{"id":277685,"date":"2026-02-03T00:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T00:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/277685\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T00:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T00:46:14","slug":"funny-as-it-sounds-with-all-the-success-the-money-is-not-something-that-you-just-have-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/277685\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Funny as it sounds with all the success, the money is not something that you just have\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou have to enter Dublin<\/a> like a Spitfire. Full armour.\u201d <\/p>\n

In a hotel room in New York<\/a>, Glen Hansard<\/a> is pacing the thick carpet as he describes a typical day in his hometown, directing his thoughts over a WhatsApp video call. \u201cOften Irish people will just come up and start a conversation in the middle: they don\u2019t bother with the hello.\u201d <\/p>\n

In Helsinki, where Hansard winters with his wife, the Finnish poet Maire Saaritsa, and their son, Christy, it\u2019s different. \u201cIt\u2019s great for me, because \u2013 not to sound like an eejit \u2013 no one gives a f**k. In Dublin you might be a bit self-conscious. You have to have the energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unsurprising that many Dubliners feel they can dispense with the formalities. Ever since he played Outspan Foster in The Commitments, the Alan Parker film, from 1991, of Roddy Doyle\u2019s first novel, Hansard has been a mainstay of Ireland\u2019s cultural scene. <\/p>\n

With an Oscar for the song Falling Slowly, which he wrote with Mark\u00e9ta Irglov\u00e1<\/a>, his Swell Season partner, for Once, the other iconic film he was involved in, and any number of fantastic records to his name, whether with The Frames or Swell Season or as a solo artist, Hansard is a household name even in households that aren\u2019t interested in music.<\/p>\n

These days there\u2019s more salt and pepper than flame in the beard, and with his neat black jumper, earring and good haircut, he\u2019s half indie rock musician, half coolly minimalist Silicon Valley tech employee as he flashes a tentative grin.<\/p>\n

But Hansard still has a will-o\u2019-the-wisp way about him: we talk not the first time we\u2019re meant to but in an impromptu way, after he texts two days later, apologising. Turns out he bumped into a pal who inveigled him into an encounter with the black stuff, leading to an epic hangover and a tech hiccup. Very rock\u2019n\u2019roll? <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of those rare moments,\u201d Hansard says. \u201cHe ended up getting me in a headlock, and we ended up drinking together \u2013 and a lot more than we should have.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hangovers are few and far between now he has turned 55. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of ginger tea and long walks on tour. As you get older the existential dread of waking up hungover is appalling.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"GlenGlen Hansard: \u2018Am I looking to slow down or speed up?\u2019 Photograph: Luciano Viti\/Getty <\/p>\n

Rather than find Hansard in a pub, you\u2019re more likely to encounter him in a soft-play centre in Kildare, near where he lives with Saaritsa and three-year-old Christy. \u201cI\u2019m in the soft-play centre a lot, and my will to live is low,\u201d he says. Home time is about the simple stuff: bedtimes, storytimes, bathing. \u201cThat\u2019s where you meet your kid: in the banal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hansard has made it on to this video chat because he and The Frames, his band of origin, are about to headline a tour of intimate venues around Ireland. The aim is to highlight the importance of grassroots venues and their role in nurturing artists and getting music to fans outside cities.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t need to explain that to me. The first time I saw The Frames was in one of those small venues. It was the 1990s. I was 16 and at a gig at Connolly\u2019s of Leap<\/a>, a dark womb of a venue with a low horseshoe-shaped balcony around the stage, band posters on every wall, bodies pressed so closely together you could taste sweat. <\/p>\n

That night, to the grungy, overdriven guitar of their song Revelate, and Colm Mac Con Iomaire<\/a>\u2019s keening violin, Hansard climbed on to the balcony and jumped off. I\u2019d never seen anything like The Frames. I spent plenty of school hours daydreaming about when they might come back.<\/p>\n

