PAST APPEARANCES

CU@USC
Los Angeles, California
07 October 2004

ISAAC: Hey everybody, I'm Isaac.

TAYLOR: I'm Taylor.

ZAC: And I'm Zac.

ALL: And we're Hanson.

TAYLOR: You're watching Trojan Vision.

ISAAC & TAYLOR: Let's get it on.

ZAC: As she said, let's get it on, so I gotta go.

MIKE HOY, HOST: Touring right now to promote the release of their new album Underneath. They're playing all over the city; they're playing all over the country. We've got Isaac, Zac, and Taylor Hanson here tonight on CU@USC, the best college talk show on television. Stick around.

MIKE: Hey, welcome to CU@USC, we've got an incredible show lined up for you tonight. We have three guests and yes, not only are they three very, very cool people but they're three incredibly talented musicians. We have Isaac, Zac, and Taylor Hanson here tonight. Guys, thank you so much for being here. I want to shake all of your hands but I gotta like, run around the whole set. So you guys have been, like, super busy. You just played the House of Blues in Anaheim last night; you're playing the House of Blues here on Sunset Boulevard tonight, and you're finishing up-or continuing a summer tour.

TAYLOR: It's sort of going into the fall now.

MIKE: Yeah, so like the summer-fall…

ZAC: Smalter.

TAYLOR: Last summer we did an acoustic tour before the release of the record and then after the release of Underneath and earlier this year we kicked into the summer tour and we've been playing…

ISAAC: Plugged in.

TAYLOR: We've been touring and playing shows for the last couple summers. The electric shows have been amazing.

MIKE: So you guys were doing acoustic and now you're doing electric.

TAYLOR: Yep, electric, full on.

ISAAC: Well, last year to commemorate the acoustic tour-we'd never actually done a full on acoustic tour before---we'd always done acoustic sets in our shows cos that's a big part of kind of who we are as a band but when it came to touring we'd never really done just a full on stripped down acoustic show, and so we also released an acoustic EP last year, which was only available through our website, and so that was really, really cool. It was a way to introduce people to the coming music, to Underneath, but to introduce them to the music in a different setting than they were used to seeing. So that was cool.

ZAC: It has been four years since our last record so to sort of bring people back into the music, bring people back into where we've been, we sort of like to call it the songwriting sessions. Acoustically, that's sort of the way you write music, in its inception it's usually the three of us sitting around with acoustic guitars or on piano or whatever, and it was just a way to bring people into the fold in a cool way.

MIKE: Sure, and what was that like for you guys, as a band and a unit, to sort of play an acoustic show for people which you don't normally share of them and what kind of experience was that like?

TAYLOR: Well, that was great. Again, now we're playing electric shows but the reason we wanted to begin that way was one, like Zac said, it's been four years in between records and so we have a lot of amazing fans, we wanted to give them something, kind of a special show. And honestly, playing acoustically is probably more natural than anything cos that's the way we write songs, we sit around and work on stuff, that's what we do. Also, we started out--like you were saying, you sing in a vocal group too, we started out just snapping our fingers, singing a cappella, so it makes a lot of sense for us to sit around with acoustic guitars and kind of pare it down. What's cool about the shows now is that we get to do all those things. We get to come up there and cover songs, anything from Radiohead to AC/DC to classic stuff we grew up on like classic things like "Gimme Some Lovin" and rock & roll stuff and break it down and do the acoustic sets, do solo tunes. Everyone kind of switches around on their instruments, somebody plays piano, somebody plays-

MIKE: So you guys are doing some covers too? That's fun.

TAYLOR: We always have. I think it's more entertainment for us than for anyone else. Like, "I love this song, let's play it!"

ZAC: What cover can we do?

TAYLOR: And also, we thought it was really cool to introduce people, to sort of bridge the generational gap. Cos we grew up hearing music that was almost a little before our parents time, we heard 50s and 60s rock & roll and R&B and that was the first music that inspired us to write.

