The polluted haze of the Los Angeles sun is a far cry from the exotic places Benjamin Booker has experienced of late. The New Orleans singer-songwriter, disenchanted and lost in his own world, took off for Mexico last year in a quest for some much-needed soul-searching. His second album Witness is a result of those experiences – a powerful album that’s heavily inspired by soul and R&B, as well as garage rock. It’s a soundtrack to his thoughts and feelings circa 2017, and his fresh perspective on what is happening in the US right now.
“Good intentions aren’t good enough,” says Booker. “Being able to backpack, you are the sum of your actions, your good intentions. But you have to take a step back, think – work out how you yourself can be accountable for the state of things, of your life.”
The title track and lead single from Witness arrived in March, alongside an essay by Booker that detailed the issues important to him, and by extension, the inspirations for his album. Already, certain critics have interpreted Witness as a political record, but Booker disagrees.
“I don’t think it is [politically charged] at all. That’s just how people celebrate it. I think the message is kind of more selfish – the first [album, 2014’s Benjamin Booker] was about my relationship to other people, kind of like the problems I had with them, and I think with this one, it turned into me looking at myself, and addressing the issues in my own life.”
According to Booker, music and performance is ultimately an individual pursuit, and Witness is evidence as much. “I think they’re just personal songs,” he says. “They reflect what I’m trying to do in connecting to other people, like a group of people. These personal songs, I guess they spoke to a larger group that feel the way I do.”
To most people, the idea of dropping everything to relocate to a foreign country without even knowing the language – or even having an idea of what you want to achieve from the whole experience – is an intimidating one. Not so for Booker.
“That sounds like the best thing in the world,” he says firmly. “I enjoy being in uncomfortable situations and just taking off and putting myself in situations like that. I didn’t know what was going to happen. And being in Mexico, I was wearing a blindfold. I think it gets stale when you’re doing the same thing all the time, and for me, doing that opened up my eyes to a whole new perspective in life. I took away a lot from that trip.”
Aside from his international expedition, Booker says the songwriting process for Witness didn’t differ all that much from his self-titled debut release. “I just can’t sit down at the guitar and write – I try to do that every day and it doesn’t work for me,” he explains. “What I did when I went to Mexico – I got to know myself again, I took things as they came and wrote about them. I guess this album is a culmination of what’s happened to me over the last few years.”
Go out there and be yourself, do something you love and it’ll be alright.
Booker left the US a picture of confusion, dissatisfied and adrift, but he returned determined, inspired and able to pen some of his strongest work yet. Has the Witness experience changed how Booker will approach music from now on? “I think it has, definitely,” he agrees. “Generally I’m pretty anxious, like pretty on edge all the time, and I like to write music that makes me comfortable that makes me able to take time to sit with the guitar – so that’s a lot of the time.
“I’m not one of these singers who can just sit down at a planned time and write a song – I’ve gotta feel it, it’s gotta be right. Going away was the best thing in the world for me and maybe I’ll need another experience like that to keep writing – who knows? But for now, I guess Witness says it all. [I’m] trying to recapture that sense of aloneness, I guess.”
Of all the tracks on the new album, it’s opener ‘Right On You’ that resonates most closely with Booker. “It’s my favourite to play and was one of the first I wrote after my trip,” he says. “I guess that was my ‘real’ song – I needed to get back to things that are meaningful and I didn’t think I’d be happy with everything in my life, so the writing this time, it’s more profound.
“I just want everyone to not get overwhelmed and really educate yourself and know there’s more important things, and go out there and be yourself, do something you love and it’ll be alright.”
Photo: Neil Krug
Witness is out Friday June 2 through Rough Trade/Remote Control.
