JEFF: Alright, it’s 88.1. I’m very excited, joined with Coley Verbick.

COLEY: Hi, Jeff.

JEFF: How are you Coley?

COLEY: I’m good.

JEFF: A little excited?

COLEY: Yeah.

JEFF: That’s right, because we’ve got Hanson in the studio right now! That is right! Taylor, Zac, Isaac! How are you guys doing today?

TAYLOR: We have one lone fan! There’s this guy, he’s locked in the corner.

ISAAC: The only guy comingn to the show tonight at the House of Blues!

TAYLOR: He’s actually chained to the wall.

ISAAC: (screeching voice) Hey, let me out! I love Hanson!

COLEY: Oh, Jimmy.

ISAAC: …coming to the show and we’ve got the one guy standing in the center going, “WOO!”

TAYLOR: You’re like, “Hanson!” and then there’s like, *imitates clapping*

JEFF: No, no, that’s not true for anyone listening, we have got a huge crowd outside gathered, just trying to take a glimpse of Hanson right now doing the interview. But how have you guys been?

TAYLOR: We’ve been really good. We’re here today actually as a part of the tour—we’re doing kind of two tours. We did a show last night at the House of Blues, we’re doing another one tonight, which is more in support of this live album we just released called Live & Electric and we’re also visiting schools, here we are at Columbia, and what we’re doing at universities primarily is we’re screening a documentary we produced and it’s sort of takes people through the story of our experience with a label we kind of inherited through record companies merging together and kind of our struggle with that and ultimately becoming an independent band, starting our own label. So we’ve been really busy, been having a good time.

JEFF: For sure. We want to definitely hit the new album Live & Electric and also 3CG Records, but first of all we have to wish Isaac a very happy birthday today.

COLEY: Yes, happy birthday Isaac.

JEFF: The big 2-5, Isaac?

ISAAC: Yeah, the big 2-5. I was joking, I was saying…

TAYLOR: Quarter century, baby.

ISAAC: I’m going through my mid-life crisis early. Cos we’ve been doing this music thing for so long, this year was our 13th official year and it’s kind of one of the things where I start looking around going, “Is my life really getting to this point? I don’t know what to do!” (aged voice) Then I realize I’m only 25 and I’m going insane.

ZAC: We’ve known that for a long time. He’s just now coming around.

JEFF: Also, I want to turn to Taylor. Married? Married life, two kids.

TAYLOR: Yes, married with two kids.

JEFF: How’s that treating you?

TAYLOR: It’s amazing, it’s awesome. I’m very busy. *laughs* Very busy. I meant with taking care of the children. It’s amazing. I’ve got an amazing family. A 3 year old boy and a six month old little girl.

JEFF: That’s awesome.

TAYLOR: Luckily they get to bring them on the road with us a lifestyle on the road, rock & roll lifestyle with a family.

JEFF: Now Coley, you had a huge crush on Zac…

TAYLOR: She’s like, “Thanks a lot.”

JEFF: Zac, you’re engaged, I hear?

ZAC: That’s the word on the street.

JEFF: Oh wow. That’s got to be exciting.

TAYLOR: The word on the “underground.”

ZAC: Yeah! The word on the underground, for everybody who’s listening.

TAYLOR: Zac is engaged.

ZAC: Yes.

COLEY: Unfortunately.

ZAC: I’m tying the knot.

JEFF: For all these lovely ladies out here, I’m sorry to say… or maybe happy.

ZAC: Yeah, it’s a happy thing.

JEFF: It’s a happy thing, marriage is a very happy thing.

ZAC: Some people don’t agree, but I think it should be!

ISAAC: Now’s the time for a bad joke. What’s the difference between a wedding and a funeral?

JEFF: I don’t know, Isaac, what’s the difference?

TAYLOR: Oh, god.

ISAAC: The difference is, one you’re dead and one is the end of your life.

ZAC: It’s supposed to be: one signifies the end of your life, and the other one you’re dead.

JEFF: Well, that’s cool. Nevertheless.

TAYLOR: Yeah, that’s okay. Our life is over.

ZAC: Ike tends to do that, where he forgets the punch line but he starts the joke.

JEFF: Well, you guys are brothers, that’s what brothers are for, right?

ZAC: Yeah, only it’s not funny when you don’t know the punch line. And even when we tell it properly, he’s already screwed up the joke.

