Road stories inspire Sensor’s songs

Trevor Sensor makes music for barflies, writing sketches about the lounge lizards and wayward souls that haunt the dimly lit corner booths in small-town taverns. The singer-songwriter’s professional career even started in a bar, having been discovered by the Killers’ Dave Keuning while playing an open mic in Iowa.

“He said, ‘I’m gonna get you a record deal,’ and I said, ‘Sure you will,’ not believing him at all,” Sensor said. “We became friends, but he didn’t really have a hand in what happened. He just introduced me to the guy who became my manager, and in eight months’ time, I was signed to (indie rock label) Jagjaguwar.

“It’s kind of a Hollywood story that I’m not really proud of because it’s out of pure luck,” he added with a laugh.

Sensor, who opens for Irish songsmith Foy Vance at the Bartlett on Thursday, is only 23, but his work conveys the world-weariness of a musician who’s been living on the road for decades. On his latest release, the EP “Starved Nights of Saturday Stars,” Sensor’s primal, smoky growl and occasional spoken word interlude is reminiscent of Tom Waits, and his observations about lonely people in lonely places would be right at home in a Warren Zevon or Leonard Cohen song.

“I’ve been into music my whole life,” Sensor said. “My earliest memories are listening to the Eagles with my brother. I just naturally tended toward making things. I was always writing stories as a kid, or making up songs without putting music to them.”

Originally from Sterling, Illinois (he identifies his current hometown as “America”), Sensor says his mother enrolled him in piano lessons when he was 10 or 11, but they didn’t stick. He eventually taught himself how to play by listening to songs and clawing at piano keys to try and duplicate the sounds.

“Formulating things or thinking about how a song should go, I like to think about that in private, learn things by myself at my own pace rather than having somebody bent over my shoulder and saying sharp words in my ears about how I’m playing it wrong,” Sensor said. “That just gets tedious after awhile.”

Sensor has released a handful of EPs on Jagjaguwar this year – they contain songs with such evocative, fire-and-brimstone titles as “Judas Said to Be a Man” and “Texas Girls and Jesus Christ” – and he says he has an album’s worth of material in his arsenal.

“(The label) found out I had a wellspring of songs that I’d been writing into the void for the past five years or so,” Sensor said. “We’ll eventually get an album, but in this day and age, there’s no rush. It’s more of a rush once you start having expectations around you.”

As Sensor spends more time on the road, he says the people he encounters will continue to inspire his writing. His career may be in its nascent stages, but you still get the sense that he’s seen a lot in a short amount of time.

“A lot of writers try to force songs, and I just live my life, and if a song blesses me with an idea, then I’ll go with it, and I’ll drop everything and go write it,” Sensor said. “Songs don’t come from isolated places. For me, they come from meeting people and interacting with them and the joys and euphoria and loss that comes from all that.”