Hanson Day 2019: a Recap

Registration

To everyone’s surprise, registration opened before the event had even officially started, on Wednesday afternoon. I don’t know if that was planned, or if it was a last minute decision, but it was a good idea regardless. It’s obvious that more and more people are arriving to Tulsa earlier in the week, so it makes sense to try and register as many attendees as possible, as soon as possible. So by late afternoon on Wednesday I had my bracelet, my tickets and, most importantly, my EP. I’d lugged my trusted old MacBook Air and an external CD drive all the way across the Atlantic with the sole purpose of being able to listen to that EP straightaway so I headed back to my hotel room for a very exclusive Listening Party. (Check out this blog again soon for a full review of the EP.)

Storytellers

Setlist

This year’s Storytellers was effectively an acoustic show, centred around the Underneath album. It’s a golden combination for me, as I discovered the band through that particular album, and I love it when Hanson go acoustic - so much so that I that I keep voting for ‘acoustic’ as a BTTI theme, albeit with pitiful results. But give me the Hanson brothers with an acoustic guitar in their hands and I’m the happiest fan in the audience. 

My only slight criticism of the show is that there was very little storytelling. I would have liked to hear how those songs had been created, but on the other hand, as my friend Kasey pointed out, Hanson tend to mumble when they tell their stories, and unless you’re right at the front and adept at lip-reading, it’s often hard to make out what they’re actually saying. So maybe it was for the best and anyway, Hanson amply made up for it with a surprise performance of Isaac on the cello, the instrument that he has been learning for a while. That first public performance of “Underneath” on the cello will no doubt go down in fan history. Watch the clip below if you don’t believe me.

The Store

I got there at 9:00 AM, thinking that, as I had already registered and the queues wouldn’t have had a chance to build up, I’d be done in a couple of hours.

Four-and-a-half hours later and questioning all my recent life choices, I was finally setting foot in the store. Despite the fact that a preview of the new merch had been put up on the website, enabling people to choose whilst still in line, it had taken hours to get in, possibly through a combination of not enough staff picking orders at the back and fans not leaving the store quickly enough. Whatever the reasons, I felt that only through highly sophisticated brainwashing, a person of reasonable intelligence would give up almost five hours of vacation time to roast on a pavement in order to give Hanson more of her hard-earned cash. Make no mistake: the store visit is nothing but a Hanson tithe.

Karaoke

The Hanson Day ticket sale chaos back in February meant that I hadn’t managed to get a ticket for karaoke, but thanks to a friend on the lookout, a couple of tickets were found. I took the tickets with immense gratitude because missing karaoke would have meant being excluded from the first night of Hanson Day partying. I didn’t fancy prospect of ending up outside, possibly - shudder - stone sober, my face pressed against the Vanguard doors like a snotty-nosed orphan outside a bakery. 

Compared to 2017, Karaoke offered precious little Isaac hosting time. The best bit was a performance of “A Minute Without You” by a group of Australian fans, who were joined onstage by the Old Man himself (check out the clip below). Overall though, I felt that the night was a little flat and by the halfway point, a lot of people appeared to have left. A suggestion? Get Isaac to actually host the whole thing (hey Isaac: we know you’re backstage imbibing mid-price nightclub-level bourbon, so why not just come out and be drunk on stage?), and find a bigger venue so that everybody can attend.

Group Photos

The Hanson Day group picture always goes quicker than lightning, making the BTTI picture feel like a 15-minute long Meet & Greet in comparison. The line moved quickly - it’s a Hanson Fan Dogma that the only fast-moving line at Hanson Day is the line for Pictures - but as we were finally getting through the door, something went wrong and our group got merged with the one in front of us. Next thing I knew, my friend Kasey, who is not known for being a shrinking violet, was kicking off at Hanson, Hanson’s staff and the whole world, yelling ‘that is not our group!’. Unsure as to what to do, I stood there looking in turn at Kasey, who refused to budge, and Hanson, who were already lined up against the wall like convicts facing a firing squad, their faces barely disguising their increasing exasperation and waning patience.

Well, I thought to myself, amused and horrified in equal measure, we certainly managed to draw attention to ourselves. Eventually the impasse was broken and we joined the group. I didn’t fare too badly, standing next to a friend from my group, Pei-Yi, who was in turn standing next to Isaac. As Hanson's photographer Trevor lifted three fingers up in countdown, I felt a hand on my back, and realised it was Isaac’s, who had his arm over Pei-Yi and me. It’s a small detail, but very telling about these guys: even if group photos must be a pretty tedious affair, they still try to make the person at the far end of the group feel like they’re in a picture with Hanson and not with just a random group of people.