TAYLOR: That’s okay, that’s why we’re musicians and not comedians. Sometimes it goes together though, unfortunately.

JEFF: Alright, so you guys are now an independent group, correct? You have your own record label?

TAYLOR: Yeah, well a couple years ago—I was starting to kind of describe the documentary. What the documentary shows is, we produced the film, it was directed by a guy we’d known for years, and it started out as a film about kind of going through us making our music and the making of our third album, and the film became this story of us struggling with this label we’d been merged into, because of the companies that we were a part of merging together and the struggle we went through, and eventually after 2½ years of working with very corporate, removed company, we said, “You know what, we end to get out of this system,” and we got out and we’ve had the label for a little over two years now. So, and luckily, amazingly, we’ve had such success as an indie. We have distribution all over the world with different independents. We had a #1 independent album with our first release, Underneath, last year, and I think it’s a huge credit to our fans, to people that have been coming to shows for years and to the active fans all over the world that we’ve been able to keep fueled with music and the last couple years it’s been sort of our mission to say, “We need to keep the foundation of our amazing fan base alive and well” and we’ve toured all over the world the last couple years just to make sure that was strong and making sure that our fans know that we’re not going away.

COLEY: And it just kind of works out that a lot of your fans were your age when we started. Like, I’m 20, Zac, you’re 20. Now that we’ve kind of grown up and you grew up, we grew up with you and it works out really well. We’ve all kind of matured at the same level.

ZAC: I think that’s what bands should do. Take people with you through their lives; you’re becoming a part of who they are and growing and changing with them as people. To be able to go and take people over the last, primarily 8 years, is a really cool thing and hopefully we can keep doing that.

TAYLOR: What’s amazing is so many bands… obviously, being brothers allowed us to start really, really young cos being 9 years old when we did our first show…

ISAAC: I joke that we didn’t put the classified ad out and say, “Looking for 9 year old drummer who can sing and write songs!”

JEFF: That’s not how it started!

ZAC: You wouldn’t have gotten many responses.

TAYLOR: Because of that, it’s almost like we’ve already had—we could have not had any career up to this point and just be starting right now. We’re guys in our early 20s and a lot of bands are just getting started and being active doing it at our age now. We’ve just been lucky enough to be able to do it for so long. We’ve already made a lot of mistakes but we’ve also had a lot of success so we can kind of learn from all that and put it into our music.

JEFF: That’s awesome that you guys value the fan base as much as you guys have shown.

TAYLOR: It’s so important.

JEFF: We also have Kate on the line, Kate, can we take a call real quick?

ALL: Sure.

JEFF: Kate, do you have a question?

KATE: I’m right outside, actually. I was wondering, as far as the documentary goes when you started it you were still with Island and you didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. How does that change the focus of the documentary, how did that kind of come about until you realized, “This is totally different,” than I’m assuming what you started out doing?

TAYLOR: What she was saying, Island/Def Jam is the label we were on. The label we were merged into. Originally it was Mercury. Island/Def Jam is where we ended up.

ZAC: We originally didn’t intend to make a film about the struggles of making a record within corporate music business. I think… the director of the film came to us right after we finished touring for our second record and said, “Hey, I want to make a music film. I want to see the songwriting and the producing and all that stuff,” the music side, and really do an in-depth film on making records and we’d worked with him in the past. He’d done things on long-form videos and things like that and EPKs and so we felt comfortable with him. Basically we started off making that film and I think if you come tonight and see the documentary, there’s really a pretty significant point where you see the focus in the film changes just as the realization of what the process of making this record was going to be changed for us, and you start seeing more of the conversations with our management company and talking with the record label.

TAYLOR: Sort of going to a focus on some of the outside of the music story because that kind of became the story. It was sort of about—instead of being a story about making music, it was about how hard it can be to even get to making music in a lot of record companies today. It’s important also that when you watch the film you realize, it’s important that you understand that Hanson is not the only band that has been in this situation. This is just one example. And that’s why we felt it was important for students to see it.

JEFF: Alright, Kate, thanks for calling in.

TAYLOR: Yep. That’s hilarious, you guys have your little fishbowl window and she’s standing right outside the window. There’s a delay. I see her mouth move and then the echo.

