Complete Interview With Isaac Hanson

Isaac Hanson calling from some shady corner of the world, most likely Hanson’s hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where it was sunny with temperatures in the 70’s.
We haven’t been to Fort Lauderdale or St. Petersburg much, but we’re excited to come back down to the very Southern part of Florida.

And we are excited to have you. Speaking of being excited to have you, we are planning on hosting a walk on campus and I’m finding that many people are put off by the idea of the walk being barefoot. How do you overcome this and why is it so important that people do it barefoot?
Well, the fact that they’re put off by it being barefoot is important. ‘Cause we’re talking about is, when we do these one mile barefoot walks our focus has been, not specifically that oh please donate money and lets raise as much as humanly possible. Of course the goal is to raise money on some level or other. But, what we’re focused on is helping one another understand the capacity to lead or the capacity to do positive things in the world and to help those who need help and to understand what it is to not have something to understand what it is to live a life of poverty. And so remarkably basic but interestingly, as you hinted to, it really gets people confused and thrown off they’re like, ‘wait I’ve got to walk without my shoes?” And they start like acting hysterical almost sometimes. Like, ‘well that’s scary.” We’re like, “well, what do you think we’ve got needles on campus?’ I think that it’s important to walk barefoot because without walking barefoot you don’t have the opportunity to truly examine psychologically what it is to not have them. And most of the time when you’re walking barefoot it’s not a big deal I mean you put you’re foot underneath some water or something and put you’re socks back on you’re good, you know. I mean it is truly about understanding what it is to live a life of poverty and that’s why we walk barefoot. Because what we’re trying to get to is leadership requires you being willing to do something that others won’t do. Leadership requires you being one of the few not the many. Leadership and making positive impact unifying the world around you leaving it better than you found it is about being willing to go out there and put yourself in someone else’s shoes or lack thereof. And also we give a dollar for every single person that walks, for every person that registers a walk on takethewalk.net we will give a dollar for every single person that walks with them, if they come to a walk we’re hosting we will give a dollar for them and whoever shows up as well. And, what’s also important about that is we’re talking about people who are living on less than a dollar a day. We’re talking about a day’s worth of income [?]. We as a band are donating those dollars out of our pocket because we think it is much more important that we address the realities of leadership of understanding what it is to be in poverty and of doing something of taking action than it is for someone to reach in their wallet or pull out a credit card and give a dollar. It is about the psychological reality that is living without that we’re trying to understand.

Now I understand that you just made the 113 paintings you painted for the special packages available for pre-order on your site yesterday, how do these paintings add to the message/feel of Shout it Out or how did they come out of the album?
Well one of the things is actually the backdrop that we just used on the Shout it Out tour has been a good portion of those paintings enlarged and displayed in a kind of a grid type pattern. So you see about 90 different paintings behind us. The colors are inspired by the colors of the record. The art and the way it was done is very inspired by you know the message of the art of the record you know with a kind of a very it’s kind of this very hand painted very bold color and stuff. Amongst other things it was just a real artistic outlet for us. This record I think is a very [personal], very expressive kind of bold color type of record to have paintings that kind of were very bold and kind of exciting and what not was something we were really excited about. And also we’d never really done anything like that before. Taylor and Zac in particular are really great painters and artists and so it was really nice to have a different set of outlets for the album. And also in addition to that they were tied to the really extensive package that we provided for people which was if people wanted to they could by this platinum package which included sets of headphones, a limited edition double LP, the album, the photobook, the original an original painting as in they got the canvas and the original one-of-a-kind painting one of the 113 that were made they got one of them, and several other very customized items. And so that’s kind of where that came from was we said, ‘well lets put together this special package what would make it extra special?’ ‘oh, you know paintings, artwork something truly one-of-a-kind, so that’s what we did. And then we took extensive photographs of the painting of the artwork as well as just photographing paintings themselves as well it’s a shame for everybody not to have the chance to see all of these pieces of art so we put it all together in one cohesive book.

There seems to be a trend in album releases with a new album coming out every 3 years, almost like clockwork (the one exception being Underneath). Mostly, it seems that this has been less intentional and more based on circumstances. Is that safe to say?

