Speaker 1: Pushkin, Pushkin. Glen Hansard is best known as the lead
Speaker 1: in the two thousand and seven movie Once. It's about
Speaker 1: a hard scrabble busker in Dublin. It's a role he
Speaker 1: was probably destined to play himself, having dropped out of
Speaker 1: school at thirteen to busk around Ireland's capital. Prior to
Speaker 1: that movie role, Hansard had put out a string of
Speaker 1: great albums with a band called The Frames, but after
Speaker 1: the film he started working on other projects and also
Speaker 1: a solo career. His fourth solo album, The Wild Willing,
Speaker 1: came out on Anti Records last year. He and his band,
Speaker 1: including keyboardists Rami, met up with Bruce Headlim and Nashville
Speaker 1: to chat about the unique approach he and the band
Speaker 1: took to creating the record, improvising nearly every song, and
Speaker 1: unlike most folk records, it has a lot of electronics
Speaker 1: on it. Hanser talks and plays through some of the
Speaker 1: songs off the album and then opens things up with
Speaker 1: a song that contains a very unintuitive sample. This is
Speaker 1: broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond.
Speaker 1: Here's the Blood Hansard plane. I'll be you be me
Speaker 1: See if you can guess the sample. It's very hard
Speaker 1: to sum up your career because you've done so many
Speaker 1: different things. And when I was reviewing them, I realized something.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this has occurred to you,
Speaker 1: but you want an Oscar for the song from the
Speaker 1: movie Once, and I think you want to Grammy as
Speaker 1: well for that. I know the soundtrack. Wont to Gramm?
Speaker 1: Does that mean I did? I think it means you did. Oh,
Speaker 1: maybe it didn't, I think the No? I think yeah
Speaker 1: I did? Yeah, okay, uh. And then it once became
Speaker 1: a Broadway show that one slew of Grammy's, Tony's and um.
Speaker 1: But that means you have an Oscar, a Grammy, and
Speaker 1: a Tony. If you get an Emmy, you have the egot.
Speaker 1: Do you know the egot? No, the egot is for
Speaker 1: people who have won Emmy's, Grammy's Oscars, and Tony's Special Award.
Speaker 1: There's only been fifteen people in history. No way you
Speaker 1: would join Richard Rogers, Helen Hayes, Okay, John Legend, but
Speaker 1: you know Barbara streisand didn't do it. Okay, wew see
Speaker 1: what you can do? Okay, all right, that's our project.
Speaker 1: You've given me a new trajectory in life. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: we're on it. That's our project. Then um TV people
Speaker 1: listen up. We're getting this man an egot um you
Speaker 1: got it. This album, this new album you're leasing is
Speaker 1: it's described as a departure from what you've been doing
Speaker 1: the last few albums. So tell me, tell me about
Speaker 1: the making of this album and how it is different. Well,
Speaker 1: sometimes we go true periods of our life where we're
Speaker 1: doing certain things and we're you know, we're writing certain ways.
Speaker 1: And for me, the last couple of record well, certainly
Speaker 1: since the beginning of me making Glen Hansard Records, it
Speaker 1: was it seems to me like the city of New
Speaker 1: York had a kind of a there was a through line,
Speaker 1: there was a kind of an American sense throughout the
Speaker 1: records that I was making over the last few years.
Speaker 1: And this one it just it's the longest period in
Speaker 1: the last kind of twenty years that I haven't been
Speaker 1: in America, which is about a year and a half.
Speaker 1: And you know, not to say that that really means
Speaker 1: anything for or against the record, It's just that I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in Paris in the last
Speaker 1: year and a half and also time with with with
Speaker 1: Rome and David Odlum over in France recording this record
Speaker 1: and Joe and making a kind of a decided to
Speaker 1: make an acoustic record. But I had some time in
Speaker 1: France and in Paris, and that I think is what
Speaker 1: made this album a little different, and that when I
Speaker 1: listened to these songs now, it's the streets of Paris
Speaker 1: that come back to me, because it was on the
Speaker 1: streets where I wrote the lyrics, you know, taking long
Speaker 1: walks and thinking of meditating. When a song comes into
Speaker 1: your head, you get about four days of absolute focus
Speaker 1: because you get excited about a lyric, or you get
Speaker 1: excited about a melody, and it just rolls around your
Speaker 1: head and around your head and around your head, and
Speaker 1: you can sit and you can write at your desk,
Speaker 1: or you can just go for walks because the song
Speaker 1: isn't going to leave your head. You've got to. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you've got four days. Sometimes you've got two weeks where
Speaker 1: the song won't leave your head. You become obsessed. It
Speaker 1: becomes the only thought you have, and everything else is
Speaker 1: just surrounding that one thought. And so in Paris, I
Speaker 1: was walking around with these songs in my head, and
Speaker 1: I was finding the lines and I was kind of
Speaker 1: jotting them down quickly, either in my phone or in
Speaker 1: a notebook. And I'm gonna get home that evening I'd
Speaker 1: sort of compile what I'd sort of come across during
Speaker 1: the day, and what's wonderful, I said a couple of
Speaker 1: parameters around the songs, and that I thought each lyric
Speaker 1: needs to be an actual experience. I wanted every line
Speaker 1: in the album and every line in every song to
Speaker 1: be a particular memory that I couldn't just be all
Speaker 1: that rhymes with that and that's actually a good line.
