Hanson.net Journal and News

Hanson Doesn't Stop at 'Mmmbop'

Fri, 09 May 2008 19:54:00 +0000

It is extremely rare, since the days of Our Gang and Freddy Bartholomew to the present, for child performers to transition to successful adult careers in entertainment. Far more are the crash-and-burn accounts of used and abused kids whose lives wind up in the toilet as adults.

Even rarer are the cases of an entire group that hangs together through the transition.

Enter Hanson, an original “boy band” of three brothers who grew up playing together in their garage, on street corners and at churches in Tulsa, Okla., who scored their first big hit “Mmmbop,” when they were barely teenagers, and now, 10 years later, they’re on yet another national tour, one that brought them to Falls Church’s State Theatre last week.

At their sold-out concert here, they rocked the house with all original songs, a combination of lively acoustical, electronic and a-cappella performances. Even otherwise cynical rock purists, there for a variety of reasons besides any desire to see Hanson, could be spotted gettin’ their groove on big time. These guys were really very good.

Their original music takes off from late 1950s, early 1960s pop and ranges from gentle ballads to high-energy rock. There is a lot of harmony and very little attention to individual parts.

“We’re a real boy band,” said Isaac, the oldest, in a pre-concert interview with the News-Press on cushy couches in the modest back-stage lounge at the State set aside for performers. “The other so-called ‘boy bands’ are really ‘man groups,’ formed by grown men to mass market.”

Isaac is now in his mid-20s, and he was joined by the youngest, Zac, just turned 21, for the first part of a very casual, and cerebral, interview. Taylor, the one in the middle, turned 24 in March. He’s the real ringleader, as exhibited during concerts and in an unusual Pied Piper-like walk the brothers led on a sunny afternoon before the May 1 concert.

Hundreds of young Hanson fans, many of whom have been fanatically loyal to the group for over a decade and now “grown up” like their heroes, gathered in the parking lot beside the State Theatre starting around 2 p.m. At 3 p.m., they got an instructional talk on a bullhorn from Taylor, and began walking quietly behind the three Hanson brothers up North Washington Street.

The idea was to walk in bare feet as a symbolic form of putting them in others’ shoes, so to speak, or more correctly, others’ lack of shoes.

The current Hanson tour is called, “The Walk.” The brothers got the idea after a trip to perform in southern Africa. Upon their return, they learned of a small shoe company that wanted to donate 50,000 pairs of soft walking shoes to poverty-ridden people in Africa, but could afford to do so only if they sold 50,000.

The Hanson brothers decided to take this up as a cause. They’ve organized walks on every city they go to, urging their fans to show up to both walk and buy the shoes. They accomplished the goal on their tour last year, and are at it again now.

In Falls Church, Taylor led them with his bullhorn up N. Washington, right onto Columbia Road and right again on Lawton to Madison Park. There, he climbed onto a large rock as hundreds of fans gathered around in the afternoon sun, and he told them about their potential for good.

“Look at what you’ve got on you right now. You have cell phones and I-Pods, you have access to the Internet, these are tremendously powerful resources at your fingertips, each of you, to make a change for the better in the world,” he intoned.

He said it was not enough to wait until everything’s ready or in place to do something. The purpose of the walk, he said, was to demonstrate that you just have to start, even if it is just by taking off your shoes, walking or buying a pair of shoes. “Your tremendous energy must be harnessed for good,” he said.

Prior to this, in the interview with the News-Press, Taylor admitted that having such a fanatically loyal fan base “can be kind of intimidating,” because music has “such power to evoke emotions in someone else, to conjure them up. It enables you to connect your feelings to other persons.”

“It makes you feel like you have such power to influence them. It makes you think how important it is to have the right kind of influence,” he said. “You can screw it up, or do it well.”

“All celebrities are faced with the same thing,” he went on. “Some react one way to it, others another. Some just flaunt it, some get very withdrawn. Ultimately, they either turn into a pompous ass or something better. The power can be used and abused.”

Taylor said he and his brothers first stumbled on the idea of helping needy folks in Africa when a friend developed a new computer software, called Doc Via, that he donated to an African organization. It turned out to have an almost revolutionary impact on being able to, very inexpensively, detect and thereby help prevent the transmission of the HIV virus from mother to child.

This model of a small contribution having an enormous impact in Africa led the brothers to discover the shoe company that also wanted to help.

