DJ MALE: You’re listening to WXOU, 83.1 Auburn Hills, streaming at wxou.org, and it is my pleasure now to welcome in the studio Hanson.

ISAAC: Hello.

TAYLOR: Hey, how’s it going?

ZAC: Hello.

ISAAC: We’ve got an interactive crowd outside.

ZAC: You guys actually have a window where people are viewing us like we’re in a fishbowl.

TAYLOR: Yeah, I feel like I should be swimming.

DJ MALE: It was covered, but we like to show promos, so we took it down so they could actually see. I’d like to first thank you guys for coming, taking the time out of your busy schedule.

ZAC: No, it’s our pleasure to come. We’re going to colleges all over the country. We’ve got a documentary we’re screening here today. We’ve done it at a lot of schools. And touring, I think it’s a cool thing to be able to come and sit and talk about music with our peers and really get to talk about the discussion of what’s going on in music right now and really get that going within people.

TAYLOR: She’s like, “I’m pondering my question, what should I say?” Oh, great. Water just got handed to us, thanks.

DJ GIRL: Alright, since this is a college we want to know if you’ve ever attended any classes anywhere?

TAYLOR: We haven’t attended any college classes, no. (phone rings in background!) YES!

ZAC: The phone rings! I think it’s more the college of life. I mean, we found out really early on what we were doing with our lives. I think people go to college mostly in search of finding some end goal on what they’re going to end up on. Like, “Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’ll figure something out.” I think we were lucky out really find something we were driven to do and really be going for it and so the idea of college, though, there’s still a lot really cool things I think we’d all like to educate ourselves on.

TAYLOR: Yeah, we haven’t been to college but I think there’s no question we’d love to do that in the future. We’re lucky that we know what we want to do and we’ve been able to actually do it.

DJ MALE: Do you feel you’ve missed out on anything?

TAYLOR: No, not at all.

ZAC: We’ve had so many experiences.

TAYLOR: I think obviously college is a great experience as is many other things different people do, but everybody’s got their own path and making music has been… this is sort of who we are, this is what we’re about, and you wouldn’t want to waste your time doing all these other things just to make sure you’ve done everything instead of doing the thing you know you’re passionate about.

ISAAC: I think it would have been cool to work at a college radio station. I would gave enjoyed that, and I certainly would have enjoyed certain aspects. I’ve always said if I actually went to go to school I would have gone either to study more aggressively actual music theory and composition on a very structured platform, to be more familiar with actually being able to write out the notes themselves. I mean, I studied theory as a young kid doing piano lessons and all that, so I understand it, but certainly even more skilled at it and having all that practice of being a music major in college would certainly have been or would be beneficial, and also the other one I would enjoy going to school for would be to be an attorney, but that’s a whole other one. I would be an attorney for clearly for the reasons of just aggressive pursuit of even more knowledge in the actual execution of it. Cos I understand contract law and everything like that but…

TAYLOR: People don’t usually think of attorneys like, “Ahh, I want to be an attorney!” It’s a sleazy job.

ISAAC: Well, that’s what I would do!

TAYLOR: So he’s a sleazebag, is what he’s saying.

DJ MALE: It’s extra years of schooling, too.

ISAAC: Exactly.

DJ MALE: I know the topic of your documentary is about this, but what made you decide to leave your label and start your own?

TAYLOR: Well, basically the documentary illustrates, it was filmed over a period of about four years, finished in the middle of last year, and it illustrates the struggle we went through with an inherited record company. One thing that’s really common, especially over the last five years, is record companies that have merged, cos big parent companies have bought one another. And so in 99 before our second album, the first big merger of record companies happened. We ended up on a label called Island/Def Jam. And the movie basically shows the process of us making our third record and sort of the struggle we went through to work with a label we basically inherited because of a merger and the fact that we were working with non-creative people, we’re working with an attorney doing a creative job and the whole structure of the company was really a company that was really not designed… well, first of all it wasn’t designed to work with Hanson because it was a rap label, but the whole infrastructure was built much more on short-term thinking. Labels that are because of the structure of them aren’t reporting quarterly to stockholders and that environment created a situation where we could never get things moving cos the people we were working with were non-music people and eventually after about 2½ years of people that didn’t really have vision, didn’t really have passion, we just said, “You know what, we can’t spend anymore time doing this. We need to work with people that know at least how to make music, let alone our music, and we need to get off” and at that point there was negotiation, the process was slow, but eventually we left the label, started an indie label, and we’ve had a lot of success as an independent. So, it’s—there’s a lot in the film and I think we felt that it was important for the film to be shown because we didn’t start out to make a film about how we were going to struggle with a label. It started out as a filmmaker that we’d worked with wanting to make a music documentary, and then it became a film about, “Oh wow, it’s so hard to work in the music business today with a lot of the major labels,” and we really want people to see that Hanson, we’re just one of many bands that have been in that exact same situation, over and over, especially over the last 5-10 years, and record companies today need to sort of look at that and say, “How do we do something?” and fans need to see it so they can realize, “Hey, this is one part of an issue with the business today that we need to get exposed to and learn about and get involved in.”