Speaker 1: That wasn't good enough. It had to be. I wanted
Speaker 1: to anchor every line into something that was actually going on.
Speaker 1: And the song you just performed, I'll be You. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember walking from the Irish Cultural Center, which was
Speaker 1: the place I was staying. It was like an old
Speaker 1: monastery and they gave us a small room and I
Speaker 1: was spending time in that place and really loving it.
Speaker 1: In the Latin Quarter, right in the middle of the
Speaker 1: Latin Quarter and the fifth hour in this morning Paris,
Speaker 1: and I was walking down the room of tire and
Speaker 1: turning left, and just as I got to the junction
Speaker 1: of Lagoblin, which is one of the sort of major streets.
Speaker 1: This whole thing just sort of hit me, you know.
Speaker 1: I had kind of hit upon with Joe and Ruth
Speaker 1: in this studio Your Love's a Bonnie Snare traps me
Speaker 1: in the Evening, which I thought, what an interesting thing
Speaker 1: to just sort of pop out of your mouth. And
Speaker 1: I liked the image of it. You know that that
Speaker 1: that that that there's a kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: you know how to you know how to pull me in,
Speaker 1: you know exactly what it is, you know my buttons,
Speaker 1: you know, And there's an intimacy in that and admitting
Speaker 1: to someone that you know exactly what it is. And
Speaker 1: so I started to think about the song as the
Speaker 1: lover as a as the spider who devours her lover,
Speaker 1: and so I started going off on that imagery in
Speaker 1: my head, and it was like, I'll be you, be me,
Speaker 1: and I'll be you, and we won't say no more
Speaker 1: about it, this idea that we'll swap will become each other.
Speaker 1: And I was really really pleased where the song was going.
Speaker 1: It kind of there was a kind of a permission
Speaker 1: to get dark, if you like. There's something about the
Speaker 1: chord structure that allowed you to to stay between dark
Speaker 1: and contemplative and even lightness. So for me, when I
Speaker 1: heard the song, I'm straight back on that street and
Speaker 1: it's a particular corner, you know. So so I'm very
Speaker 1: happy with how that that turned out because now when
Speaker 1: I sing these songs, I can there's a place in
Speaker 1: them I can place myself somewhere. It's also a song
Speaker 1: which is technically uses a sample. Which had you ever
Speaker 1: used a sample before? Oh? Yeah, oh we've used samples
Speaker 1: through the friends yea a long time. And my friend
Speaker 1: David was in the studio and I had myself and
Speaker 1: Ruth and Joe Will start playing around with just like
Speaker 1: it was just like you're just fooling around. And my
Speaker 1: friend David Cleary, who who had asked I had asked
Speaker 1: to come over. There's two really interesting musicians from Dublin,
Speaker 1: David Cleary and Duncan Murphy, who are kind of experimental
Speaker 1: electronic musicians, and they would very much inhabit the world
Speaker 1: that Romi inhabits, which is just all the texture and bending,
Speaker 1: and the only kind of instruction that they were given
Speaker 1: coming into the record was like we'd love you to
Speaker 1: come in because we have a bunch of Persian music
Speaker 1: is coming in, so we'd love you to come in
Speaker 1: as a balance. Because there was just Persian musicians playing
Speaker 1: along with an acoustic record, it's going to sound quite esoteric,
Speaker 1: maybe world music in a way. So the way to
Speaker 1: balance that was to bring in these electronic musicians and say,
Speaker 1: your job is to disrupt the music, just to disrupt
Speaker 1: anything you hear and come in and just put an
Speaker 1: elbow into it, a dirty elbow, which is exactly what
Speaker 1: they did. And David said, I have a beat for
Speaker 1: that that I think would really work. And the beat
Speaker 1: was really odd, and it's from a cassette, so it's
Speaker 1: really noisy, and we kind of fell in love with
Speaker 1: the texture of the sound because as a beat, it's
Speaker 1: just a very simple beat, but we fell in love
Speaker 1: with the texture. And he said, you know, no one
Speaker 1: will ever know what this is. This is from the
Speaker 1: David Bowie Queen session for under Pressure, but it's like
Speaker 1: a song that was never used. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: It's something I found somewhere that no one will ever
