1. Where’s the Love
2. Great Divide
3. Get Up & Go
4. Got a Hold on Me
5. Running Man
6. Been There Before
7. World’s on Fire
8. Carry You There
9. Madeline
10. Deeper (Isaac solo)
11. These Walls (started as Taylor solo, then Isaac & Zac came back on stage)
12. This Time Around
13. Waiting For This
14. Crazy Beautiful
15. A Minute Without You
16. Mmmbop
17. Lost Without Each Other
18. Hey
Back in the summer of1997, one couldn’t walk out of their house without hearing someone humming, blaring, or damning to Hell that juicy nugget of pop rock that was Hanson’s “MMMBop”. Depending on your age and gender, you either understood the hooky genius of the song or you were just in love with the boys dreamy locks of hair and gentle Oklahoma-bred smiles. For a moment in time, Isaac, Taylor, and Zac could do no wrong in the eyes of teen girls the world over.
Smug folks dismissed “MMMBop” as pop fluff of the illest repute, forgetting the fact that it was written by three musically-educated teen boys who worshipped artists like the Beatles and Chuck Berry. Insipid as it was at turns, it was also expertly crafted. In a year that gave us the Spice Girls, Aqua’s “Barbie Girl”, and the Backstreet Boys, it’s strange that actual instrumentation was shunned. A few more singles were culled from their Middle Of Nowhere LP over the rest of the year, and the brothers released the requisite Christmas album just in time to cash in on the hype surrounding them.
The brothers laid low for a few years and came back in 2000 with This Time Around which saw the band leaning farther towards big stadium rock than short bursts of bubblegum. By this time most of their young fan base was probably getting tongue rings and waiting outside the Limp Bizkit tour bus for Fred Durst. Anyone paying attention would have heard razor-sharp pop rock created by musically-educated guys in an unfortunate situation that was out of their hands. It’s not their fault that the rest of the world was wearing backwards hats and repping Faith No More.
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In 2004, the band released Underneath followed in 2007 by The Walk. Both albums featured the band pushing into harder blues-rock territory, sometimes coming off like a junior version of the Black Crowes. Both albums garnered decent reviews and success in spite of little marketing, which stands as a testament to the band’s lingering grassroots fanbase. A new album was finished this summer, with an aim for a rollout at next year’s South By Southwest in Austin. The band played a showcase at the festival in 2008 and were seen around town at shows as disparate as Blue Cheer and Fastball. In honor of tomorrow night’s Hanson gig at the House Of Blues, Rocks Off has gathered a group of videos featuring bands with brothers in their ranks. And yes, we do realize that the Jackson 5 and Kings Of Leon are also made up of brothers, but after this year we wish they would both disappear for awhile. Problem partly solved we guess. Too soon?
Their music has been described to resemble “Tom Hanks in his younger years;” their primary influence is the 1959 hit “Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love” by Dion and the Belmonts. Accordingly, Hellogoodbye seems to just be a couple of quirky guys having fun and not taking themselves too seriously. These “beatnik surfer dudes from California,” as Steel Train put it during the concert, took the stage Saturday, Oct. 24, at the House of Blues Orlando as part of the Use Your Sole Tour presented by Toms Shoes. Hanson also headlined the show (yes, the brothers of “MMMbop” fame), which was opened by Sherwood and Steel Train.
We caught up with the members of Hellogoodbye before the concert backstage in the dressing room area where they were hanging out with the guys from Steel Train. Everyone was very friendly and casual, acting as if we were old friends goofing around instead of doing an actual interview.
Hellogoodbye recently released a mini-EP entitled “When We First Met,” and when asked how the crowds on the tour have been responding to the new material, frontman Forrest Kline responded, “A lot of the kids, I think, that come are mostly familiar with Hanson, you know? And so they don’t, they can’t really determine our old from our new, but they seem to enjoy the new, I’d say. And that’s cool.”
There is also a music video released for the song “When We First Met” and the idea for that video came from the band members.
Keyboardist Joey Marro mentioned, “We had a weird hot tub session, remember that one? Brainstorming hot tub session?”
Kline confirmed, saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did. We were at a hotel… in a hot tub.”
When asked what superhero any of the band members would want to be, the first response to come from the group was “Zac Hanson.” “Seriously, Zac Hanson.” “Zac Hanson.”
“He’s a stud.”
