Chris Sligh and Hanson

[sweetgibberish]

Being a major Hanson fan, I was surprised to find in Chris Sligh's recent blog entries some pretty cool info, thought you guy's might like to see. Hanson had their annual Fool's Banquet and Chris Sligh (from AI '07) was one of the people invited. He posted a blog all about it here (http://frommymindtoyoureyes.blogspot.com/)


Here's a picture from the event
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/3491/nzrigijz3.jpg
Top row: Keaton Simons, Kai from Locksley, Andrew Ripp, Taylor, Chris Sligh, Zac, Jesse from Locksley, Stephen Kellogg, Pat McGee
Bottom: Kate Voegele, Jason Mraz (♥), Isaac

Everyone here really should check out Hanson (http://www.hanson.net). They along with Tom's shoes (http://www.tomsshoes.com/) have been doing some really awesome Aids awareness work.

[awau]

My sister is a die hard Hanson fan and I wanted to send her the info from the blog but I couldn't find the entry for it.

Do you have what Chris posted by chance?

Thanks!

[sweetgibberish]

Here ya go! ;)

February 4, 2008

Every year, the Hanson guys bring out several songwriters varying from popular indie artists to established mainstream artists to up and comers. For 5 days, they split the singers up into groups of 2 or 3 and they write songs together. The songs then can go on the artists' records or can be used to pitch directly to film/tv or can be pitched to other artists. It's a very cool concept that happens to work extremely well.

I got to Tulsa on Wednesday night. Because of my schedule I could only work out going for 2 full days of the 6 (they started on Monday). I got picked up by Hanson's assistant Rebecca. We had a nice trip out into "the boonies" as Rebecca referred to it, talking about how she got a ticket driving out there the night before. We finally got to the house/studio and the guys were working on recording the songs they wrote that day. Hanson has a 2 studio recording complex that is part of a ranch-style house. They have room A and room B. Room A is an actual studio, Room B is really part of the house, but they have converted in nicely into a very nice live room.

When I walked in, the studios were in a frenzy because both of their engineers had falled down with the flu. So, no pros recording, and some of the audio setups within Pro Tools are pretty complex, so everyone was doing acoustic demos. The songs that I heard seem to lend themselves to acoustic demos anyway. I walked into studio B where Jason Mraz and Pat McGee were working on recording 2 songs they wrote that day. Jason sat down and played and sang the song in one take. It was amazing. The song was great and Jason sang every freaking note in tune. Amazing. Then Pat sang some bgv's and threw down another guitar part.

Several other songs were recorded, but the first night was a blur. I was just meeting everyone and trying to process everyone's name. Kate Voegel who is an artist on myspace records was there on Wednesday but left Thursday morning bright and early, so my time meeting her was short-lived. People kept on working until about 1am when I finally headed up to my bedroom and got some sleep.

I woke up the next morning about 10am and went down, got some breakfast and started working on a couple of ideas I had on my own (everyone else was either not up yet or eating breakfast. Then they broke us up into groups and I was put with Pat McGee and a guy named Kai Kennedy from a band called Locksley. I'll give more info on everybody later. We got to working and worked through 3-4 different ideas before settling on a Counting Crows-like alt-country song. It took us a long time to perfect it, but it turned out very good. It's called "Wait for Me"...the basic premise is a guy who's going out on the road and he and his woman are struggling in their relationship, so as he leaves to hit the road, he says, "I wouldn't wait for me...I'm done making promises I know I can't keep...I wouldn't wait for me...but for once I'm hoping that you don't agree." It was a nice little lyrical turnaround.

When we finished the song, we headed over to the studio,but someone was already working on their song, so I went over to Studio A where Isaac Hanson, Jason Mraz and a guy named Zac Malloy were recording the song they wrote. It was a song called "The Story of Your Life"...cheesy title (but I don't know that another title would work) but seriously one of the most genius songs I've heard in a long time.