Yeah it is safe to say. I mean most of the records are released in the spring or summertime. Middle of Nowhere was released in May, This Time Around was released in May, Underneath was released in April, at the very end of April, The Walk was released the latest in the year, it was actually released at the end of July. It was originally slated to be released in May but got pushed back a couple of months. And then Shout it Out was released at the very beginning of June. So, yeah it is less intentional and more circumstantial. We’d like to think that we’ll increase the speed of records in the years to come but know that it’s taking longer and longer to promote albums then to release them around the world then to get songs heard on whether it be getting videos spread through the internet or getting songs played on the radio or whatever it is. So, unfortunately the business as a whole is going slower, but I feel like the fan base as a whole, music fans in general, not just Hanson fans, are wanting less content more frequently. I think people would generally be happier if they were getting between 3 and 5 songs from the band every 9 months or less and consistently getting music because it keeps things fresh and then it makes tours a little bit more exciting because every single time you go over and see a show there’s something new to hear and something new to buy and stuff like that. So, I’d like to think that things if we change a little bit, but unfortunately the music business as a whole is not changing very well, but of course the music business is going bankrupt so I don’t think we should really be chasing the music business as a whole these days anyway. But my goal would be, sure, my goal would be increasing the speed. . .

What’s more frustrating, the Hanson “All Grown Up” articles, the Hanson “Mmm Bopping their way [insert location or chart position here]” articles or the reviews with compliments that almost sound begrudging I mean they’re almost like “yeah Hanson’s kind of great, I guess, considering they’re Hanson”?
That is a really, really funny thing to ask and you know what it’s, I will tell you this, you are the first person that I can remember to ask that question with that clarity and with that context. And my answer to that is that on some level or other you always want to be judged based on the content of the album itself. And that I think far too often you’re in scenarios where people are comparing things in various different ways and I per- well I’ll just flat out say it: I think all of those articles are kind of silly and frustrating. Because the underhanded comments are kind of silly because I think on some level or another you just need to come to a show and deal with it from a musical level and stop trying to justify it so if you’re going to write an article have balls and say ‘I like this band, end of story.’ And if you want to give context and write actual context not silly tag lines. And the irony is the reason why the silly tag lines and the ‘all grown up’ stuff is silly is because it’s incredibly tired, we’ve been ‘all grown up’ since 2000.
Since ’97, basically. You’ve been all grown up since ‘97
Well, but what I’m saying is people have been writing those articles since then. Every, a huge portion, huge portion of the articles since 2000 that are kind of general, overarching articles are like, ‘wow, Hanson’s more mature. Wow, Hanson’s all grown up.” And I just think it’s silly, I think it’s tired and I think somebody needs to actually start listening to music instead of talking about the past. Let’s talk about the past, let’s talk about the future. And, the truth is I’m really really proud of what we’ve done. I’m really, really proud of my teenage self as well as what we have been able to do over the last 10 years. I mean everybody always goes for huge hits, but what really matters is what happens in between the huge hits and we’ve been the underdogs the whole time. We’ve either been too young or you know I even read an article not too long ago that said that, ‘Hanson should start acting their age’ you know, with regard to Shout it Out because it was an upbeat record and I was like, ‘wow, you can’t win either way.’ So the truth is it’s always that way and I guarantee you the Black Crowes and U2 and all kinds of other people have all kinds of similar kind of random issues and so it’s kind of one of those things that’s just a part of being a band. We’ve got incredible fans. We’ve been able to continue to tour successfully for over a decade and I don’t see it going anywhere in a bad way, I mean actually, we’re seeing, we’ve been better in the last few years than we’ve ever done as far as seeing progressive increases in ticket sales and in all that kind of stuff. So, things are continuing to grow not shrink.

Well, I’m hoping that this article won’t be one of those, I’m sure that it won’t-
By the way sorry to interrupt but you seem like somebody who’s got a lot of context for us as a band and what not. I will say this other thing which is, if you’re coming to a Hanson show just to see “Mmm Bop” you’re coming for the wrong reasons. We’d love for you to come see “Mmm Bop” and come see stuff from our first record and our first couple records and we will play that and love it and you will hear it because it’s who we are. But, we’re going to play 23 songs, 25 songs for two hours, you know, and I don’t know I just think that there’s -- people who are coming to see Hanson concerts and people who are buying Hanson records are not buying them because Hanson wrote a song called “Mmm Bop” 13 years ago and that’s the reason why they’re buying Shout it Out. The reason why they’re buying Shout it Out is because they like it.