Their fans, they remarked, have maintained a “fervent” and “fever pitch” for many years, and are somewhat unique. “They’re not jocks or cheerleaders, they’re a little ‘out there,’ something a little quirky about them. The most popular kids tend not to be Hanson fans,” Zac said. “With us, you either love us or don’t like us at all. We’ve watched our fans grow up with us, and change the way kids do as they grow older. Some become very clean cut, others become Goth, they all change some way. There’s a lot of diversification now in their cultural elements. But they remain loyal to us.”

They don’t think a lot of “American Idol,” by the way, noting that Paula Abdul’s screw up on the show last week had to do with the fact that not everything is truly live, but that some of the songs are pre-recorded. “It’s entertainment. It’s more like a quiz show than a music show. It’s designed at best to identify one particular kind of singer, the solo pop singer, that can be mass-marketed successfully,” Isaac noted. “Many of the great singers who’ve been around the longest, like Billy Joel or Bruce Springsteen, would never have made it on that show. For me, it’s painful to watch.”

Since their first hit, “Mmmbop,” written by the brothers in the same way they have continued to write all their own material to this day, Hanson endured the years of being on the countless covers of teenie-bopper “Tiger Beat” and “Pop Star” magazines, appearances on Saturday Night Live and sold-out crowds of mostly pre-teen, squealing girls at larger venues such as the Nissan Pavilion, where they performed in 1998. They’ve also performed at the Warner Theatre in D.C. and the Birchmere in Alexandria.

“There have been terrific pressures to break us up as a group, even to this day,” Isaac said. “But through it all, we’ve been able to make good decisions because we’ve always judged our options from the standpoint of what will be best for us over the long haul, and not for the moment. Our barometer is what will help us for years to come.”

Isaac and Zac talked a lot about longevity. Zac joked that they’d have to keep on performing because “we don’t know how to do anything else.”

But the careers of the Rolling Stones, all now well into their 60s, and even older performers like Bob Hope, who toured into his 90s, are looked on with envy by the Hanson brothers. “Music keeps you young,” Taylor said. “Bob Hope in his 90s talked about how he loved to make people happy. It brought him joy and kept him in good health, also.”

They’ve gone from being tossle-headed middle school phenoms to semi-scruffy young adults. Isaac is clean cut, but Taylor and Zac dress in leather and denim with beads, earrings and modest amounts of facial hair. All three are now married, and all either have kids, already, or are expecting.

All three, also, live with their young families in Tulsa, although that’s a big town and it doesn’t mean they’re on top of each other. They’ve had stints living in Los Angeles and New York, but they have excellent recording capabilities in Tulsa, and enjoy for the time being in the city where they grew up.

Asked how they get along so well, in such close proximity as concern tours require for so many years, they all piped up. “We don’t, necessarily. It’s just that we work well together,” Isaac said.

All their writing is a collaborative effort, worked out on paper and in rehearsals, where changes are introduced.

And when they’re on tour, they stay on tour. “We’re not weekend warriors,” Taylor said. “We stay on the tour for the duration.” Their tour bus was parked outside. That’s where they were headed right after the State Theatre concert, which didn’t end until after midnight. The plan was to take off right away and steam north to some new venue in Pennsylvania for concert the next night.

“You have to love this to do it,” Taylor said. “It’s too much work if you don’t love it. The fact is, I’m afraid I couldn’t do anything else without wishing I was doing this.”

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Walk in Durham -TIME CORRECTION

Wed, 07 May 2008 15:31:00 +0000

Hanson’s big welcome

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:12:00 +0000

Flocking to Asheville from Maine, New York, Virginia, Tennessee and across the Carolinas, Hanson fans are willing to travel great distances to see their musical idols up-close. More than 400 screaming fans — the majority being young women between the ages of 27 and 18 — gathered in front of the Orange Peel this afternoon for a chance to join the pop band Hanson on a one-mile barefoot walk through downtown Asheville. This is the band’s 66th “Walking Tour” since September of 2007, an event that aims to raise awareness on issues of poverty and AIDS in Africa, while empowering young people to stand up for a cause that they believe in.

But traveling great distances is not the only thing Hanson fans are willing to do to show their support, as Xpress learned when talking to the crowd of Hanson fans.

Michelle Brochon of Long Island and her best friend Katie Harris of Bowdoin, Maine, traveled 18 hours straight to have a front-row view of Hanson at their sold-out Asheville performance.

