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2010 PRESS COVERAGE
2009 INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS University Times North Carolina TINTED WINDOWS PRESS RELEASES
TINTED WINDOWS PRESS 2008 PRESS RELEASES 2008 INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS The
Daily News - Pittsburgh Lancaster
(pt 1) Lancaster
(pt 2) Lancaster
Sunday News The
Mirror News
2007 PRESS RELEASES
INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS Wall
Street Journal Asia
MUSIC SAMPLES
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HANSON
ANNOUNCE TOUR WITH HELLOGOODBYE, New EP STAND UP, STAND UP Available on Tour One-mile
barefoot Walks to fight poverty in Africa to continue Tulsa OK - July 2009 – Rock band HANSON announced today a tour with Hellogoodbye, kicking off in the trio’s hometown of Tulsa, OK on September 30th and winding down in San Diego, CA on November 8th. The tour will also feature Steel Train and Sherwood. Currently at work on their 5h Studio album due to be released in 2010, three time Grammy nominated singer-songwriters HANSON have become road veterans over the past ten plus years, garnering praise for their live shows as “the finest straight up rock band in America” -The Village Voice. On tour HANSON will also be unveiling a new EP, which previews new music from the band’s upcoming full-length album. The EP, titled “Stand Up, Stand Up”, features four special acoustic versions of new HANSON tracks plus one album cut, “Worlds on Fire”. Tracks from the EP plus additional new music will be premiered live throughout the fall tour. Says Taylor Hanson, “This tour will be a great chance to premier brand new music for our fans each night, and to share the stage with HelloGoodbye, in cities across the country”. Along with the tour and new EP, Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson will continue their one-mile barefoot Walks before each concert as a part of their TAKE THE WALK campaign in continued partnership with TOMS Shoes, who the band has helped to donate thousands of shoes to children in need since 2007. Through their campaign, HANSON has encouraged individuals to take action against poverty and disease by organizing grassroots one-mile walk events in cities around the world. Since 2008 they’ve already completed 1 lap (24,902 miles) around the globe and are several thousand into their second, raising funds with each mile walked. The next lap of their Walk Around The World will continue before each concert at venues and on college campuses, with tour mates HelloGoodbye taking part in the one-mile treks with HANSON and TOMS Shoes. HANSON’s dedication to this cause was chronicled in TAKE THE WALK, a book and EP released in November 2008 also available on the fall tour. The “Stand Up Stand Up” ep, is available on Hanson.net, itunes and on tour. For more info on the tour and Walk events check out www.UseYourSole.com. TOMS
SHOES PRESENTS TOUR
DATES:
*HANSON, Steel Train and
Sherwood only For press inquires on HANSON please contact: Ken Phillips Publicity Group, inc. (323) 845-9997 or kpgroup@yahoo.com as well as http://www.kenphillipsgroup.com/Phillips/hanson.htm for high res images
TAKE
THE WALK New book chronicles Hanson’s journey to Africa, challenges individuals to take action in fighting poverty and AIDS in Africa.
Inspired by the example of a small technology start up from their home town in Tulsa, OK who donated their technology to the cause, the band set out to take action with the tools they had and encourage others to do the same.
Hanson, with their voice and their fan base, started Take the Walk, a campaign in which the band walks barefoot with their fans for one-mile before each performance, in an effort to demonstrate that simple actions can make a real and lasting impact. Starting last fall the band partnered with shoe company TOMS Shoes, who donate a pair of shoes to a child in need for each pair purchased, and through 2007’s one-mile walks the band helped TOMS reach their goal of giving fifty thousand shoes to children in South Africa. “Take
The Walk is not about individuals becoming great in order to impact
the world, it is about discovering the greatness of individuals as
they use what they already have to touch the lives of the dying, sick
and poor. It is about normal people with careers, families, and responsibilities,
asking “How can what I already do and what I already am make
a difference in lives half a world away?”. It is about individuals
responding to the emergency of AIDS in Africa with action.” The initial campaign to Take The Walk in ’07 chronicled in the TAKE THE WALK book has continued to grow, and now enables fans and supporters around the world to host their own walks, with the band donating a dollar for each mile walked to one of the key causes featured in the TAKE THE WALK book. This is managed through the website www.takethewalk.net, with the goal to amass enough miles to walk ‘around the world’ (24,902 miles). Over 13 thousand miles have been walked in the last few months. For press inquires on HANSON please contact: Ken Phillips Publicity Group, inc. (323) 845-9997 or kpgroup@yahoo.com as well as http://www.kenphillipsgroup.com/Phillips/hanson.htm for high res images, etc.