“Truly. Truly, he is.”
Kline then decided on “Jeremy Enigk from the Emogame where he floats in the clouds and he’s like the god of Emo. I’d probably be that.” Marro went with the Flash and then asked guitarist Andy Richards what his answer was, figuring it would be “something we don’t know about” given that Richards is British.
He responded, “Bananaman. You know who he is?” We did not, though as would be expected, apparently “he eats the banana and becomes a superhero.”
The goofiness did not stop backstage. Hellogoodbye was quite talkative between songs and even during songs, literally stopping to coordinate a wave in the audience for one chorus of “Oh, It is Love.” Kline told some Hanson fans at the front of the pit not to worry because he would let them know when the chorus was. At one point the band members also told an elaborate story about being confused between the Hanson brothers and Chris Hansen from “To Catch a Predator.”
As Kline stated in the interview, it was clear that Hanson had the biggest fan base in the venue and some of those fans did not seem to quite grasp how a concert line-up works, surprised that though the show started at 6:30 p.m., Hanson, the last spot of the night, did not start their set until over three hours later. Hellogoodbye had a shorter set than they would have if they were the main headliner, which also meant less spectacle at the end of their set. Previous tours they have headlined have ended with the explosion of confetti cannons or balloons dropping from the ceiling. All in all, they played a great, energetic set with a good deal of new music, so it would seem fans can certainly look forward to a new full-length album soon.
The guys of Hellogoodbye also came out upstairs around their merchandise table during Hanson’s set and were enjoying themselves by dancing up a storm with members of the crowd in that area. It was clear that they meant what they said in the interview. When in response to being asked how the tour was going they gave it an “A+,” saying it has been “real fun” and “top notch.”
Oh, and if you are wondering exactly how Hellogoodbye sounds like Tom Hanks in his younger years, you are not the only one. On their web site, www.hellogoodbye.net, in the Q&A section a fan named Jeanie asked just that. Kline’s response reads, “I’d say classic Tom Hanks (mid 80s) had a nice modest confidence and a very attractive charisma, coupled with undeniably likable roles, that is embodied musically by everything we do.”
So head over to the Hellogoodbye web site and get “When We First Met” for free and see exactly what classic Tom Hanks sounds like embodied musically. Also, catch Hellogoodbye in concert the next time they come around.
Categories: article · openers · tour
Tagged: tour, article, hellogoodbye
Brothers Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson walked from Belmont to the Vanderbilt bookstore barefoot Tuesday. The one-mile walk was part of their campaign to raise awareness of poverty and AIDS in Africa, and part of their overall college tour. At the bookstore, they played a quick acoustic set for a tightly packed crowd.
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Samford students swarmed Ben Brown on Tuesday, Oct. 26 to see Hanson host “The Walk” around campus. Along with TOMs shoes, Hanson has spent the last few years touring the country promoting action on behalf of those less fortunate around the world. This year, the band chose Samford as the Birmingham walk site on their “Use Your Sole” tour. After “The Walk,” the band performed a two-song set in Harry’s.
Following the concert, the Crimson had the opportunity to sit down with Hanson and ask them a few questions about what they do. Here’s what they had to say:
Crimson: How did you initially get involved with TOMs?
Taylor Hanson: We just started calling and we had a mutual friend who knew Blake Mycoskie (the founder of TOMs). We’re now good friends with him.
Crimson: What kind of work do you do with them?
Taylor: TOMs is one of the causes that we work with in our “Take the Walk” campaign.
Isaac Hanson: This cause has been a catalyst of inspiration for us.
Zac Hanson: It’s a good example of looking to the future, really. With TOMs, we are providing children with shoes. But we work with four other different causes under our campaign, too. We are working to drill water wells and build schools in Africa. We’re trying to help distribute antiretroviral drugs to people with AIDS and provide cell phones to people who don’t have other means of communication. They use the phones to stay in touch with their doctors.
Isaac: By using the cell phones, they don’t risk jeopardizing the doctor/patient relationships.
Zac: The patients need to have consistent contact with their doctors and this allows that.
Crimson: Why are you so passionate about these causes?
Isaac: For me, at least, it stemmed from personal experience. We had some friends who were donating cell phone technology to help people. It really inspired us. It helped us realize that the capacity to communicate and organize as a generation is greater now than ever before.
