From the September 17 issue of the Oklahoma Gazette. (Thanks to lj hanson comm member spacetiger for typing this up!)

Walking tall
After the smash hit ‘MMMBop,’ Hanson fell out of the spotlight. The Tulsa brothers have quietly nurtured dedicated fans ever since, with progressive albums and activism.

BY BECKY CARMAN

It’s been 11 years since Tulsa’s Hanson broke through the grunge-rock cloud looming over popular radio with “MMMBop,” the viral, omnipresent hit that went to No. 1 in 27 countries and led the band’s 1997 Mercury Records debut, “Middle of Nowhere,” to go quadruple platinum in the United States Alone.

Blamed for spawning the teen-pop renaissance and widely dismissed as a one-hit wonder, the Hanson trio has weathered a tumultuous decade by forging its own inimitable path in the industry, growing into relatively normal 20somethings (Zac, Taylor and Isaac are all married with children) and championing humanitarian causes, all the while maintaining a passionate and unexpectedly sizable fan base.

“I like to think that it’s because what we do as musicians is really valuable to people, but nonetheless, it’s unique to have fans stick around for as long as they have,” said eldest Hanson brother Isaac. “Ten years is no small amount of time, especially in people’s lives who, when we first connected with them, were quite young. To see those people grow with you over 10 years is definitely something we feel very lucky to have.”

The consistency of Hanson’s fans is comparable to the band’s own work ethic, where even as kids, the Hanson brother’s dedication to their craft and to each other belied their ages. In that respect, little has changed, even as they’ve taken on progressively individual responsibility both outside and within the group.

“Despite how young we were, we were very, very motivated and very aware of everything,” Isaac Hanson said. “When things are really ‘happening’ in the music business, there are a lot of factors, a lot of potential pitfalls. Luckily, in our youth, we came out relatively unscathed.”

The group’s willingness to confront difficulty head-on is likely what saved Hanson’s career. The comparatively dismal sales of “This Time Around”, 2000’s follow-up to “Middle of Nowhere,” as well as creative disputes over the marketability of the band’s new songs, led to Hanson’s decision to split from Island Def Jam, the label group that acquired the band after the dissolution of Mercury Records. Hanson went on to form an independent label, 3CG Records.

From studio time to the signing of contract-relinquishing documents, every turn was documented in 2006’s “Strong Enough to Break,” a gritty, realistic film detailing not just Hanson’s difficulties, but the state of the major-label business as well. Hanson toured various universities with the film, later segmented as a free iTunes video download, and participated in 2008’s South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, as panelists, discussing the importance of staying independent.

“Hanson is not what people think of as an indie band. So much of ‘indie’ has been caught up with a stylistic statement rather than a state of mind,” said youngest brother and band drummer Zac Hanson. “When we originally formed 3CG, at this point almost five years ago, it was a really big deal. A lot of our friends who are musicians were thinking, ‘Really? You’re going to do that on your own?’ and now, most of our friends are off of their labels. I think it’s important to see Hanson, who is obviously a mainstream band, where the music we make has a certain broad appeal, realizing that in this phase of the business, you need to be in a place where people are willing to take risks and not be afraid to make a decision.”

Hanson’s continued success can also be attributed to its live show, which has garnered critical praise from the unlikeliest of places, including AbsolutePunk’s Anton Djamoos to New York City culture blog Gothamist. The band admits that widespread appeal is no accident.

“What we’ve always done, since the beginning, is had a specific focus: We want people who are fans or aren’t fans to be able to come to the show and come away having had a good time,” said Isaac Hanson. “We pull out classic-rock covers and make them part of the show. I’d like to think that what we do is something that a 9-year-old and a 49-year-old would enjoy. What we do is something that I think a lot of people can enjoy because a lot of where we come from as musicians is the roots of rock ‘n’ roll, late Fifties, early Sixties stuff. I think that carries through.”

While Hanson shows are designed as unifiers, the act itself has lately taken an increasingly individualistic approach to songwriting, with three tracks on 2007’s “The Walk” listing only one brother in the writing credits – a first for the band.

“Everyone’s creative process is different. Probably 75 percent of the time, someone brings an idea to the table. Like, ‘I’ve got this chorus, this verse, this progression,'” Isaac Hanson said. “Then 25 percent of the time, you’re sitting there and something just happens and you chase it immediately. I would say Taylor and Zac are more constantly prolific than I am. I need a little bit more headspace, but that’s just me. We’re all different.”