MIKE: Like what kind of tracks, like what kind of tunes?

ISAAC: One of the songs for me was definitely Chuck Berry's "Good Lovin" and for a lot of people, that was one of those songs that just really lit their fire, and for me that made me want to play guitar, amongst other things.

MIKE: And all three of you guys are incredible talent and you pretty much trade off playing everything, right?

ISAAC: We can… I don't play drums.

TAYLOR: Everybody can play most everything. You know, I play drums, I play guitar, I play keys. I don't consider myself a pianist or a guitarist, I'm a drummer, you know? But you can write songs.

ISAAC: He's modest, he's a perfectly good pianist

ZAC: I play piano on the show tonight, I'll come up and maybe play a solo on that or maybe on guitar. Everybody switches around, has fun with it.

MIKE: What do the girls like best, when you play piano?

ZAC: I think they like it when I bang the drums.

ISAAC: Yeah, "save a tree, bang a drummer," right?

ZAC: There's a lot of bad phrases that you see signs, you know, I guess the original phrase was "save a tree, eat a beaver," and now people say, "save a drum, bang a drummer," it's just really bad.

MIKE: What have you guys been-oh, go ahead Taylor. Okay, what have you guys been doing for the last four years?

TAYLOR: Well, a lot of things.

MIKE: Besides writing the album.

TAYLOR: One thing is obviously writing an album, writing tons of music. One thing about us is we're constantly writing, three guys who obviously write music. But one thing is we started our own record company and after kind of going through a process with our old label we just reached a point where we really-I think we always said if we could have, we would have always been an independent band, but one of the big things is we reached a point in this process where we said, "we feel excited about the opportunity to own our own music," to really take this album on our own and represent it the way it should be represented and so obviously forming the record company was a really big part. There was a lot of writing, a lot of collaboration; we wrote the title track with Matthew Sweet, "Underneath." Gregg Alexander from the New Radicals, we wrote with him. There's just some cool collaborations like Sam Farrar from Phantom Planet came and played bass on the record.

ISAAC: There's a guy named David Garza who's from Texas, he's an amazing singer/songwriter/guitar player… well, he's actually an everything…

TAYLOR: He's an everything. He's a virtuoso.

ISAAC: Anyway, he played on the record too, he played on a couple tunes, a really great guy and Michelle Branch, our friend, came in and sang some vocals on the record.

MIKE: What a great compilation of talent.

TAYLOR: Well, I mean, absolutely. That's one of the things-I love doing that, cos I think there's kind of a lack of community in artists so much now. I mean, we have so many friends that are musicians that are peers of ours and we wanted the opportunity to just say, let's get a little bit of the talent from each of those people on the record. And of course it's all just a natural thing, it's like, "hey, you know, you're in town, come play, come sing." And I think that's something that's really powerful, when you go, "wow, these artists are really sharing" in something and they're contributing to one another's records and it's really cool.

MIKE: What would you say is like, sort of the underlying message of Underneath?

ISAAC: Hmm. Well, I think a big part of the record is kind of about, for us has always been about cutting your own path and there are several songs on the record that kind of deal with those kind of things, like the song "Strong Enough To Break," which kind of talks about being willing to kind of fight for what you believe in despite the fact that you may not always get what you want out of it. But that you're strong enough to kind of be broken down and…

ZAC: …pick yourself back up.

ISAAC: Pick yourself back up.

TAYLOR: It's definitely the most textural record, too. I mean, the music that was created as we produced most of the record on our own definitely was a sense of wanting this album to be rich and be the kind of album you can listen to loud or soft and still have it being enticing, still have it be enjoyable.

MIKE: Sure, well, we're going to talk a lot more about the album and I want to talk about 3CG, your independent label, after a quick commercial break. We'll be right back with Hanson on CU@USC.

