The Swell Season "I Have Loved You Wrong"

At last week's Laura Marling show, a few folks who had bought tickets let us know that they couldn't come, and discussion turned to reselling those tickets, meaning we would be double-dipping on some of the seats.

And I had a flashback to The Swell Season show I went to a couple of years ago . . .

I was supposed to go with my wife, but she wasn't feeling well, and as I was leaving for Boston, she decided it would be best if she stayed home.

I got on the phone and made a number of calls as I was driving up to Boston.

Did my sister want to go?  Not really.  She hadn't even heard of the band.

How about her husband?  No, he was working.

My wife's brother worked in the city, but I wasn't sure what time he got out.  Had he already left town?  Was he not getting out of the office until well after the show started?

I left him a message and told him to call me back.  I'd wait in the lobby until the show started, hoping he'd return my call.

It was a bitterly cold night in Boston.  (In fact, almost a year later I met Glen Hansard of The Swell Season at Newport Folk, and when I said, "I saw you last fall in Boston," his one sentence reply was "Yeah . . . it was really cold that night.")

I waited and waited, but didn't hear from my brother-in-law.

I hated that the ticket might go to waste, so I approached the box office, which was in the foyer between the street and the lobby.

"My wife isn't coming to the show.  Do you want to resell this?"

The young folks behind the glass looked at me like I was about to hand them a turd.

"No, No!  We can't do that."

I guess there some law about reselling.

They told me, "You're welcome to give it away though."

A small line to get in had formed behind me.

"Does anyone need a ticket?" I asked hopefully.

I got the averted eye that I'd given many, many times before, to scalpers.

"It's free."

There was one person looking at me.  He didn't say anything, but he looked and gave me a hint of a smile.

He was on the other side of the foyer space.  He was most certainly homeless.

I'd seen him in the foyer, busying himself reading the posters of coming attractions.  Looking out the glass doors, up and down the street, as if he were waiting for someone.

It was bitterly cold, and the lobby was a small respite from that.

I thought about it for a second.  Should I give this guy my ticket?  Give him 2 hours in a warm, safe space?

But then I thought, If I give him the ticket, I'm stuck with him for 2 hours.  It's not just a pass to get in.  It's a pass to sit right next to me.  What if he's weird?  What if he's unstable?  What if he wants to talk during the show?

Already feeling a bit fragile (as I wrote about in the previous post).  Was this what I was really going to substitute for a night with my wife?

I turned and went inside, the extra ticket still in my pocket.


Did I do the right thing?  I don't know.  Probably not. 

I certainly didn't do the kind thing, the charitable thing.

More than that, remembering this little moment I re-read the lengthy, "Oh I'm sad about my wife not being here" post and think about how small my problems seem, and how embarrassed that I am to have had them, when I compare them to the problems of the homeless man, whose next two hours, and his night, and his rest-of-his-winter are out in the bitter cold of an unforgiving Boston season.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Jason Segel "Call Me"

While PJ is on vacation, he's tossing out some improvised songs.

Sort of unfortunately, one of the great improvised songs that I would put on this week's list, is a song I'd already written about.

The good news is that The Swell Season lead me to this. I would say that it isn't necessarily fully improvised, but I'd guess that this song wasn't written too long before this video was shot either.

And that's all I'll say, as the song otherwise certainly speaks for itself.

The Swell Season “Say It To Me Now”

Five songs I’m looking forward to hearing again, in Newport.

I’m hesitant to write this post, because it does go against personal policy.

I try not to retell other people’s stories.

It just never comes off, does it? When someone retells a joke they heard on a comedy special, or tries to paraphrase Quint’s “Indianapolis” speech from “Jaws” or whatever. It loses something in the retelling. And it even detracts from the original if someone retells a story, and then later you hear it from the original source.

So if you’re going to see The Swell Season anytime soon, maybe you should just skip this post. (ed. note: you may also want to skip to the end of this post and watch the video first)

I think I was already in a bit of a fragile state of mind when I saw The Swell Season last fall. I’ve seen shows within the last week, that I’ve spent less time thinking about, than the show at Berklee in November.

Most affecting was Glen Hansard’s story that seemed to start as an aside---and yes, here is where I ruin his story, by trying to be brief and encapsulate it. He’s an Irishman, for Fuck’s Sake. A masterful storyteller. And here I go, giving you the Instant Mashed Potato version.

He was in an elevator in Chicago, the night after a show, headed down to the lobby. There was a woman in the elevator.

He commented on her beautiful coat. She thanked him and began to cry.

She explained that she’d gone through a really hard time, had lost her son. She said she’d stayed at home for nearly two years. But she decided to live again. She saw the coat in a store window and even though it was more expensive than she could afford, she bought it, as a promise to herself to seize the day.

“My son. He was in one of those fucking buildings.”

You could feel the room seize up.

Hansard didn’t have to explain to the audience what she meant. We all knew he was talking about September 11th.

The woman said she had woken up that day with a bad feeling in her gut. She’d tried to call her son, but had not been able to get through to him. She never got to speak to him.

Hansard walked her to a cab, gave the woman his email address and invited her to come see his show. “She’d never heard of us,” he laughed, lightening the mood. “We’re headed back to Chicago next week to play again. I hope she comes out.”

And then he played “Say It To Me Now.”