A group photo, minus Hanson

The Gallery

Since my last time in Tulsa, the Gallery is now housed inside an exhibition space at the back of Chimera. Despite having to line up in a dumpster-lined back alley, I liked the new gallery’s smaller, edgier feel - a much more appropriate setting for the works of an emerging artist.

That said, I wasn’t blown away by this year’s material: Zac is beginning to take the pop-art, mass produced thing a bit too far, as his paintings all look like they’ve been traced from photographs and then given the Zac treatment. The resulting pieces are nice to look at but I miss Zac’s original work of past years - like the one with the three knights from 2015, a signed print of which I have in my study. 

"Panic in the Streets" by Zac Hanson (signed print on canvas)

The most interesting insight into the artist’s mind was provided by three individual portraits of the brothers. Isaac appears pensive, as if the weight of the world is resting on his shoulders. Taylor looks older than his age, in an over-exaggerated version of his current bearded look. In his own self-portrait, however, Zac, looks very much like himself: clean shaven, sporting a headband and aviator sunglasses and with a knowing smirk on his lips - the smirk of the artist who has deliberately made himself look prettier than his brothers.

Credit to @iamhansonguy https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx0noEgHxHi/

This year’s photo prints selection was also somewhat disappointing, with most of the photos representing random subjects and landscapes rather than the brothers themselves. I see the reasoning behind it, as the photos were taken by Taylor and therefore he only featured in a couple of mirror shots; but, let’s face it: do you really want to pay $50 for the photo of a dentist’s surgery door, just because Taylor Hanson took it, when there are better much photographers out there? 

I still managed to drop $100 for a photo of Isaac (to complete my mostly-Isaac-centred wall in my study) and a self-portrait of Taylor for a friend, and as I loaded my currency card for the umpteenth time that week, I thought ruefully at how skilled Hanson have become in extracting money out of me.

Isaac Hanson looking a bit like Dean Martin

The VR Experience

The best part of visiting the gallery was the VR ‘experience’. I had to get into another endless line that felt like a million years, but it was worth it. I sat on a revolving stool on an elevated platform while a member of staff handed me a set of VR goggles (which my friend and I disinfected with her surgical grade anti-bacterial wipes: you really don’t want the sweat of dozens of people all over your face). After pressing play on the remote control, you were suddenly transported to the 3CG studio. The band started to play “Compromise”, the first track from the new EP, as, I, the virtual viewer, sat in the middle: Isaac to my left, Taylor right in front of me and Zac to my right. Swivelling to the left or to the right, I could see exactly what Isaac and Zac were doing, and right in front of me there was Taylor, who would often look right into the camera - giving me the illusion that he was singing right at me. But what I found even more bizarre was being in the studio, which, after years of watching Livestreams and ‘making of’ videos, by now feels like a really familiar place. Then, some thirty seconds before the end of the song, the goggles’ battery died on me. Oh well - it was fun while it lasted.

Edible Digital Pants

I was - literally - late to the (listening) party due to how long it had taken to get to the VR experience at the Gallery, so I missed the first two or three songs, but I still got my lunchbox with a CD, some candy and a rubber doughnut. The only really notable moment was the end when a vo-coded Bugs Bunny voice  said something like, ‘the party is over, please leave now’. In a nutshell, Hanson’s feelings by the end of Hanson Day-week.

String Theory

I was looking forward to seeing the show from the Mezzanine, as I’d been in the front and first few rows at the String Theory shows in Europe. Once I got over the terrifyingly steep descent to my seats - the Mezzanine at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center is high, high up - I enjoyed the infinitely superior sound and finally being able to see the whole orchestra even if the tradeoff is the emotional connection that you get from being closer.

If I had to find one point of criticism, it would be the lack of an a capella encore, which I had almost taken for granted as Hanson were playing in their hometown, to their families gathered in the front few rows. At first, the orchestra stayed put and it looked as if something was going to happen, but then the lights went up. My theory is that Taylor’s voice, which sounded a little strained at times during the concert, needed resting, and that perhaps an encore had been planned but had to be aborted last-minute.