Hansard remembers that era fondly, but with an acid touch. \u201cThe Frames didn\u2019t fit into a particular colour or trend. Engine Alley had all the cool, and they were cool \u2013 they were brilliant as well. And Therapy? You had the [Hothouse] Flowers, [who] were a little bit older than us. <\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we came out of busking, I don\u2019t think we were ever a cool band in the sense of rock\u2019n\u2019roll cred. I would have been listening to The Jesus and Mary Chain<\/a>, but I wasn\u2019t advertising it and I wasn\u2019t wearing their clothes.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Jim Reid of The Jesus and Mary Chain: \u2018I\u2019m not saying we\u2019re all lovey-dovey: we still scream at each other\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Those in the Church of the Frames were evangelical, those outside it sceptical. \u201cWe were signed to Island Records, and they just wanted us to tour England the whole time. They didn\u2019t put any value on how well you were doing in Ireland.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"GlenGlen Hansard and Noreen O’Donnell of The Frames at the Town & Country Club, London, in 1992. Photograph: Ian Dickson\/Redferns <\/p>\n

There were highs. \u201cI remember being on the bill with Radiohead<\/a> at the Krazyhouse in Liverpool at one point.\u201d There were surreal phases. \u201cRichard Ashcroft<\/a> came to one of our shows in Wales. Noreen\u201d \u2013 O\u2019Donnell, of the band \u2013 \u201cended up going out with him for a while.\u201d And then dizzying, band-buckling lows. \u201cIsland Records dropped The Frames because The Cranberries had done so well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elevation, rejection: the rollercoaster ride had many loops. Hansard recalls being so broke at one low ebb that he and O\u2019Donnell asked for chips \u201con tick\u201d walking home to Killester and Artane one night. \u201cWe were looking under bushes, hoping someone had dropped money.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it came to making their second album, Fitzcarraldo, the band approached Whelan\u2019s<\/a>, the music venue on Wexford Street in Dublin, and asked its bookings manager, Dave Allen, if the venue would advance them \u00a310,000 towards the making of the record. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe said, \u2018We\u2019ll give you five gigs over the next four years. We\u2019ll play for free.\u2019 Whelan\u2019s thought about it. They said, \u2018We\u2019ve never done that before,\u2019 but they gave us the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0From the archive: How Music Works \u2013 Dave Allen on booking music in iconic Dublin venue Whelan\u2019sOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a story that resonates now because small and medium-sized Irish venues are struggling. During Covid, music fans were told to stay away from gigs for the good of their health. Many never came back. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s all just about drinking the coffee and showing up for work<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Glen Hansard<\/p>\n

The Live Venue Collective<\/a> was established during Covid to petition the government for help. A \u20ac500,000 scheme to support small venues was announced in March 2025. The collective, which was initially formed by 23 venues, is seeking cultural-status protection for established grassroots venues, the removal of VAT on tickets, and a \u20ac1 levy on tickets for arena and stadium shows, to be donated to a grassroots-venue fund \u2013 a practice that is being increasingly adopted in Britain, with the suggestion of legislation should the nascent scheme falter.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t realise that we are under pressure,\u201d says Edel Curtin of Coughlan\u2019s Live<\/a>, in Cork, a venue that holds 60-80 people. \u201cIf you don\u2019t support these spaces they\u2019re not going to be here any more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is never a gig that we make a profit on. We don\u2019t take anything from the ticket money. So, even if it is full, you\u2019re depending on your bar sales to subsidise it. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seen as commercial because we\u2019re not a not-for-profit, so that makes it very difficult for us to apply for any grants or funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

If gig-going is a habit, it\u2019s one music fans need to reacquire, according to Hansard. He says he has walked into gigs where talented artists are playing to just five or six people. \u201cIt\u2019s feast or famine. Peers of mine, they\u2019re filling a room or they\u2019re struggling to get anyone into it. There seems to be less of a good, honest number of people showing up for your show.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like that thing in New York where someone puts a good review of a doughnut shop up, and next thing there\u2019s a queue down the street, but they\u2019re not different to the doughnut place across the street, which is empty.\u201d<\/p>\n

