Glen Hansard loves being Irish.
He’s effectively conscious that in right now’s present political local weather, it’s a taboo factor to say as a result of we reside in an overtly nationalist world.
However he can’t assist himself.
“All of our rivers are named after goddesses,” he says in his thick Dublin accent. There’s ardour in his voice as he tells me about the fantastic thing about Eire over a video name. “We expect in a different way. To not say we expect in a different way from the remainder of Europe, however I feel we could have a barely totally different route. We’re a storytelling nation. We come from a rustic of mysticism and paganism. I like being Irish in that I like the depth of the language as effectively. The language could be very poetic. I don’t communicate it very effectively. However, I’m very connected and in love with the depth of my language and my place.”
Hansard is carrying a black mock turtleneck sweater, his as soon as pink curly hair and beard now a delicate white. As of this interview, the Irish musician is in New York Metropolis for a few reveals: final evening at Metropolis Vineyard and tonight on the Bowery Ballroom.
I first found the Irish musician in 1991 after I was in ninth grade. I had simply seen The Commitments, wherein he performs guitarist Outspan Foster, and cherished it. A pal of mine launched me to the Frames, Hansard’s rock band. I nonetheless bear in mind listening to “The Dancer” off the band’s debut album, One other Love Music, for the primary time, and the way enamored I used to be by it.
Since then, Hansard has develop into a worldwide sensation because the frontman for the Frames, his solo work, and one-half of the folks duo the Swell Season with Czech singer and pianist Markéta Irglová.
To have fun his greater than 30-year profession, he’s releasing a two-part reside retrospective album, Don+t Settle – Transmissions East and West. Transmissions East (Vol. 1) is out April 24, and Transmissions West (Vol. 2) will launch later this yr.
The album was impressed by a live performance Hansard carried out at Zuiderparktheater in The Hague in the summertime of 2024. Hansard recollects that 5 or 6 songs into his set, a torrential downpour started. When he seen folks leaving to get out of the rain, he invited all the viewers onstage.
“We had like a thousand folks sitting round us whereas we performed,” says Hansard. “Individuals actually loved it as a result of out of the blue, they’re sitting subsequent to the musicians that they’re watching. They’re proper subsequent to them. And so they’re in there, and so they’re listening to the musicians discuss to one another. All of the sudden, they’re within the equipment of what a live performance is.”
Don+t Settle was recorded in entrance of a small, intimate viewers over two nights in April 2025 at Berlin’s historic Funkhaus, a former East German radio facility. It options reside and up to date reinterpretations of a few of Hansard’s most cherished songs from the Frames, his solo work, and the Swell Season, with no vocal overdubs, second takes, autotune, or modifying.
“We determined to do it on my fifty fifth birthday,” says Hansard. “I’m actually completely satisfied for the songs as a result of a few of them, I felt like I by no means fairly bought proper on report, and on the reside report, they simply appear to return alive differently.”
The album is called after the second monitor on his fourth solo album, This Wild Keen.
“I’m at an age the place you both put your foot on the fuel, otherwise you take your foot off the fuel,” he says. “And I very a lot have to put my foot on the fuel. I wish to work, I wish to be on the planet. I wish to be making music. And so, the title made sense.”
Hansard found his love of music by way of jail time and Bob Dylan, although not precisely the way you would possibly assume.
As a child in Dublin, Hansard was moving into bother; stealing automobiles, experimenting with medicine and alcohol, typical of youngsters in his neighborhood, he says.
“The place I grew up, there was no pleasure. So we had been on the lookout for it the entire time. I used to be positively slipping, and my mother was a bit frightened about me. She had each proper to be.”
Hansard admired his girlfriend’s older brother, who gave him a cassette of Bob Dylan’s Biggest Hits. “I believed he was sort of cool,” he says. “He was mad, however he was additionally a really cool dude”.
On the identical time, Hansard’s uncle was in jail and had left his guitar at Hansard’s home.
“The convergence of the instrument being left at our home and discovering Bob Dylan was, I might say, a kind of moments the place all the things aligned,” Hansard says. “And I disappeared into music. I had that second the place I stepped out of 1 pores and skin and into one other, and I fully metamorphosed into a unique individual.”
Hansard discovered himself in Dublin Metropolis, hanging out with writers like Seamus Heaney, administrators like Jim Sheridan, and listening to Paul Meehan reciting poetry in a basement. Although he had dropped out of college, he was getting a unique sort of schooling.
“All of the sudden, I used to be in a really totally different world,” he says. “I had an inferiority complicated, with the truth that I used to be from a working-class neighborhood, didn’t have a correct schooling, left faculty younger, all of that. However man, did I catch up as a result of I used to be enthusiastic about data. I used to be enthusiastic about literature and about songwriting. And Dylan was my north star.”
At 13, Hansard began busking on the streets of Dublin, first within the laneways—the slender thoroughfares behind buildings that join the town’s main roads—so he might study to mission his singing as he listened to his voice echo off the partitions. As he grew in confidence, he moved to Dublin’s foremost avenue, Grafton.
“Whenever you take out your instrument on the road, you’re declaring your self; that’s the toughest a part of busking,” says Hansard. “Unzipping the case, taking out the instrument, placing the case on the bottom, placing the instrument on. After that, it’s a doddle. However once you try this, you’re saying, ‘I’m doing one thing. I’m declaring myself a musician. I’m declaring myself an individual who’s worthy of your consideration.’”
