Judgement Day

The week started with the news that Howard Greynolds, The Frames/Glen Hansard manager in the US asked me for my passport details to get a 3 year O-1 visa as I may be touring with Glen in the US sometime in the next year or so. This came as good news as I had to take the bitter pill of being asked to do the massive The Frames shows in Ireland this year, but was subsequently asked to step down and was replaced before the shows even started because of judgement about the break-up of my marriage. These were shows that I was extremely buzzed about after the 2 year lockdown and something we excitedly talked about between us and also with the management.

Strangely, since the marriage break up, I had been working with most of the band members individually on exciting projects like the soundtrack to Sean Penn’s movie Flag Day which featured Glen, Eddie Vedder and Olivia Vedder among others (‘clank’). So it was surprising that someone within the band decided to take a high moral stance against me at that very late stage, prior to the shows, basically refusing to play with me onstage. The rest of the band were apologetic about this when I rang them individually and seemed to regret making that rash decision after talking to me about my perspective, but that one particular band member just would not budge. As one guest band member said, insightfully, “Sure if we all hung out our dirty washing, nobody would be playing music with each other’. How true!

The gigs went ahead without me obviously this summer and it was tough trying to block out radio and social media in the run up to the gigs. But the communication this week about the visa was a pleasant turnaround and gave me a boost when my confidence had hit a bit of a low because of it. I do thank Howard for that show of faith and the letter he sent.

Video footage playing ‘The Stars Are Underground’ with The Frames live in Footsbarn’s special Circus Tent in Ballintubbert in 2018, the last pre covid gig we did. Glen felt I was the only one who played really well that night. How ironic when you consider what happened since!