DJ MALE: How do you see, or how do you view, the success that you’ve had in the past, the huge success that you guys have had in the past? How do you see that now?

ISAAC: We see it very positively. I can’t imagine how you couldn’t see it in an incredible light. Especially as young songwriters, to be able to go out and pursue the thing that you’ve always felt you were good at, the thing hat you always felt was a calling for you as a person and to be able to take that to the next level and not just be making various independent albums and selling them out the back of your car and selling them at concerts on a very localized level, but to take that to national and international places around the world and being able to use that music and have it be exposed to so many people has been a huge thing for us. We were traveling around to pretty much every continent and most of the major countries in the world on that first album and people are singing your music and we’ve been able to continue to do that. We’ve done that with This Time Around, which was the 2000 release, and we’ve been able to do that with Underneath, which was the 2004 release. You go to Argentina and you have people belting at the top of their lungs your latest single. And it’s just—it’s kind of stunning.

ZAC: It’s mind blowing.

TAYLOR: But it’s important to say now we’re doing that as an independent, which is an amazing… that couldn’t really be done by a lot of indie labels, not that many years ago. It was really hard to be able to have reach around the world and it’s—obviously the success we’ve had initially opened the doors for fans but our focus is how do we continue to build on that for years? And build on that with your own company is a pretty amazing thing.

ZAC: We were in 30 countries last year, just promoting this last album and it’s really an opportunity that you don’t take for granted, so few bands really have the ability or ever have enough success to really be able to tour in every major country in the world and I think it’s something that we never, never take for granted and are always ready to give back as much as we can to those fans around the world that keep supporting you, that keep coming back.

DJ GIRL: How does it make you feel that fans will travel hundreds of thousands of miles to see you? I have a friend in Scotland who went to New York and LA recently.

TAYLOR: Wow. I think that’s passion, I think it’s…

ZAC: It’s either a testament to the fact that we don’t tour enough in Scotland or… *laughs* I think what Tay was saying, to have fans that are dedicated in that way… we travel touring around the country and there are countless records of longest lines and people waiting for six days in front of a place and I think having fans that are that passionate about being involved, I mean, it’s not about a song or an album, it’s kind of about the whole experience of the concerts and really being really hardcore music fans and I think that’s something that we look at other bands and go, “Man, what is it that is causing these fans to be this passionate about music and be this driven to be involved in everything we do?” I guess we don’t know exactly what it is that causes that reaction.

ISAAC: We just hope somehow, as the music business is restructuring itself in the next few years, that there will be an encouraged level of passion on the part of more music fans. I think there right now is a certain sense of people feeling like they can’t trust the quality of music these days. they feel a little bit jaded. They feel a bit insignificant in some cases. We really feel like that shouldn’t be the case and we want to encourage it to not be the case. I feel like, and I hope, that there can be a really positive change in the tides and you’ll see even more aggressively passionate fans in music.

ZAC: They’re discussing, “What do we ask them?

DJ GIRL: Yeah, I’m kind of nervous.

TAYLOR: You guys can ask us anything, don’t worry about it.

ZAC: There’s nothing you can say that we wouldn’t either just either answer or say, “Ehh…”

TAYLOR: Keep it going.

DJ MALE: I guess I could ask, who would be your musical influences now or who do you find when you sit down to just listen to music recreationally, whom do you listen to the most?

ISAAC: Totally obscure thing that I’ve really been enjoying lately, which is very easy to listen to, and this is not necessarily an influence, I’ll get to the influences, but she’s actually apparently I think she’s a model from France but she made this really cool record…

ZAC: Ike! GET TO IT!