Speaker 1: figure out what it is, right, and you know, and
Speaker 1: so we got excited by it and the idea that
Speaker 1: the idea that that that what we're hearing is you know,
Speaker 1: John Deakin, you know, and there's a touch of Bowie
Speaker 1: in the in the in the vocal. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a kind of a very very so just the fact
Speaker 1: that the spirit of these these people is on the
Speaker 1: song kind of gave it an extra layer of kind
Speaker 1: of sensuality, if you like. So we got very excited
Speaker 1: about it. We we finished the song, we mixed it,
Speaker 1: we it mastered it, and we put it on a record.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly, you know, I downloaded Spotify on my
Speaker 1: computer because I'd been asked to do it so many
Speaker 1: times just to sort of listen to it and check
Speaker 1: it out, which I kind of resisted up until that point,
Speaker 1: And so I did, and within six songs of listening
Speaker 1: to Spotify, I heard a song called cool Cat by Queen,
Speaker 1: which it was exactly the same beat, and I realized
Speaker 1: that we were in real trouble. So so what are
Speaker 1: the chances Queen would sue us? So, yeah, nobody's heard
Speaker 1: of them exactly, and we were. We all cursed our
Speaker 1: friend David for a while, and then we had to
Speaker 1: and then Howard had the unenviewed job of going and
Speaker 1: trying to contact Brian May and asking him for permission,
Speaker 1: which took a couple of months because they had the
Speaker 1: movie coming out and stuff. So the album ended up
Speaker 1: getting put back to April. But you know, in the
Speaker 1: end of the day, we did recreate the beat, which
Speaker 1: was easy to do because it's a it's not like
Speaker 1: a super original beat or and it's like you know,
Speaker 1: it's on every record. But the fact that it was them,
Speaker 1: the fact that it was had all that hiss, the
Speaker 1: fact that it was that it came from that session
Speaker 1: was worth actually pursuing it. It was worth actually asking
Speaker 1: and going through the front door and asking for permission,
Speaker 1: and they gave us permission. Maybe you're listening to a
Speaker 1: premium Lawyers edition of Spotify that just at that's good
Speaker 1: to track it down. You said this album was built
Speaker 1: from the ground app Yeah, what does that mean? What
Speaker 1: it means is that not one song on this record
Speaker 1: was a song before we went into the studio, and
Speaker 1: that's untrue. Two songs, the one I'll Come Back to
Speaker 1: Find or Leave a Light and Brothers Keeper were two
Speaker 1: songs that existed before, but the rest of the songs
Speaker 1: came in the studio. They were they were brand new.
Speaker 1: They were brand new in the studio and like for instance,
Speaker 1: like albu b Me was played once, we never played
Speaker 1: it twice. We never it was a little jam that
Speaker 1: we elaborated on and a song like way to the
Speaker 1: World that happened once. We've never played it since. You know,
Speaker 1: we've actually tried to play it sound checks and stuff,
Speaker 1: but we never managed to figure out what we did
Speaker 1: in the moment, and that became the exciting part of
Speaker 1: the birth of this record. Was we were going into
Speaker 1: record a set of songs, you know, and some of
Speaker 1: them are covers, even we were going into record a
Speaker 1: couple of friends of our songs, and then when it
Speaker 1: came time to listen back to what we had, we
Speaker 1: realized that there was a whole bunch of jams that
Speaker 1: were really interesting. And then we just decided to scrap
Speaker 1: everything that we were working on and then just focus
Speaker 1: on the jams. And once we focused on them and
Speaker 1: we elaborated on them, they became their own songs entirely,
Speaker 1: and they became much more exciting because they were coming
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. So for instance, I'm singing songs and
Speaker 1: keys that are not good for my voice. My voice
Speaker 1: his way down low, but I'm just trying to I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to jam along with whatever chords we just
Speaker 1: came up with. So there was a kind of an
Speaker 1: element of freedom to those songs that was much more
Speaker 1: attractive to us in that moment than the songs that
Speaker 1: we went in to try nail. If you like, why
Speaker 1: don't we hear another one? Yeah? This is called fools game? Now?