COMMERCIAL

MIKE: We're back on CU@USC. If you have any questions or comments about tonight's show, check out our website, www.trojanvision.com, email us at cu@trojanvision.com, or pick up the phone and give us a call, 213-743-4178. We're here tonight with Isaac, Zac, and Taylor Hanson. What's up guys? So we were just talking about Underneath and sort of your influences and maybe like the underlying statement that you were trying to get across with that. You've had a couple of other albums, Middle of Nowhere and the album before that, which was…

TAYLOR: This Time Around.

MIKE: This Time Around, very good. How would you say this Underneath sort of separates itself from the two?

TAYLOR: A lot of ways. I mean, musically, obviously we were saying definitely the mellowest record, we produced most of the record on our own. I mean, we've always produced but there was a sense that we wanted this record to have a particular sound, we wanted it to be a mellower record. And I think also probably one of the biggest differences is how we're releasing it and kind of the statement behind getting this music out to people. We were talking about it earlier, starting our own record company, and I think in a lot of ways I mean we're 23, 21, 18, we've been a band for 13 years…

MIKE: That's amazing.

TAYLOR: It's kind of scary, actually.

ISAAC: It's actually ridiculous when I think about it, I look back at some of the old pictures from back in the day when we were doing stuff and it's still kind of weird to me that even though I was there, I don't remember it (laughs). I mean, I remember I was there and I remember my experiences and my perspective on things as kind of skewed in that you live your life and you remember things through your own perspective but when you look at them kind of in this third person way, you look at yourself back when you were, you know, 12, 13 years old singing local gigs at some amusement park, you're like, "wait a second… I was insane!"

MIKE: Yeah, I mean, that just doesn't happen for people at that young of an age to have an album that comes out and sells 8 million copies.

TAYLOR: Well, he's actually talking about way before that.

MIKE: Oh yeah, even before that.

TAYLOR: We were a band and started out and we played, I guess probably about 500 shows before we were even signed and we put out three independent records and at a really young age it was…

MIKE: And those were through, like, you guys yourselves?

TAYLOR: We were just making them and selling them at shows.

MIKE: So that was kind of like, preemptive practice for your new label.

TAYLOR: It's the same idea of basically saying we're passionate about our music, we're passionate about reaching fans, and it's a different-basically when we decided to start our own record company it isn't this idea that you're going to go and do something so completely different and we're going to remake the system, but something that's really begun to crumble away is really developing a relationship and really developing careers with artists because so many of the labels have really lost their artist relations and real A&R and the real artist development that goes on. We just were at an amazing position to say, "look, we can own our music" and we've always had amazing fans, and we want to be able to map where our career goes next; we want to be able to take this in the direction that says we don't have to spend so much money on the front of every record that we have to sell millions and millions of albums. We need to go out there and build a relationship by playing live shows, by really building a relationship on the internet, by providing a continual flow of music, and by building a relationship with your fans.

MIKE: Making a connection with the audience?

TAYLOR: And there's such a lack of that, historically that's happened over and over. I mean, I think about Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan didn't sell more than-he sold two million albums on his sixth or seventh album. It took him a long time before that ever happened. But by the time every record he put out it was like, "wow, I'm carrying more and more people behind me and every one really believes." It's not this, "okay, wow!" And we're in this interesting position where when we first came out obviously we had a big breakthrough and we reached a lot of people and still at that level we were always down in the mud, we wanted to be involved in everything that we were doing, but also you've reached a lot of people who aren't necessarily the true hardcore fans, and so now our job is to say, "look. We've reached a lot of people. We've put out album after album, we've continued to tour, we've continued to build that relationship," and now when we own our masters, when we own our music, we can control what we do and we can control the message and we can reach every single one of those people and we can talk about the importance of independent music, the importance of developing that relationship again.

MIKE: What was the kicker for you guys? I mean, what made you really decide, "alright, we want to break off from the industry, from the system, and start our own thing?" I mean, there must have been something that happened and some sort of reason.

TAYLOR: There were a lot of reasons.

MIKE: And how do you do that, because I don't think every band can just say, "okay, we're going to start our own label now!"

