DALLAS — The Mitch Hansen band began as one of the “Twilight” saga’s first fan-made bands just after the release of Eclipse in 2007, and has grown steadily in popularity among Twilighters ever since, and Blast recently caught up with Hansen after his appearance with the band at TwiCon in Dallas, Texas earlier this July.

Blast: How do you think playing conventions has changed things for the band, do the people attending already know who you are?

MH: I think definitely the size of the convention will have some sort of bearing to that end. TwiTour is a little smaller and they do smaller conventions, and so not many people there had heard of us but I think we gained quite a few new fans, whereas TwiCon was pretty huge and we had quite a few people there who already knew who we were. I think we gained a handful of new fans there, too, though.

Blast: How did your songwriting change after Breaking Dawn came out and there wasn’t that mystery left anymore?

MH: When I read the first three, I didn’t have this notion of writing songs. But it’s funny, as I was reading Breaking Dawn, every scene or every chapter I would read I’d think “oh, that’d be a cool song, “ so yea, it was a lot different reading Breaking Dawn. The mystery was kind of gone, but she tied it up pretty nicely I guess in the end so it was fun to read.

Blast: So you have two CDs at this point: Twilight Hour and Endless Day?

MH: Yea. Twilight Hour is just me and an acoustic guitar and I actually recorded it myself in my walk-in closet in my bedroom. So yea, it’s pretty raw and rough and unpolished, but it turned out to be pretty good for what it really is. And then we got a record deal about a year after I recorded that one, and we polished up a lot of the songs from Twilight Hour and added a new song as well.

Blast: Was it after the record deal that you gained Brent and the rest of the band?

MH: Brent is my friend and guitar player in the band. He actually joined back in 2008, pretty early on. People started approaching me about playing shows and I kind of needed a little extra something to play live shows, and it turned out that Brent was really good at guitar and we got together and just kind of did the acoustic, coffee house, you know small club type thing for about 8 or 9 months. It was just he and I for a long time, actually.

Blast: Are you still playing coffee houses, or mostly “Twilight” related gigs?

MH: Oh yea, we still play a lot of local gigs around here in Atlanta. We do acoustic shows but now it’s more with the full band. So we do both, we do full band shows at clubs with the electric guitars and drums but we still do the acoustic stuff, too.

Blast: And are you still writing now?

MH: I’ve been writing songs since long before Twilight came out; it’s kind of hard to turn that off. Melodies are always popping into my head and whenever I sit down with my guitar, inspiration starts hitting, so yea, we’re always writing.

Blast: Do you have anything public planned with the release of “New Moon” in November, since everyone isn’t quite at the convention level yet?

MH: Sure, yea, there are a lot of casual Twilight fans out there, and we’re trying to reach them as well. We are playing a huge film release party in Salt Lake City for the twilight moms, actually. They’ve invited us to come up and play that and they’re expecting to have you know, three or four thousand people there. It’s kind of a more casual event than something like TwiCon. So yea, we’re definitely trying to reach out to those casual fans too. Our music is a little bit like that in itself. We’re not like, really overtly Twilight with our references “" well, except for one song we have called “Jacob Black” that’s pretty blatant. We try to keep the references to : “Twilight” pretty subtle and we did that on purpose because we didn’t want to alienate casual Twilight fans or casual music listeners even.

Blast: Do you think as a band you’ll eventually move beyond from “Twilight” inspired music to just Mitch inspired music?

MH: Yea. You don’t want to pigeon-hole yourself as an artist for you know, a fad “" a passing fad. As it stands right now, it’s really fun to do and people are into it, but yea for longetivy’s sake, we’d love to do some more mainstream type music. You know, inspiration comes from all over when you’re a song writer, not just one specific thing, but I think “Twilight” has a lot of cool themes and stories and I think there are a lot more songs to be written to that end.

Blast: Speaking of the stories in “Twilight” what point was the easiest to write songs for?

MH: Definitely the end of Eclipse has been the most written about as far as my songs go. That’s kind of when Jake takes off and Edward and Bella decide they’re going to get married. There’s also the big fight scene with Victoria and the newborns. So a lot of the story lines kind of came to a head at the end of “Eclipse” and so there’s like five or six songs that came from that specific time in the stories.

Blast: As “New Moon” is approaches, and even “Eclipse” are you trying at all to get onto the soundtracks?

MH: Yea, we’ve done a little light. . . I don’t know, we’ve shopped it around lightly to a few people and as it turns out, once “Twilight” was such a booming success, it’s just like everyone in the entire world is trying to get on the soundtrack for “New Moon.” So you know, it’s not as easy as it would have been if we had really tried last year to do it for the first film. But you know either way, if we get on a soundtrack or if we don’t, we’re just happy to do what we do. But yea, we’d love to be involved with one of the films somehow.

Be sure to check out Blast’s Mitch Hansen Band giveaway on YouTube to win free stuff from the band!

About The Author

Liz McClendon is a two-time graduate of Virginia Tech and now spends her time traversing the internet, where she writes and continues her seemingly everlasting quest to be gainfully employed.

8 Responses

  1. Lauren

    I absolutely LOVE the songs by Mitch Hansen! She is Brighter and the new Already Dead are my favourite songs. I also love the piano added to Lullaby, and the instrumental parts of Number 3. The new versions of A World Without You and Jacob Black are awesome too! Christ I might as well just say every song, because I love them all!

    The list of songs I would love to hear played in New Moon and Eclipse would basically just be a list of all the songs written by Mitch, but if I had to pick one (or two) song/s, it’d probably be The Last Thing (in Eclipse) or Lullaby. I would go mental if I heard them. They’re both so beautiful!

    Reply
  2. alex commisso

    “By You” would be a perfect song for New Moon! Oh, and “Sun’s Lament” for Eclipse! That’s one of my favorites! I love MHB!

    Reply
  3. alex commisso

    i hope MHB comes back here after their next show! love them so much!

    Reply
  4. Kaylen

    I love MHB!! I got to meet them at Twicon and talked to them many times! 🙂 I got 6 autographs from them. Thay are all really nice and the music is fantastic! MHB is my favorite band, and they play my favorite songs. One of the songs I would like to hear on New Moon is “By You”.

    GOOD LUCK MITCH HANSEN BAND!!! 🙂

    Reply

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