(From left to right: Taylor, Zac and Isaac Hanson)

If you see the name Hanson, what do you think of? Many people would immediately make some reference to the hugely popular 1997 hit "MMMBop," a few may readily express their love for "Penny & Me" or the growing hit "Give a Little," and some wouldn't even know where to begin to discuss the last 14 years they have spent growing up alongside Hanson.

No matter which of the above groups you would fall into, Hanson has set out on a truly innovative tour that will appeal to everyone. The Musical Ride Tour is just the latest example of Hanson's forward thinking ways of engaging with their fans. Each night, fans have the opportunity to vote for one of Hanson's five studio albums and the winning album will be played in its entirety. Cool, right? But don't be dismayed if you don't know the winning album, because they will also be playing classic hits, Hanson staples and they always through in a cover or two.

When I had the opportunity to speak with Zac Hanson, 26, the youngest of the trio, I jumped right into the topic of this tour which easily led into more about their music and the future of the music industry itself.

The tour, which Zac described as "definitely a challenge, but enjoyable," is not just a testament to their relationship with their fans, but to their musicianship. The set list is constantly rotating, and one of the first questions was if any patterns had shown themselves in the winning albums thus far.

"Everything has consistently won a little bit," he revealed. "This Time Around, the second album, has won the most. But, it makes sense to me just 'cause I think a lot of our fans - that was the album where people sort of became hardcore fans. People started traveling to shows, multiple shows, and things like that. So, it's won a couple more times than any other record, but... who knows by the end of it."

As for what else they'll be playing, well, you're going to have to check out the tour for yourself, but with a repertoire of cover songs with everything from Little Richard's "Rip it Up" to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin" and Radiohead's "Optimistic," it's always a surprise what non-Hanson song may make its way into the set. "It's just as random as it might seem. We throw up the songs we think are cool, just songs that someone hears and goes, 'that would be fun,'" Zac explained, "and you know, when we can work them out and do a good with, we go for it."

"I think we're all such Billy Joel fans," Zac went on, "Covering something by him is definitely something I would like to do. But it's hard to do him well. The songs, they change so much... they're very layered. It's a hard one to pull off, but the right song..." he trailed off, leaving us all to anticipate if and when we may hear a Billy Joel song Hansonized. For now, we can just imagine.

The Musical Ride Tour, which wraps up at the end of October in the United States and then makes its way overseas in November, takes an interesting pit stop at the House of Mouse when Hanson returns for the second year in a row to play two nights at the Eat to the Beat Series in Epcot in Disney World.

"You know, we're all got kids and families," Zac explained. Isaac has two children, Taylor has four and Zac has two. "It's one of the few times where you're able to make a point of doing something fun for your family while being a band on the road, so it was enjoyable and they asked us back as we said sure!"

But this year, they'll be playing on October 31st and November 1st, so I had to ask about Halloween. "We will have fun no matter what," he laughed, "[but] I'm sure that it will be a unique experience to play there on Halloween. Few better places to play on Halloween than there. They'll have it all decked out and everything." As for dressing up, "right now there are no costumes planned, but those things usually happen last minute."

Certainly what makes Hanson, well, Hanson is partially their incredible live show (costumes or not), but at the root of it all is, of course, the music. And they are well aware of this. So while out on this tour, they are also doing a special series of events for members of their fan club called The Story, where fans can attend a session - there are five throughout the whole tour, one for each album - and have the brothers explain the process of creating the album and ask questions of their own.

"It's one little way that we can do something special for the people who are part of our fan club... It's very natural to just speak about it. We get to sit down and talk and people are forced to listen," he laughed. "It's fun to tell the stories and also to hear the questions from people, things that someone has been thinking about for a lot of years or just came to their mind while we were talking."

"Mostly, I think we just like to engage with our fans, go a little deeper. You know, I think in today's entertainment business, the thing that some of these celebrities seem to show the world is their bad sides, you know, and things that don't relate to why they're successful, why people care about them."

"And I think for us, things like The Story, which is us sitting down talking about talking about making records, talking about writing songs, it's a place where we can let people deeper into who we are, but deeper into what they love about the band, not sort of 'I like mustard and I have two kids' and that stuff. [But] the stuff that really relates to why they care or want to come to a concert or want to be a fan club member or whatever it is."

While we didn't go into specific albums, Zac did share the general beginnings of the process of creating an album. "An album is not for us just a collection of songs. It's a collection of songs that makes an album, a voice, a representative of that time period. So, you do end up writing songs that don't make it to a record, because they just don't feel right for the whole process, the whole sort of message of what that record is doing."

"So it's a little bit of a mystery, even to us," he laughed again. "Just, you're letting the songs sort of lead the way and sometimes that means you write twelve songs and that's the whole album and sometimes you write eighty songs and that's what the album is taken from. But almost always you, you have an end in mind. You know you're making an album; what exactly that album may be may still be up in the air."

But in a recent interview, Isaac spoke about the future of Hanson albums and it was an interesting take that certainly had fans talking. Isaac had brought up the idea that Hanson may move away from making full length albums to something more akin to EPs, five or six songs every few months rather than a full album every few years. The idea seems drastic at first, but with Hanson constantly pushing the envelope in terms of forward thinking techniques in music and fan-engagement I had to see if this was something they were actually considering.

"Oh certainly!" Zac's enthusiasm showed through. "I think for us, we don't ever want to ... forget that you have to continue to push yourself to find cool/new ways to bring attention to music. And you know, it was not long ago that there weren't really full-length records like we expect today, and so records are really fun to make because you get to sit down for a long period and really map the project, but there's definitely certainly other ways to release music and to find different ways to [be creative]," he elaborated.

"I think the main thing is to really use music as art this way. And if you're feeling excited about the shorter form content like that, EPs instead of LPs, than that might be the best thing to do. And it could allow you to release a couple records a year that were short than one every couple years."

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