Famous Blue Raincoat

And Leonard came on.

And maybe five, six songs into the set, he played Famous Blue Raincoat.

It's 4:00 in the morning.

The end of December.

I write you now just to see if you're any better.

And during Famous Blue Raincoat, my cousin took a fit.

And, and Leonard was like, "Is that boy okay?" But, my God, he'd noticed us.

And so we get him out to the side, and he's kinda calmed down a bit.

And Leonard came on.

And maybe five, six songs into the set, he played Famous Blue Raincoat.

It's 4:00 in the morning, the end of December.

I write you now just to see if you're any better.

And during Famous Blue Raincoat, my cousin took a fit.

And, and Leonard was like, "Is that boy okay?" But, my God, he'd noticed us.

And so we get him out to the side, and he's kinda calmed down a bit.

And I remember at the time, 15, I remember going, feeling this, like, transformation of like, this is my life.

talking to Carly Rae Jepsen if you're just joining us she has a new album called Day and Night this is World Cafe gonna shift gears here a little bit I want to talk about poetry because there are some poetic easter eggs in this album In the song, Something Tragic, you mentioned Leonard Cohen.

You referenced his song, Famous Blue Raincoat, on Just a Little Walk on the Moon.

There's a nod to E.E. Cummings and his poem, Who Knows If the Moon's, where he writes about the moon being a balloon.

Why did you want to include those two writers, and maybe I missed some, but at least those two, in this album?

Well, Leonard Cohen has been one of my favorite lyricists of all time and poets too.

Like Book of Longing is probably the first book or one of the first books I ever gave to Cole to be like, hey, you got to get into this.

I think that when I was a little girl, my mother used to play like songs like Famous Blue Raincoat and give me like a fake glass of wine and be like, all right, like, what do you think this is about? And we would like dissect songs together.

Like that was like our mother-daughter thing to do.

Another big influence on Glenn's music was Leonard Cohen, and here is Glenn with Javier Mas, who is a long-standing Spanish guitarist in Leonard's band.

This is Glenn Hansard singing his version of Leonard Cohen's famous Blue Raincoat.

It's four in the morning, the end of December I'm writing you now just to see if you're better New York is cold but I like where I'm living there Music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

And I hear your building, your little house deep in the desert.

Yes.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair.

She said that you gave it to her that night that you planned to Did you ever go clear? Oh, the last time I saw you You looked so much older Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder You'd been to the station To meet every train You came back without Lily, my lady And you treated My woman To a flame Of your light And when she came back She was nobody's wife.

Well, I see you there with the rose in your teeth.