Where Did It Start

Dare we try and wade through this muddy water
Fill this ocean of need, bottle by bottle
Hollowed we stand and watch this parade
Saturday morning down to the graves
Where Did It Start, Hanson


It all began when I was in second grade. My first concert was a PTA-sponsored event at my elementary school in the middle of the afternoon. The whole school filed in to the huge round gym. Because we were second graders, we had to sit on the floor, while the eighth graders sat on the bleachers. Isaac, Taylor, and Zac Hanson were announced and the music began. I cannot tell you what songs they played (though I could probably guess), but I can say that by the time I left the concert, I had this incredible feeling of freedom and exhilaration flowing through me. I was humming songs all the way back to the classroom, even though I was not sure what I was humming. My love for music and Hanson began that day in second grade.
A year and a half later, MMMBop was released and teenage girls everywhere went crazy. TeenBop and other magazine covers were plastered with pictures of the three blond boys that "looked like girls." I was not immune to the hype and soon began to save my allowance to buy these magazines and cover my bedroom walls with photos of the boys that originally turned me on to music. Their would be Hanson t-shirts in J.C. Penney and my sister and I would beg for a shirt every time we passed them. We asked for Hanson CDs and videos and clothing for Christmas and stood in line for hours for tickets to one of their shows. Because of the popularity of this band in 1997-1998, I knew that I was not the only one that "really liked Hanson."
After the hype from MMMBop and the Middle of Nowhere album, Hanson took a couple years and released This Time Around in 2000. They were still wildly popular and I think that I owned this CD at one point but it seemed to disappear at some point.
After this album, Hanson "took a few years off" to write a third studio album. What was really happening during this time was a music merger and Hanson, a pop group, came to be under a rap label. Needless to say, this did not go over smoothly. Because the band was trying to put out a third studio album, they continued to write songs and present them to their A&R guy, but this particular executive thought that Hanson did not have a hit song and sent them back to the drawing board. The band ended up writing over 80 songs during the time they spent making this record. It took nearly four years, leaving their label, creating their own label (3CG Records), and filming the whole thing to make their third studio album, Underneath. The footage that was filmed during this process was made into a documentary called Strong Enough To Break, which highlighted the issues with the music industry today and the struggles that artists are facing.
Hanson spent most of 2004-2005 touring and in the summer of 2007 released their fourth studio album, The Walk.
While Hanson was making music and fighting the "man," I was fighting the hardships of being an awkward, intelligent child and later teenager in Oklahoma at a small school. I was regularly bullied for various reasons, one of them being that I was a Hanson fan. (My interest in Hanson slowly fizzed away. I still listened to their music every once in a while though.) In high school, I went through various phases. The rebellious and "dress in black" phase. (For the attention and shock value if I remember correctly). The trying-to-be-popular-by-dating-a-high-school-musician phase. (It did not work out...I had/have a thing for drummers, and this guy was NOT a drummer.) And finally I ended high school with the get-me-the-f@#$-outta-here phase. (Oklahoma... enough said.) I was smart and did well as far as grades and ACT scores were concerned but not well enough to get a huge amount of money thrown at me for the university of my choice. I decided that if I was going to be forced to stay in state, I would go to the best university in the state: the University of Tulsa. My freshman year was uneventful and I did not make a huge amount of friends but I survived it.
The summer before my sophomore year is when things really started to get interesting. I was shopping in a thrift store in my hometown for dishes or curtains for my apartment, and I came across a CD of independent recordings of Hanson from before 1997. I bought it for $4.99 and immediately stuck it in the CD player as soon as I got in the car. A wave of familiarity ran over me as soon as I heard it. I decided to look up what Hanson had been up to since I had last heard about them and found the official website online. I was looking around and clicked on the Tours/Events tab. There it was... Hanson was starting a new tour to promote their new album The Walk, and they were to play a show on October 3rd at the Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa. I called up a friend and told her about the show. She was excited and we decided to go. I bought our tickets and patiently waited as school started and new events started to unfold. Little did I know then that these events would end up shaping my life choices over the nest year and give me new direction, meaning, and passion for my life.

(This may seem like it is a biography for the band Hanson, but I promise the part where they change my whole life is coming soon. It is first necessary to start at the beginning, so I needed to give some background. Please keep reading.)