‘It just feels like losing a friend’: Glen Hansard fans take to the street to sing and remember

The people who gathered on Dublin’s South King Street on Thursday to cry and to sing in memory of Glen Hansard hugged each other fiercely. They were trying to get their heads round why they were on this street almost six months before the annual Christmas busking session for the homeless traditionally brings them together. When they woke on Wednesday morning none could have imagined they would be here in the shadow of the Luke Kelly statue singing the Hansard songs that have been the soundtrack of so many of their lives. “We all have different experiences of Glen and Glen’s music and that’s why there’s so many here,” one of the organisers, Jamie Harrington, told the gathering. “He touched so many people’s lives in so many different ways and we’re here to celebrate Glen, to listen to his music and to be together.”Harrington told The Irish Times he first met Hansard in Ballymun 15 years ago.READ MORE“He came to our youth centre to film the music video for High Hope and we just had a great day. At the end of it, someone said, ‘I’m starving’ and he bought everybody chips. That showed me what kind of man he was. He saw hungry kids and just went ‘you’re part of my tribe now’. I’ve been friends with him ever since.”“It’s very emotional,” said Joanne Flood from Castleknock. “I didn’t even know a lot of his stuff. I’ve been reading about him in the papers and didn’t realise he had done so much. It’s a special thing for a busker from Dublin, isn’t it?”Yvonne Butler from Rathfarnham first saw The Frames play at the Temple Bar Music Centre in 1999 having been dragged along by her brother. “I can’t count how many times I’ve seen him perform. It just feels like losing a friend and it’s important to be able to celebrate him here with all these people,” she said.[ Glen Hansard was Ireland’s band leader, something Bono or Geldof couldn’t beOpens in new window ]Butler was in Airfield Farm with her young son on Wednesday when she heard Hansard had died in a motorbike crash early that morning. “I got a text and just walked around the farm for hours. I met one dad on the way out. He was wearing a Frames T-shirt and pushing a buggy. There were tears streaming down his face. I knew how he felt.”Crowd pays tribute to Glen Hansard. Photograph: Enda O'Dowd The Dublin busking community turned out to pay tribute to Glen Hansard. Photograph: Enda O'Dowd Activist and artist Dean Scurry, who stood shoulder to shoulder with Hansard at the Apollo House homelessness protest in 2016, was standing shoulder to shoulder with those mourning his friend’s passing. “Glen took action. He made music. He connected people, he connected everybody from paupers to presidents. He connected people through music and through love. That’s activism. I think it’s great that young people came out today and it wasn’t sprinkled with the superstars. It was young people. Young boys and girls with guitars and broken hearts, they wanted to sing songs for their friend,” he said.As the crowd dispersed with The Auld Triangle still ringing in their ears, Harrington called them back. “Don’t think yiz are getting this for nothing,” he shouted. “When ye get home please go online and donate to Dublin Simon – a fiver or a tenner. Or if you’re loaded give them a thousand,” he said. It was a sentiment his friend Glen would have been proud of.