Dedication: For Sarah.

Intro: Winter grips New York like a vice. It is gray and hollow and unbearable, the way the wind howls between the skyscrapers as if they were desert canyons, kicking up dust and making you bend low, a particularly urban type of supplication. My Big Apple dream allowed for a lot of uncomfortable variables—poverty, boredom, loneliness—all of which have come true to varying extents. It did not allow for the winter.

The snow and the chill might make Isaac Hanson want to write, but that’s easy to say from the comfort of your thousand-foot, fine-art-filled TriBeCa loft. Take the 2 or the 3 uptown a few stops, and this newly transplanted, slightly harried working girl was feeling differently. Write? She wanted to kill someone, actually. (And then write, maybe.)

I had not been out of the city since Christmas. By the time Hanson announced these new shows—this tweener, mostly-acoustic-but-not-really, post-tour/pre-tour smattering—even Sayreville, NJ was seeming like a pretty good idea.

So nondescript were these shows that I had a difficult time even convincing people to come with me. Corinne bailed. My sister bailed. Amanda almost bailed, except I basically beat her up until she agreed not only to come, but to drive, damnit, all the way into the crumbling, blighted jungle that is New Jersey.

We saw three shows in 72 hours. We lived, barely. We came home with our vocal chords shot to hell and our wallets empty, the bottoms of our backpacks littered with ticket stubs, shredded liquor bracelets, hotel key cards, pens, torn Ticketmaster envelopes. The telltale debris of too many Hanson concerts in too short a time.

Cumulative Statistics, Unscientific and Brief: Shows: 3
Hotel Rooms: 2
Obscenely Overpriced Hotel Rooms: 1
Toothbrushes Misplaced/Lost/Forgotten: 2
Males in Our Party: 1
Rhinestone-Encrusted Monogram Pins Lost on the Campus of Trinity College: 1
X-Rated Comments: 403 (approx.)
X-Rated Comments that included the word “Hanson”: 328 (approx.)
X-Rated Love Letters Written to Hanson: 1
Number of Times Amanda’s Car Was Vandalized: 1
Number of Times 3 Car Garage Was Played Between Hartford, CT, and Sayreville, NJ: .7
Number of Exits Passed on the New Jersey Turnpike Before Realizing We Were Going in the Wrong Direction: 2
Rest Area Stops: 2
Hours of Video Footage Filmed by Melanie: 9
Bitchy Laura Tirades Caught on Tape: 2
Number of Times We Considered Saying Something to Hanson and Didn’t: 78

Locales, Exotic and Not:

• The Webster Theater, Hartford, CT: Cavernous and filthy with bullet holes (?) in the exterior, located in what we're told is "the worst neighborhood in all of Hartford," as if that's saying much. Amanda's car was vandalized during the show and crowds of dangerous-looking boys ambled about beforehand. You know you’re in a classy part of town when the entrance ritual includes a full-body frisk. The female security guard even made me dump the little pillbox in my purse on the grounds that its contents looked "too mixed." Clearly, she didn’t know Hanson fans very well: It contained Tylenol, multivitamins, two gelcaps of echinacea, and mints. I was almost flattered. Inside, however, afforded us our best concert view ever, thanks to a wonderously exclusive 21+ area. The availability of cheap alcohol didn't hurt matters either. Amazing how Hanson fans seem downright nice after a few drinks.
• Northern Lights, Cliffton Park, NY: Surprpise. It's still in a strip mall. It still has terrible acoustics and a leaky ceiling and intolerably grumpy security. It is still the home of what a good friend calls the Death Crowd, the loudest, most fiercely annoying, pushy, shoving, underdressed, foul-smelling Hanson fans you have ever met. Or maybe that was just our particular dimly-lit corner. The secret to having a good time at Northern Lights? Show up really late, and have a drink before you delve into The Pit of Doom. Showing up late, at least, ensures that you’ll arrive in darkness and will therefore be spared the stinging visual reality of that strip mall, Gold’s Gym included.
• The Starland Ballroom, Sayreville, NJ: Rock and roll to its very core is this weathered, middle of nowhere New Jersey roadhouse. It's a dumpy mess, like all of these places are, but there was much to love about Starland, with its wide, low stage and honky tonk ballroom feel. Packed to heaving with all manner of sweating, overexcited Hanson fans, the local ambulance companies did good business that night. Girls were hauled (in a distintly unladylike manner, all asses and boobs first) out of the crowd by the dozen, most of them looking merely dazed or a tad dumbfounded. A few were straight up unconscious, causing visible panic among the burly staff. We stood on the stairs in an acoustic dead zone that afforded us a rather stunning view of Zac Hanson, the pulverized front row, and not much else. It was Taylor's 21st birthday. He seemed distinctly sober.