Speaker 1: Was that a song that came out of the same method.
Speaker 1: Were you in a studio and he came out of
Speaker 1: a jam? Yeah, Dunk was showing me around his vocoder's
Speaker 1: something I'd never used before, and he had this delay
Speaker 1: on it, which is like now you know, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, wow, wow wow. I was like, it's a fools,
Speaker 1: fools game. And I was like, it's a fool's game
Speaker 1: and that's all I had. But the way the delay
Speaker 1: was picking it up, it kind of had this very
Speaker 1: interesting thing, and I thought, wow, this kind of sound.
Speaker 1: It sort of reminded me somehow of like a velvet
Speaker 1: underground song but with a kind of a vocoder, And
Speaker 1: I thought, this is a very simple chord. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes if you're lucky, you'll hit upon a kind of
Speaker 1: a song where you go this sound was simple enough
Speaker 1: to be really good, you know, where you're not kind
Speaker 1: of overthinking it, and it just sort it's a fool's fools,
Speaker 1: fools game, lover that we have to have to have
Speaker 1: to play. And so I just took away the delay
Speaker 1: and then just saying it, it's a fool's fools game,
Speaker 1: lover that we have to play. So it's all the threes,
Speaker 1: which we were watching an interesting documentary about the base recently,
Speaker 1: and the tree is a it's a very important part.
Speaker 1: It's the tree over the four. Boom boom boom boom
Speaker 1: so woe. Oh it's actually it's it's a tree over
Speaker 1: three right right, yeah, But apparently this the three over
Speaker 1: the four is like a big thing. I know, Dylan's
Speaker 1: really wearing Queen again. I just think that example, it
Speaker 1: tell me with the three over the four. Tell me
Speaker 1: with that. Oh, I don't know. I think there was
Speaker 1: something that was like boots he or somebody was talking
Speaker 1: and it was like, if you're ever in doubt, just
Speaker 1: give them three. So you just go, you know, so
Speaker 1: that's the tree that dream. Then you just feel in
Speaker 1: something else. Okay. But in that case, like that song
Speaker 1: which is a beautiful song. If I asked, I'm sure
Speaker 1: a hundred musicians they would say, no, that song was
Speaker 1: the product of a songwriter sitting and coming up with
Speaker 1: a very with a kind of very concise, very perfect
Speaker 1: lyric that goes with this melody. It doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: the product of jamming. It doesn't sound like an Eric
Speaker 1: Clapton song. It doesn't. So I'm interested in how that
Speaker 1: came together, Like, were you playing a certain kind of
Speaker 1: riff or and then Romeo you jumped in or how
Speaker 1: did that emerge that? No, there was no guitar involved.
Speaker 1: It was just a vocode or keyboard and a delay
Speaker 1: and then and then that became I actually have the
Speaker 1: recording here on my phone. Maybe maybe look what i'd find. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll find it. It's going to be it's called vocode
Speaker 1: or song in my in my let's try this safe
Speaker 1: safe it works, slow slow right, slue that's me chee.
Speaker 1: I haven't hit on the fools Game line yet, but
Speaker 1: I will ye, that would have been nice chord. I
Speaker 1: moved on to something else there. But at some point,
Speaker 1: at some point I say fools game and maybe in
Speaker 1: the next one, but you hear the idea. So then
Speaker 1: in the studio did you just play that for you know?
