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