A Pre-Game Side Trip: Holy Trinity: In Meghan’s dorm room at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, there is a tiny fridge and a wire shelf full of junk food. Giant fish sandwich crackers and Easy-Mac. Granola bars, Ramen Noodles, cookies. There is a long dorm-sized bed, and a chair with cushions you can’t remove. There is a dry-erase board with her to-do list, and messages from her friends. The only things out of place, a little shocking amidst all of the collegiate usualness, are the Hanson posters. Two of them, on opposite walls.

Meghan is 21. She is tall, and fair-haired, and perpetually smiling, and handsomely jacked from her years as a superstar on Trinity College’s diving team. When she graduates in May, she will hold degrees in both mathematics and computer science. She will live in Washington, D.C., where she will work at a job doing things that I can’t even begin to understand for nearly twice my annual salary. She will probably have a hot boyfriend. She laughs from the belly up, and you can still hear her Massachusetts accent sometimes, when she’s not paying attention. Just like the rest of us.

For everyone who has ever said something awful about us, who has pegged us as crazed, screaming, deluded empty-heads with too much time on our hands, I want them to meet Meg.

Sitting on her long bed eating Easy-Mac, watching a bunch of good looking boys practice some unidentifyable sport on the tree-lined quad outside her window, I thought, yes. I love Hanson.

Out Back: I remember Taylor in a yellow Izod shirt, shivering in short sleeves in a scarf and saying the word “Frickin’,” which seemed funny in the moment. Funny enough for me to laugh out loud in this huge, inappropriate way, while everyone was awestruck and silent, hanging on his every word. For an instant, I felt stupid.

Ike made the rounds and smiled and flirted and did his Ike thing in a leather jacket and gray scarf. I was too shy—I always am—to do what those girls do. To get noisy and brittle-voiced and shove up front and call their names and talk tits-first. To ask the roadies to inspect their tattoos.

I fear all sorts of things. Recognition, mostly. Oh, you were that girl in such and such city, right?

Zac ran in and out, apologetic, with his hair sticking up. And beautiful Kate in her rad clothes, the fans hissing awful things under their breath as she passed. And Natalie and Ezra, the most fascinating Hansons these days. Lovely and smiling, both of them, the baby giggling out loud as the crowd oohed and aahed over him, exposing a dimple, shocking and familiar, on one cheek.

The Warmup: Ben Jelen, love or hate him, is a wonderful choice to tour with Hanson. He’s the right age, and more, he is very much in Taylor Hanson’s aesthetic ballpark—even if he is in the bleachers—in that foofy-haired, nonthreatening, metrosexual-with-bad-shoes sort of way. He also has a respectable handfull of legitimate musical tricks: A lovely voice. A fondness for girly instruments—pianos, fiddles—that he plays more than reasonably well. Most importantly, though, he’s probably not sleeping with anyone in Hanson, a reality that makes him instantly popular with their fans. Granted, had Taylor not been so outward about his basic, rather disapointing heterosexuality, we’d wonder about him and Ben.

As for Ben’s music, eh. It’s boring. Of course it’s boring. His own record label was touting him as the male Vanessa Carlton. Shame on you and me both for expecting anything else. He’s very sensitive. He sings about social change. He covers a song from Hedwig. (Edgy!) And we were all dozing by the third song.

Working the Show: The Coronation: Something new, and unexpected: The wholesale re-crowning of Taylor Hanson as the reigning and infallable god of all things golden, beautiful, and pop. During all of the Underneath Acoustic Tour proper, the fans loved themselves some Taylor, but not in the breathless, barrier-busting, seam-ripping way that they had in his tender bachelor years. Suddenly, all of the wheezing and heart-attacks and panty- throwing seemed to be directed at the Abercrombie model on drums. It seemed a shame, really, that the fans could be so unforgiving of Taylor’s new family life, but consious or not, there it was: He’d come out, sing is solo, and the reaction was warm, but not overwhelming.

For this short, mesmerizing series of shows, something changed. Maybe time heals. Maybe he’s simply too lovely and endearing to stay mad at, even for the most stubborn, jilted teenie. And maybe there is something new from Taylor these days, a desire to reconnect with the crowd that wasn’t quite there during the summer, when we were seeing him for the first time not as the gorgeous, crumbly-voiced heir apparent to Robert Plant’s lace-up leather pants, but as a harried young dad, content to let his brothers do most of the heavy-lifting in an act where he was always the undisputed star.

But from the moment he stepped onstage to do his solo at all three of these shows, it felt instantly different. He stood, looking out at the crowd for a moment, and for the first time in years, he seemed effortlessly regal. For all his skinniness, his tangle of limbs, there is a bigness to Taylor that neither of his brothers, not even Zac, can quite muster on stage. The others hunch, slink, fold over onto their instruments, greedy and protective. Taylor, eyes front and sholders squared, looms. And as he looked out, the crowds responded with a surging, new kind of warmth. It was obvious: He’s forgiven, then.