At each venue on their tour, from Clonakilty to Kilkenny, The Frames will showcase a different local support act. It\u2019s a way of giving back \u2013 which Hansard feels strongly about, whether it\u2019s a grassroots tour or an initiative such as the Christmas charity busk<\/a> on Grafton Street with Bono<\/a> and Imelda May<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Is Hansard becoming an elder statesman of Irish music? He laughs. \u201cWell, I grew up in Ballymun. I don\u2019t make a big song and dance about it, but I grew up witnessing hardship among friends, family. Ballymun gets a bad rap, but it was an incredible community. There was a great sense of meitheal. My mother didn\u2019t have any money, but she had a great sense of community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hansard thinks it\u2019s much harder now for people. \u201cIn the old days there were supports in place. You had a little distance between the bottom and where you were. It\u2019s a tougher place now. For people who are a bit more sensitive, and who tend to fall off the path a bit, it\u2019s not a world for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a teenager Hansard volunteered for Simon<\/a>, the homelessness charity. It\u2019s close to a decade since he got involved with the Apollo House movement<\/a>, when he and other citizens tried to run an empty office building in Dublin city centre as a shelter, both to highlight and to help fix the homelessness crisis.<\/p>\n

He stands by the purity of the move, but he has some regrets. \u201cI remember Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor<\/a> rang me and she said, \u2018Just be careful. I raised my head above the parapet a few years ago, and it really isn\u2019t good for your mental health. If they come at you, they\u2019re going to come after you big time.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cShe was so right. For such a simple thing that only lasted a month, I\u2019m still dealing with the consequences of it in my life and in my head.\u201d <\/p>\n

His head has spun many times in the past few years. His mother, Catherine, died \u201cof loneliness\u201d in a care home during the first wave of Covid. \u201cIt\u2019s a massive loss,\u201d Hansard says. \u201cShe was the centre.\u201d <\/p>\n

He has also dealt with the transformation of self that comes with parenthood. Named after his late friend Mic Christopher<\/a>, with a side nod to Christy Moore<\/a> and Christy Dignam<\/a>, little Christy has acted as a spur.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was, \u2018Am I looking to slow down or speed up?\u2019 I was looking to speed up, because I had a kid and I needed to make money. Funny as it sounds with all the success, the money is something that you have to go out and earn constantly. It\u2019s not something that you just have all put away and it\u2019s all sorted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MarkétaMark\u00e9ta Irglov\u00e1 and Glen Hansard of The Swell Season during the 2025 Newport Folk Festival at Fort Adams State Park. Photograph: Douglas Mason\/Getty Images \"GlenGlen Hansard and Chad Smith onstage at YouTube Theater in 2022. Photograph: Kevin Mazur\/Getty Images for EV <\/p>\n

Hansard recently switched management, signing with Brian Message and Ric Salmon of ATC, who represent Nick Cave<\/a>, Thom Yorke<\/a> and PJ Harvey<\/a>. With a Swell Season tour just wrapped up, he plans to release a live record from Berlin in April that he stops just short of calling an introduction to the works of Glen Hansard. \u201cIt\u2019s songs from the whole period: Frames, Swell Season and the solo career,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s also in a band with Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s frightening how loud he plays\u201d \u2013 and thinking of making an album with Thomas Bartlett<\/a>, aka Doveman, of The Gloaming. <\/p>\n

Hansard is in New York to work on a record with unnamed friends \u2013 \u201cWe\u2019re noodling, digging.\u201d He was in the studio with Irglov\u00e1 in December, working on new material. And a Frames record, he says, could happen quickly if the stars align. He has \u201ca bunch of songs\u201d that could work for the band. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a joy at the centre of my self that comes alive when I play with those lads. Something lifts in my heart. We\u2019d probably rent a house in Kerry, bring some recording gear and spend maybe 10 days there, cooking, hanging out, and that\u2019s where the record would be recorded. Because we know each other so well, we have a kind of universal mind about things.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all just about drinking the coffee and showing up for work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Frames<\/a> play Spirit Store<\/a>, Dundalk, on Wednesday, February 4th; Dolan\u2019s Warehouse<\/a>, Limerick, on Sunday, February 8th; De Barra\u2019s<\/a>, Clonakilty, on Monday, February 9th; and Cleeres<\/a>, Kilkenny, on Wednesday, February 11th. They also play Hot Press: History in the Making at 3Arena, Dublin, on Friday, February 6th. Glen Hansard plays the Trinity Summer Series in Dublin on Thursday, July 2nd<\/p>\n