Live music:Glen Hansard - Everyman, Cork

4/5

“Well, it was value for money anyway,” says a man, laughing, in the lobby of the Everyman, close to midnight on Tuesday. He was among a sold-out crowd being warmed up for two-and-a-half hours by Glen Hansard and friends. And friends of friends, it seems.

The encore felt like a marathon, beginning with ‘Star Star’ (“A song by some Irish band,” the Frames frontman deadpans). The show is a fundraiser for Right2Homes, so a spokesman explains their campaign to constitutionally challenge home repossessions by banks.

Hansard tells the crowd of his trip to Dingle’s Other Voices music festival two weeks ago, where he was charmed by a pianist/Tom Waits-alike named Paddy Dennihy. Dennihy has accompanied him to play two songs. Support act Nicole Maguire is called out for another tune.

Hansard climbs onto one of the stalls to give a magical acoustic performance of ‘Gold’, by Fergus O’Farrell, before a ropey rendition of ‘The Auld Triangle’, which includes Glen’s brother, Gary, singing an impromptu verse from the crowd. Latest single, ‘Her Mercy’, concludes an extensive encore.

Hansard was last in Cork with The Frames, celebrating 25 years together with a gig at Live at the Marquee. The Everyman is intimate by comparison. He starts, away from the mic, with ‘Grace Beneath The Pines’, the opening track on his second solo LP, Didn’t He Ramble.

Flanked by up to ten musicians, he howls through most of its tracks, ‘Winning Streak’, ‘My Little Ruin’, and ‘Stay The Road’, which he dedicates to bands playing around town that night. They are early highlights and only eclipsed by the soaring ‘Revelate’ and searing ‘Falling Slowly’.

Hansard’s known for his onstage yarns, and the best we hear tonight, before ‘McCormack’s Wall’, is one involving a cup of tea with fellow troubadour, Lisa O’Neill, which turns into pints in Whelan’s, bottles of wine, a trip to Kildare to find the residence of John McCormack, having to get over said wall in the process, and putting Damien Dempsey on speakerphone to sing a song.

It’s fair to speculate that if he ever gets tired of the acoustic, a successful career in stand-up comedy awaits — though the way he strikes and caresses his guitars suggests that won’t happen anytime soon.