JOHNNY, DJ: Oh, they’re here! Hanson here in the studio! Awesome! All right, real quick we’re going to take a quick break so we get everybody set up here. Right now it is Hanson, live from Chicago. They are here in the studio, Hanson live in the studio. What’s going on guys?!

ZAC: Helloooo!

JOHNNY: Hello! What’s going on! Let’s turn the other mics up. Okay, wow, this is great. Crowded studio. Yeah, welcome to our closet of a studio, guys.

ZAC: Can you hear me on this?

JOHNNY: Yeah, we can hear you! We can hear you Zac, it’s all good.

ZAC: I like this studio… almost like a closet.

JOHNNY: It’s awesome. Alright, welcome guys, welcome.

TAYLOR: Good to meet you.

JOHNNY: Good to meet you too, Taylor. Isaac! Zac!

ZAC: Glad to be here.

JOHNNY: Nice to meet ya’ll. I’m Johnny Costanza.

ISAAC: Johnny Costanza!

JOHNNY: I am Johnny Costanza, that’s my radio moniker, and over here we have Richard Alcazar. The main man. He’s our connection here, so Richard—I just gotta say, you’re a God man. You’re just an awesome, awesome person.

TAYLOR: A god, man.

JOHNNY: This is just plain great.

RICHARD: Well, I would like to let you know that we have reached our peak of listenership online.

JOHNNY: Yes, we have. Yeah, thanks to you guys we have had the biggest listenership ever in the station’s history.

JOHNNY: You guys got shout-outs from Finland, from Brazil, from everywhere. I mean, thanks to hanson.net, our website was posted on ya’lls website, so yeah, it was great.

TAYLOR: Well, we’re glad to be here. That’s awesome.

RICHARD: Let’s get started, and tell us a little bit about why you’re here and what this tour is all about and what you’re doing.

TAYLOR: Well, I mean there’s a couple factors. Right now there’s a live album that’s out that kind of spans from the beginning of Hanson till now, new tunes, old tunes. And we’re doing a full tour to promote that. I mean, we’re playing a show tomorrow night here and we’re all over the country playing concerts. And one of the things you guys were a part of was we also set up a couple of other things to support independent music. The opening band contest, where we’ve got a local student group that’s opening up the show, which is so totally amazing and then in addition to that, we’ve got the documentary Strong Enough To Break. And that’s really where our passion for coming to universities came from, that was the original thought process. We produced a film, and the film was about—it’s a documentary about how we made our last record and eventually left our old record company because of struggles with kind of an overly political situation and a record company that was not our original label, and ultimately how we started an independent label. We’re bringing this film to schools all over the country cos we want to talk to students who are our peers, you know, we’re all primarily the same age and we feel like not only is it important for people’s careers, for what they’re doing, going into the world in the next few years, but as peers who are all music fans, opening the conversation about the support of music and an important time in music where…

ISAAC: …college radio has an opportunity unlike any other.

TAYLOR: College radio, you guys right here. You have more listeners than you’ve ever had, I hope that happens time after time and it keeps breaking those records.

RICHARD: You want to come back tomorrow?

TAYLOR: Maybe! *big laughs* But that’s just one small thing… if we can do that, that’s awesome. But I think we see obviously students, college students, I mean you guys are always the ones leading the way. You’re always the ones doing things first, maybe the people setting the trends and coming up with ideas. But this is really a time where that rule is even more important than it’s ever been cos the corporate ownership of media outlets has gotten to such an extent that the choice is so dab, people have so few options that independent record companies like us, independent radio stations like you guys, independent websites, media… they’re the places where you’re seeing growth. Where exciting things are happening.

ISAAC: It’s just about growth.

JOHNNY: It’s all about growth. I gotta tell you guys, I totally understand where you’re coming from. I used to work for an FM radio station back home and it was “play by this play list, play by this, play by this, play by this,” And then when I came here and I was looking for an outlet and I just want to do what I want, you know? Play what I want. And then I got that opportunity just coming here to this station, so I can completely understand where you guys are coming from.