Speaker 1: We we we we don't forgotten to bring his vocoder
Speaker 1: with him, which was that sound which was kind of
Speaker 1: a culmination of a bunch of stuff going into a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff creating that big sort of phiz of
Speaker 1: sound and delay. So we went and we ordered some
Speaker 1: Russian vocoder on eBay, which he claimed would be like
Speaker 1: the perfect one to do it on, and we think
Speaker 1: we could got it for like six hundred quid. It
Speaker 1: was like it was expensive, and someone in Spain had it,
Speaker 1: and then Heavier had called theavier, our friend in Spain
Speaker 1: had called to the shop and the guy had given
Speaker 1: him the anyway we got the vocode or was a
Speaker 1: Russian vocoder. We couldn't understand anything that was written on it,
Speaker 1: and it was like because all the instructions are in Russian,
Speaker 1: all the buttons, and we tried to get it going
Speaker 1: and it didn't work. And then we ended up using
Speaker 1: one of those corg the microcorg that has a vocoder
Speaker 1: setting on it and something that Warren Ellis swears by,
Speaker 1: he uses it all the time, and so we got
Speaker 1: this one and it was perfect to him. So but
Speaker 1: that was that that that that was the one we
Speaker 1: were trying to recreate. And then how did you how
Speaker 1: did you make the song from there? Like romy, how
Speaker 1: did when you heard it you thought, did something occurring
Speaker 1: about playing it? Or well, I think if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: we kind of just like we we set up that microcord,
Speaker 1: we got the boat, we got a boat carder going,
Speaker 1: and then like pretty much everything else, we just sort
Speaker 1: of Glenn started singing, singing those lines and thing, and
Speaker 1: we all just kind of felt our way around it
Speaker 1: and got some droning stuff going on. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very very loose. Okay, this is massively putting you on
Speaker 1: the spot. Could you do that now if Glenn started
Speaker 1: playing something? Oh, that's the whole session is based on
Speaker 1: the idea of here's a thought, you know, like let
Speaker 1: me let me see okay, you know there could be
Speaker 1: a song in that still no word, still still still
Speaker 1: still haven't you know, still listening, still waiting, you've not
Speaker 1: nothing's come back. So suddenly when you start playing that,
Speaker 1: you get all these thoughts like, okay, so it's still
Speaker 1: no word, it's the first thing that fell out of
Speaker 1: your mouth. Then trust that and then follow that and
Speaker 1: then just use that as a kind of a as
Speaker 1: a kind of a tent pole to a bunch of thoughts.
Speaker 1: You know, so, what is this? Why is there still
Speaker 1: and still no word for to who? Why are you waiting?
Speaker 1: Do you need to wait? Is? Does your life depend
Speaker 1: on hearing from whatever? Whoever this is? You know? And
Speaker 1: then you suddenly your brain just starts coming and then
Speaker 1: you find your and you you have to be you
Speaker 1: have to allow yourself to go. Yeah. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: key to writing is to allow mistakes, to allow dreadful
Speaker 1: like I mean, we were changing I'm changing chords there
Speaker 1: without informing anybody what's going on. There's definitely going to
Speaker 1: be mistakes. We're gonna hit, we're going to bang into
Speaker 1: each other, of course, But that's the that's the basis
Speaker 1: of that's the basis of music. How long did it
Speaker 1: take you to be comfortable enough to do that kind
Speaker 1: of playing when you were a kid? Were you worried
Speaker 1: about getting it right first and that that inhibited you
Speaker 1: or were you always able to kind of just open
Speaker 1: up that way? No, I don't think we're always able
Speaker 1: to open up that way. You learned to play guitar
Speaker 1: and of course, everything you know, when you learned to
Speaker 1: play the guitar and any instrument, you want to get
Speaker 1: it right. So every time you play a song, you
Speaker 1: want to get it. You want to play it correctly,
Speaker 1: you want to execute the song correctly. But it does
Speaker 1: you do get to a place with musicians where you
Speaker 1: find intimacy, and that intimacy is that you can completely
Speaker 1: blow it. I mean, for years Joe has been listening
Speaker 1: to me go wow, I will be a bad blah blah,
Speaker 1: but you know, and then and then but when we
Speaker 1: got when we go on stage, there's a shape to that,
Speaker 1: and there's there's lyrics to that. But the lyrics don't
Speaker 1: necessarily come as you as you're beginning. The lyrics can
Speaker 1: sometimes you sometimes have to find your way into a
Speaker 1: song and find your way into what it means. So
Speaker 1: for instance, when we recorded Fools Game, I probably had
Speaker 1: most of the most of the lyric kind of figured out,
Speaker 1: but I was probably writing that song the whole way
Speaker 1: through the session, you know. And again like walking around
Speaker 1: Paris in between sessions, thinking about the song, listening to
Speaker 1: the kind of the blah blah blah and the kind
Speaker 1: of you know me, you know me, trying to find
Speaker 1: something and kind of going, wow, I really see where
Speaker 1: I was kind of trying to get it there. But
Speaker 1: now that I'm outside of that moment where I have
Speaker 1: the instrument in my hand, I know what I was
Speaker 1: trying to say. I was trying to say this, and
Speaker 1: so I write it down. So then I go back
Speaker 1: and I know exactly what it was I was trying
Speaker 1: to get. Well, they're trying to hide the vote quorder.
Speaker 1: That's what I say. Keep going away from the voder.