JEFF: Alright. Taking a look at your latest album Live & Electric, is this—now, I understand it’s not really a compilation album. You took some of your favorite charts from over the years then and added some…

TAYLOR: Well, it’s not a compilation. It’s called The Best of Hanson: Live & Electric. So, in a way it’s sort of a “best of” live.

ZAC: It kind of became a “best of” after we finished the album and started thinking about what we wanted to call it and we looked at all the songs on it and we went, “Wow, this is kind of a ‘best of’” cos the songs we picked to make up the album were a lot of the singles off of records we’d released.

TAYLOR: Plus, a lot of random songs. We did a cover of “Optimistic,” a Radiohead song. We opened up almost every show throughout the last tour for Underneath with that song cos it’s just an amazingly dynamic, powerful song. There’s also a U2 cover on there, there’s also a couple new songs, some rare songs that were only put out on exclusive fan club things that we performed live. Plus, there’s a DVD with a song that’s never been released before.

ISAAC: And with that, some live performance videos.

TAYLOR: There’s just a lot of… you know, we felt like it was a good time, especially with the documentary, to sort of summarize what we’ve done over the last 8 years with our music in a live setting. We toured for almost 2 years on Underneath, from 2003 throughout all the way into 2005, and it was just something we felt like was good timing. Cos we as a band were in a dynamic place and felt really good about the live show and wanted to capture that. So, there it is.

JEFF: I’d actually like to play “Optimistic” off of the album. Did you guys just decide it was a good song, you wanted to cover it?

TAYLOR: That’s sort of the way things work with us, yeah…

ISAAC: We got presented the idea actually, interestingly enough, by our bass player. He was like, “I was listening to Kid A and I know this is totally random, but I want you guys to listen to this song,” cos we all knew Kid A but he was a big Radiohead fan, and he was like, “Dude, I think we should take a listen to this song,” and so we listened to it and we were like, “Surprisingly enough, there is very much a song in there. We can take that, we can stay true to the original for the most part, but we’ll give it our own little take.” It’s a little more rock & roll and straight up than obviously the Radiohead version, cos it’s very atmospheric on Kid A.

ZAC: More than anything it’s a really seismic song and when you open up as how with a song like this, the drum beat and the guitars… it’s a good way, I think, when someone walks in the door suddenly they’re in it. They’re going, “What am I hearing? I want to really listen.” I think it’s a really good song to open up the shows, it opens up the album also.

JEFF: So why don’t we just take a quick break…

TAYLOR: Some music! This is a radio station.

JEFF: That’s right. We’ll listen to “Optimistic.” Stick around, Jeff Freiders here joined with Coley Verbick and we’ll be with Hanson right after this.

HANSON – OPTIMISTIC (from L&E)

HANSON – DEEPER (remix)

JEFF: WCRX, 88.1. Jeff Freiders here with Coley Verbick.

COLEY: Hi, hehehe.

JEFF: And we are joined still with Hanson.

ZAC: Yes. They couldn’t get us to leave. They tried.

JEFF: It was tough, but they’re going to stick around for a little bit. So, can you tell us a little bit about that indie remix we just heard of “Deeper”?

ISAAC: That actually is a remix of a song called “Deeper.”

TAYLOR: A song off the last album, Underneath.

ISAAC: Off the last album, Underneath. We thought about having “Deeper” as a single and really considered it and went out to a friend of ours who’s a remixer, he’s just kind of getting started, a young guy in his early 20s. I went out to him and said, “Hey man, check this out. See what you can do with it,” and that is what he came up with. It was really cool. Unfortunately, we hadn’t really found a real good way to use it and I figured since we’re on the radio here on the radio today it would be a really great thing to do.

TAYLOR: You guys play a lot of dance stuff. Yeah, I mean we’ve always been sort of—It’s funny, cos the whole thing about being independent in so many ways is so catered to who we are really as a band. When we started out before we were singed—when we got signed I was 14. And before then, we had made 3 independent albums already and done 500 shows.

ISAAC: And at that point you were incredibly frustrated that you were 14 and had gotten signed cos he wanted to be signed before he was a teenager. I remember him saying that over and over and over again.

TAYLOR: Well no, we were just—in other words we were always really driven. And I think being independent again, stuff like doing remixes, finding independent remixers or bands… for instance, the whole thing we’ve been doing with the opening band contest on this tour. We set up contests for opening bands, local bands in each city along the tour to submit their music and be selected and then be voted on by fans in each city to open up the shows. stuff like that, that’s what it’s all about. You gotta always just be thinking, “What can we do that’s different to facilitate what we’re into and giving people more?”

