This feature was published in the January 2013 edition of Rhythms.
FRAMED: GLEN HANSARD BRIEFLY REIGNITES THE FRAMES. BY BRIAN WISE.
Glenn Hansard has so many stories to tell that I am reminded of the phrase ‘the gift of the gab.’ Meeting Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, having Jeff Buckley as his roadie, touring with Eddie Vedder. The tales roll effortlessly in that lilting Irish accent. Some might say that he has kissed the Blarney stone but all the stories are true.
Unlike some of his peers, the now 42-year-old Hansard survived early notoriety with The Commitments, formed one of Ireland’s most successful bands in recent years, carved out a solo career, appeared in a film about Bob Dylan (I’m Not There), had his voice on The Simpsons and also created a successful duo The Swell Season (with Market Irglova) and starred in the film Once for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in the movie.
Now Hansard has released his solo debut album, the acclaimed Rhythm & Repose, and is due back in Australia to not only promote that record but to play with some of the members of his former band.
When I catch up with Hansard by phone, he is in Savannah, Georgia on a spare day during his tour opening for Eddie Vedder. A few weeks earlier they were in Austin, Texas, recording with producer Joe Henry.
“The guys been great,” says Hansard, “he’s all heart and such a great friend. I just love being around him and learning a lot about grace under the pressure. He’s under a whole different microscope through his success and it’s very interesting to work with a man who has such grace and has such respect towards his music and his people. It’s really fascinating.”
“We did this thing as a tribute to Clarence Clemmons,” reveals Hansard, who adds that he is not sure that he should actually be talking about it. Too late!
“We did a Springsteen song [‘Drive All Night’] and we got Jake, Clarence’s nephew to come in and play on it. Myself and Eddie just shared the vocal. We haven’t quite decided how will come out. It might come out early next year or as a single or something.
“It’s a lovely thing to be out here playing gigs and then having these ideas like why don’t we go into the studio and record this song and give the money to [one of the] Big Man’s foundations. Eddie is always thinking that way. All those things they do are just class. It’s a classy operation that they run. They keep the whole front row, so if the gig sells out they say to all the people in the back row would you like to upgrade your seat and put them in the front!”
“How often do you get to travel with someone who does what you do and to do it in very successful way for such a long time?” says Hansard of his tour with Vedder. “There are certain things, for instance if I go see any show – even if it’s a band I hate or if it’s a band I love – I will always learn something every single time. Sometimes you’re learning what not to do.
“I’m watching Eddie every night – how he talks, how he is on stage and the songs he chooses to sing. I’m just drinking it in because being a songwriter can oftentimes can be quite the solitary thing because as a songwriter you in your own head a lot. As a member of the band you are not hanging out with songwriters or hanging out with musicians, you’re hanging out with your friends. The idea of getting to spend a couple of months with a guy who’s written a hundred songs – just like I have – but he’s written different ones……. It’s just really great to hang around with someone who is really masterful. It’s great to hang around with people who are really masterful at their craft. That is really what I would say about Eddie – he really knows what he is about and I find it really refreshing to be around.”
Hansard is no stranger to ‘hanging around’ with masters of the songwriting craft. He met and played for Van Morrison many years ago and The Frames supported Dylan on his Australian tour back in 2007.
“It was a very interesting,” says Hansard when I ask him about that tour. “Being on tour with an absolute legend and standing in a room with your guitar and your song and realising not one fucking person is there to see you! And having to sort of deal with the fact on the one hand while you’re opening for Bob Dylan, which is a great ego boost for yourself, and on the other hand if you offered it to me tomorrow I would say, ‘Why would anybody open for Bob Dylan?’
“You know I met Dylan in 2004 and had a conversation with him then,” continues Hansard. “I was only 24 years old and I met him in Dublin.” He explains that Dylan had walked into a rehearsal studio when he was just playing solo after the rest of the band had packed up. Suddenly, a hooded character appeared in the doorway, cigarette in his mouth. It was Dylan, of course, who was there rehearsing for a tour. He stuck his head in the door and said, ‘Sounds good.’