Well, I hope I don’t sound like a cocky bastard

"We don't tell prejudice jokes here"

These last few days have been both interesting and very, very busy. Though we weren't doing our research and service learning over the weekend, we still had organized activities. My last entry left off at the beginning of. . .

Dia Cinco (Day 5):
On Saturday afternoon we went to a jacare (caiman) farm nearby and saw all sorts of "wildlife," or rehabilitated wild animals that weren't quite turned back out into the wild but rather were allowed to live as semi-domestic animals on the farm. After briefly exploring the farm's vast array of birds, wild dogs and other animals we grabbed a bucket of cow tongue and went to feed the jacares. We each took turns dangling cow tongue from the end of a stick over the jacares head until they ripped it off. That was an interesting experience. After that we took a sunset horseback ride through a cow grazing area and then snacked on fried gator strips until dinner was ready. After dinner we took a night walk through the woods to look for wild animals. We saw a couple capybaras, a tamandua (a tree climbing animal in the anteater family), a bird that's so good at camoflauge that you can only tell that it's in front of you by the reflection of it's eye, some sleeping fish (who knew that fish sleep?) and a frog. We returned to the ranch for some maite before heading back to the hotel.

Dia Seis (Day 6):
We got up early Sunday morning and went to a nearby town to a farm with several waterfalls on the property. As soon as we pulled in we saw a family of monkeys hanging out in front of our van. We then took a brief tour of the various waterfalls before jumping into the river. Several of us decided to play in one of the waterfalls and allow it to push us downstream, and slid down the river as though it were a waterslide. Things turned a little scary, however, when we attempted to walk across the rocks in front of the waterfall and I lost my footing and fell between two rocks. I was under the water for a while and took in a lot of water. So, that was a little scary. I was pretty shaken up about it, so I didn't go back in the water for the rest of that day. My muscles seized up as I was fighting my way back to the surface, so I was also pretty shaky for the rest of the day from that. But, after lunch on the patio back at the farm I relaxed in the hammock, went hunting for monkeys (unsuccessfully) and returned back to the hotel.

Dia Sete a Dia Nove (Days 7-9):
These days blur together somewhat. But, on Monday we returned back to our sites. On Monday I worked with several teachers and the same group of students. We learned
geographia, historia, and matematicas. The most interesting observation I made that day was in history class when the teacher was discussing World War II and the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was interesting to hear an unbiased view of America's role in the war and slightly embarrassing at the same time, knowing that I was there representing the country that cost so many people their lives for generations to come. After that we worked tirelessly into the night on our unobtrusive observations and mapping exercises of Miranda.

On Tuesday (Dia Oite) I had a wonderful experience at the school. I met Zeni, the Portugese and English teacher who I'm supposedly going to be working with for the rest of the time that I'm at the school. She immediately seemed excited to have me there to help her with her English, especially her pronounciation. At some point she stepped out of the classroom and I had the attention of the kids for myself. I told them that if they helped me to learn Portuguese I would help them learn some words in English. Suddenly the air in the room felt lighter. The kids stopped giggling at me and my poor Portugese and we began exchanging words in Portugese and English. They invited me to sit with them at recess and we spent much of the day talking in Portugese and English. I gained so much ground that I decided to capitalize on the momentum and do my free listing experiment the next day.

Wednesday, however, all momentum seemed to be lost. The teacher suddenly seemed as though she didn't want me there at all. The kids were just as excited to learn as they were the day before, but the teacher kept putting off having me in her classroom. The only difference between the two days is that on Wednesday I had a grad student from Campo Grande with me who teaches Terena teachers how to teach English. Our theory is that she was afraid that he was a spy sent to make sure that she is teaching English correctly, because she doesn't seem to know too much English. So, a different teacher took me around to some classes and helped administer the free lists. This went awful, because the idea is to see which animals the kids think up first on their own, but the teacher suggested certain animals to them, and this could have interfered with our results. So, even though I got 30-40 pieces of data I still need more to try to correct for this. I was super frustrated about all of it yesterday, but today I have more perspective. That's just one of the pitfalls of scientific research.

