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16
Magazine Interview
5/1/00 (16 Magazine) |
The month of May marks a momentous occasion for fans who have waiting patiently for the return of their three favorite brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The long-awaited follow-up to Hanson's successful
Middle Of Nowhere is finally here.
This Time Around has 13 rockin' tracks including the title track that was released as the first single in March. 16 sat down with Isaac, Taylor, and Zac and had a lengthy chat about their return to the radio airwaves and of course the most important thing- when they'll be visiting your town!
What steps did you take when writing for this album?
Isaac: The process itself was not particularly different. You like to think that you get better as you do it more. But things are different. You write new songs, you come up with different chord ideas, you write in a different key.
Taylor: I think it's definitely taking the next step as far as just getting a little more rock and roll, and some of the chord structures are a little more complicated. But you hope you are continuing to improve your craft a little bit, as far as the writing goes. You're just taking a little different perspective on some of the songs.
What were the themes for these songs?
Taylor: Everything we think, see and experience would be presented in a song. So the experiences of being able to travel on the road and meet people and talk definitely changes your perspective and could change how you write. It might influence your song writing before you ever did that. And also just being on the road, a lot of these songs were written while we were traveling, while we were in a hotel with a little piano.
Isaac: I think it's more than just musically you change, you evolve naturally. I don't think it's so much directly related to travel or things like that though, I just think it's more as natural evolution goes on. As you experience more, as you do more- you just grow and you change,
that just a natural progression. That's something that happens.
Did you set out to try and change your sound?
Isaac: It wasn't a conscious effort at all.
Taylor: Over the three years it was just a natural evolution to rock. I think also a little bit with the last album our producer added his thing so it made it a little "poppier" than we actually were in that situation. If we had just been a band off doing our own thing the last record would have been rockier and we might be even more there by this point.
Isaac: I think there are flavors on the last record definitely that relate very closely to this current record, so in some ways it's just a natural evolution.
Zac: But to answer your question directly, no.
Your lyrics are more mature now. Are you ready for an older audience to attend your shows?
Isaac: I guess they already did attend the shows but not in large numbers.
Taylor: I don't think that there's really ready or not ready, we were ready before. It's just it's up to them you know. [This Album] is going to attract some different people who said before, "Oh, I don't like Hanson." Maybe not, but I think because it's changed a little bit, the people who thought Hanson's too pop, maybe will be turned on to it. You always hope to be able to turn on new fans, to turn somebody around. This record could sell zero copies or it could sell a trillion. You hope that you can grab the fans that were around before, cause they've grown up the same way we have, these last couple years, and then you hope you can get some other fans too.
Isaac: You just hope that you can keep the fans you had before and hopefully expand on them.
What are your favorite songs on the album?
Taylor: Well it was actually really hard for us to pick our favorite songs because we recorded 17 for the record.
Zac: And we wrote about 25.
Taylor: Yeah, so it was a hard process to narrow it down especially once we had recorded seventeen songs and then taken it down to thirteen. It was kinda like telling four of your kids they can't go to Disney World.
How did you decide This Time Around would be the first single?
Taylor: Well, "If Only" is more like the last stuff and we were kinda going, "Well this is more what people expect," whereas "This Time Around" is kinda like, this is the next thing, this is where the band's going.
Isaac: It was kind of a little bit of a hard decision.
Taylor: No one can fault you for not changing. "This Time Around" is where the band's going, so that only makes sense, to be like here's what we're about.
You collaborate with a lot of people on the new album. Who was the most exciting person to work with?
Taylor: There were kind of three main ones: Johnny Lang, John Popper, and Rose Stone and the choir. I think as far as Rose being there, well that was just amazing because she was the keyboardist for Sly and The Family Stone, she steps in and she just has this aura.
Isaac: She's a very cool person and the group, the choir that she put together makes you realize just how far you have to go as a singer.
Taylor: That was a very cool experience, and I think it really added to the album and to the sound overall. The collaborations were a lot of fun.
What are the plans for the next six months?
Isaac: Our rough schedule is to start touring in early July.
Do you have a message you want to share with your fans?
Taylor: That's a good question. We're just excited to see what they think of the music, we're excited to play shows and see them.
Isaac: We're excited to get out there and do what we do best.
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