Kristy Hanson

  • big in new zealand

     /  06 Jun 2008  /  News

    well, big is stretching it…but mike tells me, because he likes to search the internet for the randomest statistics ever, that my aimee mann contest entry video is…drumroll please… currently the 90th most viewed music video today in new zealand. thank you new zealand! but actually, this contest is pretty fun. people seem to be digging it, and favoriting it, and telling their friends, which is, i’m told, the way this whole internet thing is supposed to work.

    if you haven’t watched it yet, feel free to weigh in and tell me what you think.

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  • what i’ve been up to…

     /  03 Jun 2007  /  Music, food, LA, and other things I love

    I keep saying I’m going to get better about regularly blogging and then I don’t – or I do, but in fits and starts.  In my defense, we have been BUSY planning and promoting the CD release party. Mike and I are the street team, the publicists, the promoters, etc. :)  More on that in the next blog. First I’ll catch you up on my recent musical activities:

    1. Guitar lessons. I’m taking lessons from Tim Young when I can squeeze them in. He’s teaching me how to improvise and solo more. Lots of blues and pentatonic scales and other scales in different places on the guitar. I’m playing electric, which is really fun (and easier on my fingers, frankly). Who knew I could bend notes? I’m trying to get out of my ruts and expand my skills and songwriting – and ultimately, be a girl who can wail on the guitar. There are definitely some but far too few out there. Hopefully I’ll be shredding in no time…

    2. Our show at Cafe Cordiale on the 23rd. Lots of fun, friendly people, and we made some new fans! One of them even pre-ordered a CD. One of my favorite parts might have been when this woman actually leapt up from her dinner to applaud me after I sang “Careful.” But she also full-out danced in her seat when we played “Comfort,” so that was a close second.  Perhaps I’ll be a dance-pop star yet…ha ha ha

    3. Rehearsing for the show on the 6th – and more on that in the next blog, as I said. But playing with Tim, Mike, and Aaron this last week was so fantastic. I’m always suprised by how gratifying it is to hear what other people do with my songs – they always become something different and better than I can even imagine.

    4. Hearing Aimee Mann at Largo again – along with Paul Bryan, her bassist and, these days, producer. You should check him out on MySpace and go listen to his song “Houdini and Celia” and cry like I do. :) Jay Bellerose and Jen Condos played with him – it was the first time I’d seen Jen play, and it’s very inspiring (see my above comment about girls and guitars…). She’s the sweetest, as is Jay. And we even saw Ryan Freeland, our album engineer/mixer, too. It was a fun reunion and I got a little emotional, especially watching Jay play with Aimee Mann. I still sort of can’t believe that he’s on MY album. I am a very lucky girl. :)

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  • a week in the life…

     /  24 Feb 2007  /  Music, food, LA, and other things I love

    I’ve been meaning to blog for a while, and since I haven’t I’ll have to do a bit of an overview. I realize now that it’s been a rather momentous week.

    Thursday, Feb. 15 – Worked on a new song…it’s a little depressing (I was in a funk) but it may have potential. I’ve been writing lots of little half-songs recently, which is odd for me, but this one I basically finished the form of.

    Friday, Feb 16 – We went to see Aimee Mann’s “Valentine’s Revenge” show at Largo. I really love the whole “variety show” format she’s into these days. Well, in my eyes she can do no wrong, but nonetheless, it was really a very well put-together, entertaining show. She had Paul F. Tompkins (funny-and who knew he could sing?) and Morgan Murphy there, and she had Grant-Lee Phillips do a couple songs (his voice is just perfect, always). Paul Bryan, Jebin Bruni and Jay Bellerose comprised her kick-ass backing band. I’d never heard Paul play before and I see now why Mike is so into his playing. It was so good to hear Jay play, and equally great to see him and catch up a bit. I’ll never get over how nice he was and is to us. He even asked Mike to come back on Saturday night to see the show again and, apparently, to throw back some scotch. I had to work…but I shouldn’t be greedy. I really can’t complain (though I did, let’s be honest).

    Saturday and Sunday, Feb 17-18 – Worked most of the weekend: more Mozart mania with LACO! What I caught of the concerts was lovely, and I had a good time post-concert on Saturday night at Charles’ Billiards in Glendale with Pulse, the ‘young professionals’ (for lack of a better term) group we young LACO staffers are building. Addie and I played a very hard-core game of table hockey.

    Monday, Feb 19 – A day off, and a full one…rehearsed and grabbed some food with Mike and my favorite half-Romanian Steven Nistor. Steven is hilarious and rehearsals are always really fun. For some reason having to leave home and have official ‘rehearsals’ has gotten me much more motivated and focused as far as my playing and singing go. I feel like I’m getting back into it, whatever ‘it’ is. Mike and I also hiked and went to see “Music and Lyrics,” which was kind of silly and cute. I thought the more satirical parts of it…like the little quasi-Britney character…were spot-on. We tried to catch Maria Bamford at Tiger Lily and she was nowhere to be found…

    Wednesday, Feb 21 – After work I drove to Hollywood for the end of our mastering session with Gavin Lurssen. He, like everyone else who’s worked on he album, is incredibly nice. He talked me through a lot of what he was doing, and it was like going to ‘mastering class’ with a very insightful teacher. And the album sounds GREAT! (If I do say so myself, har har). Then we scrambled back to play with Steven for the SoCal Music Live competition at The Derby. There was a decent crowd there overall and our set, while short, was really fun and seemed to sound pretty good. I love playing with a band! Love it. It was also really great to play for and to meet some new people who seemed to dig the music. That’s always good…apparently, score-wise, I’ve made it into the ‘top 5 females’ in the competition. Woo hoo! I do like to win. At table hockey or music competitions. Ha.