As a busker, Hansard says he realized two classes: The coin is rarely a measurement of how good you’re; it’s both charity or appreciation. And should you’re all the time in a great temper, you’ll all the time make more cash.
Hansard didn’t count on to get wealthy off busking. Nor was that the explanation he did it.
“I wasn’t fishing for cash. I spotted early on I used to be fishing for one thing else,” he says. “What was necessary was one thing energetic that I can’t fairly put my finger on. I assume approval. I imply, possibly that’s it. You recognize, some sort of acknowledgement that you simply exist, that you simply’re there. And so it modified all the things about efficiency for me.”
Hansard recollects an Irish time period, Aisling, (pronounced ashling), meaning “imaginative and prescient.” He tells me that the Irish are very near the Indigenous thought of the imaginative and prescient quest, or the walkabout.
“The guitar is sort of a unusual sort of a key,” he says. “You step out into your day, and you are taking out your instrument, and your day might go in any route.”
When Hansard was 18, he signed with Island Information, and in 1990, he fashioned the Frames, which might finally launch seven albums, the final of which, Longitude, was launched in 2015. Whereas they had been engaged on their first report, he joined the solid of The Commitments, fairly accidentally, he says.
“I didn’t really go for the function. I by no means auditioned for it.”
He tells me he and his actor pal had been up all evening smoking weed, and had walked collectively to his pal’s audition the following morning. Hansard, guitar in hand, sat within the ready room, ready for his buddy to return out of the audition.
When a member of the movie’s casting got here out, they zeroed in on his pink hair and guitar, which he says was precisely what they had been on the lookout for. They requested him to learn just a few strains; he agreed, and he bought the function of Outspan Foster.
Over time, Hansard has been quoted as saying that he regretted his expertise in The Commitments. So, I requested him about it to set the report straight.
“Simply to clear this up, I’m extremely proud. I used to be a large Roddy Doyle fan earlier than The Commitments,” he says. “And to be solid in his story was unbelievable. I cherished each second of it.”
However he says he was frightened the movie would intrude along with his music profession, which he most popular to focus on. However when he did interviews to advertise the Frames’ first album, all of the media wished to speak about was The Commitments, which got here out across the identical time.
“The Commitments was all the time the primary query of all the things on the time,” he says. “After all it was. However for me, I used to be like, ‘There’s extra to me than this.’ In order that was the place that discomfort got here from. I used to be kinda like, “Fuck The Commitments! I’m a musician!’ I ought to have seen it as a blessing, however once you’re younger and filled with your personal scheme…Paradoxically, the 2 greatest moments of my profession got here by way of movie. So, who am I to argue with that?”
Hansard, after all, is referring to his 2007 movie, As soon as, which received the 2008 Academy Award for Finest Unique Music. It additionally birthed his joint music mission with Irglová, the Swell Season. The duo launched three albums: The Swell Season in 2006, Strict Pleasure in 2009, and 2025’s Ahead.
In case you’ve ever seen him carry out reside, you realize Hansard has a really passionate, some would even say intense, type onstage. Greater than 30 years later, he nonetheless has the guts of a busker.
“Each evening I stroll on stage, I stroll on stage as a busker,” he says. “I don’t stroll on stage as knowledgeable musician as a result of I do know that if I am going on as knowledgeable musician, I’m gonna want the drummer to code 1, 2, 3, 4. and we’re all gonna begin. I all the time wish to journey up the band. My intuition is to journey up the music, get away from the shape, break the shape. Let’s busk, let’s busk. As a result of once we busk, we name the band into the current. After which everybody’s referred to as into the current. And that’s the nice lesson of busking, is that you simply’re all the time within the current. You’re letting the music come by way of you reasonably than you attempting to wrestle the music down into your thought of what it must be.”
Hansard tells me that each evening earlier than a present, he sends his tour supervisor the set record, and his supervisor solely prints one copy as a result of he is aware of that two minutes earlier than hitting the stage, Hansard goes to vary his thoughts. Then his supervisor prints out the ultimate copies, and the band goes on stage. And Hansard doesn’t comply with that set record both.
“The room, the sensation, you, the spirit of the place, the day that’s in it, the place the moon is sitting, all the things, no matter it’s, is dictating the gig. And I like that.”
Six weeks in the past, Hansard’s again went out, and since then, he’s been in plenty of ache. He says it was an actual wake-up name for him, an indication that he must train extra and get his core power again. Getting older isn’t straightforward. However that doesn’t imply it’s important to give in to it. “If you end up saying, ‘I’m getting outdated,’ you’re in bother,” he says. “You’ve bought to get severe or else you begin giving into all of your aches and pains, and earlier than you realize it, you’re canceling reveals, and also you’re simply disappearing.”
He makes a remark about how he imagines Bob Dylan finally dying on stage one evening, doing what he loves doing.
“That will probably be his happiest means out. I don’t wish to sound glib, however that is one thing I wish to do,” Hansard says. “I need my voice to carry out. I need my physique to carry out. I wish to write 10 good songs. I nonetheless don’t really feel like I’ve achieved that. I’m on this for the lengthy haul. So I’m a believer within the power and the spirit of the music. And when it’s flowing by way of you, and also you’re in that exalted excessive, candy place of taking part in music, it’s fucking invincible.”
