Matt Benson: ‘I think there’s so much beauty to be had in the normal things, even in the down and outness of life’

Belfast-born troubadour, trombonist and pianist Matt Benson has released his lyrical debut album Sit Back Down Again (11 July) featuring a reflective and poetic collection of songs that take the listener on an evocative, cinematic journey.

Sit Back Down Again features 12 tracks that serve as snapshots in Benson’s life, from ‘Nancy and The Soldier’, his love letter to his grandparents about how they might have met, ‘Broken Masterpiece’, which should surely be the next Bond anthem, to a sweet chance meeting with a girl, all carried along by his warm, gravelly and very unique vocals which remind me of London’s musically incisive Benjamin Clementine.

He describes the album as being like ‘twelve short films’: ‘I really see so much cinema in it,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘There’s a song called ‘The Last Goodbye’ which is about this woman who’s fleeing a domestic abuse situation. She steals his motorbike and his gun and just leaves off and goes to a bar. That Thelma & Louise aspect of freedom to me is really cinematic. Then there’s a song called ‘The Well-Dressed Gentleman’, which is the flip side of that. It’s like a cinematic horror story about an ancient creature that looks like a well-dressed gentleman but he isn’t, it’s something much more sinister. The album title felt appropriate, you know, “Sit back down again and listen to the album!”,’ he quipped.

‘There are a bunch of ballads on it that are so romantic and full of lyricism’

Benson calls the tracks a mixture of ‘jazzy and romantic’: ‘We’re putting out more upbeat ones at the minute but there are a bunch of ballads on it that are so romantic and full of lyricism, I love that kind of romantic stuff so much.’ He is not new to the music scene – he has been in George Ezra’s band since 2017, and has played with Bad Manners, The Pogues, Hot 8 Brass Band and Brian May, amongst many others. He has played at Glastonbury, on The Tonight Show, Jools Holland’s Hootenanny, The Royal Albert Hall, and The Brit Awards. Quincy Jones has called him ‘a great trombone player’ and Paul Sanchez (composer for HBO series Treme) has said ‘this guy can play his ass off’! Recently, he played on the soundtrack to the film ‘Lola’, which was written by The Divine Comedy frontman, Neil Hannon.

The title track ‘Sit Back Down Again’, which was also his debut single, is partly about the tragic early death of his sister Catherine but despite the harrowing backstory, there’s something inherently uplifting and optimistic about the soulful song full of heart, brass and memories: ‘I remember listening to music as a teenager and I remember always looking for advice, for someone to tell me what to do with my life and say something significant, some guidance to reassure me,’ he said. ‘I try to write songs that are wholesome that will reassure me. This song is about knowing people have to leave and chase their dreams and go on adventures, it’s about wishing them well. Life is for living, not for piling money up.’

I tell him that I love the line in it “You might wanna dance with a quiet stranger in a two-star hotel” and he agrees: ‘That’s one of my favourite lines, actually,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘I just love that mix of romance and slight down and outness, there’s something beautiful about that. It doesn’t have to be super glamorous and the best stuff usually isn’t, is it? I think there’s so much beauty to be had in the normal things, even in the down and outness of life. The nooks and crannies of life are so beautiful at times.’

Fascinatingly, he woke up one day with the song in his head: ‘I lived in this tiny little house in a place called Nobber in Co. Meath. It used to be the butcher’s house on an old country estate and we lived in the tiny cottage on those grounds. I just woke up with this thing in my head, when you’re feeling down and I just knew there was something there, so I sat down and it tumbled out! I didn’t know what I was writing about really but I had this idea of a story arc with this chorus.’

‘The shop was completely trashed, all except for a little student model trombone that was found under a pile of smoking rubble on the top floor’

Benson began performing professionally in 2010 with bands around London, notably New Orleans style brass band Brassroots: ‘As far as I know, Brassroots was the first band to do that high energy pop covers thing in the U.K.,’ he said. However, his bittersweet introduction to the trombone has left an indelible mark on him: ‘A fire broke out in my dad’s music shop in Belfast around ‘94,’ he said. ‘The shop was completely trashed, all except for a little student model trombone that was found under a pile of smoking rubble on the top floor. It was still in working order, and between you and me, I think the fire gave it something a bit special. My da brought it home for me and we spent that evening cleaning it up in the kitchen sink. He taught me how to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star’ in C Major that night.’

