PAST APPEARANCES Mid-Morning Live
Savannah, Georgia
17 October 2007JODY, HOST: We are back now with Hanson after a great performance.
SONNY, HOST: Let me tell you, we’re going crazy in the studio! Aren’t we, everybody?! Isaac, Taylor, Zac, good morning! We are delighted to have you in Savannah, Georgia.
ZAC: We’re glad to be here!
TAYLOR: In fact, our first full performance here in Savannah. Our first real show.
SONNY: But you’ve been here before?
TAYLOR: Yes, we have.
ZAC: Been here before, mostly on leisure actually.
SONNY: That’s a good thing! Come on back!
ZAC: It’s beautiful. Love coming to Savannah.
ISAAC: Yeah, we rarely get leisure and when we get it, it seems like we’ve gone to Savannah a few times in that leisurely period.
JODY: At the Trustees Theater tonight and I think there may be 1 or 2 tickets available. Hurry!
SONNY: Better jump on it. Doors open 7, show starts at 8 o’clock but you better get going if you want to get that last little handful of tickets.
JODY: First we want to hear, how are you doing? Isaac?
ISAAC: I am doing alright. I recently had a blood clot issue in my shoulder, and…
ZAC: Is that what they call it nowadays? *laughs* It’s a blood clot “issue.”
JODY: But you didn’t think it was very much an issue.
ISAAC: Well, it’s one of these things that you don’t really expect to be dealing with blood clots in your early to mid 20s.
SONNY: But it has a lot to do with what you do.
ISAAC: It does have a lot to do with what I do. It’s called thoracic albots syndrome and what happens is your collarbone and your first rib, which is right up here [points to right shoulder] actually cause a construction of the vein and nerve and artery area where it passes through the…
SONNY: You’re getting too technical on us!
ISAAC: Basically cos all of the years of strumming I’ve constricted that area enough that it caused a kink in the vein and extensive clotting in my arm. It’s happened twice.
SONNY: Your brothers are telling me maybe next time we see you we may be calling you Adam Hanson, what’s up with that?
ISAAC: Well, rib resection; I have to remove a part of a rib…
ZAC: He says “resection”—removal. Basically it’s something that happens to pitchers and tennis players and swimmers but not necessarily as common in musicians, but…
TAYLOR: In a lot of cases, you can lose the use of your arm for any purposes besides daily use, so luckily…
JODY: But you couldn’t wait to get back on the tour and now you’re putting off this next surgery so that you guys can finish off the rest of your tour. The dedication that you have—seriously—to your art and to your mission in Africa, tell us about that.
TAYLOR: Well, Africa…
ZAC: Well, basically what we’ve been doing with Africa is it started off about a year ago with this record and we felt just kind of called to go to Africa. We had some people we knew from our hometown who were doing some really cool work with medical technology they were giving away, and basically it kind of started with our music and giving away a song called “Great Divide,” which we just played. So, if people buy that on iTunes all the proceeds go to a hospital in South Africa.
JODY: Do you guys agree on everything? You seem agreeable.
TAYLOR: No, we don’t agree on everything and obviously once we’re here together we’re talking about stuff that we’ve agreed on but you have to disagree a lot of times before you agree on something, it’s like a marriage.
ISAAC: And we don’t do our dirty laundry in public as well.
SONNY: Speaking of marriage, ya’ll know where to go to pick wives, let me just tell you. You may be from Oklahoma but you came to Georgia and Florida to pick your spouses.
TAYLOR: Yes we did. We definitely know that you guys—we’re very lucky that we found amazing women in the south.
ISAAC & ZAC: Yes, yes.
JODY: What a talented family. Traditionally you leave the younger brother out, did you try to keep him out as long as you could?
ISAAC: Actually, we recruited Zac.
ZAC: It was a recruiting process. I was going, “Okay, do I go to this band or this band…”
ISAAC: He was 6, he was already coordinating multiple different bands.
ZAC: Yes, they offered me extra Honeybaked Ham at Thanksgiving and so I said, “Okay.”
SONNY: Taylor, you guys have seized control of your own destiny. You are recording under your own record label, 3CG…
TAYLOR: Yeah, essentially it’s Three Car Garage.
SONNY: Unfortunately they’re telling us we’re limited on time, but you feel really good about kind of controlling your own situation.
TAYLOR: Well yeah, the music business is totally changing and it’s all about being in a position to put music first and you even talk about advocating things like doing the walks with the shows and supporting causes like with what’s going on in Africa. I mean, those things—we’re empowered to do more of those things by being able to be in control of the rights to our music and how we release it. The independent music scene is also growing. You’re seeing so many of the biggest artists now that are succeeding are starting out on indie labels and I think they’re just going back to basics. Focusing on fans, focusing on music.
JODY: And it’s been so great to watch you guys grow up through all of this, but you can still be involved in the walk, still time for the walk, 3 o’clock at Trustees Theater.
TAYLOR: Yeah, if you come to the walk—part of what we’re doing is campaigning to help sell—you can see these shoes [raises foot], Toms shoes. Every time you buy a pair of Toms, a second pair is donated to a child in poverty and through the tour we’re hoping to sell over 50,000 pairs. And when you do the walk, we encourage you to check out Toms.
SONNY: We’ll have more on that, but I want to hear more music. They played to a packed house in Atlanta last night, they’ll play to another tonight in Savannah but we’re not done wearing them out here on Mid-Morning Live. Stick around!