The Hop Jam on Sunday in the Brady Arts District was the first time Hanson did not play, stepping back the third year of the band’s beer and music festival from headliner to host.
That doesn’t mean the brothers lounged around all day.
Busy pouring beers and taking selfies with fans, Isaac Hanson said the weekend was a perfect way to celebrate Oklahoma beer, music, family and friends.
“I think it’s harder not playing,” Hanson joked. “It’s as much as we could hope for.”
Tens of thousands of people streamed in to the free downtown festival all day as beer flowed and music played. A dozen bands, more than half of them from Oklahoma and Tulsa, started playing early in the afternoon, culminating with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros headlining the night.
Families laid out blankets and played on the splash pad of Guthrie Green while listening to the music, including Janelle Weaver, who was watching her 2-year-old son, Carl Weaver, play in the water.
“It’s a mix of craft beer and music,” she said. “Can’t go wrong with that.”
Many of those taking part in The Hop Jam also participated in the weekend-long Hanson Day, a variety of events put on by the band for fans. The annual event draws thousands of people from around the world.
Sarah Dwyer has attended every Hop Jam and has attended the last three Hanson Day weekends. From Cincinnati, she said the event is a great chance to connect with fellow fans from around the world and the chance to explore Tulsa again.
“It’s crazy to think what they’re capable of and what we as a fan base are capable of when we come together,” Dwyer said.
Her friend, Sarah LaBarre, from Columbus, Ohio, said Hanson Day and The Hop Jam are opportunities for fans of Hanson, music and beer to come together for the same reason: A fun Sunday afternoon in Tulsa.
“A lot of the fans I don’t know, but when I come here, they treat me like family,” LaBarre said.
This is the first year for Suzany Mota, who made the trip to Tulsa for Hanson Day for the first time this year. And she is in the early running for the fan who traveled the farthest, coming with her husband from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
She’s a Hanson superfan, while her husband, Hanrique Lamtin, really enjoys beer. The Hop Jam gives them both a great day to take in a nice afternoon in downtown Tulsa.
“It’s like a little town, but very, very beautiful,” Mota said. (Sao Paulo has a population of around 11 million.)
“The people are amazing and so nice,” Mota added.
The Hop Jam was the culmination of a busy weekend in downtown Tulsa, which included Blue Dome Arts Festival and Tulsa International Mayfest.
“Tulsa is just hopping this weekend, for sure,” Weaver said.
Sunday sights during The Hop Jam in the Brady District. TOM GILBERT/Tulsa World
A beer is poured Sunday during The Hop Jam in the Brady District. TOM GILBERT/Tulsa World
TULSA, Oklahoma – Hop Jam is underway in the Brady Arts District.
The festival, founded by the Hanson Brothers, showcases music and craft beer.
Breweries are set up on Main and Cameron.
Oklahoma brewers say the event is helping their businesses.
Vendors and volunteers spent the morning Sunday gearing up for one of the largest craft beer festivals in Tulsa.
“This kind of exposure is wonderful,” John Elkins said. “You can’t get this kind of exposure without something this big and something this crazy going on.”
Elkins owns Elk Brewing Company, a fairly young brewery out of Oklahoma City.
They’ve been making Oklahoma brew since 2014, and this is their second time here in Tulsa for Hop Jam.
Elkins says it’s a great way to get new people to try their beer.
“We get a lot of first timers trying it, which is kind of the goal,” he said. “That’s the key. Get those first timers, get them in, let them try it and see what they think.”
Half of the vendors on Main are local Oklahoma brewers — big and small –with some names you’ll recognize.
A poster showing The Hop Jam guitar that someone will win in a raffle is hung during as The Hop Jam festival kicks off in the Brady Arts District. TOM GILBERT/Tulsa World
Crowds are streaming into The Hop Jam as the beer and music festival opens Sunday afternoon.
Thousands are expected to spend the afternoon in the Brady Arts District listening to music from local and national acts into the night. The festival, organized and curated by Tulsa-natives Hanson, is free to attend and beer purchases can be made on site.
Two stages will feature music starting at 3 p.m. Sunday, one at Guthrie Green with all local acts that topped the Tulsa World Opening Band Contest: Groucho, Nicnos, Nightingale, The Young Vines and Sam Westhoff.
