'Once' couple is now embracing The Swell Season The Oscar-winning musicians share life, work in 'victory lap' For Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, everything changed on Feb. 24.

That was the night their sweet little song "Falling Slowly," from the shoestring-budgeted "Once," leapfrogged a trio of brassy tunes from a modern Disney classic ("Enchanted") to win the Academy Award for Best Song.

Now, Hansard, a singer and guitarist who was reared in Dublin, Ireland, and Irglová, a classically trained pianist and singer from the Czech Republic, are selling out club shows -- including Toad's Place tonight as fans of the movie scramble to hear the live re-creations of "Once's" sparse, tender tunes.

"This tour is very much a victory lap," the introspective, rapid-speaking Hansard said by phone from Los Angeles recently. "It feels very comfortable.

"Most tours you do, you are kind of having to win people in the audience. But something extraordinary has happened to me and Mar. You win this golden statue, and the audience comes with it.

"We're also very much aware of the nature of success, and a lot of people coming to see us are going to be curious. The challenge of this tour is to convince them to come back next time."

For more than a decade, Hansard, an ambitious street busker in his youth, has fronted the Irish rock band The Frames, which has released six studio albums.

He met Irglová on a trip to her country, where he went to record a solo album called "The Swell Season," released in April 2006. Irglová also played on the record and, later that year, filmed "Once" with Hansard.

In the course of making the movie about two struggling musicians who unexpectedly fall in love, life imitated art and Hansard, now 38, and Irglová, now 20, became a couple.

They now tour under the name The Swell Season. (Hansard has enlisted his Frames bandmates for the tour as well, saying: "Why not take my lads out and give them work?")

When asked how the sudden fame bestowed on the couple has affected their relationship, Hansard initially bristled with a terse "That's none of your business, actually," but then softened.

"We get on fine. We're good mates. It's funny that we went through this together. The film, more than anything, brought us a lot closer and that madness after . . . if I'd have gone through this alone, I might be handling it differently, with some sort of questioning. But her perspective, being younger, is very different."

Hansard says the post-Oscar attention has afforded them a few meaningful luxuries for musicians, such as being able to bring extra guitars and their own sound and lighting person on the road.

But he's incredibly philosophical about this current state of his life.

"This was a crazy, odd thing to happen, but at the end of the day it's not the be-all, end-all. It's an award from a body of people -- and the award means a lot to us -- but it means more to other people," Hansard said.

"It's a bit like you're in your garden and kicking a ball and hoping it will make it to the end of the garden, and we kicked the ball and it went over the fence and to the river.

"I have to get used to this skin," he continued. "I haven't gotten used to the idea of being a successful person. Now I think I understand this and am ready to move forward.

"Everybody just talks about the success in this nondescript way that creates mystery and leaves the normal person saying, 'What the [heck] do I have to do to get there?' But you need something in your life to try to achieve.

"Sometimes, when a lot of achievement happens at once, what you have to do is go off and figure out if it's true and if it's real." mruggieri@timesdispatch.com.