JEFF: I really like that opening band contest. I haven’t really heard of anyone else who’s come along that sort of idea. Tonight it looks like What Four is playing, joining you on stage at the House of Blues, and last night was Escape From Earth.

COLEY: Yeah, I’ve actually seen Escape From Earth a couple of times locally and they’re really good.

ZAC: You know, some of the interesting things is it’s not even necessarily always our favorite band that’s getting picked. There have been some cases where it’s like, “Man, that seems like that band is really the best band!” but they pick a different band, because what’s happening is bands submit, people from our label who work for us are trying to find the best three bands that seem like they really can pull it off and are the best musically, and then those three bands get put on the site and fans get to vote on them, and it’s really about local people coming out and voting for the band they think is really the best, the band they like to see live, and then our fans and really trying to maybe help some local bands get some more fans.

ISAAC: And we’ve seen the local fans really make a pretty positive difference in the cases where these bands have real local following, you see that that does change the way that the voting goes down. That’s kind of the whole point.

TAYLOR: Actually, a good example—or a different thing... one of the schools that we did in Florida, University of Central Florida, the radio station was involved in helping us promote the show and the screening at the school and it turns out a couple guys that were students at the school submitted themselves into the congest, happened to meet the DJ at the school, and then they connected and they just got the vote out and got all these students to actually vote for their college student band, cos these guys were students at the school so everybody wanted them to win. So, the college and the radio station were really pumped it up and got a lot of votes for that band. The whole dynamic of stuff organically happening like that, that’s part of what you want to happen. You want people to connect the dots and meet each other and help get more independent music out there in front of more people.

JEFF: Sure. Owning your own record label, 3CG Records, are you looking to possibly sign any of these opening bands or is that where it came along or just to give back to the fans?

TAYLOR: It’s not specifically the goal in finding bands to sign. Just by default you see bands that you like, but our thought now is there’s no question that we’ll sign bands eventually, but we want to take the time to figure out how we’re going to work as a label, learn from our mistakes, figure out what our philosophies are, and also just figure out how we as a label can look to the future and look at new methods to promote new bands. So we’re not just like, “Hey, we’re a label, let’s sign people!”

ISAAC: Cos that’s one of the biggest artist mistakes, though, is you get a label and you sign a zillion bands and you have no money left to promote any of them. Like, “Sweet, we got 30 bands on our label! Crap! We have no money left…” So it’s like, for us it’s about finding 1-2 bands that we really, really believe in that we feel like we can make 3-5 records with.

COLEY: And then you have more time, too right?

TAYLOR: To focus on them.

ISAAC: Focus on them… cos look, today it’s hard to have hits, harder than ever before. It’s really hard to get radio play in an effective way. For us, it’s even more important that we think long-term and look for alternative solutions to ways to promote, figuring out better ways for the bands that we eventually work with to network with other bands to make positive connection with fans and so on, because I think these days, more than ever, the word of mouth nature of the industry is more and more effective and more and more positive, cos things like MySpace have taken the word of mouth communication to a mass scale. Cell phones. Text messages. The whole thing. It’s huge, that’s so positive for, I believe, for music and for quality.

TAYLOR: It’s really that what you’re doing is you’re putting everything on a much more even playing field. You guys stream, right? You’re on the internet. You, all the sudden, now, more than ever have the opportunity to gain a bigger audience, cos hey, you’ve got just as much of a reach as any radio station through the internet.

ISAAC: People in Tulsa can pick it up!

TAYLOR: As people start getting more and more internet devices that have broadband and things like that, you’re going to have access to indie radio stations, indie record companies, indie music so quickly that I think independent bands and companies have the opportunity to fill the gap between what a lot of commercial radio stations and people are doing, which is not really giving people a lot of variety or choice or great music and you guys, and other stations like you, have the ability to be more diverse and expose more good stuff.

COLEY: Yeah, we have all our specialty shows at night and then we also, we have just our regular format with the dance and I know since we’ve been streaming online we’ve gotten people—even soldiers in Iraq are listening to us. Our general manager keeps telling us, “People are actually listening to you! So don’t screw up!”

ZAC: There are at least 4 people listening!

