Thousands of hopeful Irish hearts ground to a thundering halt in March of this year, when Hot Press broke the news that Lisa Hannigan would be leaving Ireland’s soggy pastures for a new home far, far away. Dubliners could no longer daydream about bumping into the wide-eyed enchantress in their local pub, or, even better, finding her on their doorstep with a ukulele in one hand and a basket of puppies in the other.

Ironically, the lives of Lisa’s legion of admirers haven’t changed much. They go on as normal, leaving besotted comments on her YouTube videos (online marriage proposals have officially reached double digits, while “ILOVEYOUTOOMUCHTOUSETHESPACEBAR!!!!­!” remains my favourite proclamation of affection), immortalising her in oil paintings and, of course, listening to those dreamy songs of hers until their CD players can take no more. It’s actually Hannigan’s life that’s been transformed.
“It’s been kind of amazing,” she tells me, “but also it feels very, erm… I feel like I’m blowing in the wind a bit, but I’m almost afraid to stop now.”
Today, her home is Columbus, Ohio, but only for the next 24 hours. Then it’s off to Nashville to continue an American tour with Ray LaMontagne. Hannigan’s live talents are in demand all over the world, which is part of the reason why she opted for a nomadic lifestyle
in 2012.
“When we moved out of my house, I decided that I wasn’t going to get another flat, ‘cos there didn’t seem like much point,” she explains, “so I moved all of my stuff to my parents’ house, packed a bag, and I’ve pretty much been living out of that bag ever since!”
Of course, we could have guessed that Hannigan had been bitten by the travelling bug from her last album, the aptly-titled Passenger. A record that surely needs no introduction, it found the Kilcloon native drawing inspiration from being away from home, something she became very familiar with in 2012.
“When I had a chunk of time, I decided I would go and live somewhere that I’ve always wanted to live for a bit,” she says. “I went to Paris for six weeks by myself and that was fantastic, although I realised that there were many weeks where I didn’t make any noise at all, except singing. When I got home and started to talk to people again, I realised, ‘God I haven’t been talking at all!’, which is no harm. It’s a strange thing what it does to your mind, not chatting to people and just chatting inside your own head!”
Nothing like a spell abroad to remind you how much absolute shite you talk on a daily basis.
“So much of what we say is throwaway,” Hannigan observes, “and I think I learned that when I was in France. I realised that there were so many inane things I missed saying to people, because I do that a lot. When you don’t have the linguistic power, you end up saying nothing, and you realise how sort of calming that is. A friend of mine is off to do a meditation course next year and I wonder: would it be a good thing or me to do?”
I’ve heard nice reports of that inner peace stuff, I offer.
“Yeah, no harm,” she muses. “No harm to say less.”
Meanwhile, songs from Passenger have been
getting a rapturous reception in America, Japan and
all over Europe.
“They don’t become old, really, to me. I hope when a song is done that it’s almost like a time capsule of how you felt at that moment and you would hope, if it’s a successful endeavor, that when you start to play it, it brings you back to how it felt. There’s a few songs of mine that I don’t feel that way about and I really can’t play them anymore at all, because I just feel like I’m karaoke-ing and I have no feeling for them. But actually all the songs on Passenger, I still have feeling for… most of them. Now, I’m being honest!”
Tellingly, Lisa’s favourite memory from her year on the road took place right here in Dublin. In July, she played a headline show in the Iveagh Gardens, crowned off with a live re-enactment of the paint-splattering mayhem we saw in the music video for ‘Knots’. It’s an incredible video, but I can’t imagine she was dying to get back in front of an army of paintballers.
“No, not at all,” she laughs, “when I did the video, I thought, ‘Well, thank god that’s finished! I never have to do that again’! It was such a big day for me in that it was my biggest Irish show and there was a lot of people there who meant a huge deal to me, friends and family-wise but also all the people who worked so hard and rallied around me when I went out on my own.
“I really wanted to have a big ending to the show and I couldn’t think of what to do and then I started thinking about doing a live version of the ‘Knots’ video and everyone just said, ‘Well you can’t!’ Bren Berry from Aiken in particular said, ‘Please, don’t get paint all over my equipment!’ It sort of seemed like an impossible idea and then we just tried to figure out how we could possibly make it happen. There were a lot of trips to B&Q to buy plastic sheeting and paint guns and overalls for the people shooting me. We couldn’t really rehearse obviously, so I just talked it through with everybody and they all did their jobs and it just worked perfectly.”
Now she’s laboured with the task of coming up with something even better than transforming herself into a human painting for her next Irish show.
“Yeah,” she shrugs, “but that’s life in general! Things just unfold before you.”
Speaking of music videos, the clip that accompanies Passenger track ‘What’ll I Do’, which had her spinning around on a Funderland rollercoaster no less than 18 times, has now reached over a million views
on YouTube.
“I did it with a wonderful man called Michael Kelly,” she remembers. “Off I went and did the first one, and then we just kept doing it! You mess up the words and you go out of shot, so don’t know how it’s going to look. Every time it was so different, the thing would start at a slightly different point and there were great moments. We took it into a little office in Funderland and took out the computer and had a little watch of them, and it was just so ridiculous. I felt really quite ill, to be honest.”
Hannigan’s New Year’s Resolution for 2012 was to read a book a week, something she’s managed to keep up. Any ideas for 2013?
“Really, next year for me is just about writing the next record,” she says. “I’m finding it much easier to write on this tour. In fact, I actually finished a song this morning! It’s been really good because I’ve had time to myself, on my own tours I’m much busier and in a way I kind of like writing on tour if I can, more than if I’m at home. I get terrible distracted at home!”
A song and an interview, all before 11am. I have to say, I’m very impressed. What’s on the agenda for lunchtime, a symphony?
“I dunno, I think that’s me done now,” she laughs. “I might go and have a drink.”
I guess it’s true what they say, You can take the girl out of the country…

Lisa Hannigan performs at Vicar St., Dublin on New Year’s Eve with Richie Egan, Jerry Fish, Rhob Cunningham, Gavin Glass, We Cut Corners, Cathy Davey, Neil Hannon and more. Passenger is out now on Hoop Recordings.