I still get chills, get filled up, when I hear that song, and I think about “those fucking buildings.”

And I marvel at his masterful storytelling. He didn’t say why he played “Say It To Me Now.” He didn’t hit us over the head with the point of the story, or the point of the song. He didn’t have to.

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Amazing news. I found a Youtube video of Glen telling the story and singing the song. He definitely told the story, slightly differently on the night I saw him. Hope I didn't ruin it for you.

Glen Hansard “Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy”

All Time Top Five Songs Under 90 Seconds . . .

From time to time on Every Day I Write The Blog, I do a week’s worth of my five favorite songs on theme. For the All Time Top Five rules, see this previous post.

The bulk of the songs from the “Once” movie soundtrack have a melancholy, an ache (as in “If You Want Me”). Or they have an explosive, but deadly serious passion (as in “Say It To Me Now”).

Buy while Glen Hansard’s character spends most of the movie dealing with unrequited love (of his ex-girlfriend, of new love interest Marketa Irglova), you can’t have a movie, or a soundtrack, about falling in love without a little levity.

So even though he revisits the unrequited theme on this little, seemingly-made-up-on-the-spot ditty, he does it in a charming, self-deprecating fashion. And it becomes entirely believable that Marketa Irglova’s character would be won over by him in all of 53 seconds.



See the Glen take this request, somewhat uncomfortably.

Buy “Strict Joy,” and if you haven’t see the movie “Once,” get it on DVD.

Swell Season “Low Rising”

I got tickets months ago to see The Swell Season, and booked a babysitter long in advance so I could go to the Berklee Performance Center with my wife, on an actual date. We’d seen the movie “Once” featuring Swell Season principles, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, on one of the few dates we’d had she’d become pregnant, now over 2 years ago.

The best laid plans . . . my wife came down with a cold, and just could not rally to get to the show. My Mother-In-Law was willing to play babysitter to both my daughter AND my wife, so I was given the pass to go to the show anyway. But it was the day of the show, and finding a friend to accompany me proved to be impossible.

So I went by myself.

Sitting there in the low light of the venue, waiting for the show to begin, I wondered a bit about what the dynamic of the night might bring.

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova had been a couple, but during the recording of their most recent record, “Strict Joy,” they broke up. They decided to keep the band together, finish the record, tour, and move forward. Hansard’s songs are typically about girls and breakups and sadness, and he’s pretty direct about his feelings. There was no doubt that there would be new songs, directly about their break-up.

What must that be like? To be sitting on stage as your ex- stands center-stage and sings about the intimate details of your personal life? And you have to literally play along?

How do you come to a functional truce, so you can continue to work together? Where you have stripped away one element of your relationship (romantic love) but tried to keep the friendship, the partnership, the working relationship, in tact?

Sitting there in the low light of the venue, waiting for the show to begin, I watched a young-ish, twenty-something couple 2 rows in front of me, and wondered where they were in their relationship.

I couldn’t see his face; he seemed to be looking straight ahead, almost motionless, but he must have been talking, because his date was looking at him and smiling. She was in profile from my vantage-point, and her smile rose and relaxed, rose and relaxed, but never disappeared. He must have been telling some kind of funny story, because she wasn’t saying much, but occasionally broke into laughter.

The look on her face wasn’t one of infatuation. And it didn’t have that nervous energy of someone on a date. It was more comfortable. Her body language, and her smile, were relaxed.

So they weren’t on a first, or fifth date. Something more established than that. And they weren’t like that couple in their fifties that had just wandered in. That couple had clearly been married for years and years. They didn’t speak, and they moved as one---he letting her into the aisle in gentlemanly fashion, she helping him with his jacket. But there was no smiling or joke-telling. Not even any talking. They weren’t even really conscious of each other. They just were.

Sitting there in the dark light of the venue, with an empty seat next to me, I watched the body language of Glen and Marketa. He took center stage. She sat at the piano, three-quarter-turned away from the audience. When they switched positions, he touched her, but it wasn’t a familiar, comfortable exchange. More business-like.

He introduced “Low Rising” as a song about sitting down with your partner, knowing things are hard, but that everything is going to be alright.

That, and the whole show really, made me very emotional. I missed my wife.

We’re partners and parents and friends. We love each other deeply. But we’re in a place where the chance for us to sit in the low light of a venue, telling funny stories, sharing a relaxed smile, doesn’t come up as often as we need it. Instead, our world need us. Our mortgage, our girl, our basement refinishing project, leaves in the yard---all those things strip away romantic-love-aspect of a relationship, or at least crowd it out.

I missed her so much, throughout that show, that I even got up in the middle and walked out to the lobby to check my messages, partly hoping that she needed me to come home.

But I stayed, and I’m glad I stayed. I needed to see that show, and feel those songs. To think not about the couple on the stage, but the couple in front of me. And rest my hand in the empty seat next to me, knowing that I still, consciously and deeply, wanted that seat to be filled by love, by romance, by my wife.



See the amazing music video for “Low Rising,” directed by Sam Beam of Iron & Wine.

See some fan footage of the first song of the Berklee show, which shows Glen and Marketa more intimate than they would be at any point in the show.

I don’t know if You Tube really captures it, but one of the emotional highlights of the evening, was Glen’s powerful, solo cover of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks.”

Buy “Strict Joy,” and if you haven’t see the movie “Once,” get it on DVD.