If you’re reading this, nay, if you’ve read any Australian music publication, you’d know the story of Ben Lee by now. Teenage wunderkind turned pop maestro turned spiritual guru, his entire history is etched into our collective conscience. What, then, of Josh Radnor? He’s immediately recognisable as Ted Moseby, the unlucky-in-love architect that was the protagonist of long-running dramedy How I Met Your Mother. Lately, however, he’s turned music from a supporting role in his life to the lead – with the help of Lee.
“I grew up in a very musical home,” Radnor begins.“There was always stuff playing in the house – Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Peter Paul & Mary, show-tunes. I started doing musicals in high school – which, funnily enough, was how I got into acting. Even while I was acting and directing, I still had a strong love for music. I always had a pretty distinct taste for what I liked. I had a real love of melody – which is why I was a fan of Ben’s before I’d ever even met him. I didn’t realise how much I’d been longing to actually make music and to sing until I started doing it with Ben.”
For Radnor, it’s his first earnest musical collaboration. As far as Lee goes, however, he’s a veteran. “I have an open-door policy when it comes to making records,” Lee explains. “Whoever’s around will end up on there one way or another.”
His list of guests and collaborators brings up names as diverse as Lou Barlow, Sean Lennon, Ben Folds, Missy Higgins, Benji Madden and his own wife, Ione Skye. The key difference, however, is that these were all only for particular songs or minor releases – nothing quite on the scale of Radnor & Lee’s eponymous 2017 LP.
“There’s an easy, surface-value answer as to why this collaboration works: we get on well and our voices sound good together,” Lee says. “Beyond that, I feel like there is very equal footing in this collaboration. We’re both really committed to this. One of the things we’re really conscious of is keeping our friendship a priority. This isn’t one of those bands that you form when you’re 19 and you’re just beating each other up all the time. We’re two mature adults. It just feels really healthy.”
Radnor & Lee was pieced together between 2016 and 2017 among Lee’s other projects – among them, interestingly enough, a children’s album called Ben Lee Sings Songs About Islam for the Entire Family. Both were excited and enthused by the fruitful nature of their collaboration, although Radnor is the first to admit they hit a few stumbling blocks along the way.
“For the most part, they were purely psychological,” he says. “I got in my own head a lot – ‘this is weird,’ ‘people only know me from something else,’ ‘I’m gonna get laughed at.’ I was thinking a lot about that sub-genre of actors that want to be singers, and vice versa; and how that’s not always the prettiest thing. I didn’t want it to come across as wacky or indulgent.”
“Those years of experience as a creative person are definitely transferable,” adds Lee – himself no stranger to acting, care of his 2003 cult classic The Rage in Placid Lake. “Both Josh and I know how to come up with ideas, how to deal with the feelings of doubt that develop along the way, and ultimately how to execute that idea to the best of our abilities. It might be a new medium for Josh, but I don’t think that really matters. Once you’ve honed those skills, you can more or less apply them to everything.”
The end of May will see Radnor & Lee perform a trio of headline dates across the east coast. Amazingly, for a project that is ostensibly half-Australian, it will mark the first-ever Radnor & Lee shows here – not to mention Radnor’s maiden voyage to Australia. “I couldn’t think of a better way to come down than as a part of this group,” Radnor says. “Not to mention the best tour guide in Ben.”