Speaker 1: He looks the thing. See anything that anything that takes
Speaker 1: you out of your comfort, you know. So the vocoder
Speaker 1: was really was really great because it takes you away
Speaker 1: from a guy with a guitar in his hand, because that,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm limited when it comes to me and
Speaker 1: a guitar because I know the chords. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know the chords. My brain will automatically go to one
Speaker 1: of those chords because it knows the safety of what
Speaker 1: that chord will bring. Whereas when you play with something
Speaker 1: like a vocoder or even for me in my case,
Speaker 1: a piano, like I'll hit a chord or I go WHOA,
Speaker 1: what's that and it might actually be the you know,
Speaker 1: the fourth to what I was doing. But because it
Speaker 1: sounds so different than piano, I'm excited by it, whereas
Speaker 1: I'm a playing on a guitar, I'm not. So you
Speaker 1: can do you say you can almost know your instrument
Speaker 1: too well. I think in a way you get you
Speaker 1: can get into a route with your instrument because you know,
Speaker 1: once you know how that chord relates to that chord,
Speaker 1: you know you get locked into because you know, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, most music operates, most Western
Speaker 1: music operates within a very simple you know what is
Speaker 1: it the three five? But what I always it's a
Speaker 1: Nashville thing, isn't it the one four? One four five?
Speaker 1: That that idea that once we once we figure out
Speaker 1: all of that, then it all becomes second nature. But
Speaker 1: if you put yourself on an instrument, you don't know,
Speaker 1: you might be doing the one four or five, but
Speaker 1: it sounds amazing because you don't know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: even though you might still be operating very much in
Speaker 1: a very simple structure. And that's exciting. I mean, musicians
Speaker 1: are artists are constantly seeking perspective shifts. That's why when
Speaker 1: you read like you know, Colin's biography or whatever, you
Speaker 1: know you kind of understand why he was taking man
Speaker 1: tracks and speed at the same time, because perspective shift
Speaker 1: is everything in writing. It's all about getting out of
Speaker 1: your own head and literally getting out of your head,
Speaker 1: I mean getting out of your own the place that
Speaker 1: that restricts you to certain ideas. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of romance around musicians use of drugs and
Speaker 1: painters and poets use of drugs to find themselves in
Speaker 1: a different headspace, because that's exactly that's precisely where where
Speaker 1: things can can really and you can basically get out
Speaker 1: of your own way. And that's that's always what you're
Speaker 1: looking for. And that's what the vocoder can give you,
Speaker 1: or what the playing an instrument you don't know can
Speaker 1: give you. It gives you a perspective shift and you
Speaker 1: can you can find yourself in a different spot. Did
Speaker 1: you do play another song? Yeah, I'll let you take
Speaker 1: a breath. Thanks. What was the experience that that led
Speaker 1: to that song. I was sitting at the piano in
Speaker 1: the studio and I was trying to record a song
Speaker 1: called Shelter Me, a song that again didn't make the record.
Speaker 1: A bunch of the songs that I went into record
Speaker 1: didn't make the record. So I was sitting at the piano.
Speaker 1: I was trying to record the song, and I had
Speaker 1: this stick lid ding Dong dong Dong. I love that
Speaker 1: dong Dong lid ding dong Dong Dong Dong dong Dong.
Speaker 1: There's something about the way that was kind of just
Speaker 1: flowing that bong bom. But it reminded me again like
Speaker 1: the Stooges or something like the dong dong Dong. You know,
Speaker 1: those are great velvet of the ground songs. I keep
Speaker 1: coming back to them. Actually has but it's like congdang
Speaker 1: dongg do you know when you get that sort of
Speaker 1: constant piano banging. And because I don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: doing in terms of the chords, again, I'm feeling quite
Speaker 1: free and I remember kind of going I remember playing
Speaker 1: the thing and and and there is a there is
Speaker 1: a recording of that too. Let me find it. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna find it for you because it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: worth hearing. Yeah, yeah, this is the very first moment.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've got this for every single song, the
Speaker 1: first moment, because that's how the whole record came together.
Speaker 1: Let me just find it. I think we need the
Speaker 1: we need the iPhone memos version of this. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: would It would be interesting too, It would be interesting.
Speaker 1: Let me see. Now, let them know what a free
Speaker 1: there's no hard at least beat it. There's no world.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have to meet them as equals one day.
Speaker 1: Don't set up, don't shuttle m Go tell it from
Speaker 1: the mountain. Go see we pass this way. Tell them
Speaker 1: we came you as equals. Let don't know, we weren't friend.
Speaker 1: Let them see we want together. Let them know what
Speaker 1: it is. Time to think. Maybe he will do Maybe
Speaker 1: you would be the way, maybe spattle. So there you go.