The winner of the contest, RVRB, will open the concert on the Main Stage, followed by Chase Kerby + The Villans, John Moreland — both acts from Oklahoma — followed by X Ambassadors, Albert Hammond Jr. and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros to headline the night.
Beer from more than 60 brewers is also featured at the festival. Visitors attending the beer portion must be 21 to enter.
Ooh la la
Stop me in my tracks
Something loud
Siren call
No rest for the weary
Man on top
Do you believe in love
Joyful noise
Feeling alive (lift your hands up)
Waiting for this
Already home
Sound of light
Watch over me
Scream and be free
Follow your lead
Voice in the chorus
This time around
The Hop Jam guitar, created locally at the Fab Lab, will be raffled off to benefit charity. TOM GILBERT/Tulsa World
After Hanson released the breakout album “Middle of Nowhere,” fans from around the world started mailing the brothers gifts.
As they started to pile up, the brothers sent out newsletters and tried to get the word out: Don’t send us gifts. Send them to those who need them instead.
“The Food Bank (work) goes back to the mid-’90s when we would encourage people, hey we’re really grateful for the things you send us in the mail, but rather than send us something in the mail, donate to your local food bank or do some charitable work and send us a letter and let us know what you did,” Isaac Hanson said in a recent interview. “We would rather you take that generosity and pass it on to someone else that really, really needs it.”
That’s guided their own work, too. From their work establishing Take The Walk to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa to raising thousands of dollars for local charities like the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma and Emergency Infant Services, the brothers have made giving back a big part of their mission.
And at Sunday’s The Hop Jam Beer and Music Festival in the Brady Arts District, that work continues. Hanson is partnering again with the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma and new this year, Emergency Infant Services, to raise money and support for both organizations.
“I have gotten pretty involved in trying to understand food and hunger issues in Tulsa and they’re an incredible organization,” Taylor Hanson said. “And unfortunately in Tulsa and Oklahoma, there’s a lot of hungry families. It’s kind of staggering how many are living right on the edge.
“To me there’s nothing that is more broadly speaking to the foundation of being a community effort, like Hop Jam. We want Hop Jam to be one of the events in the future that hopefully brings people together.”
Again this year, Hanson partnered with Fab Lab Tulsa to create a special guitar in the shape of a hop, an essential ingredient in making most beers. The fully-functioning guitar will be signed by the guest brewers and performers during The Hop Jam and will be raffled off, with tickets at $5 a piece.
“Last year’s donation, they were able to provide 50,000 meals,” Taylor Hanson said. “That one guitar that gets made by a cool partner like Fab Lab, it goes out and does something meaningful. That’s the stuff that gets me out of bed in the morning, is assembling the possibilities.
“Here’s the Fab Lab doing something really cool, here’s the Food Bank with a great need, here’s a lot of people coming to one place, here’s an icon for an event we want to tie into the folklore into the festival. To bring all those factors together is exciting because it’s serving great purposes and having value, but there’s all these other ripples that happen when you tie in the positive things together.”
Hanson has made a point to take decisions that come before them and examine their value beyond the money associated with it. That includes its charitable ventures.
And it’s something that they hear from their fans, who appreciate their thoughtfulness when it comes to their approach to the music business.
“From an early point when people asked us to do movies and make lunchboxes and that sort of thing, we said let’s do something that we’d be proud of in several years, not just things that make us money,” Zac Hanson said. “The fortunate side effect of doing things you can be proud of is you usually don’t do things your fans will be embarrassed of. I think we have been lucky to hit the right combination of things with young fans from the start who identify themselves and say this is important to me and who I am.”
Emergency Infant Services will set up around the new area of The Hop Jam at Guthrie Green. The area will include special raffle prizes, games and family activities with the help of the EIS Junior Board of Directors, including Tulsa-area high school students. The all-ages park also will feature local music to entertain the crowds.
“You don’t have to think very long to see those (issues) are pretty darn consistent, which is why we’re trying to help people in bad spots whether they’re halfway around the world in Africa or whether they are in our hometown,” Isaac Hanson said. “Trying to help moms not pass on a deadly virus to their babies, trying to help moms and dads provide diapers and formula for their babies.”
“It’s not politically advantageous,” Zac Hanson added. “It’s just good.”
Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson show off The Hop Jam guitar they had made to raffle off for charity during the music and beer festival. TOM GILBERT/Tulsa World
Isaac (left), Taylor and Zac Hanson will raffle off a guitar to raise money for the Community Food Bank during The Hop Jam. TOM GILBERT/Tulsa World
Hanson Day 2016 is fully underway and it kicked off with an epic karaoke party hosted by Isaac, but there’s still so much in store. The biggest, loudest, HDay yet.
MESSAGE FROM THE BAND
HANSON Day 2016 is now underway and it started off with a bang! Last night Isaac hosted the first ever HANSON Day Karaoke night and the results were outstanding! We have been wanting to do something like this for years and it really lived up to the anticipation. Today the festivities continue. The HANSON Day gallery opened as well as all three of our lectures later in the day, and everything culminates with the HANSON Day concert tomorrow night. Probably the number one thing we will be doing this weekend is performing and recording new music. We have five songs from the new members EP Loud and also the new songs that will become the Play EP, it really is like releasing a full album’s worth of new music. There is a lot we are excited to share, but also a lot of new lyrics and chords that are surprisingly easy to forget! Wish us luck. We are planning to film both the State Of The Band talk and the HANSON Day concert, but because of technical issues relating to the internet speeds at the venue, we will not be broadcasting them until Monday, May 23rd. If you are a Hanson.net member make sure to tune in to the members only streaming page as they will both be looping all week and through next weekend. Thank you all for celebrating with us as we cross the 24 year mark as a band and head towards a quarter century in May of 2017.
Wayne Coyne at Oklahoma City’s Flaming Lips Alley. Photo: Chris Landsberger/The Oklahoman/AP Photo
Twenty years ago, Oprah Winfrey asked Prince — who seemed as if he might have hailed from a different planet entirely — why, “of all places,” he chose to live in Minneapolis, where he was born. “I will always live in Minneapolis,” he said. “It’s so cold it keeps the bad people out.” He could have kept the whole world out if he wanted to, staying behind the gate at his suburban home base, Paisley Park; instead, Prince had a way of popping up around the city, at a record store or a jazz club. He was inclined to invite regular Minneapolitans to shows in his garage if they waited long enough outside the gate. His last party at Paisley Park (admission $10) was only five days before his death. In plenty of other places around the country, artists hold the keys to their cities, much like Prince did. They’re not just mingling with the hoi polloi at the local coffee shop; they’re actually civic boosters — whether it’s Hanson bringing in thousands of people with their fan weekend in Tulsa or George R.R. Martin helping a random group of guys in Santa Fe turn a bowling alley into an art space.
Oklahoma City Everyone Here Has Had Their Photo Taken With Wayne Coyne
“It used to be that [the Flaming Lips’] Wayne Coyne would be walking around in his three-piece suits and his crazy hair, and most Oklahoma Citians might just think, Oh, isn’t that a colorful character? What changed — and I take some credit for this — is in about 2006, I was 26, and I had just become chief of staff to the mayor, and I thought, We gotta do something to embrace Wayne Coyne! He’s accomplished, and he lives in Oklahoma City! I am a Republican senator, but I am also an almost-millennial, and I have a high tolerance for all the things that make life interesting. So I found this alleyway in Bricktown, and I thought, Why don’t we name this Flaming Lips Alley? I thought people might think an alleyway — rather than a street — was cool. It was actually a complicated process — everyone in the government was like, ‘Who are the Flaming Lips?’ There were a lot of politics, but the mayor ended up saying yes. The Lips put on a grand show down there for the dedication. Wayne cursed. That changed everything for them locally. Soon afterward, they were part of an ad campaign for our gas-and-utility company. Everyone was posting Facebook pictures whenever they’d run into Wayne. It became a running gag: ‘You’re the last person in Oklahoma City not to have your picture taken with Wayne Coyne.’ ” —David Holt, state senator
Where to Find Wayne The singer, who’s lived in OKC for 55 years, on his haunts.
Illustration: Jason Lee
1. Blue Note Lounge(2408 N. Robinson Ave.): “The first place that ever allowed the Flaming Lips to play. I think we’re gonna do a 60-years-in-the-same-place anniversary show there.”
2. Saints Pub (1715 NW 16th St.): “A bar we can walk to from my house, get fairly fucked up, and then walk back.”
3. Womb Gallery(25 NW 9th St.): “It was a dilapidated car dealership that someone turned into a gallery, and we got the idea it could be partially a gallery and partially a Flaming Lips warehouse, which it now is.”