ISAAC: What it is for us, too, is just… we just believe that college radio, in particular, has an opportunity unlike any other because of the consolidation. Really, college radio can—unlike any other outlet—does have listenership, does have a reach, and does have an opportunity to really seize the day and gain fans. Just instantaneously. And, in essence, take the place of what radio was when it gave you choice. And now, be that radio station, be that voice that gives choice, because you guys have opinions. You’re going to say whether you love or hate a record on the air and you’re going to give someone an opinion and people will appreciate that opinion.

JOHNNY: I was always told, you know, it’s like, basically don’t blast the music cos people are going to question, but it’s like, “Well, if you don’t like it, why are you playing it?” … “Well, I kind of have to.” But that’s not the situation here. If I don’t like it, if I throw in a CD that I’ve never heard before and I’m like, “Oh dude, this sucks, I’m not going to play this ever again, this is just trash” – I can say that here.

ZAC: I think what you were saying is that you worked at a regular FM radio station, terrestrial radio, and you didn’t have any choice in the music that got played. It’s not local content, it’s not music that’s being requested, it’s not music that the DJs want to play or even the program directors in many cases, at the stations. It’s music that is being told from the higher arcs, some guy who controls ten states of radio stations. Even eight years ago when we came out and “MMMBop” was first recognized, was the same situation where there wasn’t the same consolidation there is now.

TAYLOR: That song started as a hit cos of a couple stations that started playing it and got a great reaction and then it spread. Now, you’ve got so much control that somebody controls multiple states! And I guess the first thing you asked was why are we here? We can go off forever, but I think ultimately the reason why we’re here is we just want the message of involvement and interaction and not sitting back. We want the message of people that are now the most active in music they’ll ever be in their life, to not sit by and say, “Hey, well, what can I do?” but realize that the industry is getting reborn, independent music is growing, technology has allowed for that, and to embrace that and get involved and not hand over the future of music to passive people, but take hold of it as passionate people. Cos radio, MTV, all these—they go to the mediocre. They say, “Whatever the mediocre is, that’s what we’re going to do” and just hope not to offend anybody, instead of looking for where the passionate voices are, which is where great things come from.

ISAAC: The passionate music, the passionate voices, are right here.

RICHARD: That’s a sound clip right there.

JOHNNY: Alright, got a questionnaire for you guys, we’ve gotten tons and tons of IMs, just all sorts of people from all over the world just wanting to ask you questions. We have some written down.

RICHARD: We’ve chosen some random questions.

JOHNNY: Yes, random questions here.

TAYLOR: How random are they? *laughs*

ISAAC: Hey, can I ask one quick comment before we start asking the questions?

JOHNNY: Go right ahead!

ISAAC: I love your headphones!

JOHNNY: Awe, thanks!

TAYLOR: I don’t know if you’ve seen the cover of our last album, but it was basically a pair of old school headphones.

ISAAC: Yeah, like those!

JOHNNY: Yeah, where’s that at…?

ISAAC: They look kind of like those, but even on the live record there’s actually ones that are almost identical to that. So he’s—ladies and gentlemen, for the theater of the mind—he’s got these great kind of brownish tan Nova 40 headphones.

TAYLOR: This is like a fashion show.

ZAC: Sporting the brownish tans! These are from the Home Shopping Network!

JOHNNY: These are from my old stereo, 80s style stereo, that still played vinyl. It was great, and my mom said, “Hey, John, here’s some headphones. You want to bring them down and use them for your radio station?” And I’m like, “Yeah! Of course! Old school headphones! Yeah! Awesome!”

ISAAC: Exactly.

JOHNNY: Oh man, this is great.

RICHRD: If it’s okay with you, we’re going to take a quick break, get our bearings, and we’ll be right back. WGKN, Hanson’s in the studio. They’ll be around for at least another 45 minutes. Stick around. Here’s “Strong Enough To Break” off the new album.

STRONG ENOUGH TO BREAK

JOHNNY: That was Hanson with “Strong Enough To Break” and we actually have Hanson right here in the studio.

TAYLOR: Hey, hey.

JOHNNY: All right, what’s going on guys?

