Everything has changed. For the This Time Around tour, we skipped work to the ire of our bosses and the detriment of our bank accounts and didn’t care. No amount of money was too great. No distance was too far. No arrival time too early. No backstage door sacred.
The five of us—me and the weird, excellent, beautiful gals I have shared all of this with—live hundreds of miles apart now, our grownup lives having wound us to college and back, to Boston, to the suburbs, to New York City, to a small town in Vermont, to cramped schedules and boyfriends and money better spent on rent, tuition, 401ks, and groceries, than Hanson. Don’t get me wrong. Not being there is still not an option. But we are suddenly bending that rule. Four completely necessary Hanson shows, for this tour, turned into two. For Corinne, who quietly declined this trip to attend a wedding in Chicago with her boyfriend, it’s one. We’re grownups. It happened when we weren’t looking.
That sentiment weighed the heaviest when we considered going to the show in Philadelphia, to the notoriously small, quickly sold-out show that was a mere two-hour drive from the Maryland venue where we saw Hanson the night before. Three years ago, the temptation, even without tickets, would have been unbearable. We would have gone. We would have been the first ones there at the box office in the morning. We would have found tickets, or snuck in, or done something illegal. Not being there would not have been an option. In 2003, for the new Hanson, and the new us, it took two phone calls and a quick perusal of our schedules to decide that Philly was a no-go, an impossible, headache-filled hassle that would have put me in Manhattan and Stefanie in Boston too late for work on Monday, and too tired for good sense. The show in Philadelphia starts in one hour, and we are not there.
Showing Up is Half the Battle
Baltimore, on the other hand, was reasonable. Baltimore is an eight-hour jaunt down route 95, an easy trip if you make yourself forget about the George Washington Bridge. For our last eastern seaboard romp—the Philadelphia show on the This Time Around Tour, in Amanda’s dying Ford Escort, we made it in eight hours all right, but we wrecked the breaks and spent hours in a New Jersey Turnpike garage with nothing but David Foster Wallace, Smart Food, and rub-on tattoos for amusement. At the time, we thought it was adventurous and romantic—worthy of the boys we did it for. Now, the thought of it made us want to hurl. This time, the car is still green, but it’s an air-conditioned Civic with CD player. We all packed granola bars, just in case.
Funny thing about Hanson concerts these days: They never seem to be where they really are. We never got to Baltimore. I don’t know how far we were from Baltimore. I don’t know what Baltimore looks like, or understand the characteristic picks of its skyline. Yahoo! Maps, Ticketmaster, and Hanson pointed us to an office park called Towson, Maryland. We found Hanson, the teenies, and the concert there, so I guess we did it right.
Pulling into the parking lot of a slouchy Days Inn, the one with the sign out front that read, "Guests Wanted: Apply Within," it was hard to push one thought out of my head: You’d think, at some point, we’d get sick of being this uncool.
But another feeling crept in, one that felt so foreign, it was hard to identify at first: We were going to see a Hanson concert. Like, our very own yummy Hanson with their bright melodies and beautiful-stupid lyrics and badass clothes and pretty yellow hair. We kept saying it out loud, savoring the shock.
The Sterling Hanson Moment That Wasn’t
Fashionably Late is the new name of our very new game. You just don’t show up at a concert at 5:00. Unless you want to wait in line dehydrating for three hours, only to be let into the venue to stand, dehydrating, because you’re underage, for another hour waiting for the band. So we had dinner and perused magazines at Barnes & Noble. Three years ago, this would have seemed ludicrous and wrong to us. Then, if Hanson was in town, we were on the prowl for them, no matter the hour or the level of embarrassment. One glimpse, no matter how mundane, was worth hanging out for. Do we still want to see them? Sure. The Real Hanson, as opposed to our warped, imaginary online Hanson, is rare and exotic, especially these days, and still worth the tangy thrill, even if we’re less inclined to suffer for it.
We were last in the line, which still wound halfway around the block at 7:55, dreading the inevitable push-and-shove on the inside of the general admission Recher Theater. And then I swear to you, the air changed. I felt it the way tigers sense their prey lurking in the weeds:
Hansons are afoot.
I just started walking. Not like we’d compromise our prime spot in that line. And there they were. Just like I knew they would be. Chatting with a few fans by the busses while everyone else filed neatly into the theater and had their pocketbooks felt up by security. Ike was there for one second before retreating into the theater. Taylor and Zac stayed for a bit, chatted, signed things.