“I saw him and I walked up to him and I shook his hand. He was very nice and he was kind of tuning into what I was doing, so I felt it was okay to say hello to him. Usually I wouldn’t, if I saw a hero I wouldn’t know what to say.
“I shook his hand and I said meeting you is what it must have been like when you met Woody [Guthrie].’ And he just opened up he just said, ‘Man, Woody was incredible.’ Then he started talking about Woody Guthrie and we got on to what was probably a very, very brief conversation about Woody Guthrie but somehow I was able to keep up only because I’m such a massive Dylan fan. We kept up a conversation about Woody Guthrie for what was probably a couple minutes and then the next day there was a phone call that came through to the rehearsal studio where my band was rehearsing. It was Dylan’s manager saying. ‘I don’t know what you did but you impressed my boss. Do you want to come to London tonight and play a show?’ So, I got The Frames onto a flight. We’ve been basically playing with Bob on and off ever since. Very sporadically – but there’s been a few tours here and there that we’ve done.”
“It’s a funny thing,” reflects Hansard. “His manager once said, it was actually in Australia, that one of the reasons Bob has always liked you is that you’ve always left him alone, which I took as a strange compliment. Irish people tend not to bother anyone. If somebody is famous and they look like want to be left alone then will just leave them alone. So, when we toured with Dylan we just kept to ourselves and had a great time and occasionally Bob would stick his head in and say hello – but we would be super grateful for that!”
Having met and toured with Dylan and rubbed shoulders with Van Morrison, is there anyone else Hansard would like to meet?
“It’s a great thing to say in one’s life that you have heroes,” responds Hansard, “and that those heroes have somehow come through your orbit from time to time. I got to sing for Leonard Cohen this year which was really a huge thrill because he’s the third one in my Holy Trinity. He’s extraordinary.
“What Dylan does is weaving and spinning,” he continues. “What Leonard’s doing is basically that thing that Samuel Beckett was doing which is talking yourself to silence. It’s just like distilling the words down until you’re just saying exactly what’s on your mind. So, Leonard’s thing has always been laying bare, stripping himself naked; whereas, Dylan’s whole thing has always been about mystery and smoke and mirrors as much as substance. With Dylan you’re never going to figure out what he’s talking about and he’s never going to tell you.”
Despite the success that Hansard has enjoyed post-Frames, with The Swell Season and now his solo album, he still sounds to me very much like a music fan.
“Well, that’s what they all sound like to talk to,” says Hansard. “I know this is beginning to sound like, ‘Check out the people I’ve met’. Not at all. I just feel very fortunate that I’ve gotten to stand close to masters. You can speak to any of those guys, all they want to talk about is music, they don’t give a fuck about the rest.”
For his forthcoming Australian tour, Hansard will be accompanied by his fellow band members as well as singer Lisa Hannigan.
“I must clarify,” says Hansard. “Yes, it will be The Frames but it’s going to be me playing this record [Rhythm & Repose] with the boys because the boys were part of Swell Season too. They’re my boys, they’re the ones I play with. Of course, every night we have been playing Frames music.”
Rhythm & Repose arrived after Hansard spent 18 months in New York and teamed up with Patrick Dillett (who has worked with David Byrne and Laurie Anderson). Brad Albetta, from Martha Wainwright’s group, is on bass while the great David Mansfield, one of Dylan’s go to musicians, is on slide guitar. Javier Mas from Leonard Cohen’s touring band is also guitar.
“I was really happy find myself in New York with a bunch of guys that I really respect,” explains Hansard, “and just to be able to have the luxury of having a few quid in your pocket, so you are able to get your friends together and say, ‘Do you want to into the studio for a couple of days.
“It actually works out a lot cheaper to make a record like that. The first time we went in we did nine songs and I was blown away because these were guys that I gave the rough chords to and they were like, ‘Yes got it’ – and they were all over it. Then you just step back with a wealth of recordings – 35 songs. We did a bunch of music for that record and it was all super easy – we didn’t over analyse any aspect of it.”
Glen Hansard toured Australia in March 2013.