ISAAC: Well, I don't think every band will. I think there are a lot of people who probably would like to. I will say that it's not for the faint of heart. It requires a lot of investment of time and we're lucky in that the three of us are pretty active people and pretty active members in this band and we can kind of spread the load a little.

ZAC: Pretty active…

MIKE: Well I mean, if Zac would wake up before like, 4pm maybe you guys could get something done.

ISAAC: Exactly, but the thing that I think was the real kicker for us was really feeling the lack of understanding of the music itself and understanding how to let an artist make a record. In many cases, I think what we're seeing in the industry right now is that A&R guys at the end of the day who originally were people who empowered the artists to make a record have now kind of become a little bit more of obstructionists. But at the end of the day it really came down to that we felt the most important thing that you can do as an artist is develop a very direct and intimate relationship with your audience and the best way to do that is to be completely independent and to be able to control your own destiny in a way that you're accessing your fan base and allowing the audience to truly see your honest words, and taking it a step at a time as opposed to trying to flood the marketplace, because so many times people spend so much money just trying to get as many impressions, the technical term, as they possibly can, as opposed to getting exposure that really counts and that really makes a difference. And at the end of the day it's about quality, not quantity and for us that's what we want to be about, is quality, not quantity.

MIKE: So what you're saying is Zac is the brains behind the operation here?

ISAAC: That's what I'm saying.

MIKE: You look like you wanted to say something Taylor.

TAYLOR: There's a lot of stuff to say, but definitely the things that ring true in all of this, there's a lot of stuff to talk about with where in the industry is now, and we're really passionate about independent music right now, but the thing that really rings true is that the music industry is shrinking now because there's not enough… well, because there's complacency. There's complacency in consumers, there's complacency in artists, and there's complacency in the industry. Like, "well, if just sit in the middle then we'll be safe" and it's not growing, and it should be growing. And I went to see the Austin City Limits music festival in Austin and there's 200,000 people that come out over three days to see Wilco, Spoon, Ben Kweller, Elvis Costello, all these great artists, and one of these artists are being represented on MTV, none of them are represented on VH1, none are represented on radio, and why? At the same time, the labels, the major labels, we're working, we're licensing our records in some countries to labels like those, but the real thing that needs to happen is to say, "how do we grow?" How do we add passion back to music? How do we get people excited about the idea of artists and records and say, "look, this is something I want to invest in. This is something that is part of who I am." Because when I look back on my life I think of music, I think of artists, I think of moments that summarize a summer or a weekend with friends, or an experience, or a hard time I was going through, by these people, these leaders, the great artists that are out there.

MIKE: We're going to take a really, really short break and when we come back I want to talk about how you guys are changing the industry right now cos a lot people are saying that that is what's happening. So stick around, we'll be right back with Hanson.

COMMERCIAL

MIKE: Welcome back, I'm Mike Hoy, your host and we're with Hanson, that was just their video "Lost Without Each Other." You guys want to talk about that a little bit?

ISAAC: Sure.

ZAC: Sure, yeah, we just shot that in Boston. It was a fun video to make, we did it in a day in an afternoon when we were…

MIKE: Just one day?

ISAAC: Yeah, just one day.

ZAC: Yeah, we were on this tour. Just one day.

TAYLOR: It was the true indie way.

ZAC: The true indie way. You know, we shot it sort of on the Boston Harbors and sort of a warehouse and at the end of it, which you didn't see in that clip, we set a piano on fire, which was really fun. We bought an upright piano and just took some lighter fluid and went (imitates pouring).

MIKE: Did you get to light it?

ISAAC: Oh yeah, we were all involved. Well, you were really involved.

TAYLOR: I was lighting the matches but…

MIKE: It's like, when do you really get to burn things and let it be okay?

TAYLOR: Well, the more interesting thing about that was the piano burning in a warehouse that had more flammable material than I've ever seen in a room ever. The floor was soaked with oil, all around it was drums of waste gasoline and I convinced the owner to let us do it without that being a danger.

MIKE: Was there motivation behind burning the piano?