Zac: So many of the issues really are relatively small; they’re just compounded into something bigger. The first step is often the hardest. You have to look at each issue as an individual one to help people see that they can do something.
Taylor: Seeing ourselves and our peers in those rough situations brought a kind of catalyst. You meet people who are essentially you, almost, living in extreme poverty. We saw a real pathway to change after that.
Isaac: When you see the potential opportunities for change on a government or other level but it’s not happening, you wonder why. We realized we do have the capacity to fix these things.
Crimson: Tell us a little more about “The Walk.”
Taylor: “The Walk” is the gathering point. People pick one of five causes to walk for. Then we give $1 for each person who registers to walk. Each mile walked goes towards our “walk around the world.”
Zac: It really is around the world, too. And they’re not awareness walks.
Taylor: The walks are starting points to get others involved. It’s a kind of domino effect.
People learn about it and the issues it helps and they tell other people.
Zac: It’s many people doing little things to make big changes.
Isaac: I would never have thought there’d be this many walks. Other people have done so much. People all over the world are leading these things.
Zac: You can see that passion really opens doors.
Taylor: You know, the stats say that you can’t change things. But can’t just isn’t an option when you realize a whole continent is…
Isaac: … a giant graveyard.
Taylor: People are afraid to talk about things like HIV. Christians are afraid to talk about it. It’s a sensitive subject. But Jesus went out to work with the poor and the sick. He befriended and helped them. We’re called to do that. How can we not?
Hundreds jammed into the Vanderbilt Bookstore to catch a glimpse of pop band Hanson, who visited campus to promote their Use Your Soul Tour and fourth studio album, The Walk.
Brothers Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson led an estimated 200 Vanderbilt and Belmont students on a barefoot walk, which started at the Belmont University campus and ended at the Vanderbilt bookstore, in an effort to bring awareness to poverty and AIDS in Africa. For every mile walked, the band’s foundation donates a dollar to one of five organizations that help to provide shoes, clean drinking water, health care and education to Africans in need.
At their Oct. 27 bookstore appearance, Hanson performed one song and autographed their CD as well as their book, Take the Walk. Thanks to the band’s efforts, 28,000 miles have been logged during their U.S. tour thus far. Hanson played a full concert later that evening at the Wildhorse Saloon in Nashville.
For more information visit www.takethewalk.net/.
Now in their mid-to-late 20s, the boys in Hanson have not only left the bubblegum pop of ‘MMMBop’ behind — they’re dedicated to raising money for charities around the world.
Before every show on their current “Use Your Sole” tour, Taylor, Isaac and Zac lead fans on the “The Walk,” a barefoot, one-mile trek that raises money for AIDS, clean water and education charities, as well as providing shoes for the poor. The band donates $1 for every fan that participates in the walk, which is co-sponsored by TOMS Shoes. “We feel this walk is about setting the bar and we have the potential to make the greatest impact,” singer Taylor Hanson, 26, said at a recent walk at the University of Central Florida. “This walk is about the ability to reach out and be your own influencer.”
The trio has been working with TOMS, which donates a pair of shoes to African children for every pair it sells, since 2007 when they also released an album, ‘The Walk.’ In 2008, they released a coffee table book, ‘Take the Walk,’ which documented their efforts and included an EP of the same name.
Hanson is also set to release their as-yet-untitled eighth studio album in May, and are selling a five-song EP, ‘Stand Up, Stand Up,’ on their tour, which runs through Nov. 11.
1. Where’s the Love
2. Great Divide
3. Get up and Go
4. Georgia
5. Running Man
6. Runaway Run
7. Been there Before
8. World’s on Fire
9. Carry You There
10. Penny & Me
11. I Will Come To You
12. Use Me Up (Zac Solo)
13. Never Let Go (Taylor Solo)
14. Dream Girl
15. Waiting for This
16. Crazy Beautiful
17. Oh, Darlin
18. A Minute Without You
19. Can’t Stop
20. If Only
21. MMMBop
22. Lost Without Each Other
23. Watch Over Me
24. Gimme Some Lovin’
There’s little point in dancing around it: I like Hanson. Always have. I’ve also spent enough time listening to Slayer, Motorhead, Mayhem, Krisiun and the like to feel comfortable with my affinity for this trio of pop-friendly siblings.
Like keyboardist/singer Taylor Hanson, I wasn’t a Gilmore Girls watcher, but I read recently that one character on the show referred to Hanson as “the new Bee Gees.” Then it all made sense.