“It’s a special show because it’s my birthday,” said Brochon, who had been camping out at the Orange Peel since 3:30 p.m. on Saturday (two days before the concert). Brochon, despite sleeping on the streets, enthusiastically told Xpress that Hanson’s music means the world to her because, “They’re my age and they’re easy to relate too. They could have stopped making music, they could have sold out, but they didn’t and they keep making music on their own terms.”

Brochon and Harris were two of the five people who camped out for two-nights at the Orange Peel, and were joined by 60 others on Sunday night.

Along with camping gear, Hanson fans sported hand-made signs, one of which read: “We’re Walking A Mile W/ No Shoes On … What Are You Doing Today?” Other fans proudly displayed their tattoos inspired by the Hanson logo and by lyrics from their songs. One fan had the phrase: “Don’t lose yourself in your fear” tattooed on her forearm.

When the three Hanson brothers emerged from inside the Orange Peel, they were welcomed with ear-shattering screams and a cheer that seemed to ring through the city. They walked from the Orange Peel to Pritchard Park, where Taylor took out his mega-phone and began sharing stories about “The Walk” and the impact it’s made on raising awareness and energy in their generation. “We are the army of hope,” Taylor proclaimed. “We are not an underestimated generation, we have the capacity to make a difference.”

Needless to say, Hanson received a warm welcome from their local fan-base here in Asheville.

Click here to see a photo gallery of the event.

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Happy Hanson Day!

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:37:00 +0000

Hanson wants you to get creative. A haiku is an unrhymed verse having three lines containing usually five, seven, and five syllables respectively. You task is to create a haiku for Take the Walk. Once you've created your haiku, here's what to do:

Send your entry to contestp@hanson.net.
Include your username, real name and address along with your haiku
Only one entry per person allowed
The deadline for this contest is May 15, 2008 at 11:59PM EDT.

1st prize: 1 yr of Hanson.net fan club membership and both member's only t-shirts
2nd prize: Rock 'n' Roll Razorblade members only t-shirt
3rd prize: Leave The Light On members only t-shirt

Rules:
Entry open to all fans that are NOT currently fan club members of Hanson.net as of May 15, 2008. Hanson/Hanson.net is not responsible for lost or misdirected email. Winners will be announced no later than May 26, 2008.

Walk in Myrtle Beach

Tue, 06 May 2008 15:58:00 +0000

102.3 KISS FM Albany

Tue, 06 May 2008 15:30:00 +0000

In Action: Hanson helps children in Africa

Tue, 06 May 2008 15:00:00 +0000

When it comes to fighting poverty and AIDS in Africa, the band Hanson doesn't just talk about doing something to help -- they actually do it. And the musical group is encouraging their many fans to do the same.

"Young people have huge power," said Taylor Hanson, 25, the middle brother. "The goal is to talk about the basic needs of children in Africa -- access to clean water, education, medicine and specifically even to a pair of shoes." Before Hanson's concert at the Carolina Theatre in Durham on Wednesday, brothers Isaac, Taylor and Zack will lead fans on a one-mile barefoot walk, as they do before each of their concerts.

But "The Walk" (which also happens to be the title of their latest album) is no publicity stunt. The brothers are involved in fundraising for the cause.

After a visit last year to Mozambique and South Africa, where they a recorded track for The Walk album with a local children's choir, Hanson partnered with TOMS Shoes, a California shoe company.

"Every time you buy a pair of their shoes, they donate a second pair to a child living in extreme poverty in Africa," Taylor Hanson said. "Our goal has been to invite people to join us for one-mile barefoot walks. As you walk barefoot, you recognize this ability to make an impact, and you understand that a pair of shoes can really change a life." Isaac, Taylor and Zack Hanson were 16, 15 and 11 respectively when they entered the international music scene in 1997, although they first appeared professionally five years earlier in their hometown of Tulsa, Okla.

Hanson has since matured musically and navigated vast changes in the music industry. In 2001, they left Island Def Jam Records and to form their own label, 3CG Records, named for the three-car garage in which they first rehearsed.

Concertgoers in Durham will experience what Hanson believes is a key to their continued success 10 years after their debut.

"The live touring is just so important (to our longevity)," Taylor Hanson said.

"Our concerts are eclectic. We play everything from the first record to brand new songs," he said. "And we'll throw in covers that show our influences, such as U2, Otis Redding, Radiohead or Lenny Kravitz."