ISAAC: An artist named Carla Bruni, Carla Bruni is the name of her, the name of this artist. She’s really interesting, really good. Kind of very like, folky, French single-songwriter.

ZAC: We were all kind of—the idea of music was kind of spurred by late 50s rock & roll, so I think we still look back to those kind of artists, still find inspiration in that, whether it’s a little Aretha or The Beatles or maybe a little Elvis

TAYLOR: Original old soul music.

ZAC: Soul music.

TAYLOR: But today I think we listen to everything from the Black Crowes to Arcade Fire to… I don’t know, there’s so many other bands. The Roots. One actually—maybe a natural segway would be there’s a thing we just… here it is… it’s a sampler of music. Every time you come to a ticket—every time you come to a show on the tour, if you buy a ticket, I can’t talk. Every time you come to a show on this tour that we’re doing, you get a copy of a sampler of independent bands and some of the bands are ones we’re really into, but it’s basically a way to give people music when they come to a show. If you buy a ticket, you’re actually going to walk out with some independent bands.

ZAC: Not just Hanson music.

TAYLOR: We’re other, plus Pat McGee band, which is opening up for most of the shows on the tour and a couple other great independent artists that we love and that I think other people, fans will love too.

DJ MALE: I’m straying off on what we have to ask, but I guess I want to get your guys’s take on what you think about the filesharing. What would be your opinion on that?

TAYLOR: I think our opinion is that ultimately filesharing and the idea of digital music is something that is a major positive for music in general. It’s going to—the whole thing about a lot of what’s wrong with business is now is not the idea that filesharing exists, but the idea that the other pipelines, the radio stations and MTV, and a lot of other places aren’t giving you enough choice, so I think in general digital music is an amazing opportunity for the music industry to be reborn, BUT, I think as music fans, we have to recognize that the idea of passing around a download between a few friends that’s one thing, everyone always burns mix tapes or puts together CDs of stuff they like and pass it around to friends. But there’s a level of respect you have to have for music and especially today when it’s so easy to pass music around that you don’t even think about it. You just have to look for really legitimate way to get what you love out of downloading, which is the idea of discovering music, choice, the instantaneous aspect of it that’s great, but we as a business and as fans need to try to develop legitimate places where we can find downloads, where we can get music, and be willing to pay something for songs because if you don’t, you won’t have any music. But I think as bands, there’s a major issue—not just bands, but the whole music business—we have to get back to making sure that the quality is there so that fans are like, “Wow, I know I could just never buy anything ever, but if I don’t do that—if I do that there won’t be any music and the music is good enough, I believe in this band enough, I want to be involved. I want to go see their show, I want to buy a t-shirt, I want to go get invested” and we’ve got to give that back to fans. We’ve got to show them that they can trust the music that’s out there.

ISAAC: Exactly, trust is they key thing, but again…

ZAC: Trust and respect.

ISAAC: Your favorite bands won’t be there if you’re not supporting them in some way and at the same time, we, as a band in specific, are encouraging other people in this way too but we are going to do everything we can within our power to make every record as quality as possible so that no one ever doubts whether or not it’s worth it to buy as a Hanson product.

TAYLOR: …and as an industry...

ISAAC: And as an industry as a whole, we have to make sure that we assess aggressively that particular issue cos it’s been a big part of the fuel that’s cause for more active piracy to be a problem. So, there you go.

DJ GIRL: Do you think that if you did have another phenomenal hit, such as “MMMBop,” that you would enjoy the attention again or would you prefer to remain now with small, dedicated fans and playing small venues and the intimacy of everything?

ZAC: I think your desire with music is the—to affect people and to mean something in people’s lives and to really try and become something that’s kind of more than just music. I think music has that power to really become something almost beyond just what you’re listening to, but it’s a part of you and I think the idea of success, you know, on any level is just to say, “I want to reach as many people as possible. I want to get this music that I’ve put myself into out to as many eyes and ears,” and so I think the success we’ve had, the success even on this last record, which was incredible, I think you’re always looking to reach more people, so I guess more success is…

ISAAC: Also, what I think is really cool is that not only are we able to maintain our independence but we’re playing venues and selling out venues that people like, the example I can think off of the top of my head is Fall Out Boy. We’re playing venues that they play. We’re selling them out. We’re playing venues that Arcade Fire are playing in. We’re selling them out. And so on and so forth. It’s the same kind of thing where not only have we been able to maintain that element of independence but our ability to succeed as a band has been, in large part, even and equal to many of the other artists that we’re talking about and looking out at, that are being more potentially in the mainstream at this moment but nonetheless we’ve been able to maintain the same level of success as they have, with even less exposure.

