By Sean Moeller

There are two things that Willy Mason does exceptionally well. He writes songs that you could hear in a brickyard, a prison yard, a coal mine, a cold porch and a warm kitchen better than anyone, spilling yarns that shouldn’t come from a kid from Martha’s Vineyard who can’t even legally drink yet. Despite that, every word he sings is soaked in a whiskeyed breath and a bitter earnestness, cooing to off the stage hardships and depressions that couldn’t possibly be his own.

The other thing that the 20-year-old Mason does remarkably well is that he makes a career look easy. He makes opportunities out of what we’d recognize as dumb luck, establishing a life of good fortune, with just a single album to his credit, the rich and sagacious “Where The Humans Eat,” the title track of which is a gilded admonishment of his mother’s disobeying cat. Mason first bumped into Bright Eyes wonderkind Conor Oberst a few years ago out east, where Oberst picked him up at a show, stowed him in his bus and let him open for him on the next date of the Bright Eyes tour. That doesn’t normally happen to someone just looking to shake hands after a show. Oberst invited Mason to crash at his place in New York City as he played clubs around town for the very first time and eventually signed him to his own new imprint, Team Love, an off-shoot of Omaha’s heralded Saddle Creek Records. Since then, he’s toured with Death Cab For Cutie, Ben Kweller, M Ward, Rilo Kiley, My Morning Jacket, Rogue Wave, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, KT Tunstall and Beth Orton.

Then what happens to add the cherry onto the top of the sundae? Two months ago, he gets a call from his booking agent informing him that he’d be opening 12 European and six American dates for Radiohead this month. The tour started today (May 6 th) in Denmark and it takes Mason to the Netherlands, Blackpool, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, London, Philadelphia, Boston and Toronto for two-day stays with a band that’s always been a big deal to him.

“It just kind of hit me because I’ve been so busy,” Mason said Thursday, the day prior to his departure overseas. “I’ve been listening to Radiohead and I’ve been influenced by them since I was 16, when I got turned onto them. I guess, in a way, because of the fact that they’ve taught me so much for such a long amount of time, that it makes me feel a high responsibility to my craft on this tour. There are lots of different reasons you do different tours, but to me, this one’s really about the music and representing it as fully as possible.”

Radiohead’s unimpeachable ideals about the purity of creativity and lead singer Thom Yorke’s steadfast belief in doing shit however he wants to do it is something that Mason looks up to. He’ll be bringing his younger brother Sam out on the road with him to play drums for him. Sam graduated high school just in time to make the trip.

“He didn’t know he was going with me until a couple of weeks ago,” Mason said. “I just asked him if he wanted to go on tour with Radiohead.”

“Where The Humans Eat” was just re-released by Astralwerks in early March and while Mason hesitantly pulled the trigger to force a second wind out of his debut. It’s a record that establishes what seems like a coercion of rural route firmament, an embrace of those places where you brag that the stars are always brighter and visible and just as much of an embrace with all of the worries that delay restful sleep. His tortured and soothing voice – of troubled consternation – and his songs of warm insight could have made Mason a fit on a handbill with Johnny Cash.

“I’m very eager to put out another record. The first couple of months after I signed the contract to re-release the record, it felt very difficult to me to see the good side of it. My job is to keep making new music and keeping it fresh, but I’m starting to see that it’s paid off and people who wouldn’t have heard the record are hearing it and reacting to it. It took a bit to see and I was a little bit conflicted. I’m seeing more and more that it makes sense. It actually might give me more freedom when I do go to make the next record,” Mason said. “When I made the first one, I was sort of a stowaway everywhere I went. I was adapting to every situation and sleeping on floors anywhere I could. It was restricting the breath I could speak with. I’ll be able to dig in a bit more and use broader strokes with this next one. If there’s anything that connects the new songs to one another is that their nature and intent is less exploratory and more rallying, if that makes sense.”

Willy Mason dates with Radiohead:

May

6-7 KB Hall (Copenhagen, Denmark)
9-10 Heineken Music Hall (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
12-13 Empress Ballroom (Blackpool, UK)
14 Barfly (Liverpool, UK) without Radiohead
15-16 Civic (Wolverhampton, UK)
18-19 Hammersmith Apollo (London, UK)

June

1-2 Tower Theatre (Philadelphia, Pa.)
4-5 Bank of America (Boston, Mass.)
7-8 Hummingbird Centre for the Performing Arts (Toronto)

www.willy-mason.com
www.radiohead.com
www.team-love.com
www.astralwerks.com