4. Bad Granny’s Bazaar(1759 NW 16th St.): “This thrift store has been in this little corner of the Plaza District a long time. Even just four, five years ago, you could literally buy crack in that area; it was devastated.”
5. Lowe’s (3801 N. May Ave.): “I go to Lowe’s a lot! Recently I’ve been there five times a day to get ready for the tornadoes.”
6. Tana Thai(10700 N. May Ave.): “We have the best fuckin’ Thai restaurants in the world here.”
7. Chesapeake Energy Arena(100 W. Reno Ave.): “I just saw Bruce Springsteen; we got to talk with Bruce afterward. That’s one of the great perks of being here — there’s no one else he’d know! Robert Plant came, it was the same way.”
Minneapolis “I Showed Up One Night at Prince’s House and He Let Me In”
Prince.
“When I was in high school, there was this urban legend that if you hung out outside Paisley Park after Prince had done a show in town, when he got back he’d open the doors and let kids in to just hang out and maybe watch him play. The older kids would tell the younger kids; it was Minnesota lore. My friends and I were bored one night and we were like, Let’s just try that. We knew he’d played a show in town that night, so we chilled and waited, and finally this caravan of cars comes up, goes through the gate. They saw us and just kind of disappeared. Then some bodyguard dude comes out and is like, ‘Y’all been waiting a while? Come right in.’ It must have been ten of us. It’s this weird-looking compound, like some ’60s Soviet-bloc factory, so we went in and they brought us into this huge garage — it felt airplane-hangar-sized, and we just sat there and waited. No one was drinking or partying, just a bunch of people hanging, couches everywhere. After about 30 minutes Prince just came out and played. He was clearly just messing around. It wasn’t a performance, it was like he was just practicing. We were these giggly teenagers in the corner. He didn’t really acknowledge us, but the urban legend definitely proved true.” —Caitlin McNally, journalist
Red Hook “I See Dustin Yellin Everywhere” An anonymous Red Hook resident on the artist behind the creative space Pioneer Works.
Photo: Murphy Lippincott
“What Dustin’s donewith Pioneer Works is obviously neighborhood-changing. Basically, his door is always open — it’s not like a regular PS1 thing with snooty curators, it’s a complete open-door policy, dogs and kids running around outside. I think because he’s been like that, he’s definitely been embraced by the neighborhood. And even when they have their big benefit, he could just lock the door, but he doesn’t. He loves to be in the mix and around people in that very Warholian ‘This is my Factory’ kind of way. Five days out of the week I see him, for sure. Sometimes it’s at the coffee shop, sometimes it’s at a lunch place. I’ve seen him in Fort Defiance in the mornings. He’s very unassuming; he looks like any other 40-year-old hipster in jeans with a pretty girlfriend.”
Tulsa Last Year, Hanson Brought 30,000 Fans to the City
Photo: Murphy Lippincott
“Everyone here knows who Hanson is. Their studio is smack-dab in the middle of downtown, so you can always see them around there. Isaac will get coffee at Joebot’s. I saw Zac and his wife walking down the street the other day. I run into their dad at the diner all the time. They have this fan weekend every year, Hanson Day, that brings a ton of people here. The town is on fire. Everyone that owns a business, they plan months in advance for it. The restaurants are packed, the hotels are booked, and for a small business it has a huge impact. Once, at a random concert here, I was able to go backstage, and I found myself sitting across from Isaac Hanson and listening to him talk about getting restless-leg syndrome while on an airplane. I had to pinch myself!” —Mary Beth Babcock, owner of Dwelling Spaces boutique
“George just lives here like any other Santa Fean. He’s out and about; he’ll be at the movie theater he owns, the Jean Cocteau, or at Dragonstone Studios, the artists’ studios he bought. My business partner Vince had worked with George at Jean Cocteau, and when we found this bowling alley and wanted to turn it into a space for our art collective, we were like, ‘Oh, let’s see if George wants to buy it with us.’ So we emailed him, and George was like, ‘Yeah, that sounds cool.’ Our space, which we opened in March, is called Meow Wolf, and we make these kind of sci-fi novels you can walk inside of, and George was psyched about that. ” —Sean Di Ianni, chief operating officer, Meow Wolf
“And I’m in a Sci-Fi Writers’ Group With George R.R. Martin”
“I was at a science-fiction convention in 2001 and ended up at a table with George. I told him I lived in Santa Fe, and he said, ‘So, you could join our writers’ group if you want.’ It happens at different people’s houses. For a while, George and I were carpool-mates. For the first month, George just said, ‘Well, I’ll drive you.’ Then his car was in the shop, so I drove him for several months. There was a time when he’d come to us with part of his novels, and we’d have things to say about the plot structure, but once he’s really into it, he needs to live his way through to the end of the story, and we’ll just annoy him. I’ll see him at his theater, the Jean Cocteau. It’s quite typical to just see him pop in, and his car is pretty recognizable: It’s a bright-purple Tesla, a custom paint job. He has a GRRM vanity plate.” —E. M. Tippetts, author
Austin Here, Richard Linklater Is Just Another Zhlub-Around-Town Despite the fact that he’s one of the city’s most important cultural figures.
