The Oklahoma-based once “boy band,” now “young adult band,” Hanson, who energized audiences in Falls Church with two sold out shows of their original music at the State Theatre last year, is passing through the D.C. area again this week on its latest tour, performing at the 9:30 Club in the District Tuesday night, Oct. 20.
Taylor Hanson, the principal spokesman and leader of the group of real brothers that includes Isaac and Zac, contacted the News-Press for yet another exclusive interview this week, eager to update the group’s fans in this area of their new work and their on-going efforts to bring relief to impoverished and underserved people in Africa. The group’s recent-years practice of leading fans barefooted on a one-mile walk the afternoon of a show is continuing. This Tuesday, the walk will commence from the American University campus.
“It’s part of our ‘Walk Around the World’ tour designed to focus attention on the potential that our fans have for helping the underprivileged people of the world,” Taylor Hanson said. The “tour” has already passed its goal of walking 25,000 miles, and is 9,000 miles into its second “lap,” he said. Proceeds associated with the effort go to helping provide clean water, schools, hospital services for victims of the HIV virus, shoes and improved doctor-patient communication in southern Africa.
The band-songwriters’ latest tour began in their hometown of Tulsa on Sept. 30 and concludes Nov. 8 in San Diego. During the tour, leading up to the release of a new full-length album, the group is testing some of the new songs, and has released an EP sampling including a four acoustic versions of new tracks and one album cut, “Worlds on Fire.” Taylor Hanson told the News-Press he considers that song a “call to action” for the group’s fans.
“We continue to be blown away by the people who have been our fans for the 12 years since we premiered ‘Mmmmbop,” Taylor Hanson, now age 25, said. “Now this tour represents something of a transition, of a crossing of a line in the long-term survival of our group.” He said that the trio is in it “for the long haul,” and that his participation with a band called Tinted Windows was a happy diversion for him, but did not signal a move away from the unique and original work with his siblings.
Hanson is a three-time Grammy nominated singer-songwriter group that writes all the music it performs, and was hailed by the Village Voice as “the finest straight up rock band in America.”
On its current tour, the band is joined at its shows by HelloGoodbye, Steel Train and Sherwood.
