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ShareEVANSTON, Ill. — Glen Hansard wasn’t happy, but at least he was polite about it.
“It sounds cool,” the 35-year-old singer said in his Irish brogue after listening to the studio playback of what he and fellow members of the Swell Season had just recorded on an afternoon last week. “It just doesn’t sound great. I don’t want to be a bummer. I just think maybe we haven’t got it yet.”
“I agree,” said Jim Tullio from behind the console of his Evanston recording studio, the smell of cigarette smoke now winning the battle with some long-lit incense.
The Swell Season — led by singer-guitarist Hansard and spotlighting his interplay with 22-year-old singer-pianist Marketa Irglova, with whom he shared a best song Oscar for “Falling Slowly” from their 2007 film “Once” — had played Chicago just two weeks earlier before proceeding to tour stops at the Hollywood Bowl and in Oregon, Calgary, Alberta, and, the previous night, Minneapolis. They arrived in south Evanston in the early afternoon, and after the recording session, hopped the tour bus overnight to Buffalo, N.Y.
What brought them so many miles was Tullio’s invitation to record a song by British singer-songwriter-guitarist John Martyn, who died in January 2009 following a 40-year-plus career. Tullio, who has produced Steve Goodman, John Prine, members of the Band, Mavis Staples and many others, recorded Martyn multiple times and has been compiling a tribute album to him expected to be released next year. The slate also includes Phil Collins, the Cure, David Gray, Donovan, Lee “Scratch” Perry and Snow Patrol.
The Swell Season chose to record “Don’t Want to Know,” a jazzy folk song originally on Martyn’s 1973 album “Solid Air.” It has an almost hymnlike quality as it builds and cycles around the phrase “I don’t want to know about evil/Only want to know about love.” The Swell Season, essentially Hansard’s longtime band the Frames plus Irglova, had tried out the song twice at sound check without nailing down an arrangement. The magic would have to happen in the studio.
“Sometimes it’s the best before it’s set — when it’s fresh, and everybody’s still experimenting,” said Irglova, decked out in a navy blue Swell Season hoodie over a Swell Season T-shirt. (“That always happens when you’re on tour and run out of clean clothes. You start wearing merch.”) Joan Armatrading had played at the House of Blues the previous night, and two of her musicians, bassist John Giblin and keyboardist Spencer Cozens, were longtime Martyn collaborators, so Tullio invited them to the session as well, though Cozens never played. A couple of hours flew by in the studio, a converted corner store/butcher shop with wooden floors and exposed-brick walls, as the 57-year-old Tullio — goateed, his wavy gray hair pulled back — and the musicians prepared to record.
The wiry Hansard, with his curly red hair, scraggly beard and green/blue lumberjack shirt was visible through the window of a booth for recording vocals and acoustic guitar, while Giblin (who played bass on Peter Gabriel’s landmark third album with its melting-face imagery) stood nearby rehearsing on Tullio’s 200-year-old German double bass (i.e. upright). Guitarist Rob Bochnik was seated in front of the console, and Joe Doyle played electric bass next to Graham Hopkins behind the drums. Irglova, having been told the piano couldn’t be recorded live alongside the drums, retreated to the back-yard patio to read.
“What I was thinking would be great would be to have the double bass as the main instrument for the whole song,” Hansard told Giblin, who happily responded, “Oh, my God.” Hansard explained that the full band would come in, “but up until then try as much as possible to keep it as stark as we can.”
“Yeah, I love the idea,” Giblin said.
The first couple of versions began with just Hansard and the double bass, the rest of the band kicking in midway, Hopkins syncopating his brushes against the cymbals, Bochnik providing jazzy punctuation. “Glen, when you sing really loud, just pull your head back a bit (from the microphone), because you’re blowing me up,” Tullio requested.
Takes 3 through 5 had the entire band playing from start to finish. “Well, that was the best one yet,” Tullio said after the last one, and he played it back for the band.
“What do you think?” Hopkins asked Hansard, who was looking down. Finally, the singer expressed his dissatisfaction, adding, “It just doesn’t seem very dynamic.”
The group resumed without Doyle, who bowed out amid the feeling that the song didn’t need electric bass as well as an acoustic one. Hansard sang and strummed alongside Giblin’s double bass, again with the drums and guitar joining later. As the song built, Tullio swayed behind his console, eyes closed.
“The second half of that was great,” he declared after the eighth take.
Hansard approached Tullio. “You do the old” — here Hansard made a snip-snip gesture with his fingers — “we’ll see you later,” the singer laughed.
Tullio played it back, and Hansard shook an empty Gatorade bottle to the beat while Irglova, who had slipped back in quietly, accompanied the recording on the grand piano, feeling her way through the song.
“There’s some real magic on that one,” Hansard said.
Now it was Irglova’s turn, and her accompaniment immediately added color and emotion. “There was some beautiful stuff in there,” Tullio said after her first take. “The whole concept seems right.”
Two more takes had Tullio repeating the word “lovely.” The producer offered to send Hansard and Irglova MP3s of the recording so they could plan out any additional vocals they might record at a later date, but Irglova was ready to go.
“It will take me five minutes to do the harmony,” she said.
“The singing’s the quickest bit,” Hansard agreed, and sure enough, she sang three takes, her creamy voice intertwining with Hansard’s soulful burr like the fingers of longtime lovers.
“Fantastic,” Tullio said.
“Cool,” responded Irglova.
“We got it,” Hansard said. “I was a bit of an early grump, but we got it.”
Afterward, the singer said he realized quickly his experimental approach wasn’t working, and also that the full-band attack wasn’t the way to go. “So we went back more toward the mood of John’s original recording, which I think ultimately was the best service for the song,” he said. “So I was very, very happy with where we went. It did sound like our take on it, but it was also very faithful to his mood.”
Tullio, meanwhile, was beaming, having started the afternoon with nothing and ended with a sublime addition to his project.
“I just knew it was going to be great,” he said. “What pros, eh?”
