Esther McCarthy: 'It was never just a gig with Hansard, it was a chance to share, to inspire, to entertain'

Glen Hansard playing with the Frames at De Barra's in February. Picture: Esther McCarthy

I have my phone turned off this morning, so I hear the news a bit late. 

I'm swimming in The Warren in West Cork, my son part of a group doing a surf lesson. I'm in the area because I went to a gig in DeBarra's in nearby Clonakilty on Tuesday evening, the wonderful Aoife O'Donovan singing Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. 

I meet Ray Blackwell who runs the place on the way in. 

"The last time I was here it was for the Frames gig in February," I say to him. "That was some gig, wasn't it?" 

"Unreal," he says, smiling. "Unreal."

I turn my phone back on about noon and what I see feels a bit unreal. It takes me a few minutes to get my head around the text messages from friends, work colleagues, WhatsApp groups. 

Glen Hansard is dead. He died, aged 56, following a motorcycle crash in Dublin. Like everyone who ever connected with his music or stood in a room big or small while he sang, the news lands hard.

It's weird when a famous person dies, you feel like you know them, but they don't know you. It's unrequited grief. They could have made you feel the most intense emotions, been there for you in good times and bad, soundtracked your youth, your wedding day, the best summer of your life. 

They mean something to you. And now they're gone, and you feel like a fraud for crying.

Glen Hansard and The Frames on stage in De Barra's, Clonakilty. Picture: Esther McCarthy

I keep thinking of Clonakilty in February, of a snug back bar on a cold evening in West Cork, and of how vital he was that night — those untamable curls, the glorious beard, the energy of him, cracking jokes, stroking our ego about how great Cork is, borrowing glasses to read a birthday request off a crumpled bit of paper, and oh man that voice, those lyrics, the presence of him. 

I think how it was the last live gig he did in Cork, and it was something special.

What strikes me now, rereading it, is how much of that night was Hansard talking about community — about meitheal, about grassroots venues, about the responsibility bigger acts have to smaller rooms and younger bands. 

It was never just a gig with Hansard, it was a chance to share, to inspire, to entertain. He talked about that sense of community, and I think of how that shaped him, the busking, the loyalty to small stages, to social injustices, his joy in dragging local musicians up for the encore even when he didn't need to.

Hansard's insistence on inclusion felt like it was the actual engine of the man. He'd been coming back to rooms like De Barra's for 30 years for the same reason he pulled Intricate's set into his own that night: He genuinely believed the small rooms were where the real thing happened.

So here is the piece as I filed it in February, more or less as it ran, with nothing added and nothing softened. I've thought about updating the tense, about writing "was" instead of "is," and I've decided against it. 

Better to leave him exactly where I found him: Mid-set, cheeky, meditative, winking at a blonde during Revelate, telling a room in Clonakilty that they were "just cool in Cork".

That's how I want to remember him, not eulogised, but caught mid-flow, doing the thing he loved, in a room that loved him back.

Rest easy, Glen. Thanks for meitheal, and for reminding us, right up to that very last tour, why the small rooms matter.