Speaker 1: It's just a you know, you can just hear it.
Speaker 1: You can hear the bones of an idea emerging out
Speaker 1: of it. There's a touch of Imagine by John Lennon too,
Speaker 1: in the in the Diddlin Yeah, and in the I
Speaker 1: Don't want Yeah, that chord progression that see the yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the yeah. That sounds like imagine. You're right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of nice. And because I don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, I don't know. I certainly don't know that
Speaker 1: I'm referencing John Lennon, but I'm like, oh, that feels
Speaker 1: like a nice way to get to the next chord. So,
Speaker 1: and it's only where my fingers can reach, and you've
Speaker 1: deliterally not learned the piano for that reason, it gives
Speaker 1: you some I honestly, I honestly have strong feeling that
Speaker 1: one must learn an instrument only enough to be able
Speaker 1: to execute a song. That when you get it, when
Speaker 1: you get into the minutia of music you can it's
Speaker 1: it stops you creativity. I feel. I feel like I
Speaker 1: only ever wanted to be a guitar player good enough
Speaker 1: to play a song. I never wanted to progress and
Speaker 1: become a really good lead guitar player, or or to
Speaker 1: get into jazz chords, because once you learned the relationship
Speaker 1: between all the chords, then you then you've got it mapped.
Speaker 1: And once you've got it mapped, then then then you
Speaker 1: start figuring out interesting paths. And once you find interesting paths,
Speaker 1: it's like you know too much. So I love I
Speaker 1: love having naivety on an instrument, like I love having
Speaker 1: instruments that I don't know how to play. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: We're in Nashville, which is probably the home of the
Speaker 1: best players anywhere. We were talking about this earlier. We
Speaker 1: could get fifty guitarists in here who would be the
Speaker 1: best in any other city, and they're all right here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you like that, you like not knowing things for me.
Speaker 1: It's for me. It's crucial. Yeah, And it's crucial in
Speaker 1: the in the in the writing process, because the writing
Speaker 1: process can't be governed by the tuning or the or
Speaker 1: the rhythm being right. It has to be you have
Speaker 1: to be allowed to just you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: music is not hygiene. It's it's it's dirty. It has
Speaker 1: to be dirty. When we come back, we'll have more
Speaker 1: with Glenn Hansard. We're back with Glenn Hansard. Bruce asked
Speaker 1: him to pick a cover song to play for this taping,
Speaker 1: and he picked one of my favorites from Joni Mitchell.
Speaker 1: We've had people do a lot of covers. This strikes
Speaker 1: me as the most unusual one. How long have you
Speaker 1: been playing Coyote? Oh? And well, I learned it. I
Speaker 1: mean I know the song for so long. I only
Speaker 1: learned it and when I when we when I was
Speaker 1: invited to play at Joni's seventy fifth or seventieth birthday party,
Speaker 1: and I learned it formally, but I always knew it,
Speaker 1: you know, It's it's a song that I would kind
Speaker 1: of play a verse or two. But then sometimes you
Speaker 1: formally learn a song as and you sit down and
Speaker 1: you go, right, I need, I'm gonna learn this. So
Speaker 1: I've known the song a long time, but I really
Speaker 1: brushed it up and kind of learned my version. If
Speaker 1: you like, were you a fan of hers? Oh god, yah,
Speaker 1: I'm geez yeah, I mean since I was, you know,
Speaker 1: that was the beginning of my musical My first Johnie
Speaker 1: record was Hijera. I mean, that was the one that
Speaker 1: I court and spark there were the records that got
Speaker 1: me into her. It was only when I was older
Speaker 1: I discovered Ladies of the Canyon and the earlier stuff,
Speaker 1: which was amazing, and Blue, of course, but Blue wasn't
Speaker 1: around when I was a kid. It was more the
Speaker 1: kind of slightly jazzier stuff. She hadn't she hadn't gone
Speaker 1: deep into the jazz thing yet. So Hijera is still
Speaker 1: a kind of a record that's, you know, fairly accessible.
Speaker 1: But no, that was the stuff that I grew up.
Speaker 1: But she's a very intimidating person to cover. Though her
Speaker 1: music is complicated, absolutely, it's deep. I remember having to
Speaker 1: learn shadows and are getting to learn shadows and like,
Speaker 1: and every picture has a shadow and it has some
Speaker 1: form of like blindness, blindness and sad and then it
Speaker 1: goes to a key change treadned by all things, God
Speaker 1: of cruelty, true to the whole thing, God delay. You
Speaker 1: know the way she the way her voice is moving around.
