Hanson WPST Music Lounge
Katie 
Yesterday Hanson performed for contest winners at WPST in Princeton, NJ. My friend Kim won her way in and invited me as her guest! We were expecting there to be 30 winners (therefore 30-60 people) but they only had 10 winners and a guest each for 20 people. Except that 3 winners didn’t even show up so there was only 14 of us! (And a couple extras got added in just before Hanson performed)
In usual Hanson fashion, they were late. We were put in a conference room for a bit and we assumed this meant that they only had one entrance to the station and they didn’t want us in the lobby when Hanson arrived. Then we were moved into the “lounge” which was just a small room with 3 rows of chairs (In the random draw, Kim drew 2nd row for our seats) and shortly after Hanson came in the room.
They did 4 songs – Thinking Bout Something, These Walls, Where’s The Love and Give a Little. Before These Walls, they were talking about jughandles. For those of you who don’t know, in New Jersey (I am not sure if it is all or just some areas) you can’t make left turns instead you turn right to go left. I believe it is done because it is safer and causes less accidents this way but if you are not used to this concept it can be VERY confusing. (Especially if your GPS says that the location is on the left and you are not prepared by being in the right lane!) Taylor ended up singing a bit about jughandles in the song, which led to him completely messing up the song a couple of times, but it was so funny no one seemed to mind.
Taylor also explained that he got a new, smaller keyboard instead of his professional best recording interface and keyboard, for when they travel and it has a TON of buttons on it, so he was hitting a few and Zac started dancing. I swear, Taylor hits a button by accident on his keyboard all the time – and it always leads to Zac either dancing or making up a ridiculous song.
They took a few requests, but unfortunately most of them were not songs they were able to do acoustically so they had to turn them down (Georgia, Dying To Be Alive, Runaway Run) and they ended up doing Where’s The Love. Their last song was their latest single, Give a Little.
After they performed, we were taken out of the room an walked around the studio in a loop (jughandle?) and lined up to meet the guys. We were able to get something signed and a photo of just us with them which is a VERY rare thing and very awesome 🙂
Zac ended up taking my CD from my to sign first… and then dropped it on the floor. Isaac had it and was ready to sign but was talking to Kim about Boomerang (their first album which she was having them sign) and then Taylor went to grab it from him to sign but Isaac grabbed it back because he hadn’t yet signed it. Then Taylor got it and asked my name and added a “To Katie ROCK ON” to it!
We went down in to the lobby and chatted a bit with some other fans who were there, and a few minutes later food went by so we assumed Hanson would be staying to eat at the station. But instead, they came downstairs a few minutes later and said hi/bye and went out to their car. We followed them and they all walked past my car – Zac had parked their van just a few spots over from my car so he had to drive right by me to leave. I am not sure why that was so exciting to me, maybe because I did not have much sleep – waking up at 6:15 to get ready to go after falling asleep at who knows when! (After 1am, for sure)
Overall it was a really fun day and I am glad that Kim invited me as her guest 🙂 Even if being stuck in ridiculous traffic for 45 minutes when you are super, super tired can be considered a form of torture – it was worth it!