Both of his parents were very into music when he was growing up: ‘Mum was a music teacher and played the harp, cello and the piano, so there was always music going in the house and both of my brothers and my sister Catherine, everybody played something. Paul played violin and Peter played trumpet and piano and my dad played the trombone and the piano and he played in different show bands and everything.’

He has fond memories of his dad’s life in a band and admits that he always wanted to emulate that: ‘He was in the Hilton show band, so he was always leaving the house dressed up for that. I remember the smell of his aftershave and him being really spruced up, with his bandmates coming into the house and giving me sweets and stuff like that just before they left. It was really good, that music for me is just a memory of the house that sounded like music. There was a lot of classical music, some Irish music and some jazz. It wasn’t one particular thing, really.’ Sadly, his father passed away in March this year but championed his son’s music all the way: ‘Dad was my biggest fan, he was behind me playing trombone and going to music college in London. He was so proud of me. Towards the end, he had dementia for the past two years but in a way, it was a blessing as he died of complications before the dementia really took him. As a result of the dementia, some of his filters had come off, so he would walk into the shop and instantly tell everybody about me. It was hilarious and very heartwarming, too.’

Interestingly, he tells me the first positive story I’ve heard about dementia: ‘My dad actually suffered quite a bit with depression after the death of my sister, he took that so badly, it was such a knock for him but strangely the dementia actually lifted a lot of that depression. It’s almost like he forgot how to be depressed.’

‘As a child, I had a morbid fascination with horror movies and I still love them today, although it’s hard to find a good one!’

‘Broken Masterpiece’ is the standout track on the album for me, a powerful, sweeping piece in which both his vocals and trombone fills shine. It would make a brilliant Bond theme, with its stompy, dramatic chorus about something in the shadows. I tell him that I love it and that the lyrics make me think of ‘Stranger Things’ with its reference to the ‘monster’: ‘It’s so interesting that you say ‘Stranger Things’ because we were supposed to make the video for it today but the weather’s too bad and the whole theme behind the video for it is ‘Stranger Things’!,’ he said animatedly. ‘I think it’s my favourite track on the album, although that’s really hard for me to say because I’m so invested in the album, I love them all. This one is a combination of my childhood love of climbing trees and horror stories. We had this cherry tree at the front garden of the house and me and my friends growing up and my sister spent a lot of time up this cherry tree during the summer months. I had this love of Stephen King novels and horror movies, ‘The Candy Man’ and all that stuff, As a child, I had a morbid fascination with horror movies (laughs) and I still love them today, although it’s hard to find a good one!’

He describes ‘Broken Masterpiece’ as being born out of his ‘overactive imagination as a child’: ‘I would be up this tree at night and I remember trying to imagine that there was a monster in the shadows and I would scare myself deliberately,’ he said laughing. ‘I had to climb off the tree and try and get into the house before the monster got me. In this song, I’m playing with the idea that actually the monster was real and maybe it believed in me more than I believed in it. In the video, my nephews Adam and his brother will be me as a child and then I think I’m gonna be myself as present day me and we’re gonna figure something out with the monster. They’re busy trying to find 80’s clothes as we speak (laughs).’

Typically, he writes his songs on the piano: ‘I just sit down at the piano and I don’t get back up again until something happens,’ he said laughing. ‘Sometimes, it’s so easy and then other times it takes a little bit longer if there’s any sign of stress. Stress is the enemy, I think, of creativity. Some people say that the clock is good and I’m sure it has its uses but I find just letting something uncover is a beautiful way of writing. I think knowing that there’s something to tell and you just have to give it time and let it reveal itself and not force it too much.’

‘The song is about us comparing stories in the bar about our London days and having a little dance at the end of the song!’

The opening track ‘The London Line’ could be a Billy Joel song, underpinned by an almost hymnal piano line and turns out to have a lovely provenance after he returned to Ireland after 10 years of studying and working in London: ‘I felt so lost, I went to the pub and I remember this woman came in and sat down beside me,’ he said. ‘The song is about us comparing stories in the bar about our London days and having a little dance at the end of the song! I said ‘Broken Masterpiece’ is my favourite but maybe ‘The London Line’ is my favourite, it’s a really heartwarming song.’ I tell him that it really is and ask him if remembers what song they danced to: ‘I don’t know if there was even any music to be honest, it was just an old man’s bar in Rostrevor where I’m from, a bar called ‘Henry’s’ which goes by many names (laughs). It’s actually where I filmed the video for ‘The Way It Should Be’.’