ISAAC: Not much. Actually, speaking of “Strong Enough To Break,” just so everybody knows—I know you guys have been saying this—but that’s kind of the title track, per say, of the documentary film that we’re going to be showing on later. Or showing later… do you guys remember where we’re playing it?

ZAC: Math and Science building?

JOHNNY: Yeah, the Math and Physics building. At 7 o’clock in the Math and Physics building, and we’ll be there, of course.

TAYLOR: Sweet.

RICHARD: Of course.

TAYLOR: For anybody that doesn’t know, we’re going there to do a question & answer after the film. So, once the film screens we’re going to be there and just take your questions, talk about it, take your criticisms, take your input, once you guys have seen the film.

ISAAC: If you guys have questions about getting into the music business or anything like that, if you’re a band or if you’re a fan or whatever, just come on down. We’d love to talk to you.

JOHNNY: I wanted to get into the whole basis of the film itself. You guys were talking about it earlier, basically breaking away from your label and stuff like that. So, I want to get deeper into that if you guys just want to talk about that.

ISAAC: Sure, sure.

JOHNNY: Yeah, so basically I saw the preview to it on your live acoustic DVD when you were in the House of Blues in Chicago and I saw the preview to it. And it was basically, it was a documentary that was originally supposed to be about your recording this album and then it turned into a three-year process. So yeah, why don’t you get a little deeper into that.

TAYLOR: Basically, just a real quick back story: we were signed to a label originally in 96 and then in 99 there was a massive label merger and we became a part of a company called Island Def Jam, it just got twisted around. So when our second album came out we were with them, and as we went into make our third record, which became Underneath, it was the first record we’d really made with this company, we’d really been from the beginning, been creative, but the people at this company were mostly accountants and attorneys or people that knew rap music. And much like many, many artists in the music business with major labels, we were in the situation where we were working with people that had no idea what they were doing with music, really, or especially Hanson. So the film shows this process of us going and having a lot of excitement of us making our third record cos we’d just made a critically acclaimed record, we were really excited after that tour, and we just began to hit brick wall after brick wall cos we were working with people that had no creative vision. And ultimately the story became how we kind of worked through that and then said, “Hey, we can’t do this.” We took the ball, finished the record, and started our own label, and said, “We gotta get out of this system.” And just the struggle that was. And what it shows… it shows not just our story, but our story as an example of what has happened over and over and over to so many bands in the last—especially in the last five years. I mean, 99 was actually one of the biggest record company mergers in history, one of the first major, huge conglomerate…

ISAAC: I think it may still be the largest merger.

TAYLOR: Yeah, Polygram and Universal, when they merged. And since then, everything has just been happening like that and so we felt like that story was important, to use our own as an example. Not say, “Hey, everybody has done exactly this.” We chose—our answer to the problem was, “Okay, we’ll start our own label. We’ll leave. We don’t want to be in this system.”

ISAAC: For example, I’m sure the Fiona Apple story is very, very similar.

TAYLOR: Only actually her fans were the ones who eventually turned the tables and got her album released.

ZAC: It was also twice as long.

TAYLOR: After 2½ years of that process we said, “We gotta get out of this.” We have friends that have spent 5 years, 6 years, 4 years, and in some cases they’ve made really crappy records because they’ve gone through the process of just having to bend over and just make something that’s not them, and in some cases they’ve wasted almost a decade of their career and then finally got a record out.

JOHNNY: Yeah, I’ve seen so many bands, I mean I’m a rock radio listener and I’m always anticipating new albums coming out and everything and whenever they come out I’m all, “Oh, yeah, great, yeah, great, new album, new album, new album! … This isn’t them…” when I actually finally hear it, so yeah.

TAYLOR: Liz Phair, Jewel. Jewel had an identity crisis and made a dance record. And you wonder why? Cos she’s getting these corporate executives breathing down her neck saying, “We gotta make money this quarter. Our stock prices have to be up. Put on some sexy something.” Or Sheryl Crow, for that matter. It’s a system where you’ve got people that don’t know music, that are working on music. Why are you here? And so, it’s not to say anybody that’s corporate or anybody that… art and commerce have to go together in some way, there’s no way around it. But the system has got to evolve. The system has got to get back to people that are entrepreneurial, people that have investment, and people who at least at the base of their core come from some place of loving music.

