I’ve been staring at this blank page for many days now trying to work out how to put this into words. I still don’t really know what I’m going to say so I’m just going to start.
At the very end of last month my biggest influence – by a country mile, and probably the reason I do what I do – passed away as the result of a motorcycle accident.
I’ve always found it confusing when my friends are deeply affected by celebrity deaths, but when Glen Hansard died it all made sense, even though in truth, none of it did. There’s never a good timed to die, but he certainly wasn’t there yet.
He wasn’t sitting by a pool in The Algarve collecting his royalties for *that song*, he was writing, recording, touring, loading up the van with merch, and regularly brightening up people’s lives with his music and his generosity. Then when that was done he’d return home to his beloved young family of Maire and Christy. Even though he was now known throughout the world, he never really let it go to his head and could often be found joining in with sessions at his local – which sadly, but perhaps fittingly, is one of the last things he did.
Glen was such an important part of what I do that a photo and paragraph on Facebook wasn’t going to cut it. I needed to write a bit more, a blog if you will. Apologies if this sounds like it’s all about me, but the intention is to show how much of an influence he had on me.
My first introduction The Frames was when I was 16 years old. My friend Ange had seen them at The Fleadh in London and subsequently gave me their debut album ‘Another Love Song’.
I was hooked from the first listen – which is referenced in my song Never Been To Dublin (more on that later) and that never stopped.
Over the last 35 years I have recorded MANY times and every engineer I have worked with has had to deal with me trying to find Frames songs for sound references. Two of them are in ‘What Happens When The Heart Just Stops’; the close lip-smack vocal is something I’ve always tried to achieve, and the sonar sound that comes in at the 1 minute mark, is something I’ve had a bash at recreating on many recordings since first hearing it.
It’s very rare that I play electric guitar, but if I ever do it will ALWAYS be a tele and I will only ever want it to sound like the guitar on Revelate
After my days playing in my band Tobermory I was briefly in a band called Blue Parent/Proof of Planes – same members, legal issue, don’t ask – and my bandmate Mark Stidson helped me set myself up with that sound. We had a guitar shop together so it wasn’t that difficult. I had a tele, a Roland JC22 and just one pedal. I think officially it was an Ibanez TS9, but to me it was ‘Revelator’ for the verses and ‘More Revelatey’ for the choruses.
Fast forward a few years to 2007, while I was I was running a magazine in Florida, I was able to watch the film ‘Once’ a few months before it was released in the UK. Of course I fell instantly in love with the film, and began to learn a few of the songs.
Around that time I was in a duo with singer/fiddle player Rosie Spencer which we called Central News (named after my local sweet shop), and a few of the songs made it into our set. We regularly busked and gigged Lies and Falling Slowly, and being around the time YouTube was gaining popularity we decided to film some of our repertoire. You can see them here if you like. Apologies for the terrible filming/focussing; this was before decent phone cameras so was on something pretty ancient! (both from 2007)
Our video of Lies was featured on the main Once website for a good few months, so that was quite exciting as a fan.
Around the same time I taught myself how to play ‘Say it to me now’ by watching and pausing a video of Glen performing it. Feeling brave, I posted a cover of me playing it down at my brother’s house in Braunton
A few people in the comments were asking how I played it so I did my first ever guitar tutorial for it
This remains my most viewed video on YouTube with 208k views.
I never actually got to watch The Frames live, but in 2008 at Glastonbury Festival The Swell Season were playing and midway through an already beautiful set they launched into Pavement Tune, The Stars are Underground and Fitzcarraldo. This was a highlight for me in 35 years of going to gigs. Coincidentally my second biggest highlight was the very next day in the same venue watching Amsterdam smash out some Pele songs.
Fast forward a couple more years – I went to do some songwriting at Hurst House in Laugharne, South Wales. I grew up listening to a lot of Ireland-based music, but I realised I had never actually visited Dublin, so I thought I’d write about it.
