Hanson New Orleans
Katie My second set of shows on Hanson’s Roots & Rock N Roll tour was in New Orleans, LA. I woke up at 2am, headed to the airport and got to New Orleans about 11am. Tara picked me up and then we waited for Rachel to land about an hour after me and then we headed to the hotel, which fortunately let us check in early.
We did some shopping, exploring and eating before the show both days. Night 1 was Zac’s birthday show so we knew we would be in for at least some cake. During the last song of Paul McDonald’s set, Carrick joined him on stage and next thing I knew all of Hanson was on stage too for “Renegade” (Check out my youtube for video!)
When Hanson first took the stage they sang happy birthday to Zac and mixed up the setlist a bit by starting with “Teach Your Children” – this wasn’t a new song for my never before heard list, but it was the first time it had been done on this tour and it had been a while since they had done it live. (It was a bit of a staple in 2003, and only came up a few times since then in setlists)
The rest of the setlist, for the most part, was the same as in New York City. But they did add a totally new cover to the list – Leon Russell’s “Delta Lady”. I ended up trying to google what they were singing to figure it out and when I saw Leon Russell’s name I figured that had to be it – and Isaac confirmed after the song by mentioning it was a Leon song!
After Zac’s “I Believe In A Thing Called Love”, Taylor went and got a cake that had candles for “30” on it. Zac sang happy birthday to himself and then smashed his own face in the cake because then he’d get to eat it all himself. It was cheesecake. He also mentioned if you licked him, he’d taste like cheesecake.
Then it was time for the after party. I thought Zac may show up to have a bit of a birthday party with us all, but I only saw him sneaking around on the balcony. We ended up leaving before it was over to head back to the hotel.
Day 2 Hanson took a 1 mile walk with concert goers in the afternoon. I worked at the registration table and got to talk to Zac a bit after the walk about how hot, humid and muggy it was and mardi gras beads. We had 172 walkers.
The second show had a similar setlist as well, but Taylor did Love Me as his solo which is probably my favorite Taylor solo so I was excited about that. They also did Yearbook (again) which features my name so my 2 friends in front of me on the balcony turned around and made sad faces at me!
Afterwards, we decided to wait by the bus. Zac came out, but there were too many people for us to get near him. About an hour later Isaac came out and we moved to a spot to get a photo with him and decided to leave. Taylor ended up coming out about an hour after that, but since we decided to leave for Dallas at 4am because of the hurricane coming we decided not to bother sticking around.
Setlists under the cut. Pictures coming soon.