A Street Musician at Heart

In one of my favorite videos of the singer-songwriter Glen Hansard, who died this week at the age of 56, he is standing in a small backyard in Cologne. It’s 2015, and he’s playing “Say It to Me Now,” which he performs in the opening scene of the breakout 2007 indie film Once; it’s a raw, wrenching plea of a song that explodes in its second half. In his guitar is a gaping hole: Hansard’s trusty cedar-topped Takamine—nicknamed “the Horse,” for its endurance—had been with him through many years of…