WHAT THE PRESS ARE SAYING: “The Walk” “It’s been a while since the confection of “MMMBop” and the Hanson brothers have matured into a solid, hook-laden rock band. “The Walk,” their current release, is a soulful slice of pop and they have always delivered the goods as a live act.” – Los Angeles Times “”The Walk” feels like a natural progression… gratifyingly strong. B+” – Entertainment Weekly “An iconic American sound” – Jeff Vrabel, Billboard “…they can still make you swoon with the pure pop bliss of ‘Go’.” – People Magazine “The fans hanging on the balcony and on every word have grown with the band. Sure, the audience ate up “MMMBop,” but they were loyal enough to support Hanson wherever they decided to take the show, which was a long way from the “Middle of Nowhere.” – Chicago Sun-Times “… the band’s last two albums are full of catchy, guitar-driven pop that’s both musically accomplished and accessible to a wide audience. The brothers from Tulsa are excellent songwriters and musicians, and if you let memories of “MMMBop” keep you from finding that out, you’re only depriving yourself of some great music.” – Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly “…one of the sturdiest (and best) pop-rock bands around…” – Philadelphia Inquirer “Hanson might just be indie’s best-kept secret. Yeah, that’s right. Hanson is a genuine indie rock act – less in the sense of some contrived A&R “indie” sound, and more in the sense that, ever since 2004, Hanson have been producing their own music and releasing it on their own label 3CG records.” – Philadelphia Weekly “…as infectiously fun, as ever. They’d be a guilty pleasure if they weren’t so good.” – Jonathan Perry, Boston Globe “Killer hooks and harmonies” – Lauren Carter, Boston Herald Hanson's set represented
as strong and disciplined a performance as any of the so-called veteran
bands: U2, Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones. – Ink 19 Magazine. “…classic pop-rock like they don’t make much anymore” – Providence Journal “Hanson wasn’t really a “boy band…” There was no prefab element, no svengali, just three brothers playing in their garage. The brothers have matured from teen pinups into some hook-friendly pop/rock songmakers.” – Houston Chronicle “The trio delves into blue-eyed soul, funk/pop that gives Maroon 5 a run for the money” – Inland Valley Daily Bulletin “When I listen to Hanson, I find hope in pop music.” – AbsolutePunk.net “Hanson is in it for the long haul… and has blazed its own path in the industry.” – Mansfield News Journal “As always, with
Hanson, it’s the music that really satisfies. Taylor Hanson
remains an exuberant blue-eyed soul singer, and his older brother
Isaac drops big crunchy guitar chords liberally throughout “The
Walk.”” – No Depression Magazine
I Have
Hope –
“Ngi ne themba, ngi ne themba” chanted a group of 20 South African kids in their native isiZulu language on a July afternoon in 2006. When I first heard the rhythm and tone of this isiZulu phrase with the timbre and feel of those simple voices, I was awed. When I realized that this driving chant beneath our song “Great Divide” meant “I have hope,” I became wholly entranced. My brothers and I went to South Africa to better understand the issues facing many AIDS ravaged nations. As a part of our journey we wanted to capture the voices of this choir to help us remember and hold on to our experience. These were ordinary kids in a middle school music class, only this class was in the Soweto (South Western Township) outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. They sang of hope in an area far more accustomed to poverty and disease than afternoon field trips to sing with a few guys from the West. The corrugated metal hills of shanty towns in areas of Soweto are a microcosm of the horrific situation many African countries face and the fate of those who don’t observe it’s lessons—over 2 million AIDS deaths in Africa in 2005, 25 milllion AIDS orphans by 2010. Ghettos of millions facing the onslaught of a disease that is the most pernicious and virulent killer in history, a reminder of how our greatest enemies are those that destroy us quietly from the inside out. They can be pushed aside and forgotten, because they are silent.
Like many naïve westerners, we could have been overwhelmed as we passed a labyrinth of shacks, but not being new to the third world that was less distracting. Instead, as I watched out the window of our van and walked past market street vendors, my eyes were drawn to what seemed to be an aberration but proved to be common -- cell phone stands advertising the local cell phone providers perched in many of these poverty stricken settlements, where people struggle to survive. Ironically the existence of those cell phones were the very thing that brought us to Africa. We went to South Africa with a group of friends from our hometown who developed a technology utilizing cell phones to connect doctors and patients to one another. Driven by a passion to create change they were donating their technology to be used by a hospital in Soweto. The technology gives patients access to their doctors in countries or communities where the lack of basic infrastructure would otherwise deny medical services to patients.
As you look at the doctors running the perinatal HIV research unit at the hospital we visited in Soweto, they have every reason imaginable to despair. At the heart of South Africa’s HIV/AIDS situation, they are faced with indifference from their government and denial from the people they attempt to treat, but their drive is intoxicating. They are there to bring real solutions -- like 13 years of research that dropped the transmission of AIDS from pregnant mothers to their newborns from almost 40% to 2%, and like embracing a new cell phone technology that would expand their ability to serve patients in overwhelming circumstances. Looking at the work they did you can see that their pioneering actions are the only real thing that will turn the tide, not a single solution, but one of many solutions --a cell phone solution, a doctor’s solution, a lot of blood, sweat and tears solutions.
Completing our recording
session with the Soweto choir we were enveloped by the reality that
we were able to connect our two worlds through a few simple phrases
and melodies, a song, a few hopeful words. If only we could harness
that hope, it could be the greatest solution yet. www.hanson.net
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