TAYLOR: Each of your parents!

JEFF: My mom does listen every week.

ISAAC: And so do ours.

JEFF: But also, earlier today we had a young woman call in from Georgia saying she couldn’t wait to hear you guys on the radio today, on WCRX. (editors note: yeah, that was me. thanks.)

TAYLOR: That’s awesome.

ZAC: That’s exactly what we’re talking about. You really are reaching people and it’s not that long, like Tay was saying, before broadband on your cell phones. Not that far away. People are going to be surfing the internet in their cars, finding internet radios stations, not tuning their dial on an FM receiver.

ISAAC: Or it won’t be exclusive to FM, certainly.

ZAC: And so I think that’s a really cool thing and you guys as stations that are perceived as maybe being smaller, or we’ve been going to college radio stations all over the country and they’re like, “Well, we don’t have that much reach…” You really have so much power and you should really use it.

COLEY: We try to.

TAYLOR: I’m sure you do.

ISAAC: You guys are doing a good job as far as we can tell.

JEFF: Well, thanks. Earlier you mentioned MySpace, and I know Coley had a question to ask.

ISAAC: Sure.

COLEY: Zac, I found this random MySpace profile that’s supposedly you and it’s like, “Oh, this is just to say that we don’t have any other MySpace accounts other than the band one.” Is that you or is it not?

ZAC: I think when you look up “Zac Hanson” and you see that there are 20 “Zac Hanson’s,” none of them are me.

COLEY: Okay.

ZAC: I think if I had a MySpace page id’ probably be like “Gandhi,” or “The Dude,” or something like that.

TAYLOR: Or “God.”

ZAC: Yeah. I’d try to think of something that wasn’t me so it’d be so random it’d be awesome. That’s one of the only problems with MySpace. It’s a great, great avenue for people networking and finding cool things, but there are 20 Hanson sites that are supposed to be us. There are 10 Taylor’s and 5 Isaac’s and you know, whatever.

ISAAC: 20 Zac’s.

ZAC: No, I don’t know how many there really are but I know there are a lot.

ISAAC: People don’t love me!

ZAC: But MySpace, it’s a cool thing. None of them are us. If anyone talks to and says they’re me or us, they’re lying.

COLEY: There’s like a whole thing of like, people who like to role play and stuff too and it’s kind of creepy.

ZAC: I feel sorry when you meet someone who’s like, “Hey! It’s me, Susan! From Detroit!” I’m like, “I have no idea!” Then, the worst thing is when they’ll be like, “Califragilisticexpallidocious!”

TAYLOR: They have a password.

ZAC: It’s like a password you’re supposed to know that they told them that you’d know.

ISAAC: Like, the girl goes, “I was told to say ‘chocolate brownies.’” And you’re like, “Sounds good, but I have no idea what that means.” I’m confused!

COLEY: Do you ever find that kind of creepy that people do that or no?

ZAC: No, it’s just sad. *laughs*

JEFF: Isaac’s nodding his head.

ZAC: It’s just sad that people are manipulative that way. We don’t find it creepy, it’s just a bunch of jerks who are sitting on their computers.

ISAAC: (in weird accent) I don’t find it creepy! Is there a problem? I’m going to kill you! … that was like, somewhere between Igor and Ren & Stimpy. “WHAT IS IT, MAN?!”

TAYLOR: I think that’s the positive and negative of the internet. The freedom to do great stuff and the freedom to be a jackass too.

ISAAC: “You can be Ren!”

ZAC: Can we say that?

JEFF: Probably not. Why don’t we check in with the phone lines? I think we have Melanie on the phone. Hello?

MELANIE: What…?

JEFF: Are you on the phone?

MELANIE: Yes, yes, sorry.

JEFF: Do you have a question? Is this Melanie?

MELANIE: Yes.

JEFF: Alright, do you have a question?

MELANIE: Yes, my question is about, like, the co-writing process. Like, to me it seems so bizarre to go into a room and just write a song with someone. Like, what if they don’t want to work with you? What if they’re like, “Eww, Hanson, no!”

TAYLOR: That’s an odd…

ZAC: You wouldn’t be in a room with someone who was like, “Hanson! Eww!”

TAYLOR: What if we were like, “Whoever you are, eww!”