The chorus mentions 6 artists who have influenced me over the years: Liam (Hothouse Flowers), Davy (The Saw Doctors), Mike (The Waterboys), Glen (The Frames), Shane (The Pogues) and Paul (Bell X1) and the verses are generally made up of lyrics from those acts.
’44 beautiful dancers’ is from the first line of the first song on the aforementioned first album, the middle 8 has a line about making a hole in my scratchplate in reference to the state of ‘The Horse’, Glen’s trusty Takamine NP15, and there are a couple of nods in his direction in the last chorus.
A few years later (2015) I had the massive honour of playing at the wedding of some friends of mine, a German couple, Asi and Martina in Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland.
As part of the ceremony I was to play The Pogues’ ‘Love You ‘Till The End’ and Glen’s ‘Falling Slowly’ together with Asi’s sister Jeannette. At the end I had three separate couples congratulating me on my film, and saying that they couldn’t believe I would be playing weddings still. I tried to convince them I wasn’t *actually* him but I’m not sure they believed me.
Later that night the wedding party ended up at a local pub where I got chatting to the girl behind the bar. I explained why I was over in Ireland and we got talking about the film. She said she loves the songs and often sings them, so when her shift finished we sang a few of them in the back garden. She asked if we could do ‘Say It To Me Now’ and asked if she could play it. I gave her my guitar and she tuned it down to the right tuning. She played and sang it beautifully and I joined in with the occasional harmony. Afterwards I told her how impressed I was and asked if she’d worked it out herself. She explained she’d found a tutorial online. I asked her which one it was and she opened up YouTube to show me. It was me! Seven years earlier!
Around that time I met Saoirse Casey at an open mic night near Dublin. Saoirse’s father is singer songwriter Paddy Casey, who was good friends with Glen – you may have seen him performing at Glen’s funeral and leading The Auld Triangle on exit (blue guitar). Saoirse and I decided we would do a little tour together in England and wanting to have something we could sing together I wrote my song ‘Guess I’ll Never Know’ especially.
The song was heavily influenced by the Once soundtrack and we recorded it with Peter Bruntnell at his studio in Mortehoe, Devon during the tour.
I had a second tour organised for Saoirse and I for early 2020 but it had to be cancelled for probably obvious reasons.
The same reasons meant we had to stay in our homes for a while and we had to get a bit creative with our musical endeavours. Saoirse and I managed one livestream gig but I quickly got tired of doing them and started a series called Stranger Tunes, remotely recording and filming songs and putting them up on YouTube. Another Glen song received a makeover featuring a few musicians I had met over the years.
This one is When Your Mind’s Made Up
and then when the full band collaborations got a bit much I switched to remote duets. Falling Slowly is my most covered song EVER and I have sung it with probably 20 different singers and here is one of those with German singer Anne Pauly
Over the years I have covered many of Glen’s songs and have ended up doing covers that I heard him do first, including ‘Cry Me A River’, ‘Into The Mystic’ and ‘You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere’ among others.
My love of Glen and his music filtered down to my daughter Flo and his passing has also affected her in a similar way. From a very young age we were singing his songs together. We started with the usual suspects from the film (she was 7 when it came out) and when she was about 14 I heard her covering ‘Fake’ on her own at a gig in Glastonbury. She also floored me at a festival recently with a solo cover of Say It To Me Now. A kind lady brought me some tissues.
Her band biog cites The Frames as an influence and she sent me a beautiful message when he died. Most of it is too personal to share here, but it is summed up by her saying “Thank you for introducing me to him and his music. That was truly a gift”.
I used to hate changing strings. Like with a passion. But the day he died I had to change mine in readiness for Wickham Festival. As I looked down at them I realised that he would never be changing strings again, and that one day, I’d be changing mine for the last time.
I decided there and then that it would be something I actively enjoy doing.
I feel like I’ve lost my best friend, just one that never even knew I existed.
Thank you for the music Glen.
Tell Mairéad that you saw me.