Richard Linklater. Photo: LeAnn Mueller/This content is subject to copyright.
“Rick’s usually wearing a Criterion Collection T-shirt and shorts. Many a time, I’ve seen our interns at the Austin Film Society get into a conversation with him about film, and it’s an epic experience for them, but it’s really just typical Rick.” —Rebecca Campbell, executive director of the Austin Film Society
Eeven at film premieres, he usually looks like he just got out of bed. The specter of Rick looms large over the arts community here. He’s just around and he’s accessible — he has this longtime assistant, Kirsten, and if you go through her, he will always call.” —Evan Smith, CEO of the Texas Tribune
“He lives a few blocks from us in Hyde Park, in a modest house. Every Halloween he co-hosts a yard party. He’ll bring out his pet pig. I think of him as Rick, this guy in the neighborhood, but then I’ll see him on TV and it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s Richard Linklater!’ ” —Rodney Gibbs, digital strategist
Dallas Where Erykah Badu Might Show Up to Your Birthday Party
Photo: Murphy Lippincott
“It’s cool because Erykah really reps Dallas — a lot of people have left, but she’s stayed and is always going to gigs, art shows, things like that. It was my homie Picnic’s birthday, and we did a little party on a Thursday at Beauty Bar. It wasn’t even ten yet, and Erykah just popped in. It was one of those moments where you just do a double take. Some random weirdos were just talking to her, this older crowd who were having a drink at the bar. I think she had a flower in her hair; she might have put it in this dude’s hair next to her.” —Will Rhoten, a.k.a. DJ Sober
And in the very small town ofSt. Johnsbury, Vermont “Neko Case Is My Landlord”
Photo: Murphy Lippincott
“Dylan’s, the café I own, used to be down the street from here, and this redhead started coming in every day. One time she said, ‘Hey, you wanna buy non-GMO tomatoes?’ And I did. I just thought she played guitars in cafés and was a farmer growing tomatoes. Then one day my daughter comes up with her iPhone and shows me a picture of Neko and says, ‘It’s about time I told you, Mom.’ Five years back, she bought this old Art Deco–y post office because she heard it was being turned into a parking lot. She brought me up there and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to turn part of this into a restaurant?’ We’ve been here five years now. Behind one wall in this building, there’s an old movie theater that Neko’s turned into a rehearsal space. One time her band was practicing in the studio, and we were serving lunch, and she kept coming out: ‘Am I bothering people?’ We were like, ‘That song sounds good!’ She comes in with her dogs. Liza passed away a few months ago, everyone knew Liza, and now she has another rescue, Joanie. She sits down, and Joanie has some turkey, and Neko has a sandwich.” —Erin Papin, owner of Dylan’s Café
New Orleans Where to Find Kermit Ruffins Any Day of the Week
Photo: Murphy Lippincott
The trumpeter and singer appeared as himself on HBO’s Treme, but he’s been a beloved local character for far longer: He grew up in the Ninth Ward, had a speakeasy in Tremé until recently, and still lives there, on top of his new club, Kermit’s Tremé Mother-in-Law Lounge — where he barbecues almost every day.
Monday “Almost every Monday, I wake up and cook six pounds of ribs, which we serve in the yard of my bar. I also love to cook turtle in a nice red gravy. The other day I cooked raccoon with lots of sweet potatoes. Every day we give out free lunch and cold beer.”
Tuesday
“At around eight, I head to the Prime Example, a mom-and-pop spot with some of the best jazz in the city, where my uncle Percy Williams, who taught me to play trumpet, plays with Irma Thomas.”