Hanson approaches concerts by keenly understanding the task at hand, and having plenty of fun doing it.

"The biggest thing about our shows is we really believe it's about getting people going, getting people involved," Taylor Hanson said. "When people see that you are enjoying yourselves, that you are creating a head space that is different, then they feel like they can do that. That's our job -- to let people come in and walk out charged."

Hanson's own "walk" to relieve poverty and cure AIDS continues 24/7. Proceeds for iTunes downloads of their new single, "Great Divide" are donated to a hospital in South Africa.

For Hanson, whether in the live shows, or the charitable work, it's all about getting people involved.

"Everybody has the power to make a difference by taking simple actions," Taylor Hanson said. "We have music, but everyone has something they can use."

■ Kevin Hollander is a sophomore at Mount Tabor High School.

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Hanson takes philanthropy in stride on tour

Mon, 05 May 2008 16:22:00 +0000

The youngest Hanson brother, Zac, said there's a difference between having a "day off" and an a "nonshow day."

For starters, he said, it's not truly a day off if you're scheduled to talk to reporters on the phone.

"Not that I don't enjoy doing that," he added quickly. "Seriously, it's fun."

Zac is now 22, though he began playing in a band with his brothers — Isaac and Taylor — since the '90s, when he was still snacking on milk and cookies and singing "MMMBop."

These days, touring still takes up a good deal of his life, as does time spent in the studio. However, there are actual "days off" in between, in addition to vacations.

"I love traveling with my brothers, but we get sick of each other, too," Zac said. "I mean, when we tour, we're sleeping 3 feet away from each other and see each other all day long. A vacation usually means we're not around each other, enjoying personal time, which I think is healthy."

For now, Hanson's on the third leg of "The Walk Tour," which kicked off last month.

The origins of the tour go back to 2006, when the boys visited South Africa to record their benefit single, "The Great Divide." There, Hanson saw children plagued by poverty and AIDS.

"You look at them and realize they were born into a death sentence," Zac said. "Most of the kids we saw were like preteens, and some little kids. They look really healthy, and they were having a good time. And suddenly there are adults carting them off somewhere, and we were like — is it their bedtime? But it wasn't, it was time for them to take their medication. And some of them were between 2 and 5 years old.

"On top of that, they lacked basic necessities," he said.

So, in 2007, Hanson began organizing 1-mile barefoot walks for charity before each of their concerts.

During their Fall 2007 tour, they walked a total of 48 miles, joined by thousands of fans. The proceeds from the walks went toward purchasing TOMS shoes for children in Africa.

"It's just a basic need we're providing, but it's a start," Zac said. "And we make sure the shoes get there — though I don't want to sound jaded. But you know, lots of times you give to a charity and start wondering if your donation is going to make it to the people who need it. So, we follow through and get the shoes there."

TOMS has donated tens of thousands of pairs of shoes through a program of its own, and last November Hanson joined the company on a shoe drop, delivering a whopping 50,000 pairs of shoes to children in Africa.

Hanson now has their own line of TOMS shoe — dubbed the "Great Divide."

Included with every pair of shoes is a download card for the titular song. The proceeds from the downloads go to an HIV research hospital in Soweto, South Africa.

The Hansons will continue their walks with fans, coinciding with their concerts across the U.S. The location of each day's walk is given on www.hanson.net.

"We'd take our shoes off for the walk, and try to get other people to take their shoes off," Zac said. "Sometimes people will, and it's painful. Or people won't because they're afraid of cutting their feet, and we're like, 'See, now imagine you're one of those kids and have no choice but to go barefoot.' People start to understand."

Obviously, the boys are all grown up. They even run their own label, 3CG, having experienced the ups and downs of being signed to bigger outfits.

"We were turned down 13 times before we were signed to Mercury, and even they turned us down three times," Zac said. "There was a certain sense at that point that the music industry was doing well. A few years later, it wasn't.

"For us, the downfall was when that label was dissolved, and we got absorbed into a huge merger. Bands got dropped, but we stuck around and made it through it."

Hanson ended up on Island/Def Jam, where they ended up working with more corporate types than "creative types."

"I guess you can say this isn't an industry that's looking to build careers," Zac said. "Labels now want to own your Web site, merchandising, touring, not just your records. We just decided it was time to go, so we made 3CG."

Zac said Hanson wants to outlive the record industry's "old model."