Endearingly, he is very aware that he’s had some lucky breaks: ‘I feel like I’ve been really lucky,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve worked hard but the George Ezra thing was my main break. It’s so difficult as a trombone player – even as a brass player – to get a proper gig. My friend Gerry Morgan from uni, he put me through for an audition with James Wyatt, the MD for George’s band, who said could I send him a little recording? I had a little Random (recorder) at the time, a cheap little second hand one that was about to break down (laughs). I brought it up to Spelga Dam, which is where we get our water from here. It’s way out in the middle of nowhere and I was so self-conscious about my voice at that time that I had to go all the way out there (laughs). I remember sitting for ages just trying to get the right take but I sent it over to him and he really loved it, so I went over to London and we went to The Toucan pub in Soho and had a few pints together. We got on really well and and I did some more auditioning and then the next seven years were a blur, really!’

He has his producer Kian Boylan, with whom he wrote half the songs on the album, to thank for putting him in touch with The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon: ‘Kian was working with Neil Hannon on a film score for a movie called ‘Lola’, a film about a time-traveling radio, believe it or not! Neil needed some trombone for it, so I just arrived down to the studio and did some playing along with some really excellent brass players. I got to meet Neil then and he was so, so lovely. He’s such a gentleman and really down to earth, very respectful and so easy to work with. I would love to support him sometime or do something with him in any context. I got a little cameo in the film – everybody who recorded in the studio got a chance to to be in the film – it’s only for a split second but they asked us to shave our beards off first, so we’re all looking very baby faced!’

‘It was absolutely mind-blowing, there’s no other word for it, it’s just people as far as the eye can see’

Over the past seven years, he has played some incredible venues and I ask him if there’s one gig in particular that stands out: ‘There have been so many good ones but the intimate gigs are quite often the most rewarding,’ he said. ‘That said, the main one has got to be playing the main stage at Glastonbury with George Ezra, just before Stormzy. It was absolutely mind-blowing, there’s no other word for it, it’s just people as far as the eye can see, you can’t see an end to people and on top of that you have these huge TV cameras circling you and doing close-ups, meanwhile you’re on cloud nine and you’re trying to concentrate on the job at hand (laughs).’

Another moment he’ll never forget was meeting American musician, producer and composer extraordinaire, Quincy Jones, at the Montreux Jazz Festival. It was a meeting that almost didn’t happen given that his tour manager, Trevor Plunkett, is known for his pranks, so when he said that Quincy Jones wanted to meet the brass section, Benson simply dismissed it a a wind-up. However, when Plunkett insisted that it really was no prank, Benson and his female brass players went down to see: ‘We got to chat with Quincy Jones and Shania Twain for about 40 minutes, that was beyond surreal,’ he said. ‘He’d been watching the gig and he really liked the brass section and how we played. He was very complimentary, so to get a compliment from Quincy Jones at Montreal Jazz Festival, it’s not something I ever imagined happening, let’s just put it that way!’

Incredibly, for someone with a voice as powerful and unique as his, Benson is only just starting to believe he can really sing: ‘I’ve only really been figuring out how to use my voice in the past year or so. I recorded the album in 2022 and you’ll hear on the tracks that I sing in so many different ways – on some of them, it’s a close mic, raspy kind of sound. ‘Sit Back Down Again’ is a little bit like that. On other ones, I’m singing with quite a big voice, almost a crooner-esque kind of voice at times, which is me getting to know my own voice. A voice is a magical instrument, it’s kind of mysterious. With the trombone, you can see it, you can hold it, you can clean it. You know you can make sure there are no dents in it, you can make sure it’s working , whereas the voice is an internal instrument that you can’t see – you can only feel it if you pay attention to it.’

‘The human voice remembers everything that has ever happened to it, it’s like a fingerprint’

Along the way, he has amassed a wide range of influences, including Tom Waits, John Martyn, Randy Newman, John Coltrane and Miles Davies, calling his album ‘Kind of Blue’ (1959) ‘an album made in heaven’: ‘It’s another world, I think it’s one of the best albums of all time, the way the personality of the players comes through,’ he said enthusiastically. He’s also a huge fan of jazz singer Billie Holiday: ‘I’d love to go for a drink with Billie Holiday to hear her stories on the road. There’s a realness around her. My favourite video on the internet is her ‘My Man Don’t Love Me’ with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. They’re all at the height of their powers, there’s so much soul in that performance. I’m very into the voice and what to do to get the best out of my own. I don’t drink or smoke anymore, although I used to do lots of both of those (laughs). Billie Holiday was in the thick of all of that, she had a serious drug problem, but she had the most amazing voice I’ve ever heard, it’s so everworldly. The pain in it, the human voice remembers everything that has ever happened to it, it’s like a fingerprint. That feels really true to me. There’s a beautiful uplifting thing about sad songs, isn’t there? There’s something very uplifting about sadness itself and I’ve tried to show that on the album.’

