As of 2017, he is a member of the band A Blaze of Feather with India Bourne, Mickey Smith, Nat Wason, Rich Thomas and Kyle Keegan.
[4] Benjamin John Howard was born on 24 April 1987 in Richmond, south-west London, England,[5] and moved near Totnes, Devon[5] when he was about eight.
He was raised by musical parents who exposed him to their favourite records from singer-songwriter artists from the 1960s and 1970s at an early age, such as John Martyn, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell and Simon & Garfunkel, by whom he was strongly influenced.
[5] In an interview with American Songwriter, he stated that when he was a kid he started playing guitar because he liked to put words together and make stuff up.
[9] In 2010, he also supported the Australian folk and indie pop group Angus & Julia Stone during their concerts in Europe.
Howard worked alongside India Bourne, Marcus Wright and Chris Bond to make Every Kingdom, with Bourne playing cello, keyboards, ukulele, bass and contributing backing vocals and percussion, Bond playing guitars, bass, double bass, drums, percussion, keyboards, accordion, contributing to the backing vocals, and also producing the record, and additional modular-dynamic (MD) synthesisers provided by Wright.
In 2012, Howard launched his music in America with Every Kingdom being released on 3 April 2012, and appearances at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Texas and a US tour confirmed.
He played at Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands on 26 May and BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend in Hackney, London on 24 June 2012.
[14] In November 2012, Howard released The Burgh Island EP produced by Chris Bond, which featured four new tracks.
[15][16] Smith joined Howard's band for their performance on the main Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival 2013, on Saturday 29 June 2013, which saw them play six tracks from Every Kingdom.
In 2014, Howard headlined the inaugural Somersault Festival, based in North Devon, with other artists such as Jack Johnson.
[17] On 5 August 2014, Howard's first single "End of the Affair" from his second studio album was played on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 and Danielle Perry's Xfm station.
On 6 April 2015, Howard announced a short string of tour dates in the US with the English indie folk band Daughter as support.
The single debuted on Annie Mac's Radio 1 station with accompanying 2018 UK tour dates announced.
Together with his band Howard performed two songs from the album, "Nica Libres at Dusk" and "Towing the Line", on Later... with Jools Holland on 15 May 2018.
[19] In promotion of the album, Howard and his band performed it in full at Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station for a show that was live-streamed globally on 8 April 2021.
[23] On 9 January 2024, Howard shared "Rumble Strip", a standalone collaboration with Aaron Dessner which previously had only been available on the vinyl deluxe version of Collections from the Whiteout.
He makes extensive use of alternate tunings such as CGCGGC ("Old Pine", "Everything", "The Wolves"), DADGAD ("In Dreams", "There's Your Man") and CGA#GFC ("End of the Affair", "Esmerelda").
He also complements these tunings by using a partial capo for many songs ("Further Away", "Everything", "End of the Affair", "Boat to an Island on the Wall") in order to use harmonic or bass notes otherwise unavailable.