JOHNNY: More creative freedom.

TAYLOR: More creative freedom.

JOHNNY: Yeah, exactly. This is kind of off topic but it’s sort of in relation to that. Basically, we’re in the radio/television major here… who took the picture? Did you take a picture?

ISAAC: Zac.

JOHNNY: Oh, Zac took the picture.

ISAAC: That was Zac.

RICHARD: We need to tell him to stop fooling around. This is a professional show.

JOHNNY: Zac, happy birthday, by the way.

ZAC: Thanks.

JOHNNY: Yeah, so we’re in radio/television and actually I myself, I was looking through all sorts of different venues, all the different tracks we were going through, and I was saying—Richard, I’m not going to knock you, I know you’re generalist, but that’s what you want to go into.

TAYLOR: What’s generalist?

JOHNNY: Generalist is sort of the business end of it.

RICHARD: We have three tracks: one is production, one is journalism, and one is generalist, which is kind of like a mish-mash of everything.

JOHNNY: Yeah, a mish-mash of everything.

TAYLOR: So you can take whatever route you want to take.

JOHNNY: And I was trying to choose, I’m like, “Do I want to do journalism?” Because I want to be in front of the camera, and they said, “Yeah, if you want to be in front of the camera, do journalism!” But I found out that journalism, basically you’re doing journalism and that’s it, all you’re doing is news. I said, “I want to do more than just news, I want to do everything else.” But it was like, no, just news. So I chose my production track cos I’m huge into the creative freedom and I just want to make silly little videos and funny little commercials and stuff and that’s how I got into the production track, is because I still want to have that creative freedom. That’s why I want to go into the higher ups, like to the program directing venue of the radio station and everything, is because I want to have the creative freedom. I want to choose the music and base it on our fan base and not at the corporate base.

TAYLOR: Exactly, and right now you’d be hard pressed to find a job where you’ll even have that. I mean, honestly. You guys are the perfect example. Being a PD, unless you’re one of a handful of program directors…

ISAAC: For those listening, PD means program director.

TAYLOR: Program Director.

JOHNNY: Yeah, Richard over here is our program director.

TAYLOR: And you guys choose what you play. It’s your station.

RICHARD: No, John tells me what to do. He’s the corporate America.

JOHNNY: I try not to be. Whenever I give orientation I say, “Content wise: do what you want.”

TAYLOR: The thing about program directors and the whole system is you’ve got radio, okay. It makes sense to have a leader, a head of the body. Like, “Hey, you know what, you should work in these records when you’re playing.” But the deal is, DJs, and your interaction with your local audience, that that’s got to still be there. You’ve got to have people – you tune into a radio station cos you want to hear someone’s opinion, you want to hear their voice, you want to hear, “Hey, you gotta check this record out!” And great hit records from the beginning of rock & roll were started by DJs and by people who really said, “You know what? This is amazing. You gotta hear this.”

ISAAC: Wolfman Jack, back many, many years ago, but it’s people like that who just had the voice, theyhad the opinion, they set a trend cos people cared what they said.

ZAC: I think the interesting thing about what we’re saying is that even that if this were to happen, its only going to make radio stations more successful. It’s ironic that you’re saying, “Be involved with your fans. Listen to what they’re saying.” You know what? Because that’s going to have you have higher listernership. You’re killing your fans, people aren’t hearing music, they’re stopping listening.

JOHNNY: One of the saddest days of my life, I was on a remote with one of the stations that I used to work for and I was talking to a woman who used to work for the station for years and she says, “You know, I used to be a DJ here.” And I said, “Really?” She said, “Yeah, I used to be one of the biggest DJ shows on the planet” and I said, “Why did you go to sales?” She was in sales now and I’m like, “Why did you go to sales?”

TAYLOR: Money.

JOHNNY: And she says, “That’s where the money is.” I said, “But don’t you care about playing music and why don’t we take requests anymore?” And she said, “It’s broadcasting, its not singlecasting.” Yeah, it hurt me, it hurt me. Seriously.

