- Name: Mitch Hansen
- Hobbies: Baseball, music, movies, video games, reading, Ping-Pong
- Favorite Band: Our Lady Peace First CD
- First CD Purchased: Nirvana - Nevermind
- Most Recent CD Purchased: Paramore - Riot
- Favorite color: blue
- Favorite Fictional Character: Alice Cullen
- Favorite Book: Eclipse
- Favorite MHB Song: By You
- Favorite Guitar: My 1981 Gibson Les Paul Standard or “Leslie.” I’ve had her since I was 16 years old.
I’m sure most of you are wondering, “What would make a grown-up, family man write songs about Twilight?” Well, two things, really.
One, I love writing songs. I’ve been writing songs ever since I was 12 and could play three chords on the guitar. I’ve always loved music and putting melodies and harmonies on top of cool guitar licks. Its just a part of who I am. Anytime I pick up my guitar, I start scheming and trying out new ideas. I can’t help it. My need to create music even keeps me up at night sometimes. Just ask my wife!
Two, the Twilight saga is awesome! This is really where the story starts. My day job put me in the path of an unknown book around August of 2007. That book was Twilight. I had never heard of it or anything about, so I turned it over and checked out the back. “Vampires!” I thought, “Cool!” I decided to give it a try and I was hooked instantly. I read all three books in about a week, which is a lot of reading for someone who doesn’t read a ton. I got my wife hooked on them, too. We were both huge fans at that point and couldn’t get enough of anything Twilight-related.
After finishing Eclipse I was playing guitar and messing around with a little finger-picking riff I wrote. My wife walked by and said, “Hey, that sounds cool. Does it have any words yet?” I told her, “No,” and she suggested that I write some lyrics about Bella and Edward. The books were very fresh in my mind and I thought that was a pretty sweet idea! That’s how the song Twilight Hour was born.
I was interested to see how the public would react to such a crazy idea, so I created a MySpace music page for fun and posted the song. It was very well-received, so I figured another song was in order. The reactions continued to be positive, so I just kept on writing Twilight songs. After a while I it became apparent that I needed to make these songs available to everyone. I went to work in my studio (a walk-in closet) and after nearly a month of work, the CD was done and Twilight Hour the album was released on December 21, 2007. By January it was available on iTunes and to my complete shock, people started buying it!
- Name: Brent Cook
- Hobbies: tennis, table tennis, photography, rock’n'roll music
- Favorite Band: current favorite is The Features
- First CD Purchased: Def Leppard - Hysteria (it was a cassette)
- Most Recent CD Purchased: Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
- Favorite MHB Song: current favorite is The Last Thing
- Favorite Guitar: An old olympic white Fender Stratocaster made in Mexico. Until a couple of months ago, it was my one and only.
- Musical Influences: Too many bands to name but I was influenced mostly by many of the classic blues men, classic rockers, alternative bands of the 90’s, and modern rock.
That same month I was approached by the owner of a local club about playing a live show. I was stoked, but there was a slight problem. I needed another guitar player to recreate the sounds from the CD. The search began, and luckily I didn’t have to look too far to find the right man for the job.
A coworker of mine told me that her son played guitar and that he was very good. “Riiiiiiiight,” I thought. I’ve heard that from plenty of doting mothers before. I decided to see if he was the real deal or not, though. To my amazement, he wasn’t just good, he was awesome, and he was a nice guy, too! So, not long after that Brent and I made our stage debut with the help of our friend, Taylor, on the bass guitar. Though we still weren’t an official “band” yet, we continued to play small clubs and acoustic-style shows for a while. Brent became an official member of the Mitch Hansen Band in May of 2008 and we just kept on doing our thing for the next few months.
In August of 2008 something pretty amazing happened for us. A gentleman heard a couple of ladies talking about us in front of him in the checkout line at Wal-Mart. He inquired about us in more detail and contacted a few of his past business associates to talk to them about the band. To his surprise one of his female associates had not only heard of us, but was a fan to boot! He decided to contact us and the rest is history! More awesome players were brought in on the project and after months of hard work, Endless Day was done and ready for release. The album released in December of 2008, almost exactly one year after I released Twilight Hour independently.
Endless Day is our baby. It is a collection of the 10 strongest songs from Twilight Hour fully re-recorded and remastered in a real recording studio. It’s a great album! Its got something for everyone. We tried hard to give all of the songs their own identity, and think we pulled off, with the help of some seriously talented musicians and producers!
That’s our story so far. This is by no means the end, though. You can expect to hear a lot more from us in the future, so stay tuned to our blog and thanks for listening! You guys ROCK!