MELANIE: Well exactly, what if someone wanted to work with you and you didn’t want to--

TAYLOR: You wouldn’t work with them. The whole thing of writing with people is you choose to work with people that you think are interesting. Like, for instance, on Underneath… I mean, first of all, it’s the choice to write with someone. Cos we’ve always written all our own stuff. So, if you choose to work with someone it’s like, “We think they’re cool, interesting writers, whatever, we’ll work together. Artists.” Matthew Sweet is who we wrote the title track of our last album with, “Underneath.” We had a mutual friend, we really liked his stuff, he liked our stuff, and we just planned on getting together. It doesn’t always work that you sit down and you’re like, “Oh, this is great.” But we hit it off amazingly well and both came from a place where we understood each other and we started jamming around and a song was born.

ISAAC: Normally, songwriters and artists don’t make habits of working with people they don’t really know or, frankly, aren’t really interested in writing with, so that problem is solved…

ZAC: Let’s go work with someone we’re not interested in writing with! That’d be counterintuitive.

MELANIE: Yeah, because I’ve obviously never experienced it. It just seems so bizarre to do that!

TAYLOR: To walk into a room and write a song?

MELANIE: Yeah! It just seems…

TAYLOR: It’s just like someone that writes a book or is a journalist or someone that paints. Obviously sometimes you can’t just sit down and just bang out a song, but you have to have inspiration and motivation, but it is something that you learn how to do. You get better at the craft of pulling out of yourself the ideas and concepts.

ISAAC: But sometimes it doesn’t work. There have been situations where we have tried to write songs with people that we had mutual friends with that we all were interested I writing with and everything like that but it just didn’t happen. You can never predict that stuff. So, thanks for your question, very much.

JEFF: Yeah, thanks for calling Melanie. We’re actually going to take one more phone call real quick. I believe we have Sarah on the line. Sarah, are you there?

SARAH: Yeah, I’m here.

TAYLOR: Hey, how’s it going?

SARAH: Hey, how are you guys?

TAYLOR: Doing good, what’s your question?

ISAAC: Well. Very well.

SARAH: I have a question. Does it scare you guys when people get your symbol tattooed on you, or do you feel fortunate for that?

TAYLOR: When they get tattoos of things…?

ISAAC: I would never get a tattoo of anything.

SARAH: NO! Ike, I mean…

ISAAC: …except for maybe the names of my children.

ZAC: “I love my mom.” Something like that.

TAYLOR: Exactly. So, I know, I know what you’re asking, don’t worry. I know what you’re asking.

SARAH: Okay! Happy birthday, by the way, Ike.

ISAAC: Thank you very much. I think, for us, I feel honored that people feel like we’re a big enough part of their life that they feel the desire or the need to kind of represent our…

ZAC: Hanson on their bodies?

ISAAC: I’ve seen some really insane ones, like really, really large tattoos and then I’ve seen very, like small kind of on the ankle Hanson logo that was in the shape of a musical note and stuff like that. It’s like everybody’s own interpretation and choice of what they feel like they should do with their bodies and with their fan feelings, so we appreciate the fact that people feel like our music is significant enough to them that they want to kind of represent that permanently.

TAYLOR: I just don’t understand people that put, like, Cadillac symbol on their body… like, “You idiot.” At least a band, like there’s a—something you know, that album, you can love that album forever. What if Cadillac decides to just totally redesign their stuff and they suck?

ISAAC: Actually, I was going to actually say another thing, which is that there’s another thing with tattooing a band on your body…

TAYLOR: There’s only one problem?

ISAAC: That’s the tattoo faux pas. If you tattoo a band’s name on your body, they’re destined to break up.

TAYLOR: I hope that’s not true, cos we have a lot of people who’ve tattooed stuff.

MELANIE: I hope that’s not true! That better not be true!

ISAAC: I know, but I’m just warning people!

ZAC: Maybe if we get enough tattoos we can just reverse the faux pas! It’s like a circle of faux pas, like you’re so far that you’re supposed to break up, that suddenly you’re not ever going to break up. you’re going around the circle to the other side.

JEFF: That makes a lot of sense.

ZAC: Does it? You look very confused.

TAYLOR: Zac will be teaching the philosophy class.

MELANIE: Alright!!

TAYLOR: The science of tattoo art.

JEFF: Thanks for calling.

MELANIE: Alright, thanks for your response guys.