TAYLOR: Well, that is the world that radio has become. It’s really embarrassing.

JOHNNY: It is embarrassing, it was one of the saddest days of my life. I was so passionate about it, I was like, “These DJs are great, they’re playing whatever they want,” and then I came in and it was so disillusioning. But I still want to do it, I want to change.

TAYLOR: That’s exactly—the whole thing that we’re trying to say is, look, don’t remove yourself and go become a hermit. Don’t say, “Let’s go be cool, hide and play niche-y stuff, or whatever.” Let’s get the word out and make change happen. Call your radio station, call MTV, email, and be like, “You’re not playing what I want to see, you’re not playing what I want to hear.” Get them riled up. At the same time, go support the new places that are really doing it well. Go listen to your college radio stations, go listen to your streaming radio stations on the internet.

ISAAC: Go peruse the places like MySpace and everywhere else.

TAYLOR: …that have become these huge machines. Places like MySpace, I mean its now this huge massive thing, but it started out as an idea. It started out as a community-based concept where if people traded ideas then you’d be able to communicate with a lot of people.

ISAAC: Of course, what’s scary is MySpace just got bought by Viacom and Viacom owns MTV.

JOHNNY: NO WAY.

RICHARD: And CBS and all those party stations.

ISAAC: So we’ll just cross our fingers and hope MySpace doesn’t…

TAYLOR: Oh, it’s going to tank, I’m sure.

JOHNNY: But we still have Facebook! We still have Facebook! Facebook is going to save us all!

ZAC: For now.

TAYLOR: But there’s a lot of great new places that are starting up. When MySpace started, something like that, it was an idea, it was a concept. Five years ago somebody would have been like, “What, why do we care about a trading community site?” But that’s the future of—you trust your community. You trust your friends. You trust your circle, because there’s so much out there that you don’t know what to trust. So, that’s where music fans can really begin to do something different. They can create those circles, they can create those communities, and they can organically spread the word about great stuff.

ISAAC: And we believe that artists can do that. We believe that artists can be involved in those communities in a direct way and make those communities even more robust because the artists are talking about what they believe in too. So, it’s not only a community of fans. It’s a community of artists. And hopefully a community of DJs and so on and so forth.

JOHNNY: Yeah. I want to come on board with you guys, seriously.

RICHARD: You’re saying Viacom is going to buy MySpace… there’s always going to be something else that’s going to come along and replace MySpace so that people are going to have a voice. Like bloggers, now more than ever, are going to have a voice. They’re tackling large news organizations like CBS, which is also owned by Viacom, by the way.

ISAAC: Yeah, exactly.

RICHARD: So, there’s always going to be something to fill the gap. They’ll call it something else, but now, for this grassroots rising, there’s always going to be something to fill the gap and it’s encouraging.

ISAAC: It’s really, really encouraging.

TAYLOR: That’s why we’re so excited about it. It’s interesting because it really is out of the ashes always rises something else, and you really can, as bad as things get, all that means is it can only go up. And the whole thing about the internet and file trading and all that stuff… the reason it became such a huge buzz was because music that was on the mainstream was getting so bad, was getting so generic and they were mistreating their fans. It causes people to be even more like. “I’m going to go over here!” And that’s what record companies didn’t expect.

ISAAC: If your fans don’t trust the quality of your music, of course they’re going to go out and look for it somewhere else. It’s the only way they can research music. If radio is only playing 20 songs…

TAYLOR: Ultimately, it’s gotta be about discovery. You’ve got to have places where you can actually discover new music and get excited about new music, and I think that’s what the digital revolution has created is cos you can actually find new stuff.

ZAC: Content is endless.

TAYLOR: It’s endless!

JOHNNY: He speaks! *laughs*

ISAAC: Zac speaks! Zac sits over there and then he chimes in. Zac’s like that in the documentary, too.

ZAC: I’m like that in life.

JOHNNY: Yeah, oh man. And Zac, you’ve got your own mic, dude, come on.

ZAC: I know, what am I doing here? I’m not talking enough.

JOHNNY: And you’ve got someone in here with a camera, too. Is that a CVC Pro?