Like the brothers Gibb, the brothers Hanson were young stars. They’re also long on the kind of harmonies only siblings can create and rarely short on hooks. Asked about the Bee Gees, Taylor says, “what a heartbreaking reality to think they’re no longer making music together.
“We saw them perform one time as a band before Maurice (Gibb) passed away. I remember thinking it was earth-shattering. They just stood and sang. They weren’t doing anything more, but it was so powerful. I remember thinking, ‘This is something you’ve got to live up to. To get people to feel like that.’ “
Also, like the Bee Gees, Hanson has dealt with a certain cynical stigma. For the Bee Gees it was disco, for which they’ve been largely absolved since the reviled dance music has inspired a subsequent generation of indie rock. For Hanson, it was Mmmbop and early success as a teen pop band showered in squeals of its adoring (and mostly female) fans.
The comparisons to other teen idol acts were off from the outset. Unlike your typical boy band — a troublesome phrase often affixed to singing acts rather than bands — Hanson wrote and played their own songs. And to their credit, they’ve chosen not to run from their past. Mmmbop, a little silly but still infectious, remains a live staple, but it’s nestled alongside smarter and more complex pop songs featured on albums Underneath and The Walk. “We will probably always be, to a degree, misunderstood because we were successful so young,” Taylor says. “And it feels like a long time ago, but nothing about that song or that era feels dishonest.”
He points out that the band’s music has a 1970s feel, the result of “three white guys from the Midwest” — Taylor, guitarist Isaac and drummer Zac — listening to a lot of old R&B and soul growing up. “Three Dog Night, the Doobie Brothers, with all those harmonies, that’s where our center is. And I think, to a degree, we were also subconsciously children of Leon Russell, J.J. Cale, that Tulsa sound.”
The group has also clearly spent time with records by Big Star, the Cars and just about any other power-pop band worth its salt.
Hanson wouldn’t have found success were it not for the music. It wouldn’t have maintained its success were it not for an admirable business acumen. The brothers remain one of the fan-friendliest bands. Unlike too many teen idols, they’ve managed to maintain a contingency that wants to grow up with them.
“There’s a reason nobody wants their daughter to be a musician,” Taylor says. “That kind of early success, it’s built to fail. But I feel like we had a lot of good tools. Being a writer is an essential part for most musicians. If you’re not the creator, you’d better have a good relationship with reliable people you depend on. Otherwise, one day Diane Warren doesn’t have a good song. Then you’ve got a problem.
“We’ve also made a real effort to make it more than just releasing a record. We’re focused on developing a community around our music.”
The latest release is Stand Up Stand Up, an EP available at dates on the band’s current tour, which stops at House of Blues on Saturday. The band was something of a trailblazer in breaking with a major label and going it alone. Still, Taylor admits it makes its coin on the road. A new record isn’t due until next spring, so the EP gives the band something new to offer as well as an excuse to hit the road and strike up its fellowship with an adoring audience.
Sycophantic fervor — urbandictionary.com would likely refer to it as “fansondom” — makes the band an easy target. There’s lewd Hanson fan fiction and scads of TV punchlines at its expense, which seems base, easy and mean-spirited considering the brothers tend to come across as unfailingly friendly and inclined toward charity. Their crime, it seems, was hitting MTV’s TRL at just the right time. I very likely contributed, albeit in a small way, to a larger culture of Hanson ridicule. Then a friend who spent most of his time listening to Norwegian black metal told me he was impressed with songs that would eventually appear on Underneath (2004), which I quite liked.
My appreciation is more understated than the squealing set, but it’s honest. Hanson worked with Matthew Sweet and the Dust Brothers. Taylor has a side project, Tinted Windows, that includes members (or former members) of Fountains of Wayne, Cheap Trick and Smashing Pumpkins. Ben Kweller, another teen star done good, is a friend and fan. Their bona fides are sufficient for musicians, it’s a broader public that can’t get past one song that remains unconvinced.
But that’s fine. There are enough cynical bands, there are enough loud bands. I enjoy both. And I also like Hanson.
andrew.dansby@chron.com
HANSON
with Hellogoodbye
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
Where: House of Blues, 204 Caroline
Tickets: $27.50-$55; 888-402-5837 or www.hob.com/houston