It was then, of course, that he chose to shatter the moment with some dorky gesture. A peace sign. A half-supplicating “bow down.” Married life, then, has perhaps not changed him all that much.

His solo for all three shows was "Crazy/Beautiful", which is fine. It is especially fine when he forgets to do the extended piano part at the end, which almost everyone in our Sayreville party, filled to the brim with snobs of every variety, deemed “stupid.” And it is, really. He’s just playing the song really fast in a higher octave, which is neither interesting or accomplished, and frankly, now that we’ve recrowned King Taylor, we think he can do better.

But Taylor’s musical adventurousness isn’t all bad. Not in the least. Another song where we are liking—ok, mindlessly adoring—Taylor’s piano playing is in the wonderfully re-vamped "Ain’t No Sunshine". This is Ike’s song, really, with his slinky vocal and credibly bleating guitar work. But here’s the deal: The return of Taylor the Great has also meant the return of another phenominon. We bet you and Isaac both forgot about this one: The Taylor Just Stole My Song Out From Under Me Trick. Remember back in ancient times when they’d do “A Minute Without You,” and Taylor would do exactly nothing except toss his pretty mane and hit a bunch of bum notes with his big meaty hands and shout an occasional “Woah! Yeah!” and suddenly, by the second verse, you’d forgotten that Ike was in the room? Yeah. Like that.

By the time that shiny blue bus made its way to sunny Sayreville, NJ, Taylor’s riotous piano playing on “Ain’t No Sunshine” had set a new kind of amazing Hanson Precedent: The Advent of the Taylor Hanson Piano Solo. (And the sky opened.) Seriously. It was that cool. Big-fingered and able and downright bluesy, it didn’t suck even a small bit, and made us suddenly cognisent of the fact that Taylor, no kidding, is a damn fine piano player. So, take notes: Aesthetically flawless. The Greatest Voice of His Generation. Looks snappy in all manner of foolish clothing. Is unwittingly funny, completely charming, unfailingly intelligent and well-spoken, humble, a good dad, and a damn fine piano player. Got it? Good.

Oh, but it gets better. Taylor’s bouts with various types of accessorization (necklaces, scarves, handkerchiefs, belt buckles, cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, funny hats, bedazzled shoes, one scandalous and blessedly infected and closed cartilege piercing, messenger bags, diaper bags) are famous at this point. His new favorite? His piano. Granted, he’s not the first to treat his instrument like a jungle gym. Billy Joel had the lids of his pianos reinforced with steel bars so he could stand on them. (We suspect Taylor—all 140 pounds of him, if you leave the change in his pockets— won’t require this particular type of customization.) In Hartford, during the new, extended version of “Hey,”—which includes a wonderous, full-throttle jam on the outro, some excited arm-thrashing from the band, and a shout-y crowd participation segment—Taylor suddenly stood up, climbed onto the back of his piano, and draped himself across it rather elegantly for a bar or two while the crowd howled in appreciation.

There are so many things I want to say to Hanson, about how their music has reshaped the landscape of my life and helped me weather tough times, etc.. But if there was one thing I wanted to say to them after the Sayreville show, after Taylor hopped up on the piano bench and straddled the top of it in such a way that afforded everyone due East of Isaac an incredible, very rare angle of Jordan T. indeed, it’s this: We love antics. You keep scaling that piano, Taylor, and no matter where your music goes from this moment on. Whether it’s thrash metal or triphop or sad bastard music, we will love you forever. Unconditionally.

We also got to see Taylor in one of his more emotive moments. At the New Jersey show, when Zac said, “OK guys, this is the last song,” the look of shear horror on Taylor’s face was such that you’d think Zac had actually said, “OK guys, now I’m going to walk across the stage and knock Taylor off that prissy piano stool onto his skinny non-ass.” We’re talking full brow furrow, mouth hanging open. It was like he’d been stabbed. In the groin. Preliminary glimpses at the set list seemed to indicate that “Lost Without Each Other” was supposed to have closed the show. Maybe everyone forgot to tell Taylor. Frankly, we wouldn’t be surprised if this happens a lot.

Here We Go Around: On what planet is Madeline a good song? On the same one where it rhymes with “around again,” apparently. It’s nice to hear it, I guess, if you’re a fan of Hanson’s co-written yesteryear quasi-brainlessness. And so many of you are. In Hartford, CT, for all the energy and pizzaz the band displayed that night, they hit so many wrong notes in “Madeline” that even Ike couldn’t help looking outwardly appalled. It sort of made you want to buy a sale rack copy of Middle of Nowhere and tuck it into his Easter basket, just as a gentle reminder.

(No. “Easter basket” is not a euphemism for anything dirty, you awful girl.)