As any musician matures, inspirations change and life experiences tend to more deeply permeate creative output, and “The Walk” is Hanson’s darkest album yet. Interspersed with the more standard love songs are tracks about tragedy and contempt, poverty and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which was stirred largely by the siblings’ 2006 visit to South Africa. The boys accompanied friends who were donating a cell phone technology designed to aid in the communication between doctors and patients, to a hospital in AIDS-stricken Soweto, an urban area in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“When every eye is on the fortune/It can only breed contempt/They say blood is thicker than oceans/Still we box our brothers in,” sings Taylor Hanson on “Great Divide,” a song originally released as an iTunes fund-raising single for the Perinatal HIV Research Unit in Soweto.

Hanson has also partnered with Tom’s Shoes, selling the brand at its shows and even designing a signature “The Walk” shoe. For every pair sold, the company gives another to a child in need. To date, the company reports donating 60,000 pairs to children in Argentina and South Africa.

The line between artistry and activism, between alienation and motivation, is a thin one, and the brother recognize the risk of sounding like “soapbox teachers” to their otherwise devoted fans.

“There has always been a concern about aggressively breaching an issue like that,” Isaac Hanson said. “It has as many potential negatives as positives. The negative for us was people would react poorly, like, ‘What are these guys doing talking about AIDS? Aren’t they a pop band or something?'”

Beyond fund-raising, Hanson will continue to host and participate in 1-mile barefoot walks through every city on its latest tour to raise awareness.

“What we felt like is that everything that’s big starts small, and we have to be willing to say to ourselves, ‘If anything we ever do in relation to this is going to be big, we have to be willing to put ourselves on the front lines,'” Isaac Hanson said. “Walk a mile barefoot and understand what it’s like not to have something. It helps us to connect with the need; it could be a pair of shoes, a 33-cent combination of pills you need for the day. It’s not easy. We felt like we had to do it because we didn’t feel comfortable not doing it, seeing what we’ve seen and knowing what we know about Africa.”

On this fall’s leg, dubbed “The Walk Around the World Tour,” Hanson will encourage fans to stage their own 1-mile walks in an effort to compile 24,902 miles walked – the distance around the world. The stroll will also bring the brothers to the Oklahoma State Fair for a 7:30 p.m. performance on Friday.

Blending personal beliefs with art has always been Hanson’s formula for success, making Isaac Hanson’s remarks about “The Walk” all the more poignant:

“There are a lot of things to be done,” he said. This is not the end of the road by any means, but it’s a start.”

For more information on how to catch the Hanson brothers on their Oklahoma City “Walk,” log on to Hanson.net at 5:30 p.m. Friday.

–The Oklahoma Gazette, Volume XXX Number 38, September 17, 2008

http://www.okgazette.com/

Isaac Hanson and his younger brothers, Taylor and Zac, are men unstuck in time. It doesn’t mean that they choose to live in their ’90s pop-idol past, but their reference points are from another era. And it all comes down to the Time-Life Music collection of classic rock ‘n’ roll that the boys constantly played before they formed Hanson and tipped over the pop world with “MMMBop.”

Over a decade after the Jackson 5-like “MMMBop” and “Where’s the Love” bounced through preteens’ personal soundtracks, those classic R&B artists, doo-wop vocal groups and rock ‘n’ roll pioneers remain imprinted in Hanson’s DNA. In 2008, it’s as if these men in their 20s started out in 1956 and lived every musical transformation that followed in the next 15 years: Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, girl groups, The Beatles and the singer-songwriter boom that was launched by James Taylor and Elton John.

“I joke that we’re not dissimilar to a rock band in the ’70s,” said Isaac Hanson, who will perform with his brothers at 7:30 tonight on the Toyota Stage at the Oklahoma State Fair.

“I kind of feel like every single time we sit down and play with one another, we rediscover how elemental it (the Time-Life collection) was, and how elemental it still is. You can’t get away from the fact that what we were listening to was two minutes of straight-to-the-hook rock ‘n’ roll,” he said. “It was the birth of modern music in many ways. It helped us hone what we thought was a good song and helped us understand what song structure was all about at an early part of our lives.”

For the rest of the article, go to the
Source

The Hanson brothers have come a long way since the days when they wowed crowds of screaming girls with their 1997 hit, “MMMBop.” Now the grown brothers are hitting the road, barefoot, to raise awareness about poverty in Africa.

As part of their Walk Around the World Tour, the brothers are walking barefoot for a mile in each of the cities where they’re performing.