TAYLOR: Yes.

JOHNNY: Yes it is.

RICHARD: What is she doing?

TAYLOR: Well, we have the documentary screening, and once we finish it, especially with this tour, we want to continue the story. We may carry it over into a series of some kind, we may carry it over into bonus footage for a DVD release, but we felt what we were doing with this tour was really important. Another thing we’ve done is we’re actually involving students along the tour in actually shooting and filming the documentary, the continuing documentary. NYU is actually screening the documentary and they’ve actually given us—sent a couple students, or actually students submitted and said, “I want to do this” so then we picked out a couple of them along the tour that are actually going to come along the tour with us and get credit for it as part of their film school and document what the process is and what we’re doing, and ultimately it’ll be a part of whatever the continuing story is. So, we just felt like, hey, “We’ve got the opening band contest. We’re exposing new indie bands. We’ve got a film. Taking it to schools. Let’s put independent filmmakers out there.” And so that’s just another way of—the message that we’re putting out there is just content. It’s local control, it’s freedom of creation, and it’s awesome to just give people that boost.

JOHNNY: Using the First Amendment to its fullest.

TAYLOR: Yeah, that was the idea of the First Amendment!

JOHNNY: That’s why I got into this program, was cos I learned about the First Amendment and I said, “Freedom of speech. What a concept. Why can’t we do it in public school?” But yeah, it’s all about freedom of speech and I just find it really—I don’t know if you guys want to get political or not, but it’s just amazing to me how they’re just getting to the point where they’re shredding it little by little nowadays.

ISAAC: Well, I think really what’s shredding it little by little is not even so much a governmental thing as it is – the unfortunate thing with the capitalist—there’s a capitalist issue, which is that the beauty is the freedom initially, but the potential downside is if it gets to a point to where…

ZAC: …completely unregulated.

ISAAC: …completely unregulated, to the point of it’s more like an issue of—I’ve said this kind of radical thing, which is, at the end of the day, if Clear Channel listens to you, nobody cares. Right? Cos if Clear Channel is listening, whatever! They’re listening to my voice, they’re playing music I appreciate, they’re taking my calls when I call. I appreciate that, I don’t really care.” But when they stop listening, then you have to say, “Are you listening?” That’s the question. We believe it’s the question that needs to be asked over and over again to people, because I would put out the channel to Viacom, who bought MySpace. I would say, “Whatever you do, just let it be. Don’t try and mess with it because you’ll only lose it.” But I’m not sure that they will.

TAYLOR: Well, there’s no way to stop that. I think ultimately, the cycle—I was reading, and I’m gonna botch the quote exactly, but I was reading Henry David Thoreau’s Walden recently, which is just something everyone should read, any American especially should read, and one of the lines in there, and again, I’m going to paraphrase it, but basically there is no corporation with a conscience. A corporation of conscientious people is what it has to be. The idea of a corporation, of greater body on its own doesn’t mean anything. It can be a lifeless, heartless structure. But a corporation filled with conscientious people, filled with people that have integrity and belief, can be a powerful tool and a positive tool, and that’s where the responsibility is. You cannot assume that eventually, once we get over the hurdle we can just go on autopilot. “Cool, now we’re here, let’s just coast.” That’s where you fail, you can never coast. You always have to stay active. And that’s where the idea of being enabled to be a capitalist country, a country where you have the freedom to start your business, start at zero and go to the top, is an incredible opportunity, but if you allow for the companies that have got, that have reached that point to turn off, to turn off the belief and the original point that was set out, then you lose. It’s really all about instilling that passion and value in people now when they’re going to go run those companies. Cos if you don’t, then the information--it’s not music that gets lost, it’s information, it’s the message.

JOHNNY: And even in high school, like some high school organizations organize because they want to get a certain message out there. I’ve actually experienced this in a high school club that I was in, way back in the day. it was actually when This Time Around came around. It was back in the day and basically we were actually making commercials, making PSAs and everything, and all the sudden it sent a message that we were trying to avoid saying all together, and I said, “No. We are not saying that ever.” Then all the sudden it was all about that message that we were trying to avoid saying as opposed to the original message, which was preventing stuff from happening to the point to where you pressure people. It was basically no pressure, and now we’re pressuring you and giving you information. It’s just terrible. And so many organizations, if you put that kind of—we care about numbers, we don’t care about what you put on. Basically that’s where the downfall is going to be.

