YORK singer-songwriter Benjamin Francis Leftwich has added a second night at the National Centre for Early Music after tomorrow’s concert sold out.

“I kind of wanted to finish the tour off in York and the record company suggested it too,” says Ben, above, settling down with a frappuccino in the Coney Street Starbucks on the morning of the first day of his autumn headline tour, which would begin that night in Stockton.

The quietly spoken young man the NME calls “Brit-folk’s new voice” will now play the NCEM next Saturday as the closing show, and although Bonfire Night will be crackling away outside, inside the old St Margaret’s Church building in Walmgate, Ben will be enjoying the wonderful acoustics.

“I wanted to bring to light how good a venue it is and how more people should play there,” he says. “It has a really good sound there.”

Most of the tour’s locations were chosen by Ben’s label and management, but he put in two special requests.

“The Union Chapel in London was my call,” he says, “and so was the National Centre for Early Music.”

After his summer festival commitments finished on September 11, he was soon out on the road again, kicking off 26 shows on September 30 in Stockton.

“It’s good to be going out and playing sets longer than the 30 minutes you can do at festivals – though the festival season was amazing,” says Ben, who headed off to such outdoor gatherings as Glastonbury, Oxfordshire’s Truck Festival and the Isle of Wight’s Bestival.

“I didn’t know what to expect, but it was fantastic, playing Glastonbury as my first big festival experience. I was on at 12 o’clock and didn’t know how many people would be there but when I came on there were 3,000 in the tent.

“Reading Festival was my biggest gig to date, Leeds Festival was pretty good too, but Glastonbury and Green Man were the two best.”

His festival summer was both exciting and eye-opening. “At festivals, not everyone knows who you are, but it’s good to play to other people as well as the fans who come to the tour shows,”

says Ben. “I found that festival gigs were really hectic: you just turn up and play without a soundcheck.”

He can reflect on a successful first year in the spotlight at the age of 21, a year when his July debut album, Last Smoke Before The Snowstorm, made the Top 40, as well as number one in the iTunes independent chart and the top ten in the main iTunes album chart.

“I’m really pleased with how album sales have gone,” says Ben. “It means I’ll be able to do this for a bit longer… but I still get more excited when I hear a good song rather than if it gets into the top ten.”

Early last month Ben released the wistful Atlas Hands as the latest single off the album and he took advantage of his summer encounters to land a big fish for a remix.

“Mike Skinner from The Streets did a remix for me. I met him over the summer at a festival and he got on touch with my manager to say he’d really like to do one for me after he’d heard my album,” says Ben. “He made it into a kind of really dirty dance mix, kind of Leftfield.

“I’m a big fan of Mike Skinner both as a songwriter and producer and everything he touches seems to turn to gold. I’d put him in my top five British songwriters and I do class him as a songwriter, though people think of him as ‘laddy’ producer.”

Ben’s own song-writing prowess has caught the attention of BBC radio presenters Jo Whiley, Zane Lowe, Greg James and Dermot O’Leary, and his autumn tour gives him the chance to trailer at least two new songs, Break The Day Open and Is That You In The Plane?

While Ben says he is “not really into that” when asked to describe the first, he is more enlightening on the Plane song: “For me, the way I wrote it, I was chilling out in Australia and there was this plane that felt like it was only 400 yards away, but it was that thing of knowing that no matter how near it feels to you, it’s always out of reach, no matter how much you beg or squeal.”

Before the year is out, Ben has a tour to complete, two nights at the Iceland Airwaves Festival in Reykjavik and plans for “some really small fundraising shows” for Amnesty International around Christmas. Why Amnesty, Ben? “Some personal reasons and the recent Troy Davis case in Georgia,” he says.

Next year will find him turning his attention to writing songs for his second album. “I’m going to rent a house in the Lake District, near Keswick, for a month with a producer and a couple of friends to jam and write a bit, probably in March,” he says. “And I’ll make the album when I’m ready.”

• Benjamin Francis Leftwich plays National Centre for Early Music, York, tomorrow and next Saturday, supported by David Ward Maclean and Daughter; doors open at 7.30pm.

Tickets: £8 plus booking fee on 0844 477 1000. The shows are promoted by Stonebow music bar The Duchess.