TAYLOR: I think it’s one of the things that’s a real sign of how the music business is changing is you see more and more the idea that, for instance, right now we’re not pushing a single at radio, specifically. We’re really focused on the idea of this tour and building relationships. We’re visiting colleges all over the country playing this documentary. But we’re able to fuel the fans and create a story and have a very successful tour and do that all over the world and it begins—you begin to see that a lot of bands you have a hit song on the radio aren’t selling the amount of tickets they should and it makes you wonder, “Why is that that—shouldn’t every band that’s getting tons of radio play be also selling the same number of tickets?” Or, “Shouldn’t they be getting people buying merchandise like crazy?” Cos usually that’s the reaction, but what you’re finding is a lot of the artists that really get exposed aren’t making the connection all the way with fans. There’s not as much of a passion and interaction. And I think what that’s proving is a lot of what’s getting pushed hard, a lot of what’s being played on radio stations are not bands that are really building long term relationships with their fans and I think for us the idea of success, being on radio, being on MTV, traveling the world—all that stuff… whenever it comes you’re proud of it but the real deal is you’re really focused on building a career over time. We’ve played stadiums, we’ve played arenas, we’ve played clubs, we’ve played theaters, and all of those, you know, in some shape or form in the last few years and you realize that the most important thing that you can focus on is, “Do our fans trust us? Do we have passion?” And when we put out a record people go, “Wow, I know what I’m getting from a Hanson record, they’re never going to give me anything less than the best possible record they could make” and bands need to be focused on doing that and then hopefully you won’t have situations where you’ve got a band being played on the radio like crazy and nobody buys their tickets, cos that shouldn’t be happening. It should be the bands that are being pushed should be the bands also causing people to be passionately flying from Scotland to England, I mean flying from Scotland to Los Angeles.

DJ MALE: I guess last question… what goes into writing a song? What’s the process that you guys usually follow when writing a song, or any material?

TAYLOR: There’s not really a particular process. I think you’ll see, for instance, in this documentary, by the way—I’ll just mention that again. We’re screening the documentary. I think it’s at 12:30?

DJ MALE: 12:15 I think it is, but it could be 12:30.

TAYLOR: I thought it was… I think it’s actually…

ISAAC: Between 12:15 and 12:30 is when people should be getting there, cos the film will start…

TAYLOR: Do you know what the actual venue…?

DJ MALE: The Fireside Lounge.

TAYLOR: Yeah, the Fireside Lounge. And we’ll be… in the film you’ll see a lot of things, but one thing in the film is you see the creation of songs. You see us sitting with Matthew Sweet, who’s a really talented artist. We wrote a song with Matthew. And you’ll see the lyrics and the music all come together. A comment he makes is, “It’s weird to see a band that write and does lyrics and stuff all together” and every song doesn’t get written exactly like that but as a band, cos there’s three writers, I think that’s always been one of the things that made us a unique sound, or at least that’s what’s made our records be eclectic. From song to song it can be pretty different. I think that aspect of songwriting is what’s always kept us interested and passionate.

ISAAC: I also like to think that because we’re all three songwriters that I think it improves the quality of the records as a whole cos you end up in a situation where if everybody isn’t looking at each other going, “Hey dude, that’s the right song to have on the record” then you know, you’re not doing that then everybody knows well one of those songs need to be cut cos everybody is not agreeing that it’s the best quality.

DJ MALE: Okay, I thank you guys for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this interview.

ZAC: We were glad to do it.

DJ MALE: And we wish you much success with the new record, the label, and the tour.

ISAAC: Oh, thank you very much.

TAYLOR: Yeah, thanks.

ISAAC: Oh yeah, and please join us everybody. We’ve got a concert tonight, I believe it’s at the… what is it?

TAYLOR: Royal Oak Theater.

TAYLOR: Royal Oak Theater. There are still a few tickets left, so if you’re listening now and you’d like to have fun at a good old rock & roll show, please come on down.

DJ MALE: Alright. Thanks you guys.

TAYLOR: Yeah, thanks for having us.