TAYLOR: And that’s kind of where we’ve gone to.

ISAAC: Is it possible to maybe play a song, to take a music break since we’ve been talking about music in particular? I just feel like we should throw in some music or something.

JOHNNY: Something ya’ll’ve done, or…?

ISAAC: Actually, I kind of wanted to play a song off this sampler here, somebody else’s music. Where do we put that in?

RICHARD: Okay, what he’s referring now to is this Live & Electric Indie Sampler that whoever goes to the concert tomorrow night at the House of Blues is going to receive. It’s got 6,7 tracks on it, 3 of them are Hanson’s, and the Pat McGee Band, The Hero Factor, 28 Days, and David Garza, which are all indie bands that have aligned themselves with Hanson, so here is a track off that CD.

TAYLOR: This is David.

RICHARD: This is “What Do I Know.” You’re listening to WGKN with Hanson.

WHAT DO I KNOW – DAVID GARZA

JOHNNY: WGKN, that was Mark & James, off of their first track off their CD, what is it called Richard?

RICHARD: Does the CD have a title, guys?

MARK: When it’s done I guess it’ll be Hello & Goodbye.

ZAC: You should call it the Dorm Room Sessions or something.

ISAAC: I have to say, really, really good stuff. Really good stuff.

JOHNNY: We have about 5,000 people in the studio right now. Oh man, it’s just been great having you guys here, I just gotta say. And we’ll talk some more I guess.

TAYLOR: Want to just talk about how we all got together, you should just describe how it all went down.

RICHARD: Well, this is Richard, by the way, one of the 17 voices you’re going to hear. I am the program director here at the station and just by God’s grace, some stroke of luck, I work in Hercules as a Resident Assistant on campus and we have an open mic night monthly and we encourage all the residents that live there to come out, sing songs, read poetry, and whatnot. Well, the first night we did this this year we got two guys, two unknown people named Mark and James and they signed up to do a little acoustic set and they were amazing. Like, unbelievably amazing. I was awestruck. And the voice, these guys, they have such an amazing voice. And being that I work for a radio station, I need to get these guys on the air, cos we are a UCF station trying to serve UCF bands and trying to get people out and heard. So I talked to them, they gave me a copy of their CD, I listened to it, I was blown away yet again because it turns out, these guys recorded their CD in their dorm room. And the acoustics in the dorm rooms…

JOHNNY: They’re not that great!

RICHARD: But they managed to pull it off and it’s amazing. So because of which, because of that, they landed themselves in front of Hanson.

TAYLOR: You guys also submitted to the opening band contest, was that before you met him or was it because you guys met?

MARK: That was before we met him, actually.

TAYLOR: Just for anybody listening, part of what we’re doing on the tour is we set up these contests to basically allow local musicians to submit their music and then basically people on the internet vote on what band opens up the show.

ISAAC: The idea of course is that local fans and our fans…

TAYLOR: …get to kind of share the music. How did you guys hear about that and how did that happen?

MARK: Actually, there’s this girl that I went to high school with, she’s a senior in high school now and she really loves you guys and she called me one day and she says, “Hey, Mark, you should try out for this opening band contest” and we’re like, “Who’s it for?” and they said, “Hanson,” and we’re like, “WOW.” You know? We’re not going to win that thing because there’d be so many people, and I’m not like that guy that wins anything. But I was like, “Whatever, you know, we’ll put in a few songs and see how it plays out.” She basically told us to do it and we tried.

TAYLOR: That’s totally awesome.

ISAAC: In hearing it again, in hearing it over the radio airwaves, shall we say, the speakers in the studio and stuff like that and obviously your fans chose but I’m really happy that you guys are going to get to be a part of this cos this is a great example of what we were hoping would happen. You just never really know who you’re going to find, how it’s going to happen, you have a friend from high school and the guys from the college radio also hear about it and help get the word out that you guys are part of that contest and helped to get the votes out, I love it. It’s exactly what we hoped would happen.