    Friday, Feb 23 – Heard a beautiful concert with Steven and Mike, given by the young and incredible Calder Quartet. I went to support the efforts of their PR people, who I know through work, but enjoyed the music so much and was really glad I went. They did some late Shostakovich and Thomas Ades, and I used not to like contemporary composers all the much, but I guess my ears have stretched – I loved it all.

    ok, enough for goodness sake…i need a nap, and this is becoming War and Peace.

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  • New year, new album…

     /  06 Jan 2007  /  News

    Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that you had a lovely holiday season surrounded by family and/or friends. Mike and I went down to Florida to visit my family for Christmas, which was amazing. Just to be able to spend time with my family is such gift, and then the bonus is that the weather was gorgeous. Not that I can complain about CA weather, but we actually have to use the heat at night a lot recently, and I couldn’t kick this cold I had. Florida cured me instantly, which may have to do with the fact that the air feels like it’s being pumped out of a humidifier. I found it delightful. It did rain on Christmas, but it was one of those cool Florida sun shower things. We spent a lot of time outside and went fishing…Mike caught a shark! No joke, check out his page.

    Then New Year’s day came and went…Mike and I went hiking and made a pact to do it every Sunday from now on. We’ll see what the wind is like tomorrow – it may be movie day instead. :) Crazy Santa Ana winds! When will it end?

    The most exciting thing the year has brought thus far is…my album! After months of being too booked to work on it, Patrick Warren added his magic to 4 of the tracks. If you don’t know or haven’t heard of Patrick, you’ve surely heard his playing on something you’ve heard on the radio. If you listen to what I listen to, you’ve definitely heard him with artists like Fiona Apple, Sam Phillips, Aimee Mann (oh, speaking of which, her Christmas album, which he’s on, is awesome!). And then you certainly know how amazing he is. We went over to his place on Wednesday to listen to the tracks and to let him know what we thought, and each one blew us away. It was all as beautiful as we expected, but each element was different and even better than I would have imagined. But at the same time it’s almost scary how perfect his parts are; they just capture the individual moods of the songs and lend more richness and character to all of them.

    Just like everyone else we’ve worked with, Patrick is incredibly kind and humble. And funny. With fantastic decorating taste. His house should be a on TLC makeover show or something.

    I’m just still amazed that Ryan, Jay, and Patrick were involved at all with MY record. A lot of it had to do with Mike and how much he believed in me – that I even deserved to work with such kick-ass people – and he might still believe it more than I do. But it DID happen! Soon Ryan will be mixing, then comes mastering, design in the meantime and finally the release. I certainly feel it’s been worth all of the wait, and I hope others will, too. :)

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  • celebrities in restrooms

     /  17 Nov 2006  /  Music, food, LA, and other things I love

    I have a very strange knack for running into famous or even semi-famous people in public restrooms.

    Back in 2004, my first LA celebrity sighting transpired in the restroom of the Laemmle theatre at 8000 Sunset, where I’d just seen Napoleon Dynamite (eh. Don’t get why everyone loved that movie) with my friend Jocelyn. As I walked into the bathroom stall, Paris Hilton was walking out of it. No joke. It takes you a while to realize that when you run into someone who looks like a celebrity out here, it probably is a celebrity…so it took a second to sink in. But it was definitely her, so tan, so blond, and SO (perhaps too) thin. Really tiny, not that short, but shorter than I would have thought. Talking on her cell phone, I think, about having gotten home from partying at 7 am that morning. It sounds soobvious that it’s possible I just made that up, but I did hear something about 7 am. :)

    It was shortly after that that I realized with great certainty that paparazzi are lame beyond belief. It was a Sunday evening, and Paris was coming out of the Virgin megastore with a tiny bag and these 3 photographers were just going crazy. As I watched the whole scene, it was like, “Wow. Could this be more boring?”

    But I digress.

    The next time it happened was at the restroom of Largo on a night when we went to see Dave Palmer. Fiona Apple was there, purely as an audience member, and as I was walking out of the restroom (it’s a one-stall affair), she was walking in, to the point where we both kind of giggled because we almost slammed right into each other. I was on slightly higher ground, but I think she’s actually shorter than me. Talk about tiny. She’s adorable, actually, and all I wanted to do was scream, “you’re so awesome! You’re so amazing! You mean so much to me,” or something equally foolish and stalker-like. I held back.

    I sort of have it in my mind that I almost ran into Aimee Mann near the restroom of Largo, too, but I may be making that up. I was equally nerdily excited to see her at Largo that one night, though. (I should really get over it–our engineer for the album has worked with her tons and I’d venture to say they’re friends, and then there I am feeling like I’m going to fall off my stool just because she’s 10 feet away.)

    At Hotel Cafe, just before Vienna Teng went on to play, I almost slammed into her on her way out of the bathroom in that same, “Oh, geez, sorry,” way.

    And finally, a repeat of the Fiona run-in; she was coming out when I was going in this time. Then in between Dave Palmer’s songs, I got up to go the restroom again and saw her jump up from her table not far away and beat me there. I seriously considered turning around and pretending I hadn’t just gotten up to use the restoom. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed me anyway, but I felt like such a stalker, and what a sad way to stalk someone–by following them to the restroom. I thought about how on this new show called “Iconoclasts” Fiona laughs about how her whole life is trying to avoid awkward moments, which actually happen to her all the time in spite of that…awkward indeed. Story of my life!

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