Dia Dez (Day 10)
This day is technically still in progress, but so far the day is going pretty good. Today is Corpus Christi, so businesses are all shut down and the streets are filled with decorations made from rice, maite, cedar chips, bottle caps and other natural and recycled items. We didn't go to our sites today as a result, so we have been able to have our first real leisure day since we left Florida. Some of us helped to decorate the streets. We also walked through the streets looking at the artwork and found a really great family-style restaurant with delicious food and sat, talked, ate and most importantly laughed for nearly two hours.

And I conclude with a joke by our friend Diego from the universidade:
"A prejudice joke walks into a bar and says, 'bartender give me a cerveja.' The bartender says, 'I'm sorry we don't tell prejudice jokes here'". . . I guess you would have had to be there.

Howling Monkeys, Squeaky Cheese and the Birthday Snake

Welcome to my poolside breakfast blog. That's right, I am sitting by a pool at our luxury house turned hotel with my computer, my breakfast, my headphones, french bread and my cafe con leite writing updates on my Pantanal study abroad trip. Not too shabby huh?


So, here we at the beginning of day 5 of the trip. To recap the trip thus far, though I must start at:

Dia um (Day 1):
We arrived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia early Tuesday morning. Santa Cruz was an interesting place. There was a palpable tension in the air there, and driving through the city the poverty and third world status of the country was blatantly obvious. I didn't notice many military men with machine guns which I was told we may see in Santa Cruz, but driving down the road I saw people crowding the streets, children washing windows for spare change, emaciated stray dogs roaming the sidewalks, and bony horses tied to posts along the road. Hidden behind the crumbling buildings was a very nice, open restaurant where we ate lunch after our pre-lunch snack of traditional saltenas. The food there was muito bon. We then explored the city. We went to a beautiful, open air church in the heart of the city, and visited the market, where it seems like most citizens congregate for their meals. We then went to the train station where the tension was even more pronounced. We had to check our large bags and the man checking our suitcases essentially told us that our bags might not make it to our destination if he didn't get 5 pesos (less than a dollar in US). The train was an overnight one with reclining seats. So, for those keeping track this was night number 2 without a bed. As soon as we got on the train we were greeted by a video anthology of the music stylings of some greasy Bolivian singer blaring through the train. The same music created a sort of soundtrack in the morning, though, as we raced through the Bolivian countryside watching for wildlife the next morning and thus began:

Dia Dois (Day 2):
Early in the morning we arrived at the Bolivia/ Brazil border in the Bolivian city of Quijarro and met our van from the hotel and our guide for the day named Ricardo. We then crossed over into Brazil and explored the beautiful city of Corumba for a while. We spent most of this day in the van driving through the Brazilian countryside and stopping occasionally to get pictures of wildlife and the river. Unfortunately I slept through most of this experience since I took a Benadryl after being attacked by fire ants in case I had an allergic reaction. But, at last we ended up at the Universidade Federal de Matto Grosso do Sol's research station where we had lunch and then went trekking through the swamp. It was Jaou's birthday, so we kept an eye out for his "birthday anaconda," which I agreed to help him capture as a birthday present. I agreed to take the "bitey end" while he would take the "strangly end." On our trek we saw a number of bird species, our first capybara, and high up in the trees we saw a couple of howler monkeys waiting for us to leave their territory. We then headed to the hotel. Several hours and two lengthy construction stops later we arrived at our home for the month and at last had beds of our own to sleep in. We went, for the first time, to the restaurant where we will have dinner for the remainder of the trip and returned to our hotels to shower and sleep in preparation for:

Dia Tres (Day 3):
This may have been my favorite day so far. We visited each of our sites this day beginning with the Terena tribe and the Terena escola. I fell in love almost instantly, and visiting the site only confirmed my initial desire to work with the children in the school. We visited several of the classes and spoke with some of the children who were quite funny.
We then went to the fisherman's village and met Mr. Noel and his family. Mr. Noel took us out on his chalana, or boat, and showed us the river. We then talked with him about some of his fishing methods and such. But, for me, the best part of this site was the domesticated dogs. Because though there are many dogs in Bolivia and Brazil, playing with them is considered, by my doctor anyway, as "high risk activity," since they are strays and carry diseases. So, for me, that makes the streets like a bar to an alcoholic, filled with dogs that I can't play with.

After breaking for lunch at one of the many luncenetes we visited the cattle ranching farm, which was breathtaking. Though they are a working cattle ranch with seas and seas of white nelar cows, or boi, but it is also a tourist site with a small fruit orchard, a bird "tower," horseback riding tours and all kinds of amenities as a part of the push toward ecotourism in the area. So, the place was stunning. If I wasn't an English major I'd almost want to be there ridng horses and herding cattle all day.