Wednesday “Every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night I’ll go see Jeremy Davenport at the Ritz-Carlton.”
Thursday “At six, I’m playing at Bullet’s. Then I’ll go to the Prime Example or to see Nayo Jones at the Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone — the crowd there on Saturdays is mostly tourists; on Thursdays it’s locals.”
Friday “We have free crawfish every Friday at my bar, and then at seven, I’m playing at the Blue Nile.”
Saturday “I have pop-up concerts almost every Saturday at the bar, and then I play at the Little Gem Saloon at seven.”
Sunday “We always have a big show at my bar on Sundays with DJ Sugar Ray.”
TULSA – It’s been 20 years since the hit single MMMBop was released by Oklahoma’s own Hanson brothers. They are still making music, now creating craft beer, and are busy planning their 3rd annual festival called Hop Jam. News 9’s Lacey Swope sat down with Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson to find out where they are now.
Lacey Swope: “I’m sure you remember me. This is from the Mabee Center. 1998. I was 11. I was in section 6. Each one of you throughout the concert made eye contact with me so we’ve basically been best friends ever since.”
Zac Hanson: “Sometimes friendships. You just don’t see each other for a while.”
Taylor Hanson: “It’s the long distance thing.”
Isaac Hanson: “I’m glad you reminded me of this because that’s who you are.’
The heartthrob’s posters filled her walls, and their faces were on her pillows, they’re records were her anthems. For Lacey and millions of others the 90’s were all about Hanson!
“When we first started out we were the chipmunks and the voices were up there,” say Taylor. “What we heard in our heads was the rock and roll stuff. We just sounded like a chipmunk.”
Their sound is a little different now.
“While the music has changed a lot over the 20 years, to me the core essence of who we are as a band and what it is that we were trying to get at from he get go is definitely, definitely the same,” said Isacc.
Their voices have changed, their hair is different, and now they’re dads.
“We all have kids,” said Zac. “Tay’s got five kids. Isaacs got three kids. I’ve got three kids. What people see you doing is making music but what you spend your time doing is raising your kids.”
After the past two decades and several trips around the world, there is only one place they come back to: Oklahoma.
“We went to New York for a while,” said Taylor. “We’ve lived in California. It’s one thing to live in those places. It’s another thing to call them home.”
“It’s place with great roots,” Zac added. “Musically we feel like that is important to find our roots, to be a band from somewhere.”
Investing in their home state and watching it thrive is now a big focus.
“There are a lot of people with good morel centers I guess you could say,” said Isaac. “People that believe in hard work, that some level of trust in their fellow man. That is shall we say a heartland kind of thing.”
They do focus on up and coming musicians.
“By being from here, we’re making cool events happen. Supporting other local artists and telling that story,” added Taylor.
Tickets are on sale now for their 3rd annual music festival called Hop Jam in Tulsa on May 22. It will feature live music and over 60 different breweries. They are also raffling off a custom guitar. Proceeds will go to the Regional Food Bank.
TULSA, Oklahoma – The Hanson brother’s Hop Jam Beer and Music Festival is this Sunday.
In three years’ time, the festival has more than doubled, and the brothers said they hope the event continues to shine a positive light on Tulsa.
The trio has kept busy over the years – belting out tunes and crafting their own beer. It’s their love of music, a fine brew and hometown fun that sparked their desire to organize Hop Jam three years ago.
“From the very first year we set out to do something that was not just cool for Oklahoma but was unique for the whole region,” Taylor Hanson said.
The festival is all day Sunday in the Brady Arts District; more than 60 brewers representing over 20 states and 10 countries will be there.
“It’s a great time,” Zac Hanson said. “Who doesn’t want to listen to great music and drink a beer and hang out with your friends?”
On top of that, is a longer list of bands – this year, instead of one stage, there will be two.
The brothers said the goal is to provide a platform for new brew and music to thrive.
“What we saw was this growing community of craft breweries in Oklahoma and something we wanted to be a part of; and the music scene we travel around to do as our career and go, we want to bring these together because they make great combinations,” Zac Hanson said.
The festival is also a fundraiser. Each year a specially designed ‘Hop Guitar’ is auctioned off. The money from the raffle ticket sales helps the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma.
“We look forward to the ability to say that an event of this size, of this scale and quality is here, and it’s something everybody can take credit for and feel a part of,” Taylor Hanson said.