JEFF: Alright. I have to ask. A blast from the past, perhaps. Everyone who I talk to and they’re like, “Oh, you get to interview Hanson?”

TAYLOR: “MMMBop.”

JEFF: Exactly. I knew you were going to know it.

COLEY: Do you feel like you kind of get pigeonholed that that was your break out single?

TAYLOR: Well, everybody has a breakout single. Everybody has something that people know the most.

COREY: But that that happened to be the song, the sort of thing people remember?

TAYLOR: Well, the thing is, most people that—that song went beyond what most songs ever do. Most songs don’t become sort of—even people that don’t like music or even listen to music actively know or have heard that song. It became this culturally relevant thing that was out there.

ISAAC: What I find is most people who actually even reference it, half the time don’t even hardly know what the song is.

TAYLOR: They know there was a song and they know who did it. For us, it’s incredible to have a Grammy nominated song that you wrote when you were 14, 11, 16. And actually, we wrote it before that cos that was when it was released. Those are the things you should be proud of. Of course you want to change people’s perception, but the truth is, we’re proud of “MMMBop” and the live album, we put it on there. The live album has “MMMBop,” it has “Penny & Me” on it, it has “Underneath,” and it has Radiohead on it.

ISAAC: One of the cooler things I have experienced lately is we were on a radio station in New York, it was a public station, and they went from the 1997 version of “MMMBop” off Middle of Nowhere into the live 2005 version off of Live & Electric, and going from that version to the new version, you know the tempo is the same the groove is the same, yet it’s a positive evolution and what was so cool about it to me was that, although it was a different version, at the same time the feeling and the emotion behind the song and whatnot was still very much the same and I just feel very proud of that because I feel like people will listen to this live record in specific and say, “Wow, that’s the band I knew from 8 years ago, but it’s also the band I didn’t now I knew.” And I like that.

TAYLOR: I think it’s important to say, obviously, you may—you’re sitting there listening to music and going, “I know Hanson from a particular time or a record” and obviously we’ve evolved and we’re not the same band and in a lot of senses it doesn’t sound the same, but who we are and where we came from, we were always writing, playing, producing our stuff. Listening back to the music, I’m amazed at how many connections there still are to who we are now, but obviously when you listen to a Radiohead cover, when you listen to songs off our last album, texturally, the things you’re talking about or the sounds you’re using on the records obviously are different, but the core of this band, that’s something we’ll always be proud of.

JEFF: I’d like to take another track off the album Live & Electric and “This Time Around?”

ISAAC: Yeah, “This Time Around.” That is the title rack of the second album. It was the first single off that second album. It’s, again, it’s a very cool opportunity to just get to put a new version of these songs on a record. I feel like it represents all the records and all our influences really well on this live record, so I think if you listen to the 2000 version and the 2005 version, it’s fun to kind of compare cos there’s so much there, I think.

JEFF: Sounds good. So, let’s check out “This Time Around” off of the Live & Electric album. And hopefully Hanson’s going to stick around for a few more minutes, then we’re going to wrap things up. I’m sure you’ve got another seminar to attend later today, the documentary. So here is “This Time Around” by Hanson.

HANSON – THIS TIME AROUND (from L&E)

JEFF: WCRX, 88.1, Jeff Freiders here in the studio.

COLEY: And I’m Coley Verbick.

ZAC: I can’t believe you got Rocky to really do that promo.

JEFF: It’s pretty sweet, I know. We got everyone in here! Today Hanson, Rocky last week.

ISAAC: That as actually one of the better promos I’ve ever heard, actually, come to think of it.

JEFF: Glad you liked it.

TAYLOR: Yes, very enjoyable.

ISAAC: In fact, I think I would listen to this station just to hear that promo.

JEFF: We should just play it 24/7.

ISAAC: Over and over again. (imitates Rocky)

JEFF: Alright, so we just heard “This Time Around” off of Live & Electric before that Rocky promo and I want to mention, bring up this free sampler that you’re giving out to anyone who attends a show, buys a ticket?