TAYLOR: You guys were… we’ve been talking about all this stuff, supporting independent music, I mean the reality of it is stuff like this.

JOHNNY: This is the culmination of it all.

TAYLOR: Well, I mean it’s… the idea of local music, that’s where it all starts. Everyone is local sometime. And one of the first stations that ever played our record was a station that, before it was bought out by a radio conglomerate, was a DJ in our hometown who said, ”Hey, I heard this band, I’ll throw them on there.” And that’s the kind of thing that changes the path of music. If you get people who actually have the opinion that can say, “Hey, check this out.”

ISAAC: Well, I’ve got a question for these guys too. How far along are you guys so far? How many songs have you been able to get out in a more complete form?

JAMES: We’ve got about 9 songs on the CD right now but as a band, actually we kind of faked you guys out, we’re actually just a duo, but after we found out we were in the top 3 in this competition we’re like, “Let’s get a band together.” So we got them going. So, we got enough for you guys this Saturday.

ISAAC: Excellent, that’s great. So how many guys do you have in the band right now then?

JAMES: Right now… Mark, you talk.

MARK: We just called up a few friends from high school that are great musicians and some kid, a drummer I really didn’t even really know, and through the phone tree or whatever. Somehow got a hold of him and I was like, “Hey, you don’t know me, but we’re in this contest and we might not win, but if you want to play the drums that’d be sweet.” So.

ISAAC: Excellent. Well, you know…

ZAC: Why didn’t you call me? *laughs*

JOHNNY: Yeah, from what I hear, Zac totally knows how to play drums. Definitely.

ISAAC: That’s a rumor, we’ve been trying to hide that for years. He plays a sick tambourine.

ZAC: A sick tambourine!

JOHNNY: Just from some ahh-oo—off *stutters*

ZAC: Are you speaking?!

JOHNNY: I’m trying to. From some obscure reference I heard—I saw your DVD, it’s awesome. You’re talented musicians. Mark & James, from what I’ve heard from your CD, you guys are great, you guys are going to go far. I just want to say, this is what it’s all about here. In the studio, just jamming, just talking, just playing some different songs and stuff like that, this is what it’s all about.

ISAAC: Absolutely. We’re excited that we have you guys… that we’re not only coming to the campus but you guys are from the school, that’s really cool. That’s what we would have hoped for and so we’re excited, cos I’m sure you guys will get a bunch of fans out of it and that’s exactly what we hope.

JAMES: We were glad you guys were coming here anyways cos I didn’t want to be that guy who was like, “We lost.”

JOHNNY: And just one more thing before you guys go, I just wanted to say that when I head “MMMBop” for the first time again in God knows how long, I just got to say that it reminded me of such a simpler time, it was when I was in middle school and it was before everything happened, before 9/11, before the Columbine shootings, and it was just when I was a kid, you know, and the biggest thing that I worried about was what girl I was going to go out with or who was going out with who, who was breaking up with who, or the fact that I had no chance whatsoever. But it reminded me of such a simpler time and when you guys came on board it just allowed me to reminisce and I just gotta thank you guys for that.

ISAAC: Thanks man.

RICHARD: Round of applause for you guys!

TAYLOR: Mark & James!

ISAAC: Mark & James, we’re really excited to have you guys.

RICHARD: Anything you want to say before we close?

TAYLOR: Just a reminder about the screening tonight, it’s at 7 o’clock.

RICHARD: Math and Physics building. Be there early. First people to go in are students, next people to go in are non-students. Everyone that goes in and attends, fills out a survey will get a copy of…

ISAAC: Underneath.

RICHARD: Underneath. And you guys are going to be doing a question and answer, you guys are going to be talking to people, this is what it’s all about. So, support them. They’re playing House of Blues tomorrow. We have four winners we’re going to be giving a call later on. Guys, thank you so much.

JOHNNY: Thanks so much guys. Thanks a lot, we really appreciate it.

RICHARD: We’re going to close it out with “Penny & Me,” we’ll be right back in just a minute.

PENNY & ME