Strip: It is Albany, NY, or some nondescript, scattered little town just outside of Albany, and you are smashed against a wall by elbows and hips that aren’t yours. It is dark, overly warm, and your calves are aching from hauling yourself up on your toes. There is flailing, and uncomfortable heat, the discernable pounding of hearts, a trickle of sweat. The molding on the wall is digging into the small of your back. The feeling is big, and blissful, as the boy sitting three feet in front of you swings, big-pawed and glassy- eyed, staring off into space, at his drum set, knocking the hell out of it. It makes you think: This is probably as close as I will ever get to having sex with Hanson. And that’s OK.

Retainers: Ike is my hero for a lot of reasons. I had braces once. I have an offensively beautiful younger sibling. And yes, I too have overcome my shy, teenage awkwardness to become an overconfident, well-dressed bitch and three-quarters, thank you.

Shallow, Fleeting Ikethoughts:

• Ike should not let his hair grow long. Ever. For the rest of his life. The precise second that it starts growing out is, not coincidentally, the moment that it starts looking stupid. And one further recommendation: Sculpt it into a discernable point, one so sharp and that, during a passionate moment, I might perhaps lose an eye. Otherwise, it just turns into a shelf-like sculpture that reminds us of the topical landscape of Colorado and Jordan Knight. Unpleasant, in other words. Repeat after me: The hair must have a point. Literal, not figurative. When the trend changes (Five… four… three…), we’ll re-evaluate. At none of these shows did it have the proper amount of lift. Not a one.
• Sucks that “Hand in Hand” is the universal pee break song, no? Hey, don’t look at me. I stayed.
• Staring at his profile, that tough little nose, we wondered if Ike wore/wears his retainers. We wondered if he had his wisdom teeth out. Oddly, we don’t give a damn about these things as they pertain to Taylor and Zac. Zac’s teeth are somehow a nonissue, and Taylor is inhuman and flawless, which ultimately means that he was born, and remains free of things like hangnails, nighttime eye crispies, discernable allergies to food or environmental substances, indigestion, and wisdom teeth. We’re not even completely sure he has nipples. We think he might be entirely smooth. Like a porpoise.
• Ike has taken to wearing two rings lately, one on each middle finger. Illogically, almost, we find this sexually suggestive.
• There is a song. It is not anything we had ever heard before. It happened in New Jersey, in the middle of an almost curiously mellow set list crammed to bursting with ballads and otherwise sleepy slow stuff. We don’t know what it’s called. All we know is that Ike sings it, and that it is airy and bright and viscerally thrilling in ways that Ike songs just never are. I wanted, for the first time all night, to kick off my pinching black pumps, scuffed from the gravel in the muddy, pock-marked lot, and dance around, the hardwood cool against the bottoms of my feet. And are we getting this right? It seems to be about a girl. A girl getting ready to go out. Fixing her hair in the mirror and straightening her lipstick. She’s going to a concert. Never have we hoped and prayed, not ever, for accurancy in our straining, piss-poor interpretations of garbled Hanson lyrics. If this song is about something entirely different, I will cry. I will sit down, and I will cry.

A Footnote: Pretty Ben Jelen—dark angel Taylor if there ever was one—more than earned his keep in Sayreville, NJ during the show’s encore. Joining Hanson along with his bass player for a thumping, seething cover of AC/DC’s “Long Way to the Top (If It’s Only Rock and Roll),” he proved that even (very) pretty boys can rock. Plugged and noisy, and thrilling if only for the sight of Isaac Hanson holding a guitar and standing upright at the same time, it was a small reminder of what Hanson can do if allowed a few watts of electricity and the excitement of getting to interract with musicians who aren’t related by blood. Although the truly climactic moment came seconds later, when Ben and Taylor shared a congratulatory embrace. I wasn’t sexy. It didn’t linger or anything. But the thought crossed my mind: “Is this real, or merely a foxy, dirty fanfic-fueled halucination?” That .05 seconds was surely enough fodder for some sort of X-rated 40,000-word Ben/Taylor opus. Can someone get on that right away, please? Aspen? Hello?

And in the End: Walking back to the train at White Plains, freezing and sleep- deprived on a gray-white Sunday afternoon. Walking back and everything feels heavy. I am having trouble figuring out if it’s too late in the season for a winter coat. I am clutching bags of things I can’t even identify. Loose powder? Mix CDs. A pair of mittens. The weight of it all feels silly, and I am doing the math: How many shows in how many days, and does it all equal crazy. I buy my ticket. I figure, again, which track is the right one. I am jetted back onto the island, back uptown, back to the apartment, which is the size of a sane person’s bathroom. It is still winter. It is still ice everywhere. There is still work on Monday. And then I realize: The tour, the real one, hasn’t even started yet.