TAYLOR: Yes. One of the things--we’re talking about the opening band contest. That’s obviously exposing local, independent bands. But another thing we’re doing to sort of put our money where our mouth is in the sense of talking about independent music and those things--we’re giving away a sampler of some independent bands. When you buy the ticket, you get a 7-song disc. It’s got some Hanson tunes from the live album, plus the Pat McGee Band, who’s actually touring with us throughout the whole tour, who’s on there, and then a few other independent bands. One’s from our hometown, one’s an Australian rock band, another great artist, one guy named David Garza, he’s actually opening up for Fiona Apple next—actually in about a week or so. But the whole idea of just saying, “We’re going to give our fans more.” We want to help promote independent music. Just connecting our fans with other people’s fans is very important to us. So hopefully if you’re coming to the show you know you’re going to leave with a lot. Three bands…

ISAAC: Music in your hand and hopefully the most kick—I don’t know if we can say the “A” word.

ZAC: Kick booty.

ISAAC: Kick booty.

JEFF: Kick booty.

ISAAC: The most bootylicious show you’ve ever experienced.

TAYLOR: Oh, god. You just did a Destiny’s Child…

ISAAC: I’m sorry. No, It’s not a Chippendale’s show. “So, so bootylicious” (sings).

TAYLOR: Oh, god.

JEFF: That’s good. You guys should remix that one.

ZAC: Remake. Ike, can you feel it?

JEFF: I can. “Bootylicious,” Destiny’s Child.

ISAAC: Hanson does Destiny’s Child. AWKWARD!

ZAC: We’ll do that one right after we redo “Ignition.”

ISAAC: Exactly. *laughs & starts singing “Ignition”*

TAYLOR: Alright. Please stop singing R Kelly. I feel dirty just sitting here next to you singing that.

ISAAC: We’ve actually done “Dirrty” too.

JEFF: Wow!

ISAAC: We actually have covered “Dirrty,” cos…

TAYLOR: It’s such a horrible song that we had to try and make it better.

ZAC: We did it as a joke because there’s no melody in that song, there’s no chord pattern, so we wrote a chord pattern and like, did like three part harmony and like, made it a song and we’re singing and we’re like, “This isn’t that bad once you add a melody and a chord pattern—oh right, we wrote a song, we just used their lyrics!”

COLEY: Some of the best covers are the funny ones.

ISAAC: We certainly were doing it for comedic effect, not because we’re a huge “Dirty” Christina Aguilera fan.

ZAC: “Dirrrrrty.” Two R’s.

TAYLOR: There’s like multiple R’s.

ISAAC: Anyway! Moving on!

JEFF: So unfortunately I know you guys gotta get heading out in just a few minutes cos you’re screening your documentary. Why don’t you tell us about that.

TAYLOR: yeah, the documentary Strong Enough To Break is actually about to play over at the… what is it, Ferguson Auditorium?

COLEY: Ferguson Hall.

TAYLOR: And go check it out if anybody is just walking down the street wanting to go in now it’s actually about to start.

ISAAC: 12 o’clock.

TAYLOR: And after the screening of the film we’re going to be doing a Q&A with everybody there, talking about our experiences, sort of give people more feedback. And I was just thinking, I think you were going to play some more tunes, are you going to play something off the sampler?

JEFF: Yeah, you mentioned Pat McGee Band, “You & I?” What are you guys looking for?

TAYLOR: Yeah, the Pat McGee Band. They’re actually also opening up for us so you can play one of their tunes. This is one of the songs you’ll get in addition to the Hanson songs you heard if you come to the show tonight.

ISAAC: So if you’re in the Apple store area, go check out Pat McGee.

TAYLOR: Yeah, they’re actually also doing an acoustic set there.

ISAAC: …acoustic set there and if you’re in the Ferguson Hall area, come check out the documentary.

JEFF: Alright guys, well thanks a lot for coming in.

COLEY: Thank you.

JEFF: Isaac, Taylor, Zac. It’s been a pleasure. Good luck tonight at the House of Blues, I’ll be joining you guys.

TAYLOR: Oh also, we were talking about music off the live album and you were saying “Rock & Roll Razorblade.” That’s also on the sampler. So, there’s lots of music on there.

JEFF: Alright, well thanks for coming in. We’re going to play Pat McGee Band with “You & I” and then throw it to “Rock & Roll Razorblade.”

TAYLOR: Oh, sure!

JEFF: Off the sampler. That sounds great. So, thanks again for coming in guys.

COLEY: Thank you for coming.

TAYLOR: Thanks a lot.

PAT McGEE BAND – “YOU & I”

HANSON – “ROCK & ROLL RAZORBLADE” (from L&E)