Brian Houston

Brian Houston is sitting in his Belfast home, still non-plussed by the impact his 2003 release, The Valley, has had on listeners. “I get these letters and emails about people’s experiences when they hear the songs. They tell about receiving comfort, healing and hope, pulling the car over to weep, and so forth.”

With another set of songs and “a bit of money for production,” this summer’s Thirteen Days in August may generate another wave of empathy.

Virtually unknown in the U.S., Houston’s disarming melodies and unvarnished emotions have made him “practically mainstream” in Northern Ireland, with radio hits, annual invitations from Van Morrison to play his Killyleagh Castle festival and innumerable local gigs. However, like many Irish musicians, pre- and post-U2, he’s found access to English markets hard won. But it’s coming.

Now it seems his buoyant guitar, keening harp and Irish humor are winning over BBC DJs, TV producers, alt.country journalists and bar crowds when slotted with acts such as Josh Ritter, Mary Lee’s Corvette, Stewboss and the Way Beyond Nashville festival in London. Houston is positioned to ride the sea swell of British interest in Americana.

Perhaps it’s because underneath the youthful charm and slight vocal quaver there’s an undercurrent of vulnerability in his music that takes listeners to unexpected places. “I’m most inspired to write music that brings the kind of healing that comes out of picking an issue clean like a chicken bone,” he says. “When I do well, people think, ‘That guy knows what I went through.’ They feel understood, relieved and not so alone. It’s like a third-party healing.”

That happened a lot with The Valley, and Thirteen Days in August holds out such opportunities again: an alcoholic Christmas (“it was the time we lost the car”), lost community (“Progress cut through Paradise like a slab of butter to a red-hot knife”), wry relational denial (“I got a buddy, says he’s got a poem about oranges”), and comfort for everyday rejections (“When there’s no wisdom or grace for you to learn your lessons / When you’re only worth 10% of your possessions / Come and sit down here with me”).

Weaned on his father’s Hank Williams and Kris Kristofferson records, Houston began performing at 12, doing an Everly Brothers routine with his brother—matching guitars and all. “Mark couldn’t stick to the melody and I couldn’t harmonize, so I led,” he laughs. “That gave me an appreciation for music that’s both fun and, for its time, emotionally honest.

“And I’m glad for it. Maybe I’m reacting to people who try to put a positive spin on everything, but I love what Springsteen says on his live album, that nobody wins unless we all win. Maybe that makes me some kind of Emotional Socialist,” he muses. “Is there such a thing?”

Still, he keeps the catharsis ironic, even fun. How else to explain national airplay for a bouncy sing-along titled “Tired of Confession?” “Yeah,” he shrugs. “Everyone needs to go there, but you don’t want to live there, do you?”

So, does the healing last? He tells of a recent encounter. “This guy walks up to me on the street in Belfast. He has a full, youthful head of hair but the complexion and burst blood vessels of a much older man that we Irish would say ‘likes a drink.’ And he tells me how 10 years ago a friend sat him down and forced him to listen to my first local radio hit, which dealt with the ravages of alcoholism in a family. And he says, ‘It turned my life around.’

“I was staggered. And as he walked away I thought maybe he was just off the wall. But then his wife walked up to me and told me, ‘It’s true. He became a husband and father to his family from that point.’”

Houston shakes his head, still turning the scene over in his mind. “Ten years...”