TAYLOR: The whole underlying thing at the end of the video there's across the keys we wrote the phrase that says, "Are you listening?" and all the stuff that we were talking about, all the stuff about independent music and building a relationship and sort of redefining what record companies do with artists we've kind of encapsulated in that phrase "are you listening?" Because when we started out making this record we came up with that phrase and the cover of the album Underneath you can see here is these headphones and the phrase represents the idea that says is the industry really listening to what's going on to the music industry, to the Austin City Limits music festivals around the country, to the heartbeat of independent music, to the things that are going on, and is the audience really listening to what's really going on, to what's crumbling around them, the lack of vibrance and kind of a call to action, saying, we've gotta get out there and we've gotta start talking about this. We've gotta get out there and start saying, "the walls are crumbling around us and no one's really saying anything about it."

ISAAC: I think for us and one of the biggest things I think is so cool is a situation like this, where you guys as college students are able to be empowered to talk about stuff that you want to talk about, to do a show, to talk to your peers. In the same sense you've got college radio stations. They have that power, they have the ability to do what radio stations used to do, which is the DJs and PDs are totally independent of anyone else, they make their own decisions, and they're able to empower the audience to hear new music because they say, you know, "I heard this band live the other night, they're really, really great, I'd never heard of them before, check this out." And there's a lack of encouragement of that and ability to do that in the modern music industry right now and I think it's really causing there to be a complacency cos there's too few records being played.

TAYLOR: It's not even… there's always going to be mainstream and kind of non-mainstream and the underground.

ZAC: There's always going to be that guy who plays foramen and slide whistle.

TAYLOR: There's always going to be those guys and there's always going to be music that reaches a large group of people, but the dynamic is, what are you really trying to do with music and what's going on? What's the message, like where's the mission statement behind it? And what's happened with a lot of radio and with MTV and blah, blah, blah, and all of those outlets, is all of the bands and the music that gets played is really just filling spots in between advertising, and that's always going to be true, advertising is always valuable, but there's a pendulum, and you've got commerce over here and you've got art over here and you've got to bring it back a little bit to the center because it's not working. Less people are going out to shows, less people are buying records, why?

MIKE: It seems like it's happening in a lot of industries. Has the mp3 thing at all hurt you guys? Or how do you guys feel about that? We're kind of running out of time, but quickly.

ZAC: I think the internet is an amazing tool for music and every media and every film and everything, but especially music because it's so immediate, you can find, "well, what is this artist doing? I haven't heard anything from them." Well, type in their name and you find out what, you find 100s of songs; it's a great tool for music. I think the key with all of that is whether it's monthly subscriptions, whether it's buying concert tickets, whether it's-however it is-you've got to find a way to support music. You've got to find a way to support the artist. Whether music is eventually free and it's about going to concerts, it's about doing something else, but you have to find a way to support the artists who are making the music that you love. And that's what's key in finding that mix in all that's going on.

ISAAC: And to me it's about the value of music, cos for me the value of music is that I can listen to a record hundreds and hundreds of times and not get sick of it. If it's a record I love I can listen to it over and over and over again for the next thirty years. But in many cases movies and even books, as stimulating as they are in many cases, don't have quite that same effect. You won't read a book over a hundred times in your life, you won't see a movie over a hundred times, it's not likely.

MIKE: Well, I've seen some movies a hundred times.

ISAAC: Blues Brothers I've seen quite a few times.

MIKE: Check it out, we've got like, half a minute left on the show. It's been so much fun with you guys. What's next for you guys? What's the future of Hanson?

ZAC: Obviously we're on tour right now, I don't know…

MIKE: You're just going to play a lot more shows?

TAYLOR: We're playing the House of Blues, and just reaching out, sitting with people like yourselves, talking to young people about what's going on in music.

MIKE: You guys rock, man, thank you so much for being on the show. It was a lot of fun and it was really interesting. I hope the world is a better place because of it. So thanks for watching and we'll CU@USC!