Then, without exchanging a word, we made a decision. We decided to do nothing. After all, we were stuck, the victims of our own oldschool Hanson precaution. In our minds, this is still that other Hanson. The No Pictures, No Autographs Hanson that was selling out Red Rocks in seventeen minutes. We left our cameras in the car, our CD jackets back at the hotel. The realization was instant, and breathtaking in its obviousness: We had nothing purposeful to offer them, nothing to add to their lives, and nothing to take back for ours. We had nothing to sign, nothing to say, and nothing to do but gawk. So we did.
For the first time, they seemed small. Even Zac, who was such a hulk three years ago, has thinned out to the point that he seems deeply normal-sized, just a very cute teenaged boy in an ironic t-shirt (Lettuce Entertain You) with a nice smile and shy eyes. Ever the superstar, even when he’s slumming around in a t-shirt and Chucks, Taylor is still marvelous looking up close, all heart-stopping blue eyes and silky tresses, even if we can see the roots now, a good half-inch, near the part at the top of his head. I think the girl in front of me asked him for a tissue, eliciting a delightfully confused raised eyebrow ("What? No. I don’t live around here." Like, perhaps if he did live around here, he could maybe find her one somewhere.) and a query about whether she was being sarcastic. When she said no, I realized our decision was a good one.
I said to Meg, who is the oldest and best fan among us, and has never met them, reach over and shake his hand. Say hi. He won’t care, and he won’t think you’re weird. She shook her head no. Once upon a time, all we wanted was the opportunity. The aligning of planets and stars and schedules so that we had a chance to exchange a word with them. And it happened. And we smiled, and walked away.
The Music Lives
That’s what Taylor had written, in red sharpie this time, in a much more practiced hand than on the last tour, across his chest. It was hard to disagree.
Hanson has grown. They have grown in every which way. They have busted out and up and over like prickly weeds overtaking a garden full of boring peonies and pansies. They are huge on that stage. The transformation is total, and overwhelming. They had to shed a record company, three background musicians, all of their hair and half of their instruments to do it. But it’s as though they are finally saying to us what they wanted to say to Island/Def Jam all those years: Less is more. They are the most charming, most deeply accomplished, most personal Hanson they have ever been. It takes about three bars of music to realize this, to feel the thump of Zac’s abbreviated kit rattle in your belly in ways that it was never allowed to three years ago.
They opened with "Strong Enough to Break," which shines thanks to a newly added bridge section that tosses it firmly over the fence from second-rate song to first. The harmonies are pitch-perfect. That’s no surprise. It’s what they do with the stuff in their hands that’s remarkable. Somehow, hidden behind three other musicians in their live shows, and 40 tracks of filler trash in the studio, Hanson became great musicians. They play everything—guitars, pianos, tambourines, maraca balls—with a gutsy, full-throttle virtuosity that we’ve never seen from them, even in their best and most stripped-back moments. Of particular note is Taylor’s piano playing, which swerves liberally here between crashily percussive and delicately precise.
Even "River," that jaunty, boring little Three Car Garage holdover, seemed weighty and infused with new meaning in the hands of an older, wiser Hanson. Ike himself couldn’t help howling a huge, ecstatic note on the outro, as if confirming that everything, even the old numbers, can shift for the better.
"Runaway Run" is a new song too, thanks to something that Hanson never had the opportunity to use amidst the shrieks of their fans, and the megawatt amplification that trailed them like a nagging shadow through their "Mmmbop" days: Quiet. For the first time, Hanson has adopted an oft-uttered, but seldom practiced musical maxim: Mics are not so you can sing loud. They’re so the audience can hear you when you sing softly. They use it to maximum effect throughout, from the whisper-quiet intro here, to the new “Mmmbop,” played as an encore, for which Zac has proudly reclaimed a distinct, if gentle hip-hop sensibility.
Not everything went so smoothly. I didn’t want to admit it, and you can thank the adamancy of my good company for the following, but it needs to be said: "Razorblade" sucked. Part of the problem is that the song kinda sucks. Another part of the problem is that Hanson gets way too excited when they play it. We appreciate your passion, boys. We really do. That passion gives the song a fun, cliffhanger edge, but Hanson’s not at a point in their careers where they can hit bum notes in the name of cool, a la Ben Folds Five. I couldn’t see very well, and at one point, based solely on the sound, I honestly thought Taylor had shoved the piano off the stage.
