Glen Hansard treats audience to great night of blistering passion and tall stories

Oscar-winning Irish troubadour Glen Hansard kept an adoring audience entertained with stories and songs of undimmed passion.

Glen Hansard and Joy Byrne at the Sydney Opera House. Picture: Ken Leanfore

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A BAND on tour encounters lots of “interesting” things, Oscar-winning Irish troubadour Glen Hansard told his adoring audience in the packed-out Sydney Opera House concert hall.

It might be seeing one of the great cities of the world waking up after a gig, or watching from a bus thousands of displaced persons tramping Europe’s highways at night looking for refuge.

Or it might be a guitar — one that used to bear the inscription “This Machine Kills Fascists” — sitting in a museum in Woody Guthrie’s birth place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, rescued from an op shop for $40.

Hansard has been playing music for a living since he was 13, and it’s this rich catalogue of stories and observations which make his live concerts such special events. The songs, whether they be from his work over 20 years off and on with the Frames, or the short-lived Swell Season with Czech songstress Marketa Irglova, still blaze with an undimmed passion and lyricism, but his asides and musings in front of an audience show the humour as well as the humanity of the man.

HANGOVER

It might be a throwaway line like, “This is a song about a man who falls in love with a crazy woman” (My Little Ruin) of a droll dissertation on how a hangover can aid creativity. Or the story of how he and Lisa O’Neill, who toured here with him a couple of years back, got drunk and climbed over the wall of the boarded up house where the great Irish tenor John McCormack was born (McCormack’s Wall).

Trombonist Curtis Fowlkes and Glen Hansard at the Sydney Opera House. Picture: Ken Leanfore

His latest tour promotes his recent solo album Didn’t He Ramble, though the term “solo” is inappropriate as he uses core members of the Frames along with strings, a choir and a crack Muscle Shoals-style horn section to deliver a set of soul-driven and uncharacteristically bluesy songs all about love, friendship and a little redemption (a drumhead with Save A Soul Mission is part of the stage set).

Saturday night’s concert was also a good deal about the Irish, at home and abroad, who are this year celebrating 100 years since the Easter Uprising eventually brought them freedom.

To celebrate this Hansard brought on stage traditional Irish pianist Peadar O Riada to play a couple of numbers.

His string section got a workout near the end when they broke into a jig — that went down very well with the audience!

He was also generous in sharing the spotlight with his band mates, not just Frames bassist Joe Byrne for a blistering duet on the Van Morrison classic Astral Weeks, but also (a highlight for many of us) a couple of spots for trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, sharing vocals on the lilting Wedding Ring.

Saxophonist Michael Buckley joined him for his first of many encores Love Don’t Keep My Waiting which morphed spectacularly into Aretha Franklin’s Respect.

Glen Hansard at the Sydney Opera House. Picture: Ken Leanfore

His string section got a workout near the end when they broke into a jig — that went down very well with the audience!

After two-and-a-half hours of high-energy music and storytelling — and with the audience on its feet — Hansard closed the night with his irresistible gospel anthem Her Mercy (his answer to U2’s Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For).

Mercy Mercy indeed!

DETAILS

●CONCERT: Glen Hansard

●WHERE: Sydney Opera House Concert Hall

●WHEN: Saturday, October 22