With simple folk guitar and accents of mandolin fiddle bass and piano, Hanson takes a poetic honest and powerful look at life.

16 MP3 Songs in this album (58:17) !
Related styles: FOLK: like Joni, FOLK: Anti-Folk

People who are interested in Ani DiFranco Natalie Merchant Norah Jones should consider this download.


Details:
I was born in Nome, Alaska where we lived until I was 3. My pre-school through high-school years were spent in creative Juneau. I had encouragement from teachers and my mother to pursue all arts. I began writing in high-school when my ideas seemed too persistent to ignore. In the morning I wrote my dreams, in the day I wrote my observations, in the night I wrote more.

My love of singing began before guitar came into my life. Summer of 1993 I worked in Denali National Park. I sang where ever I walked because the park officials warned residents and visitors to be loud so bears had fair warning. When I wasn't working as a house keeper in the Denali Village Hotel I was exploring the park. I sang things I knew at first but soon enough I began to make things up. Mostly, the songs had no real words. It felt like the sounds and melodies came out of the ground that I walked, like a conversation with the earth. I felt connected to God then and that fed my love of singing.

I played guitar for the first time in Bellingham, Washington spring of 1995 when I was taught two chords at a friends house. The next night I dreamed about learning more. When I went home for spring break I got a guitar out of our basement. It had been sitting around for 30 years and subsequently had a crack in it's neck from the pull of the strings. I learned on it and then bought a Gospel Gibson with in a year. It surprised me to recognized the sweet tone within this new instrument. It was not the most beautiful of all the guitars in the shop but it's sound gripped me.

Recording came next! I started in Bellingham with "Something More Than Beautiful," at Soundings of the Planet. They tell me it was the shortest recorded album in the history of their Studio. In a total of about 2.5 hours I recorded 13 songs.
"Breaking Strings," my second recording was done Juneau at Skatebottom Sound with Albert McDonnell. I took more than 8 months and included other musicians. This brings us to "All I Can See," my most recent recording with which I was in the studio phase for 18 or so months. I included many wonderful musicians from the rich community of Fairbanks and had co-producers Ron Veliz and Pat Fitzgerald. Presently, I am working on a project in Anchorage at Surreal Studio with Kurt Riemann. I hope to have an album to share summer 2007.

I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska 2000-2006 but recently I relocated to my birth place, Nome where I met my husband. In Fairbanks I had been teaching guitar to 24 students ages ranging from 5 to 40 years old and working at New Hope Church in North Pole with a youth group. Now, in Nome, I own a small guitar studio called Bearing Song and teach private lessons. January 5, 2008 I gave birth to my first child, a little girl! I also I play music at festivals, in coffeehouses, on boats traveling up rivers, in church, and where ever I am called for a good cause.

Music came to me like a late birthday gift. It was already a celebration and when I thought things were said and done there was one more gift to open. Music keeps on giving, not only to me but to other people. To me this is even more a blessing.