Leaving the microphone stand behind him, Swell Season frontman Glen Hansard stepped to the edge of the stage, and – like the sidewalk busker he once was – launched into song, just a man, his voice and an unamplified acoustic guitar.
For once, the crowd fell silent, straining to hear Hansard as he built from the hushed verse of “Say It to Me Now” to the wailing chorus, stomping his feet for percussion as the song built to a passionate, powerful climax.
It was one of the many magical moments at the Greek Theatre on Saturday, as the Swell Season – Hansard and pianist-singer Markéta Irglová – returned to Los Angeles for the first time since their unlikely Oscar for best original song for the Irish film “Once.”
For more than two hours, Hansard and Irglová, backed up the Frames, Hansard’s original band, delivered a heart-warming show. Despite the larger stages they’ve found themselves on since “Once” catapulted them to fame, you felt like this was probably about the same kind of gig – comfortable, charming – that they did for years in bars and clubs for crowds of 50 or 100.
Since Hansard and Irglová comes from an Irish folk-rock background, it felt natural that after they walked on stage to huge cheers, they opened with Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic,” Hansard taking the verses, the Czech-born Irglová leaning for harmonies on the “rock-your-gypsy-soul” choruses.
Then, getting right to what brought all these fans out, they went right to “Falling Slowly,” the Oscar-winning ballad with its tender, interlocking harmony vocals floating above the waves of Irglová’s piano line. Just as lovely as you remember it from the movie, the song’s emotional punch makes clear why it resonated so strongly with moviegoers, Oscar voters and music lovers.
After opening with just each other, Hansard and Irglová were joined by the four Frames, and proceeded to play through a few more tunes from “Once” – “The Moon,” “When Your Mind’s Made Up” – before the couple switched places, Irglová taking center stage with a guitar to sing a new song, “I Have Loved You Wrong.”
On stage as in the film, Hansard is the gregarious charmer, Irglová a more fragile performer, her soft shyness drawing the crowd in to support and cheer her on.
After her turn in the spotlight, Hansard took a solo set, including the unamplified “Say It to Me Now” mentioned above and a solo acoustic version of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” played with an amazing fury on his again-plugged-in guitar.
Ever the garrulous Irishman, he introduced many numbers with long, rambling stories of their meanings and inspirations, which while most of the crowd listened to with interest and amusement – he’s an engaging story teller – a few strangely rude fans took as an opportunity to heckle.
As he started to talk about “Happiness” – “… the idea of this song is the heart is a fool, and the head thinks it knows everything that’s going on … ” – the jerk a few rows behind us got especially loud, interrupting Hansard so often that after a few joking putdowns he grew visibly frustrated.
“If it’s sweet, then OK,” he told the crowd about how to handle the few blowhards who insisted on destroying the mellow mood of the night. “But if it’s rude, then punch them for me, OK?”
The main set wrapped up with a few more songs from “Once” – “Low Rising,” and “Lies,” for which “Once” director and one-time Frames bassist John Carney joined Hansard and Irglová on stage.
But again, as you suspect they would have done not so long ago on the club circuit, the group wasn’t nearly ready to go home, and the night’s unpredictable magic wasn’t nearly finished.
Irglová opened the encore with “The Hill,” playing solo piano to accompany her lovely, tender vocals, then was joined by the full group for “If You Want Me,” all of which was perfectly normal encore material.
Then things took a wonderfully unexpected turn. After Frames violinist Colm MacConIomaire took a solo turn, Hansard launched into a story about all the people they’d met during their month in Los Angeles for the Oscars, eventually revealing that the nice older gent he’d met at one luncheon turned out to be Richard Sherman, co-writer of many beloved Disney movie musicals such as “The Jungle Book” and “Mary Poppins.”
Which then led to the 80-year-old Sherman joining the group on piano for “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” as the entire amphitheater sang and clapped along, and Hansard sat on the stage grinning in happy amazement.
Singer-songwriter Sam Beam, who performs under the name Iron and Wine and opened the night with a strong set of lo-fi acoustic folk rock, then returned to sing lead on a cover of Neil Young’s “Out on the Weekend.”
“Wow, this night has suddenly gone really well!” Hansard said as that song ended.
After two more numbers, including “People Get Ready,” which he introduced by urging the crowd to make the right choice for president next month, the night was over.
Though you left with the feeling that if the Greek had no curfew, they’d have been happy to play long on this last night of their first U.S. tour since a little film plucked them out of Ireland and thrust them onto a well-deserved bigger stage.
Contact the writer: Plarsen@ocregister.com or 714-796-7787
