How to meet your icon…

We’re gonna meet Glen Hansard today, trust me.

That’s what I told Kelly at around noon on Sunday, the day of the Swell Season concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Kelly and I flew in from Austin to see the show, and go to her favorite restaurant in Long Beach, CA.

Many of you already know the back story, if not, you can watch this little video.  Because of our previous communication, I felt it wouldn’t be TOTALLY inappropriate if I sent Glen Hansard a message on Twitter asking if I could meet him for a quick picture before or after the show.  Obviously I didn’t expect an answer, he gets hundreds of messages like this.

I was lucky enough to get Garden Box seats which are pretty close to the stage in relation to all of the other sections. With the tickets, I also purchased 2 round trip shuttle passes.  Here’s what I’ve found as of my 2nd visit to the Los Angeles area.  There is NO parking.  Anywhere.  So, the shuttle passes are the best option to get to any show at the Hollywood Bowl.

While on the shuttle and on the way to the Hollywood Bowl, I checked my email.  I got an email from “Glen”.  At first I wasn’t going to open it right away because I assumed it was from my buddy Glen Lewis… I could always check that when we got back from the concert.  But then I remembered I sent that message to Glen Hansard.  I opened it up and it says:

Tom! It’s glen.. I’ll get a couple of passes left for you at will call for the after show bit! See you later! Glen

My first instinct was to shit my pants… but I was able to clinch and keep everything secured.  I showed Kelly the email, and she was confused as to what the hell i was talking about.  I didn’t mention to her that I had sent Glen Hansard a message about meeting him for a quick picture.  Then, my inner computer nerd kicked in and I realized that this email is just from someone who had seen my “tweet” to Hansard and they were pulling my chain.

I responded:

That’s a joke

The return email address wasn’t anything as simple as Glen.Hansard@gmail.com or G-Hansard@yahoo.com…   the return address had no form of Glen or Hansard or Frames, nothing.. I realize celebrities can’t have a simple address or they’ll get hit up by crazy fans all day long… So I googled the address, nothing came up.  I had pretty much convinced myself that it was someone messing with me.  I checked my email again about 20 minutes later:

No joke.. Check the will call.. See you after the show.. Loved your red chord btw! Thank you!! G

I take pride in my ability to avoid being pranked (and my ability to prank people, ask me some other time about my craigslist hot dog cart prank )… I started to analyze the emails.  Now, if you know the back story you know that Hansard had previously tweeted about my cover of his song “High Hope”.  In the tweets, he signed off as “Glen”.  But in this last email, he signed off as “G”.  So, my logic was that somebody saw my tweet, decided to play a trick on me, then looked me up and found out that I did do a cover of “Red Chord” and decided to include that info in their last hoax email.  I was 98% convinced this was a trick.  However, although I tried to play it off during the rest of the bus ride, all I was thinking about was the possibility of goin backstage at the Hollywood Bowl and meeting my musical icon.

We finally arrive, get off the bus and start walking up the hill towards the entrance.  Kelly asks me if I’m going to check will-call.  I tell her “NO”, it’s a joke and i’m not going to humiliate myself.  Then she says, “what if?  You’ll always wonder if there were really passes”.  So, while she went into the gift shop I walked up to the will call window.  I had it worked out in my mind, how to ask for these without looking like a fool. I get to the window and hand the agent my photo id:

I was told that there MIGHT be some sort of passes for me??

The agent grabbed my id and picked up a stack of envelopes.  There must have been 15 of them.  She’s going one by one… nothing.  Then, when she picks up the VERY LAST ONE, I see my name….  I held in a yell… but did smile pretty big.  She could sense my excitement and said “have fun”.

So, hours earlier I told Kelly we would meet Glen Hansard today… and at 6:30pm we had 2 backstage after party passes, given to us by Glen Hansard himself.

Now, this was all fantastic… but it really ruined my ability to fully appreciate the concert because during the entire show I was thinking about going backstage, and contemplating how I would do so without making a complete ass of myself.   I will say however that I really did enjoy the 2 opening bands:  The Bird and the Bee started the night off, followed by She and Him (with Zooey Deschanel).

The Swell Season came on and really had a memorable set.  It was a fantastic venue, great weather, sound was perfect and it was just an all around incredible evening.  You could tell that even Glen and Marketa were very excited to be playing such a great venue.  Unfortunately the violinist, Colm Mac Iomaire, wasn’t able to be at the show but they substituted Jake Clemons (nephew of the great Clarence Clemons) on sax which added a pleasant change.  This was my 3rd Swell Season concert and this one was a little shorter than usual.  Most likely because there were 3 bands instead of 2.  They only played 2 songs during the encore which is uncommon from what I’ve experienced in the past.

The show ended and it was time to head to the backstage after party.  We walked to the door, showed our wrist bands and headed upstairs.  We were greeted with free drinks, Kelly and I both graciously accepted a beer.  We were surrounded by the expected “LA types”… I think we stood out like sore thumbs because we didn’t “shmooze” very well.  Basically we kept to ourselves.