Isaac Hanson, 27, the eldest of the three brothers, said the band got the idea after visiting Soweto, South Africa, a few years ago to record the charity single, “Great Divide,” and seeing firsthand the toll that poverty and AIDS have taken on Africa.

Taylor Crothers
Hanson performs Sunday at House of Blues.
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“We thought, ‘We’re going on tour, how can we connect with fans?’ ” Isaac said. “We got this crazy idea that we would walk a mile in every city, and then we were like, ‘Wait a second, how about we walk barefoot so people will understand what it’s really like to walk in poverty?’ ”

Isaac said he and his brothers, whose latest album, The Walk, was released July 2007 are looking for fans to join them on their walk in Dallas on Sunday, which begins at 3 p.m. at the House of Blues.

The band started a “Take the Walk” tour in September 2007 but had to suspend it after Isaac had surgery because of a pulmonary embolism. Isaac said that after he recovered, he and his brothers decided to change the name of their tour and expand their efforts on a global level.

The ultimate goal, he said, is for fans worldwide to walk 24,902 miles – the circumference of the Earth. Fans can organize their own walks and register them online on Hanson’s Web site. For every registered mile, Hanson will donate $1 to one of five causes: shoes, clean water, building schools, supporting medical research and providing access to health care.

The band also has paired with California-based TOMS Shoes in hopes of delivering 50,000 pairs of shoes to Africa. For every pair of shoes bought at TOMS, store founder Blake Mycoskie will donate a pair of shoes to a child in Africa.

Isaac hopes younger fans in particular will participate in “The Walk Around the World” and feel motivated to create change.

“We feel that when the heartland of America grabs onto an issue and takes it and makes it their own, things change,” Isaac said. “When average people in America make something their issue, it has an enormous effect.”

To help promote further awareness about poverty and AIDS in Africa, the brothers have written a coffee-table book, Take the Walk, which is scheduled to come out later this year.

As for the band’s latest CD? It’s a blend, Isaac said, of Motown, the Doobie Brothers and Crosby, Stills & Nash. A bit different from the group’s “MMMBop” days.

“I think there’s a real pop sensibility to this record. You’ll find it to have a lot more of an organic raw edge to it,” Isaac said. “It’s definitely R&B influenced, and it’s got groove. It’s our attempt at making sense of our music.”

Source

On the afternoon of Sept. 7, 250 young people gathered outside the Aladdin Theater — singing, chanting — some holding signs as they walked one mile. But this wasn’t a picket line. This was a celebration — the band Hanson was in town.

“Everyone say, ‘I took the walk,’” lead singer Taylor Hanson yelled into a megaphone while walking down SE Milwaukie Avenue.

Portland marked the trio’s 69th mile walked alongside fans in the effort to raise money for clean water, education, shoes, AIDS treatment and healthcare in South Africa.

To read more, head to the Source

QuikTrip Corp. is giving away free tickets to a music festival created in celebration of the company’s 50th anniversary.

Tickets to the QT 50th Anniversary Festival are available at all the convience store’s Tulsa-area locations.

The concert is slated for Sept. 20 at noon. Nine bands, including Leon Russell, Hanson and Crooked X, will perform at the River Parks West Festival ground.

Source

Just a note: There will be no M&G or Walk at the Oklahoma City and Tulsa shows. Some fans are trying to organize walks without Hanson for these events, but there will be nothing official going on since they are taking place at fairs/festivals.

QT lovers, unite.

Oklahoma-based QuikTrip Corp. is celebrating 50 years of business, and will present a free music festival Sept. 20 to celebrate.

The event, set on the River Parks West Festival grounds, will highlight Tulsa-based performers, with Leon Russell and Hanson as the headline acts.

Nine bands will play from noon to 9 p.m. A fireworks spectacular will follow, right on the river.

“The Tulsa community is our home and has supported us for the past 50 years,” said Chet Cadieux, QuikTrip’s president. “We thought it would be fitting for us to throw a party for our local customers who have been so loyal to us through the decades.”

A wide variety of music is planned, with groups such as Crooked X, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, South 40, Little Chair and Mid Life Crisis filling out the bill.

In addition, two bands whose members include QuikTrip employees will play — Uche and the Crash from Wichita and Rattle & Hum, a U2 tribute band
from Kansas City.

Free tickets will be available from all Tulsa-area QuikTrip stores beginning Sept. 2. Guests will be required to have a ticket to enter. Free shuttle service will be provided from the parking lot just west of the QuikTrip Center at Expo Square. The festival will also be broadcast on CW 12/19 from 6-10 p.m.

Source