"The business of selling music is still alive, but the industry is dying," he said. "We want to create a new model and use tools like the Internet to even things out. We're using ourselves as guinea pigs and just experimenting now."

Zac also said Hanson doesn't worry about sounding like Hanson.

"We just worry about what sounds good," he said.

And while many things have changed in Hanson's career, some things have never changed since their "MMMBop" days, when they sported much longer hair and were constantly described as "adorable" by the teen-scene media.

Hanson seems to be a permanent fixture on the landscape of pop culture. The boys from Tulsa, Okla., have seen themselves spoofed on "Saturday Night Live," "MADtv" and even "The Family Guy."

"Oh, the pop-culture thing is surreal sometimes," Zac said. "But for us, the jokes aren't about our music, so we just usually laugh our asses off about all that stuff."

He mentioned the episode of "The Family Guy" in which Peter Griffin asks Glenn Quagmire: "If you could be stranded on a desert island with any woman in the world, who would it be?"

Glen Quagmire answers "Taylor Hanson."

When Peter reveals that Taylor is in fact, a man, Glen flies into a tizzy, yelling — "Oh my god! I've got all these magazines! Oh god!"

"That's a good one," Zac said. "But I also like when 'MADtv' did this sketch that was like Hanson in 2015.

"We're all older, but we act the same way we did when we were kids," he said. "I'm fat, Taylor has long hair but he's balding too. It's weird, because they got all the nuances right, and it's funny."

Zac said if a fledgling band asked him for advice on how to obtain success, he'd tell them to "follow your gut, and know who you are."

He paused significantly before saying, "Wait, that's terrible."

But then he seemed to change his mind a second or two later.

"Bands need to know what they want to become," Zac said. "So no one can tell you what you need to be. Play 500 shows, then decide who you are."

E-mail: cdifonzo@lnpnews.com

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Asheville Walk

Mon, 05 May 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Amblin' activists

Sun, 04 May 2008 18:21:00 +0000

Pop-rock trio Hanson -- the handsome brothers best known for the 1997 hit ''MMMBop'' -- took a barefoot walk Friday afternoon through downtown Allentown with a crowd of about 250 fans to raise awareness of poverty and AIDS in Africa.

''The turnout is amazing; we've had incredible support here in Allentown,'' said Taylor Hanson. ''It's really motivating for us and it's great people are feeling it's important to make an impact. It's hard to get people to take off their shoes but it's great to see people want to be a part of this.''

Taylor, Isaac and Zac, now all married and in their 20s, were interspersed throughout the crowd as they walked from Crocodile Rock, where they played to a sold-out crowd Friday night, down Hamilton Street to 11th Street and back again. They were armed with bullhorns to rally for their cause, an outgrowth of their 2007 album, ''The Walk,'' which explores the personal and social responsibilities that come with maturity. They spoke to fans and took pictures with them.

About half of the mostly female and twenty-something fans joined the Hanson brothers in walking barefoot for the mile-long trek, an event that the trio has been staging before all the shows on their current tour. Some people came from out-of-town to walk with the group. One group from Pittsburgh said they have walked five times with Hanson already. Those who participated received a hand stamp so they could bypass the line at the show.

''I wanted to walk with Hanson because they are doing a very good cause and they are sending shoes over to Africa and it's great that they're raising awareness,'' said Lori Carita, 25, of Allentown. ''I'm very excited about the concert tonight. I've seen them maybe five or six times. I've been a fan of Hanson since the ''MMMBop'' days.''

When the walk began a little after 3 p.m., the crowd was rowdy and focused on getting pictures of the three singers, who rose to fame as teens. The frenzy died down during the walk and by 4 p.m. it was over.

The procession stopped twice -- once at PPL Plaza and once at Center Square -- so Taylor could make speeches on the brothers' decision to get involved with a cause.

''When we were making [''The Walk''] we were inspired to go to Africa. When our generation sees the problems in Africa, we wonder if that's our problem. You see parents and young people, the engine of society, dying, people in their prime; it's you guys. That's why you need to get involved,'' said Taylor, 25.

Later, in Center Square, Taylor thanked the crowd for their participation and encouraged them to get involved.

''People don't have to follow us. Just because you like us, doesn't mean you have to take off your shoes and walk a mile. We as a generation need to decide that we're going to raise the bar, we can become a greater group of people. This thing you never think about, a pair of shoes, this could change a life.''

kelly.federico@mcall.com

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