Finally we went to the cultural center, which sold pottery that is supposedly Terena, or loosely inspired by the traditional crafts. Taken together these four site painted an interesting picture of the economic gaps between groups and some of the resulting tensions from this disparity. It was a really interesting day.

Dia Quatro (Day 4):
On day 4 we left the hotel at 6:15 after scarfing our breakfast of cake, jelly rolls, "squeaky cheese" and, of course "cafe con leite." We first dropped Keely and Steve off at the cattle ranch. While the professores were talking with the farm's manager, Alex, I played with Stinky, a young, highly energetic dog who reminded me of my dog back home when she was a puppy. We then headed to the Terena tribe where we first made small talk with our contact, Fernando, before I headed over to the school. Here is what I wrote in my journal, immediately after leaving the school, about my first morning at the escola:

Now I know what it feels like to be the "oddity." I feel like I'm the anthropological subject rather than the other way around. Today was overwhelming. I think the teacher, Celia, felt the same way. Right now I feel like even the chickens are trying to figure out what I'm doing here. They are surrounding me and clucking. I am barely picking up Portugese let alone a lingua frango (or pollo). In the aula de arte I sat in the corner for a while as the students drew pictures. A few of the boys kept staring at me, which I expected, but I tried not to look too uncomfortable, though I'm sure I failed miserably. As they got more comfortable around me they slowly began to bring objects to me and asked how to say them in English. Of course, I would say the English word and they would giggle and scurry back to their seats. But, eventually they moved closer to me and swarmed me with a cuaderno and showed me their notes from English class and we exchanged vocabulary. It was actually quite helpful and I know they didn't give me dirty words instead of the correct ones because many of the words were the same as in Spanish. I asked them about animals a little bit and got some of them to tell me their favorite animals and they said dog and horse, though I made the mistake of telling them that my favorite animal was a horse first, so the boy who said horse may have just been flirting with me. The boys were pretty much what I expected, flirty and giggly. They hit each other and chased each other around the room. They ranged in age from 11-15 (though the 15 year old may have been lying to flirt). The girls were more reserved, they just sat in their seats and some stood outside the window and stared at us. One girl in the second class did walk right up to me, shook my hand and said bom dia. I noticed a tightness among the girls who would walk down the halls holding hands and linking arms. They took, what seemed to me, like several breaks. Ten to twenty minutes after I arrived we broke for a meal of arroz and some orange broth with yuca and what looked like chicken and beef. I was still full from breakfast and the meat was very fatty so I struggled to finish it, especially since I was watching the chickens when we first arrived and we were sitting with Fernando.

After writing this Lindsay and John returned with Fernando and his wife. We learned how to peel the yuca and helped cook the traditional gizardo. We ate two more times while conversing with Fernando and practicing our Portugese and learning Terena. After that I felt significantly more comfortable with the language.

We then returned to the hotel, walked around the city and shared our experiences from the day with the rest of the group. Overall, it was a good day. Now, time to experience Dia cinco. . .

Observations on characterization from a future fiction writer

I don’t agree with the statement that your characters should be your friends. I think that as an author, as you are writing you should walk around in a “character suit.” By placing yourself somewhere inside your character you add a universal quality to that character that anyone who picks up your story can sympathize with if not relate to. Afterall, isn’t that why we read? To spend some time seeing the world through someone else’s eyes? Isn’t that why we watch movies? I don’t think there is any other craft that lets you get this close to people and lifestyles that aren’t your own (except maybe acting). I would spend some time reveling in the world that you create, good and bad. When I write a rape scene, for example, I feel breathless and weak afterwards. It takes everything out of me, because during the time that I was writing I was seeing what my character saw, feeling what she felt. Her tears were my tears. Her blood was my blood. The Hanson patches on her backpack were my Hanson patches. For that hour her rape story was my rape story. I think that that is how compelling scenes are written. My other character, Aimee Hansen, loves reading romance novels. I don’t read romance novels. But, if I did my body would clench up and a quiet yet high-pitched squeal would crawl up my throat at that moment when the heroine turns around to find her love interest standing right behind her. By spending some time inside your character you make them human. You keep them from becoming merely a “type.”