String Theory, from the dizzy heights of the mezzanine

Oh, Snap! The Dance Party

Since my last Hanson Day in 2017, the dance party had been moved to Cain’s Ballroom, so a lot more people were able to attend and there was a lot more room to move around. When we arrived, two of Taylor’s kids were handing out Mardi Gras-style strings of beads and cardboard cutouts of Hanson’s heads. Of course, I picked an Isaac. Inside, there were photo booths to have your pictures and videos taken to be then shown on the multiple screens by the side of Taylor’s DJ booth. 

In terms of a Hanson ‘afterparty’, it was pretty standard, but the gimmicks were fun and I enjoyed photobombing people’s selfies with my “Isaac”. The playlist was a combination of Taylor’s usual choices and some fan choices and on that note, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sight - watched from the safety of the bleachers - of hundreds of Hanson fans doing the Cupid Shuffle. I’m nowhere near drunk enough for this, I thought as I watched in mesmerised horror.

Mardi Gras Isaac

State of the Band

Bullet points

By now, everybody will know what was announced at State of The Band - you can read the official news in one of the last newsletters. But the bottom line is, Hanson promised not one, but two albums. There must be a good stash of ready to publish songs if Hanson feel confident enough to make such a bold announcement, so I am feeling cautiously optimistic. And the nerd in me is very, very excited about the news that the HNET website will finally be redesigned. They’d better not lose my pins in the process.

The Members Only Concert

Setlist

I think most people will agree that this MOE show was the most polished in a long time. Maybe the band finally realised that they need to rehearse the new songs and it showed, resulting in an overall glitch-free show during which Hanson remembered most of the lyrics. Hurrah! Now let’s see if they can keep that streak going. 

It was a shame that the show was not livestreamed for the fans at home but the big round camera placed at the front of the stage was a telltale sign that they were filming for the upcoming documentary and I guess something had to give. Let’s hope that some footage will be soon shared on HNET, because all members deserve to be part of the experience, in one way or another.

The Hop Jam

Setlist

Not technically part of the Hanson Day events, Hanson’s headlining show at the Hop Jam was effectively the fourth show of the week.

I’m not a festival person and I would rather watch a band with my tribe than with a crowd of randoms. Shoot me but I don’t find the atmosphere at the Hop Jam all that inspiring: partly because by the time the headliners come on, revellers are a bit too drunk and a bit too sunbaked, and partly because a car park in the middle of downtown Tulsa isn’t the most picturesque setting for a concert.

But Hanson played a good show, with a predictable but upbeat setlist that pleased everybody. The best moment was the finale when all the other acts got on stage for a rendition of Kiss’s “Rock and Roll All Nite”. In all seriousness, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Taylor rocking it out quite like that before: maybe it was because his brother Mackenzie was onstage, or maybe because his buddies Phantom Planets were also there, but whatever the reason, he really, really rocked. 

(Video by Kristin Moore)

Summing Up

My third time at Hanson Day confirmed the feeling, obvious even from afar, that Hanson Day is getting bigger every year, with more events and more people attending. It’s better organised and events run more smoothly than in past years and other than the lines for the store, everything felt better managed. In terms of the actual events, four consecutive shows were an absolute treat and something that might not happen again at Hanson Day soon. What I didn’t like so much - but that’s something totally outside of Hanson’s control - is Mayfest’s move into the Brady District: this year there was a different vibe on the streets from Friday night and although I never really felt unsafe, I missed that ‘Hanson Camp’ feel of past years. I guess I’ve got so used to BTTI that now having ‘outsiders’ encroaching a Hanson event feels like an outright invasion.

Would I go back in 2020? I certainly would, if money was no object. But I’m already booked for BTTI 2020 and increasingly I am finding that BTTI wins over Hanson Day purely through the event’s size: 400 vs 1,000? It’s a no-brainer. And if Hanson meant it when they said there will be a World Tour in 2020, then that money would be better spent seeing a string of shows over here. 

But whether it’s next year or 2021 or whenever, I know that I’ll be back in Tulsa at some point. There’s something really special about that city, something that transcends its status of Hanson Graceland: it’s the warmth of its people, it’s that feel of a small town that has made itself comfortable in the middle of a big city. It’s the only airport in the world where Taylor Hanson's voice welcomes you through the loudspeakers when you arrive, and where the friendliest, most approachable security wave you through as you leave. Can I blame the scores of Hanson fans who have chosen to make a home there? Not one bit. 

So long Tulsa, I’ll be back, Hanson-soon.

Peek-a-Boo! - channelling my inner Isaac

You can already RSVP for Hanson Day 2020 on Hanson.net