The opening band members started slowly walking out.  We started to notice some celebrities.  I recognized Jason Sudeikis from Saturday Night Live , Zooey Deschanel’s sister Emily from the show Bones and a few others.  Zooey Deschanel came out… she is EXTREMELY pretty, I didnt meet her but she was about 2 feet away and I eavesdropped on her conversations… all indications were that she is a genuinely nice person.  About 20 minutes later, members of the Swell Season started coming out.  Marketa darted out, barefoot, and immediately found a friend and started chatting it up (Marketa is as pretty as an angel and her new short hair is super sexy).  I would have loved to get a pic with her for Hug Tom Dot Com but did not get a chance to meet her (although I did see her when we were leaving the party and gave her a “great show!” and she replied “thanks!” )..  All the other guys came out and I gave them each the standard “Great Show!”

I’m pretty anxious at this point, because we have missed our return bus, I know we are gonna spend at least $100 on a cab to get back to our car which is 55 minutes away.  But I’m also noticing a bunch of people edging towards the door trying to strategically place themselves to swarm Glen for autographs and pictures.

Kelly and I were standing about 10 ft from the door.  Glen walks out, he sees someone right there in front of the door that he knows and immediately shakes his hand… but, he sees me behind him, points at me surprised, and gives me the “gimme just a minute” gesture.  That was awesome!  There were 60 people up there, he comes out the door and immediately recognizes and acknowledges me.  Here’s where it gets crazy…

Glen finally makes his way towards me.  He gives me a hug like an old buddy! Introduces me to his manager, Howard (who i’ve corresponded with previously about getting the audio from the shows where Glen had mentioned my cover).  The VERY first thing Glen says to me:

You know Tom, I gotta be honest with you.  I wanted to have you come up and sing tonight… but then there was a bunch of argument about not having enough time.

I was really close to choking up!  I told him it was just an honor for him to have considered that.  I was shocked. There were 17,000 people in the crowd that night! Luckily Kelly was standing right there when he said it, just to verify that I wasn’t imagining things.  We spoke for a minute, got interrupted by a couple who forced themselves into conversation with him.. then he broke away and came back to me for a few minutes.  He told me he really liked my covers, and thought it was really cool how I got to learn “High Hopes” without the song being released.  He thought it was funny how I thought his email about the passes was a joke.  We took a couple pictures (unfortunately without a flash, but that’s another long story) then he said he will see me when he’s in Austin and told me to contact him when he’s back in Austin (i have his email address)!… and the last thing he said was “It’s a date!”

People say that all the time… “lets get together” or “I’ll call you”.  But you bet your ass I’m gonna contact him when he’s in town next.  If it means that I can pick his brain for 5 minutes or I might be lucky enough to play one of my own songs for him, no matter what the situation, I’m gonna send that email when the time comes.  Nothing might ever come of that, and if that’s the case it’s ok.  What’s important is that this guy is a real class act.  He seems to be truly appreciative of his fans, and flattered by those who cover his music.   If I can get my shit together, I hope the next time we meet it will be less of a fan meeting his idol type situation and more of 2 musicians meeting up to chat.  I’ve got a long way to go with my music to be considered a “peer” but that’s my goal.

People might think that it’s weird that a 35 yr old man has a “hero” or “idol”.  The truth is, when you’re passionate about something: music, acting, cooking, sports… anything, most people find an individual who is currently successful at doing it, someone that they connect with for whatever reason, and then they want to use that inspiration to help obtain the same status.  I will admit that I am late on the Glen Hansard wagon.  I was not aware of the Frames.  I didn’t learn about this guy’s career until after the movie “ONCE” was on video.  However, once I heard the Swell Season’s music, I was hooked.  It connected with me… the acoustic guitar, violin, piano, great lyrics, powerful vocals and PERFECT harmonies.  That’s the feel I hope to achieve with my own music someday.

So, I chose to write this blog not only to share my great experience but to also expose this guy as a really genuine and classy human being.  As far as I can tell, he’s not full of himself, not even aware of how great his music and songwriting is.  He’s got an academy award, people are covering his songs on American Idol, he performs with world-class musicians all over the globe.  His music is so good that people all around the Los Angeles area got on buses and rode for over an hour to fill a famous venue.  When he asks a crowd of 17,000+ people to sing along they do so without questioning and it sounds like a cathedral choir singing back to him the words he wrote.  In my opinion he’s a musical genius, in the same class as Springsteen, Dylan, Van Morrison, and PRINCE (yes, Prince).  He’s been a musician all his life.  He started as a busker on the streets of Ireland and earned his way to his current status.  He is one of only a few remaining TRUE songwriters, a craftsman and an artist, at the drop of a dime he can sing and play one of  hundreds (if not thousands) of cover songs written by his musical influences. His name is not a household one in America.. YET… but amongst musicians he is already a legend.

Thanks Glen Hansard, for the shout-outs on Twitter, for mentioning my cover at a couple of your shows, for backstage party passes, for telling me you considered bringing me onstage at the Hollywood Bowl in front of 17,000 people… and for the conversation.  I’ve seen an interview when you talk about meeting Van Morrison for the first time, (“nice voice, nice songs, blah blah blah” )  this experience was not as intense and uncomfortable as that… but for me, it will be just as memorable.  Fair play to ya, sir.

Tom Meny, Glen Hansard, Kelly Goletto

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