Speaker 1: I had to figure out how to do that, and
Speaker 1: that was completely outside of my melodic instinct, and so
Speaker 1: it was really difficult, and I was so surprised how
Speaker 1: the notes just wouldn't go into my head. And then
Speaker 1: one day it's just a bam, and I went into
Speaker 1: my head and I had them and I and I
Speaker 1: had it. But it definitely made me a better musician overnight,
Speaker 1: having to sit down and tackle some of her songs,
Speaker 1: because she's this song in particular, which has always been
Speaker 1: a favorite mine. It's a very tough, unsentimental, yeah song
Speaker 1: with some incredibly memorable Oh my god. Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: amazing but it's also very much it's a woman's song, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's her song, absolutely written from the point of
Speaker 1: view of someone who had this relationship. What's it like
Speaker 1: to sing it? As a man. Oh, it's wonderful. It's
Speaker 1: wonderful because you know, you're just trying to get in,
Speaker 1: You're trying to get in the headspace where she was at.
Speaker 1: And I love there's a there's a, there's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a the male and the sort of the
Speaker 1: masculine and feminine in writing and in music and in life.
Speaker 1: I find that fascinating to to move between both of
Speaker 1: them and to try to inhabit both equally. And then
Speaker 1: you did meet her when you when you performed this,
Speaker 1: What was that like? Yeah, I met her. We shared
Speaker 1: a dressing room actually, and it was a wonderful experience.
Speaker 1: She was incredible, She was such and she gave me
Speaker 1: such amazing advice. She spent time, she was very present.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was one of those meetings where I
Speaker 1: was going, God, I wish I wish I was recording
Speaker 1: this because she's speaking so fast, and there's so much
Speaker 1: going on, and her brain is operating at such a
Speaker 1: high level that I wish I could I wish I
Speaker 1: could go off and really absorb all this at a
Speaker 1: later point, but I just had to keep up, and
Speaker 1: I had an amazing, really amazing Do you remember any
Speaker 1: advice she gave you. I was telling her a story
Speaker 1: about about a homeless guy, I know, and I remember
Speaker 1: her saying, you should rhyme that, you know, and and
Speaker 1: that was she was like, you should rhyde that song.
Speaker 1: And I said, that's that's an amazing way to look
Speaker 1: at it. Well, that's what we do as writers. We
Speaker 1: just rhyme our lives, you know, just write that story
Speaker 1: is a good one. And so I just thought, what,
Speaker 1: I'm amazing, what incredibly you know, the wisdom of just
Speaker 1: rhyme it. You know, that's that's what we do, you know.
Speaker 1: She she, you know, and she we spoke a little
Speaker 1: bit about some of that. You know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: Leonard and we were talking about Dylan and you know,
Speaker 1: and she had very interesting perspectives on these people and
Speaker 1: Neil Young and you know, for me, it was just
Speaker 1: a very exciting time to not really stuff I can repeat,
Speaker 1: you know, because it would just be outside of I mean,
Speaker 1: nothing that she probably hasn't said and depressed anyway. But
Speaker 1: but but it was fascinating to spend time with her
Speaker 1: and talk about these greats. But she's the greatest, Yes,
Speaker 1: she's incredible, and you know, she was very straight about that.
Speaker 1: She was like, I'm as good as any of those motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: And she's right, you know, I mean, it's like she's
Speaker 1: she's absolutely she's giant. And I just really thank I
Speaker 1: thank whatever good fortune and good you know, alignment of
Speaker 1: stars or whatever it was that put me in a
Speaker 1: room with her for for those couple of days, and
Speaker 1: just to have been around. You know, when you're whenever
Speaker 1: you're in the presence of mastery, everything changes, the air changes,
Speaker 1: and so it's a it's a wonderful feeling to be
Speaker 1: so close to somebody who really has gone deep, so deep. Well,
Speaker 1: get us a little closer, all right. We haven't played
Speaker 1: this together before, so we're just gonna weigh it. Did
Speaker 1: we get that? Was it all right? Was it all right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think we got it? Yeah? Yeah, okay, great, I
Speaker 1: think it was all okay good. Glenn Hanser's album The
Speaker 1: Wild Willing is available now, so be sure to go
Speaker 1: check it out. You can head to broken record podcast
Speaker 1: dot com to check out a playlist to put together
Speaker 1: for this episode, including this new album and the Great
Speaker 1: Queen song that he sampled. Broken Record is produced with
Speaker 1: help from Jason Gambrell. Meoobell and Leah Rose. Our theme
Speaker 1: music is by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.