Swell Season Descends On Raleigh For A Swell Session

"We're five men and one woman singing our hearts out for you, and we're just hoping it's translating." – The Swell Season

Before launching into their epic song, “Falling Slowly,” last week in Raleigh, Swell Season frontman Glen Hansard offered up a meditation on the ages-old struggle between staying true to your music and selling out, disguised as a neatly designed metaphor. He said that watching the success of such a song is like wanting to kick a football to the end of your garden … but then you watch as it goes to the edge of the garden … then over the wall at the back of the garden … then over the river … then over the field … then over the next town … and then over a town you’ve never even heard of. And he said that about seven-eighths of you thinks, “I can’t believe I just kicked that football that fucking far.” And that overpowers the one-eighth of you that says, “I want my fucking football back.”

It’s the ideal metaphor for Hansard, who has toiled in relative musical obscurity for a quarter of a century. It’s been a long road from busking on the streets of Dublin at 13 years old to putting together the Frames to appearing in the phenomenal “Once” to winning the Oscar for Best Song with “Falling Slowly.” The humility that comes along with such a jaunt is apparent in Hansard’s demeanor and stage presence, and it was partly thanks to that humility and self-deprecating style that made the May 15 appearance of the Swell Season at Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh’s Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts perhaps the best and most genuine concert experience I’ve ever had.

The crowd of 1,700 braved the rain (and $6 beers) to be entertained first by indy folkster Dawn Landes, accompanied by drummer/jack-of-all-trades Ray Rizzo. Best known for her song “Twilight,” Landes is originally from Kentucky, but lives in the Bronx now. She played about a dozen songs prior to a brief intermission to allow Swell Season to prepare to take the stage.

Hansard wasted little time in captivating the audience. He walked onstage, waved, picked up his battered guitar, strolled to the very edge of the stage, and launched into a searing, microphone-free version of “Say It To Me Now,” my favorite song from “Once” (even though it was technically first recorded a dozen years ago).



With the crowd still rumbling from the emotional kickstart to the show, Hansard welcomed band member, girlfriend and “Once” co-star Marketa Irglova onstage, and they proceeded to unveil a new, soulful duet arrangement for “All the Way Down.” By the time they got to a phenomenal, hold-your-breath version of “When Your Mind’s Made Up,” I was just about reeling already.

After a new song called “Your Love Makes Me Cheerful,” Irglova, who was battling allergies all night (to the point where she wasn’t sure she’d be able to make the gig; but ever the trooper, she managed a “Thanks, y’all,” poking fun at the South in a Czech accent), introduced another new number, the beautiful “On My Mind.” Later, Hansard shared yet another new song called “Go With Happiness” in which he had no accompanying guitar and hammed it up (a little too much, in my opinion) as the lead singer/band director.

Yet despite some of the joking around and story-telling, you got the sense that this was a band that was truly feeding off the crowd. Not only did they play “Rise” after an audience member requested it, but Hansard constantly made changes to the set list, playing songs on feel and filling in his bandmates on the fly. The performance had a very improv feel to it, with lots of banter with the crowd and even some audience participation. This wasn’t some choreographed extension of an independent movie gone blockbuster—this was an expression of incredible music pouring through a couple of people who happened to be in a surprise film once (pun intended). Hansard has the unique ability to appear to be singing from somewhere not only deep inside, but perhaps even underneath that and outside of himself. The result is stunning at times, bringing the emotions that must have surrounded the creation of certain songs to the forefront, channeling it into the listener.

As Hansard’s metaphor points up, there can be a fine line with a song like “Falling Slowly,” a balancing act between sharing a wonderful song and having it become too commercialized and overplayed. Perhaps to combat falling off that fence, Hansard and Irglova have come up with a few different versions of it that have allowed them to at least partially keep “Falling Slowly” fresh. Also, just when you think you’ve seen the movie and heard all the songs, they’ll smack you in the face with something unexpected and incredible. Hansard delivered perhaps the show’s most indelible moments when he crashed, banged, screamed and soared through a stunning cover of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks”: (“If I ventured in the slipstream/Between the viaducts of your dream/Where immobile steel rims crack/And the ditch in the back roads stop/Could you find me?/Would you kiss-a my eyes?/To lay me down/In silence easy/To be born again/To be born again”):



That was followed quickly by another tremendous cover, a Hansard/Irglova duet on the Pixies’ “Cactus” (“I miss your kissin' and I miss your head/And a letter in your writing doesn't mean you're not dead/Run outside in the desert heat/Make your dress all wet and send it to me”). The band brought the two-and-a-quarter-hour show to a close with an eclectic encore that included Irglova favorite “If You Want Me,” dedicated to the women in the audience; a solo for Con Iomaire, the violinist, called “The Blue Shoes”; and even the freaking tour manager got into the act, making a political statement about America with Steve Earle’s “The Mountain”:

I was young on this mountain but now I am old
And I knew every holler, every cool swimmin' hole
‘Til one night I lay down and woke up to find
That my childhood was over and I went down in the mine

There's a hole in this mountain and it's dark and it's deep
And God only knows all the secrets it keeps
There's a chill in the air only miners can feel
There're ghosts in the tunnels that the company sealed

By the time bassist Doyle got into the act on the finale, “Star Star,” I figured Hansard would eventually let an audience member have a crack at a song. I was ready to go with “Creep” on the triangle, but I never got the call. Oh well.

The show was made even cooler since I had recently been to Ireland, where Hansard hails from. I’ve walked some of the same streets where “Once” was filmed, so I understood a few of the references he made between songs. He mentioned that if you go to Dublin, you’re not going to Ireland — you’re going to Dublin. He said that Dublin is like any big city, so you need to go somewhere like Doolin to really experience Ireland. Having been to Doolin, and been to Dublin, and been to Ireland, I totally got this.

One of the funniest aspects of the show is that, still, no one seems to know where Swell Season ends and the Frames, “Once” and/or the Hansard/Irglova duo begins. Many of the songs overlap from album to album for the various collaborations. I do know that Swell Season features three members of the Frames: violinist Colm Mac Con Iomaire, bassist Joe Doyle and guitarist Rob Bochnik. However, drummer Graham Hopkins is not affiliated with the Frames. However, former Frames member John Carney wound up directing “Once,” and sort of spearheaded the creation of “Falling Slowly.” Carney said in an interview that he knew that, in order for “Once” to be a success, the music had to be almost transcendent, to carry the film. Not only was he right, and not only did that happen, but it wound up being the genesis for this new collaboration, this new creative machine that eventually turned into Swell Season.

And I found out for myself that Swell Season can kick a fucking football one hell of a long way.