Ike had his awkward moment too. It came in the form of "Sorry for Being Me," a weepy ballad, surprise surprise, about "self loathing." We love that Hanson’s music has become more personal, and more honest with the passing of years, but you couldn’t help feel that this ditty was a colossal overshare on Ike’s part. When he got to the chorus, and the "sorry for being me" lyric, the crowd let out a collective feminine howl of pity. It was awful and hysterical, hearing the boy confirm all the things we assume about him and the apparent tragedy of his love life. The song is nice enough, but it’s hard to know what to do when it’s over. Like, if we applaud, he’ll write more of this stuff. When Ike puts his mind and his able singing voice to better use, however, like rocking out, the results are stunning. For a cover of Little Richard’s "Rip it Up," Ike handled vocal duties all his own, and he tore it up. No one, not even the scowling parental units gathered, for moral support no doubt, at the back of the house, could keep still. That number also provided the token audience participation moment of the show, where the band led the audience in various clapping sequences. Leave it to Zac, of course, to tear his brothers’ attempts at serious discourse to shreds.
At some point, our little clapping lesson started to get out of hand. It wasn’t obvious. Just a funny little tension lurking under the surface as Taylor firmly instructed, "Here’s what we want you to do next…." I turned to Amanda at that exact moment, and I said, "Do you sense that this is getting sexual all of a sudden?" Before I had time to turn my head back to the stage, out of Zac’s mouth flies, "We want you take of all your clothes!" Of course, Ike and Taylor dove in with, "No! Don’t!," because they know us too well. But it’s a good example of how even their stage banter is becoming more natural. Later in the evening, when some audience members shrieked “Where’s the Love?,” whether it was a rhetorical question or a song request, Zac was quick to chime "Right here!" And thank God. I may have taken years for Hanson to grow a sense of self-awareness, but we’re glad someone else finally gets that tired old joke.
Taylor, of course, owned most of the breathtaking musical moments. When he took the stage for a solo version of "Crazy/Beautiful," he also took most of the room’s oxygen with him, leaving the crowd pin-drop silent, and vaguely stunned. Between the strength of the song, with its soaring, icy-sharp melody and cranky lyrics, the plaintive echo of his voice, and the impressive ease of his piano playing, it certainly cements Taylor’s place as Hanson’s symbolic and musical ringleader. Although he promised this version is "really different" from the album version, this one is glittery-formidable all on its own. Likewise impressive is the haunting "When You’re Gone," which sports some of Hanson’s most stunning lyrics to date. We’re sure we weren’t the only ones scraping our jaws off the floor as Taylor sang, voice flooded with emotion, "My forehead is still bleeding / from the thorns I used to wear." You won’t need liner notes, however, to decipher the song’s ringing sadness.
Other new songs that we heard for the first time in their entirety include the awesome "Hey," the cagey, strutting kiss-off to the silly California girl who wants yachts and Crystal on Taylor’s dime. With references to "Beverly heights," and "Cadillac blues," and punctuated with a handful of sassy, soaring high harmonies, it is the sort of confident stuff we knew was lurking beyond Hanson’s sticky-sweet musical adolescence.
The Family Comes Home
The family is back too. We counted heads, and spotted at least six Hansons in the building, offstage and on, all of them looking older, and happy. Once shielded from the teeming masses of us by babysitters and other handlers, you’ll now find the lovely Jessica Hanson selling t-shirts and CDs in the lobby, a shy, knowing grin on her face. Walker (Please. Anywhere outside of this review, he is Mr. Hanson.) is at his usual post with his camera, building the Hanson Video Collection, looking a stone or two lighter and distinctly more war-weary than three years ago, although his smile is ever-present too. There is something heartening about their presence, for us as well as the band. There is a safety there, a sense that Hanson is enveloped once again in the suffocating bearhug of their family, and because we happen to be in the building, so are we.
It’s a good feeling, the sense of things shifting and not shifting further away from the center of what Hanson was in April, 1997, and yet, it’s remarkably the same too. The music is still good. The concerts are still exciting. And we are still here. We’re busier, and older, more broke, more cynical, and we’re still here. On a Saturday night in Towson, Maryland, Hanson showed us that: If we show up, they will too.
It came at the very end of the night, as we tried to pry the auto-grins off our faces, ambling back to the car. We peeked at the busses, just to see if Hanson was out there again, still signing stuff for our crazy obsessed selves. They weren’t, but there was a crowd assembled, waiting for something the way we Hanson fans always wait for something, I’m still not sure what. Staring at the bus window, it caught my attention immediately, although I’m not sure any else saw. I had to say it out loud, twice, just to make sure the image computed properly, that my eyes weren’t playing tricks. The shade was drawn, but clearly visible behind it was Taylor, his face obscured, cradling a baby in his arms. Rocking it back and forth as its chubby little arms and legs flailed into the air. It is no act of fanfiction or delusion or conspiracy, I will tell you that. Hanson’s lives are Hanson’s lives, and ours are ours. And growing up, and out, and over, seemed suddenly, and inexplicably, not so bad at all.
