Boy Band No Longer, Hanson Takes 'The Walk'

By Connect Mason Reporter Rachael Dickson, from her Anything and Everything blog
Video shot by Dickson, edited by Video Director Scott Williams

As I sat in the main hall of the State Theater, waiting to go up to interview Hanson, I grew more and more nervous. I hadn't ever interviewed a big celebrity group like Hanson before - the closest would probably be the politicians I've spoken to. And for a girl whose first CD ever (in fourth grade) was Hanson's major label debut, "Middle of Nowhere," getting to meet them was like, a dream come true.

• Please continue reading for more video footage of my encounter with the band.

To be fair, I haven't listened to Hanson's music in many years. The boy band craze started shortly after that and I got caught up in that. Then I discovered real music (classic and alternative rock are my faves) and never really looked back on what I listened to before *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys. The recent music Hanson has released sounds really good though, from what I've listened to. I feel like I should go back and listen to that more now.

Anyways, I'm waiting in the Theater watching the techies set up the stage, totally freaking out (Was I asking the right questions? Would they ask what I thought of their new cd I hadn't listened to yet? What if they were mean or uptight?). It didn't help matters when the tour manager, Tim, came to bring me to the interview, as I had to climb a dark twisty staircase to get to the top.

Tim walked down the hallway and pushed open a door with a sign saying "Hanson" on it. I followed behind.

I thought of a thousand different things that could happen during the interview, but the scene that presented itself before my eyes was definitely not one of them. Two of the Hanson brothers were standing on chairs in front of a window, wielding BB guns, shooting pellets at a trash bin across the parking lot, as another jumped in front to grin and say, "Absolutely nothing illegal is happening in here." As I set up the equipment, the whole band joked with me, introducing me to the backup musicians that walked through the door, most of whom were promptly led to the window to pull off a few rounds of their own at the much maligned trash bin.

It's fair to say that the ice was broken by then. I tried to get a picture of the brothers at play, but they requested that I not, as the BB guns were designed to look fairly real - one an AK-47 and another a handgun.

They shot off a few other rounds, but Taylor, who'd been standing off to the side chatting with me most of the time, got Zac and Isaac to sit down on the couch with him for the interview. The interview itself was great fun, very relaxed. The brothers were down to earth and talkative. It was easy to tell that they'd been doing this whole interview thing for quite a while. Every answer one brother gave me, another one would want to chime in right afterwards, leading to a great depth of discussion.

The conversation showed me how passionate the band is about what they do. We talked on a variety of different topics relating to their music, their independent music label 3CG Records, their families and the charity work they've been doing on the tour to promote concerns about the AIDS epidemic in Africa. I think they would have been willing to talk for an hour with me, but after 15 minutes, Tim came in to tell me to wrap it up. As I packed up and left, the brothers began testing out their megaphones in earnest, setting off the siren buttons repeatedly. It was time to take The Walk.

Before each of their shows on The Walk tour, Hanson has taken a mile-long walk with their fans, barefoot, to raise awareness of the problems in Africa. They encourage concert-goers to purchase a pair of shoes from Toms Shoes, an organization which donates a pair of shoes to children in Africa for every pair of shoes purchased. I didn't get a count of how many people were there for the walk, but it seemed like a good hundred or so. Some people took off their shoes, some didn't, but everyone crowded around the Hanson brothers, eager to talk to them. The group stopped at a playground at one point, where Taylor addressed the crowd from the top of a slide via megaphone. After ten minutes or so, the walk continued, winding through streets and around parking lots, the brothers and the police shepherding the fans through stoplights and trying to keep them on the sidewalks. I raced around with my camera trying to get every possible angle.