Hanson

I just want to say, hi, Steve. It’s good to see you again, it’s been awhile. mean, the last time I saw you we were kind of having a party in the place that you know what I’m talking about—there’s only one Steve, trust me. When we decided to form our own label, it was definitely a big decision and definitely signing on to take hold of things in a different way than we ever had as a band. We’ve always been very involved in everything we do, but when you actually are the CEOs of a label, it’s still different no matter how involved you are. It’s definitely been a difficult process but one we feel is very rewarding because of the freedom from people who are not passionate about your project. Often times when you’re with a big company or a big label, you end up in a situation, at least in our case, because of a merger we ended up with a rap label that never would have signed us because we’re obviously not rap artists. (laughs) You just end up in these kinds of odd place where you’re not with people who are passionate about your project or have a clear understanding of here you should go with the project or how to promote it.

Steve this is so like you to ask more than one question. You’re such a hog. I mean, at that party, I think you drank all the booze, I didn’t get any. [laughs] I think probably the biggest issue with our last label was, well, we originally signed with a company called Mercury, which was a good home for us, we had a lot of champions, we had a people who really understood the project. They had a roster that at least somewhat matched what we were doing. What happened was once they were part of a huge music merger in ’99, the biggest music merger in history at the time. There were like 200 artists that were dropped from our label alone. It was just a bad situation where you had a lot of unrest in the staff, people not knowing if they had a job, and they didn’t want to make the hard decisions. It was this situation where no one was where they wanted to be.

A: Uh, well, Tanya, success at an early age could potentially be very dangerous for some. In some ways, it’s not undangerous for us. He’s certainly certifiable and I’m pretty sure I am, too—though that has nothing to do with success at a young age. [laughs] Anyway, being successful at an early point in our lives was really in a lot of ways a goal of ours. We were really ambitious as young kids and I don’t know exactly where that came from. I know that some of the ambitions that were genetic certainly played a role in our youth. I remember that when we got signed, Tay was upset because he was a teenager, he was thirteen. He always wanted to be signed before he was a teenager.

Tanya, that’s a hard question to answer, I would say. One of the things that’s interesting about being in a band with your brothers is that people who are not brothers say oh we’re like brothers, in a positive way. And then people that are brothers are like we’re not brothers, we don’t want to be brothers, we’re bandmates. It’s hard to separate yourself from your life situation because I think Hanson wouldn’t be what it is if we weren’t brothers. It just all depends on the people. You have brothers who can’t stand each other and you have brothers that get along. I think we have a lot of respect for each other and that’s made it work out over time. As for the worst fight, I remember in particular I think we were on a radio junket trip and there was something about what we were doing with the promotion of the record and I think you guys – full on fist fight – as we were in the car and then we parked and the door opened and it continued.

Hey, Amy. Thanks for your question. Part of the story of this whole record has been our experience in Africa and really recognizing our ability to make an impact on the issues in Africa with tangible actions, with our music, with our influences, with things around you. And that inspired us to start the walks that we do at all our shows, we do one mile barefoot walks and last Fall our goal was to help Tom’s Shoes, which is a really cool shoe company, give thousands of shoes to kids in Africa by selling shoes. They donate a pair every time you buy a pair of shoes.

Josh, I know you probably read People magazine and heard about the man who had a baby. But I didn’t have a baby. My wife had a baby [laughs] … It’s incredible. It’s life changing. But definitely something people should not be afraid of. I when we told people, they said. ‘You’re so young, it’s going to change things.' I don’t think it should be something that people are as afraid.”

Taylor: Karen, the solo project idea has come up lots of times. It probably comes up with lots of bands. I think especially because we all sing, we all write–people assume that there are going to be solo projects. I think we all feel like there will also be side projects, but at it’s core Hanson will also be alive and well.