He elaborates on that: ‘Take ‘The London Line’, there’s a lot of sadness in that. Loneliness is a big theme on the album, being lonely but needing someone to talk to when you’re tired and feeling lost in the world. And then you have finding love and finding little bits of it, that’s the same thing. The ‘dancing with a quiet stranger in a two-star hotel’ is about finding bits of love in amongst the sadness and little bits of joy amongst the rubble of the sadness. I think that’s all that anyone can do, really.’

Other songs are a celebration of love, such as ‘Nancy and The Soldier’, which tells the sweet story of how he imagines his grandparents might have met: ‘My grandad was an American soldier,’ he said. ‘His infantry, The Red Diamonds, came to Northern Ireland to train for World War II because the field systems here where I grew up are very similar to Normandy. She met him here when he was training. He went to war but was a very different man when he came back. He was shellshocked and they had my father and then he died very shortly after that in a car crash. My granny never talked about him very much but we knew that they were really deeply in love. She never told us about how they met. In the song, I say right in the opening verse that I don’t know how they met but here’s how I’m gonna imagine they met.’

‘She goes to pick it up and as she looks up, she sees him there beside her, smiling down at her’

At the time of our chat, I haven’t heard the album, although he very kindly sends it to me afterwards, and I tell him later that it’s one of my favourite songs on it: ‘In the song, Nancy is out with her camera and she’s walking around. I found out later that Nancy was a bit of an amateur photographer. I didn’t know that when I wrote the song! In the song, she sees the soldiers coming off the boat and she spots Vernon coming off the boat and she locks the camera onto him. Just as it’s coming into focus, she drops the camera. She goes to pick it up and as she looks up, she sees him there beside her, smiling down at her.’ He asks me what I think and I say that I love it and it sounds really cinematic, I can visualise the whole scene unfolding as I imagine Nancy in a red coat and he’s genuinely delighted: ‘It’s an interesting song because I set it during Christmastime, the Christmas just before he left. He proposes at the end of the song, he says: “If I put a ring on your finger, I’ll have a reason to fight”. It’s so real for me.’

He’s had some brilliant moments on the road, saying there are ‘so many silly stories’ but one of his favourites was touring with Bad Manners, the English two-tone and ska band led by frontman Buster Bloodvessel: ‘Just being on the road with Bad Manners in general was very funny, there were a lot of very, very hilarious moments,’ he said laughing. ‘I was in Winnebago for the first tour, I wasn’t with them for very long. We were waiting in the pub for the tour van to arrive. Have you ever seen ‘Breaking Bad’? I say that I have. ‘The camper van where they cook all the meth – it looked completely identical to that – pulled up outside this pub. Up to this point, I’m used to musicians being quite serious music college types (laughs), where everything’s quite proper. The doors open on the van and out jumps Pepe the dog, Buster’s dog, who runs up and starts licking everybody’s face. It really set the tone for the rest of the tour! It was a crazy time in my life that was full of madness and really funny stories. I couldn’t even begin to start really! It was fantastic and I’m really grateful for all of it.’

Benson goes on to tell me a funny story about doing gigs in an old people’s home with a trombone trio: ‘In its own way, it was very heartwarming and very funny as well. Some of the old people didn’t want us to be there and would tell us to clear off (laughs), so we’d be running off. Not exactly everybody’s cup of tea, I suppose! I remember a couple of incidences where people let their opinions be known a little bit, you know. It’s the old people thing, no filter, isn’t it? Actually, I quite admire that now (laughs). That’s something I find with me, the older I get, the less of a filter I have, which is probably not a good thing but there is something very freeing about not worrying too much about the filter. I love, just once in a while, to let the filter loose a little bit. I think it’s good for the soul, you know! Just every now and again, obviously, not all the time, because that would be a disaster (laughs) but every now and then you have a day where you don’t worry about it too much and you feel grand afterwards!’

As we wind down our chat, I say that I’m really looking forward to listening to the album that night and will be listening to the stories as much as to the music itself and he sounds genuinely pleased: ‘That’s the hope, you know, if people can see the songs the way I see them and get even half of those images that I see, I’d be delighted, really. That’s all I want to do.’

(Photo credit: Ruth Medjber.)