This is a little side note...I've never really bought into the whole idea that certain great songwriters are on higher level than other great songwriters. I think once you reach a certain level as a songwriter, it's tough to be consistently better...you know, you might throw out the occasional "incredible" song - we all do at some point - but it's touch to be consistently better. Well, with Jason Mraz I saw my first instance of a writer being incredibly greater than me on a consistent basis. It's so fluid for him. Not to take away from the guys writing with him because Isaac and Zac are incredible in their own right, but I heard 5 songs that he wrote and all of them were "next level" songs, especially from a lyrical standpoint. Incredible.

Another side note is this: people are stupid who diss the Hansons. Seriously these guys are some of the smartest, savviest, most incredible musicians I've met. They are serious about their craft and they have serious skills. Don't diss Hanson.

Anyway, we laid down our song. Pat played some acoustic guitar and tambourine, Kai played electric and bass and Zac Hanson played drums. And then I sang the song. It ended up really cool.

We all hung out talking and listening to each other's songs...it was this great communal atmosphere of just everyone cheering each other on.

Finally, about 1:30am I went to bed. I again woke up about 10 and ate some breakfast. Apparently several people were up till 4:30 so we didn't get started until about noon. This day, I got to write with Isaac Hanson and Jesse Laz-Hirsch, the lead singer of the band Locksley (Kai was the guitar player for the band). Isaac had taken Jason to the airport and crashed back at his house, so he was a bit late, so Jesse and I started working on a song. It started off with me just playing a wurly and it slowly morphed into a Justin Timberlake-type song. We wrote the song really quickly. By the time Isaac got there, the song was basically complete, as far as form and basic lyric content. So, we headed down to record.

I played a wurly loop and then Isaac went over and recorded a drum loop with live drums. We basically found a couple of measures that worked for the loop and them looped it over and over again. Jesse had a very clear vision of where he wanted the song to go, so he kind of drove the boat on the production side of things. I laid down a guide vocal. After that, we began working on recording the instruments. I wasn't feeling well - I think everyone out there was fighting off the flu - so I took about an hour nap. When I woke up I felt much better and went back down to the studio where the song was almost done. It sounded great! Isaac did some cool guitar stuff and Jesse had layered acoustic and bass and piano on top of the track, as well as some bgv's. To end up, I laid down the final vocal as well as some bgv's. It really turned out cool...just a vibey, jammy track that starts off kind of Timberlake-y but ends up kind of funky pop/rock.

After we finished I again went to check out other guy's stuff. Zac Mallow, Taylor Hanson and Andrew Finn wrote this great song that was somewhere between Gavin DeGraw (it's a rhodes-based song) and Marc Broussard. They worked on that for a long while and it sounded great! In the other studio, Pat was working on the song he wrote with Stephen Kellogg and Keaton Simons. Another great song...very Counting Crows-like. Very cool.

While they were working on that, I went down to one of the writer's room and heard Zac Hanson messing around. I went in and we just jammed for a little bit and then really started writing a song. We took this idea of a train ride being a metaphor for love and wrote this beautiful, hooky song based on the idea. It ended up being my favorite song from the week. We finished the song about 12:45am and waited a while to see if we could record it. Finally at 1:30, I decided that sleep was vital, and Zac said he would get some of the guys to help him record the song the next day.

I woke up at 4:30am to head to the airport. Stephen Kellogg and Pat both had 7am flights. The studio is about 40 minutes from the airport, so it wouldn't make sense for someone to have to drive me separate for a flight an hour and a half later. So, I just bit the bullet and got to the airport 3 hours before my flight left. Unfortunately Southwest didn't open up till 7, so I had a good hour and a half to waste, so I went up and got some Starbucks (venti White Chocolate mocha). And I listened to music for an hour and a half...it was nice.

I am in the midst of creating a reality tv show that I'll be pitching to the networks very soon. So, I spent some time when I got to Kansas City (a 2 hour layover) to really work out some of the finer points of the treatment, how the competition will work, how the shows work, etc. I can't give more details right now just because it is in development, but I've shown the idea to several people in the industry and everyone thinks that it's a viable idea that could get picked up pretty easily, with the right people attached. So, we'll see.

[awau]

Awesome!! Thank you so much!