Five years ago, Benjamin Booker had a vision. He was living in New Orleans, just scraping by, when he saw himself on stage, playing a raucous hybrid of blues, punk and soul. He set out to make it a reality. Within a couple of years, he was touring an acclaimed self-titled debut album, supporting Jack White and Courtney Barnett, and playing late-night TV talkshows. It all felt surprisingly easy. It was only when he returned to New Orleans that he realised he was lost.

“It’s the cliche,” he says with a nervous laugh. “You think that when your dreams come true, it’s going to get better – and of course it doesn’t. Everybody knows it, but I guess everybody thinks it will be different for them. It only got worse.” Booker is sitting in the office of Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis, surrounded by framed photographs of legendary musicians. He looks like he belongs on the wall: he’s a dashing, charismatic 27-year-old with a smile that unfurls like a banner, but there’s a rawness and urgency about him that keeps you on your toes. He gets straight to the point.



“Because the songs are so personal,” he says, “if I wanted to make an album that progressed, I needed to progress my personal life. I was feeling overwhelmed. I was not taking care of myself, abusing some substances. It was the worst shape I’ve ever been in. I didn’t recognise myself. I was 15 pounds heavier and looked like shit. When you’re out on tour, it’s easy to not worry about things. Then you come home and realise your life is in pieces.”



Booker needed to get away and clear his head, so he packed his bags and went to visit friends in Mexico City. On the flight, he read Don DeLillo’s White Noise and was struck by this line: “What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation.” He made a bullet-pointed list of problems he needed to confront: 10 points that became the 10 songs on his new album Witness, a sensational record that is more spacious, open and emotionally direct than his debut. As soon as he returned home, he moved to Los Angeles. “I have a habit of running away from things,” he says.



Mostly, he is running away from his childhood. Born in Virginia, Booker was raised in a trailer park in Florida according to the strict tenets of evangelical Christianity. “When I was a kid, I thought this is so terrible that one day there’s gotta be some good stuff,” he says. “I used to be a cutter. I was a pretty depressed kid.”

It was the constant guilt that hobbled him. “I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 20. I was so uncomfortable around women. I would drink so much to just be able to talk to them that I would ruin every opportunity. That overwhelming guilt comes from being told that you’re going to go to hell and burn forever for the things that you do. The things you learn as a kid never leave you.” His voice falls. “I don’t think it will ever go away.”



‘I didn’t feel like I could fit in’ … Booker. Photograph: McGaw/BFA/REX/Shutterstock

The gospel influences on Witness reflect the straitened soundtrack to Booker’s childhood. Until he was 16, he’d never even heard of the Beatles. When he first heard Nirvana, he was so stunned that such a thing existed he listened to little else for the next two years. After school, he went to college in Gainesville, Florida, where he interviewed musicians and writers he admired for the college paper.



However, Booker couldn’t find a place in Gainesville’s thriving punk scene. “I didn’t feel like I could fit in, especially being a black guy. The punk scene is supposed to be inclusive, but it’s the opposite.” After college he moved to New Orleans to work for a non-profit company, HandsOn New Orleans. The gruelling experience wrought havoc on both his idealism (“It was hard learning that everything comes down to money”) and his health. “I literally ate bread and butter and drank beer for six months. It was a bad time.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. I got a record out of it, I guess.” His debut’s fierce and wrenching tales of unravelling lives stem from that period.

Booker doesn’t consider Witness a political record, but many listeners will. The knockout title song, which features gospel matriarch Mavis Staples, squarely addresses the killing of innocent African Americans by the police. “I have zero interest in politics,” he says. “I’m very interested in how people get through life and that’s what I write about.”

He mentions the killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, in 2012. Booker lived a 90-minute drive away. He was used to being pulled over by the police and viewed with suspicion, but had always felt that he’d be OK as long as he did the right thing. Martin’s death made him realise he’d been kidding himself.

‘To some, my life is disposable. I’m basically an animal’ … the performer in 2014.

“When it’s just a kid walking down the street, or a guy who serves lunch in schools, this is you,” he says. “It really affected me. You realise it doesn’t matter if you are in college and moving towards something. They don’t care. It was the first time I came to terms with the idea that there are people who don’t even see me as a person. I’m basically an animal. My life is disposable. I’m glad I’ve come to that knowledge. It could have been more dangerous if I still felt I could get away from it.”



The title of Witness comes from an interview with James Baldwin, one of Booker’s heroes, about being a witness rather than a spokesman, though Booker worries that witnessing is not enough. “With police shootings, there’s camera footage on TV. Everybody knows what’s happening. It’s not enough to just see it, there has to be action.”



The album comes, he says, from a sense of obligation. “It’s important to do more than just entertain people. I guess my biggest fear is looking back on my life and feeling like it was all a waste.” It’s really about learning to be a better person. “People are the sum of their actions and I was a piece of shit,” he says flatly. “It’s not enough to have good intentions, you have to make good decisions – all the time.”

What rescued him from his cycle of self-destruction was love. For the past 18 months, he’s been in the first serious relationship of his life and that has made all the difference. Has he finally stopped running away? “Ah,” he sighs, “let’s hope so, but who knows? Things change. I have no idea what’s going to happen.” He wipes away a tear. “Sorry, I’m getting all emotional.”

Booker is devoted to honesty even though it’s clearly difficult – or perhaps because it is difficult. He’s like that with his music, too. “There’s a fear of putting your stuff out there,” he says, “but my fear of being a shitty artist is more intense.”