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Frame By Frame | Glen Hansard

The Frames' main songwriter Glen Hansard tells Jackie Hayden how he ended up with eight songs and the lead role in an award-winning film – and gets excited about a forthcoming songwriters' workshop in Listowel.



Glen Hansard, revered singer/songwriter of the Irish band The Frames and one-time star of The Commitments, is back in the news with the success of John Carney’s new film Once in which Hansard not only plays the lead male role alongside his real-life musical accomplice Marketa Irglova, but he also supplied an impressive bunch of songs for the soundtrack.



But the original plan for Once was actually quite different to what ended up on the screen. As Hansard explained to MQ, “I’ve known John for years. We played music together and he’s always been very good to me in his film work, putting a song in here or there. When he first told me about Once his plan was for the part of the busker to be played by Cillian Murphy, and John asked me to give him a few anecdotes, basically about my own days as a busker. He also asked me if I had any songs that would suit. So I gave him the CD I had done with Mar(keta), The Swell Season, as well as a few other things I’d done at home. There were some of the songs that really appealed to him for the film, so he asked me for some more in the same vein.”

As it happens, Carney was also on the prowl for a piano player, so Glen recommended ‘Mar’, but when Carney met her he thought she was also perfect for the lead female role. Then, when Murphy pulled out, Carney asked Hansard to take on the lead role. The result? A film that is already being described as the best Irish film ever made.



Writing the songs for Once was a challenge welcomed by The Frames’ man. “I had to write songs that worked for the characters. John would tell me he needed this or that type of song for a certain scene, and describe the kind of mood he wanted for it, and that would steer me in the right direction. It was a good exercise for me as a songwriter, because normally I write songs that come from my own life and feelings. That can be kind of claustrophobic in its own way, but I suppose it helped that the character had a lot of me in it anyway. I also enjoyed being part of the discussion and the arguments we would go through for each scene.”



And it all worked spectacularly well: Once was the surprise winner of the World Cinema Audience Award at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and has also picked up the inaugural audience award at the Dublin International Film Festival. Not surprisingly, the rights for North America were promptly assigned, so more kudos can be expected over the coming months.

Despite Hansard’s enjoyment of the opportunity to work outside the context of The Frames, he admits that lines can be blurred between the various aspects of his creative work. “I wouldn’t want to be compartmentalising it. For example, some of the songs in Once are already part of The Frames’ set list, such as ‘Falling Slowly’ and ‘When Your Mind’s Made Up’. The Frames are still my number one priority.”



Meanwhile, Hansard’s songs are increasingly being covered by other artists and I wonder if he’s sensitive about the way his work might be handled in circumstances that are beyond his control. For example, an Irish female singer last year recorded a fine version of ‘Revelate’ marred only by her insistence on singing it as if the middle vowel was an o. But Hansard laughs at the idea of trying to protect his songs from what others might do to them. “I’m genuinely flattered by all this, you know. I don’t even know what revelate means. It’s just a word that appealed to me. But I hear that there are a few versions of my songs on YouTube, and Lisa Stansfield did one of mine called ‘Say It To Me Now’. In fact I didn’t even know she’d done it until a long time later. To me it’s the ultimate compliment that somebody else wants to sing one of my songs.”



There’s good news too for the legions of Hansard fans who would like to learn the craft from a man who has well over a decade of acclaim behind him, since he has agreed to host the songwriting course as part of this year’s Listowel Writers Week where he’ll deliver three two-hour classes.

As he admits that his own lyrical bent tends to be towards the literary, his involvement in such a festival is perfectly apt, but this will be the first time he has undertaken such a venture. “I was really flattered to be asked. But as I’ve never done this sort of thing before, I’ve been picking up tips from different people over the past few weeks, but I guess I’ll just go along and talk to people and play a few songs. I feel these things work better when there’s a level of spontaneity and nothing’s too worked out in advance.”

As for his own songwriting methods, he frankly admits to being a bit of a “plodder” in need of a deadline to really concentrate and produce the goods. “The best advice I ever got about writing songs was quite simple: just write. So I write all the time, and maybe I start a hundred songs and finish two of them. It might start with a phrase: like there’s a phrase that came to my mind recently 'if you grab at love' and that’ll float around my head and maybe develop into something else. Other times I might just be doodling on the guitar and a song or a bit of a song appears from nowhere. So songwriters, I believe, should take that guitar in their hands as often as possible. That way, they’re ready when those moments of inspiration arrive.”



Glen Hansard will conduct the Songwriting Course at Listowel Writers Week (May 30 to June 3) and will play a solo gig in St. John’s Theatre on June 1.