'I often think I'm smiling when I'm actually not - do you think it's psychological?" Brian Kennedy is peering into the tiny viewfinder of Frank Miller's digital camera as the Irish Times photographer scrolls through the series of shots he has just taken. The images range from "moody" to "undeniably glum".
But if the singer-songwriter's forthcoming album does as well as his last two have done, he'll have plenty to smile about. The press release detailing Kennedy's career so far fairly glitters with platinum. Triple platinum; quadruple platinum, even. The glitz of it all seems to have affected him not a whit.
Ensconced in the dauntingly designer Garden Suite of the Morrison Hotel doing interview after interview, Brian Kennedy is chatty and easy-going and entirely devoid of rock-star airs. He is, dammit, nice. Looking back, the amazing thing is that he became a singer at all.
"I always had a sort of humming thing. I'd hum round the house. One of my earliest memories would be of coming down the Falls Road, and there'd be an ambulance or a fire engine heading somewhere, and I'd think of a harmony to go with the siren. I know it sounds mental."
Well, let's describe it as "extraordinary", given that his was a house where music just didn't figure in the scheme of things. "Not even a radio, really. I'm one of six kids who grew up on the Falls Road when all that was going on, so there wasn't an awful lot to be joyous about.
"The situation we were in was never really expressed in a very articulate way - you were just stuck in it and that was that. But for some reason, I used to engage in this kind of melodic language. I can articulate it now; but at the time, I was just a little kid who distractedly hummed around the house."
When people began to say he should be a singer, he had no idea what they were talking about. Eventually, thanks to the intervention of the music teacher at school - "God love him, he had such a hard time; most people messed about, or croaked, or . . . well, everybody was smoking so much they could hardly talk, never mind sing" - he made it into a nearby cathedral choir where, incredibly, he was placed in the bass section. But when he started to listen to records and sing along, it was women singers he chose to emulate - among them Kate Bush, famous for hitting the highest notes. So, nowadays, is Kennedy.
What's the highest note he can sing? "I've no idea. I never studied music. Pretty high, apparently." The new album, Get On With Your Short Life, hits an unmistakeably New York note. The songs were written while he was living in Greenwich Village and working on Riverdance. Listening to it, it could be a soundtrack for Friends, although this particular week, anything to do with New York comes in only one key - poignant. Thus the title track, chosen as a single because it's the most up-tempo number on the album, has taken on a whole new meaning for its author.
"I used to get up in the morning and go for a run from Greenwich Village down into Battery Park, right beside those buildings, so I know that area really well. And suddenly to see it devastated . . . it's surreal. It's like watching Die Hard III or something."
He shakes his head. "For some of those people, life was very short. Very short."
How, though, did the album end up so rooted in the Big Apple? "Well, the song Christopher Street - for instance - would not have been written at all, had I not lived on that street and walked up it every day, to get to the train, to go to the theatre, to do Riverdance. God, I just loved that journey. I felt like I was living out one of my dreams, which was to live in such a musical historical space, you know? Joni Mitchell had been there. Lou Reed. Paul Simon. Bob Dylan. Crosby, Stills and Nash. They had all lived around there, performed around Baker Street - and when I was coming home with my guitar, I really felt connected, maybe in some na∩ve kind of way.
"I'd get home a bit hyper from the show, because naturally I couldn't calm down; so I'd play the guitar and try new things. Christopher Street was born looking out of the window - towards Christopher Street. And I'm so glad I lived there. The songs wouldn't have been the same without that. Walking up that street you see every shade, every flavour of person that has ever existed in the world. Every cross-fertilisation that is ever gonna happen is right there. I just loved it."
If one person is responsible for the sound of Get On With Your Short Life, says Kennedy, it's Kevin Killen, the New York-based Irish engineer. "He made suggestions that I would never have thought of as regards tempo, arrangements, song selection. He also assembled a bunch of New York-based musicians to work with - the mandolin is played by Gerry Leonard, an Irish guy who plays with David Bowie; the drummer is the guy from the B52s and the bass player is the guy from Aimee Mann's band." But then there's also that distinctive Kennedy sound. Shades of Paul Brady; shades of Christopher Cross.
Kennedy raises his eyes to heaven. Sorry if that was an insult. Actually I quite like Christopher Cross.
"I do too - but I don't get it. I know my voice is high, but I sing in an Irish accent; he's American. I don't think I sing like he does, but if you hear it, you hear it - what can I do?" What I don't hear is any trace of Van Morrison, but Kennedy insists his collaboration with him has profoundly influenced his musical development.
"He's a real master of what he does. It gave me a real confidence boost. And also, he coming from such a learned place. Scat singing, for him . . ." A rare pause, while he tries to describe what it's like to sing with Van Morrison, live, in front of an audience. "He's like singing with a saxophone. You never really know where he's gonna go. And he taught me an awful lot about dynamics in a song: how to drop it right down, to be very quiet, and what that does to you emotionally."
Ah, yes; emotion. How does he, Brian Kennedy, feel about all the stuff that's written about his sexuality, the nasty rumours, the snide remarks? Hurt? Angry? He sighs.
"Rumours are funny things because you cannot compete with someone else's fantasy about who you are or aren't," he says.
What's worse, though, is the idea that it's OK - or even de rigueur - to question a gay artist about his or her private life. "I find that very offensive," he says. "Because there would never ever be a case where somebody would write: 'heterosexual singer Bono said today, blah, blah, blah'. It just wouldn't happen. So why do they have to say 'gay singer', or 'bisexual singer'? Why? It's like talking about 'women musicians' or 'women song writers'.
"I think it's actually a safe way for some people to be offensive. I'm a singer. I'm not anything else. But I can see that I have a responsibility, even though I don't really want it. When I grew up, any kind of same-sex coupling was only talked about in an abusive context. That's a very damaging place for anybody to be.
"As I became more and more comfortable with the notion, I realised there was sort of a responsibility - whether I liked it or not - to be honest about it. Because if there was one kid out there who felt the same way, but who could then say: 'oh, well, that guy is like that as well, so maybe the world is a little less scary' . . . so I do acknowledge that responsibility. Reluctantly."
Get On With Your Short Life is on Sony Records. Brian Kennedy's Irish tour: Olympia Theatre, Dublin, September 27th-29th; City Hall, Cork, on October 9th; Radisson Hotel, Galway, on October 10th; UCH Limerick on October 11th