(ASBURY PARK, NJ) -- The Stone Pony presents Glen Hansard and special guest Margaret Glaspy on Saturday, April 11, 2026 at 7:00pm.
Glen Hansard has announced his sixth solo album Don’t Settle – Transmissions East & West, an expansive collection featuring live reinterpretations of some of his most loved songs from across his solo career, as well as his work as the frontman of The Frames and half of the Oscar-winning duo The Swell Season. Friday April 24th, 2026 will see 10 of these tracks released first as Transmissions East (Vol. 1).
Hansard also shared his new version of “Didn’t He Ramble” from Vol. 1 alongside a live performance video filmed at Berlin’s historic Funkhaus during recording.
About the song, he explained: “Our local bar was The Ramble Inn. My father spent most of his waking and sometimes sleeping hours in there…he’d ramble in and stumble out. I wrote this song after he passed at the fair young age of 62. The kind of tribute song he would have approved of. My father was a proud man. Loved his family and his drink in equal measure. My father showed his love shoulder to shoulder, not face to face. He drove The Frames amps and instruments around for years. Rarely staying for the show. But always there to load out the gear with the band afterward. I loved him very much and wanted to write him a tribute song he’d enjoy. I raise my voice, and a glass to Jemo Hansard.”
Tickets start at $59 and are available for purchase online. The Stone Pony is located at 913 Ocean Avenue in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
Hansard and his band recorded Don’t Settle – Transmissions East & West over two nights in April 2025 in front of a dedicated audience at Funkhaus–an expansive former East German radio facility–and in many ways, it encapsulates multiple things at once: a career retrospective opus, a ‘Best Of’ collection, a live record, and a new studio album.
The inspiration for the album came from a memorable rain-soaked outdoor performance at Zuiderparktheater in The Hague in summer 2024, when Hansard invited audience members onstage during a storm, creating an impromptu communal experience that would help to shape the record’s concept. Transmissions East (Vol. 1) is the first release in a two-volume set with the 2nd, Transmissions West (Vol. 2), appearing later this year.
Both volumes feature no vocal overdubs, second takes, autotune, or editing–brilliantly showcasing the breadth of Hansard’s talents and songwriting. In all, Don’t Settle – Transmissions East & West feels like an important demarcation point in an already storied career, with Hansard looking backwards within his creative path while he moves forward–‘transmissions’ both from his past and to his future.
Originally from the Northern California town of Red Bluff, Margaret Glaspy began writing songs at age 15 and quickly developed a style marked by raw sensitivity and razor-sharp insight. She began her solo career with the self-released Homeschool EP in July 2012. After signing to ATO Records in 2015, she released a 7-inch in early 2016 featuring “You and I” and “Somebody to Anybody”—songs that would later appear on her debut full-length Emotions and Math, a bold and bracing album that introduced her as a major new voice in indie rock.
“The Golden Heart Protector” marks the first bit of music Glaspy has shared since last year’s EP The Sun Doesn’t Think (ATO), which followed her critically acclaimed 2023 album Echo The Diamond which drew attention from the likes of The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone, among many others. That LP emerged from a deliberate stripping-away of artifice to reveal life for all its harsh truths and ineffable beauty. Like the precious gem of its title, the result is an object of startling luminosity, one capable of cutting through the most elaborately constructed façades. The albums’ singles “Act Natural,” “Memories,” and “Get Back” saw support from The New York Times, NPR, Pitchfork, Stereogum, Spin, and others. “Act Natural” reached the top 20 at AAA Radio, marking Glaspy’s highest chart position of her career. The album was labeled a “notable release of the week” by both NPR and American Songwriter and Pitchfork included it in their “8 New Albums You Should Listen To” list around release and The New York Times’ Jon Pareles included “Memories” in his in Best Songs of 2023 list noting “Over a waltz of simple guitar chords, Margaret Glaspy blurts out unvarnished grief in a torn voice, bereft yet struggling to go on."
