Jennifer Hanson 'Thankful' album

Great art is often like a vacation: The destination can’t be reached without taking the journey. That truth gives an instant explanation to Jennifer Hanson’s five-year wait between her substantial, self-titled debut album and Thankful, her invigorating sophomore project. The 64 months between them were not in any way a vacation. They were, in retrospect, the time required to complete an emotional journey, one that passed from elation to disappointment to confusion to self-discovery and recommitment.

That odyssey is a background for Thankful, one in which Hanson—a former Academy of Country Music award nominee—claims her own unique artistry. It’s simultaneously complex and refreshing, much like the woman who recorded it. Musically, it’s an album of breezy tempos, atmospheric instrumentation, gritty reality and hard-won joy. Instrumentally, it’s an album that challenges the typical Nashville process of record-making and celebrates her contributions as a musician. Lyrically, it’s a project that not only grapples with transition, but actually celebrates uncertainty—that necessary-but- uncomfortable state that accompanies change.

Ultimately, it’s an album that also symbolizes conviction. At the time Hanson recorded it, there was no deep-pocketed label funding her time in the studio. Every nickel and dime that went into the creation of Thankful came out of her own bank account, a statement of her unsinkable belief that this project— whatever it would become—had to be made.

“It felt really good to write these songs and get them out,” she reflects. “It was kind of a cleansing process for me. I didn’t really know if this album would ever see the light of day. I was just writing and being creative—musically, lyrically and as a musician—so it was really healing for me to get to make the record. It was like, ‘I can do whatever I wanna do. I can write whatever I wanna write. And by golly that’s what I’m gonna do.’ So that’s kinda what I did.”

In the process, Hanson stakes out her own place in the musical landscape. The album features riffs in “Won’t Give Up” and “Stepping Off” that could easily belong to the Rolling Stones and Tonic. It features the kind of arpeggiated story song in “‘73” that could fit in a Don Williams album. It employs the kind of ingratiating melodies in “Joyride” and “Kick The Jukebox” that could easily meld into both ‘70s pop broadcasts and 21st-century country radio. And it’s crafted in total with the kind of authenticity one attributes to Emmylou Harris.

That kind of multi-layered influence is a result of Hanson’s own upbringing and the background of producer-musician-songwriter-engineer Nick Brophy, a Los Angeles collaborator whose work has brushed both the commercial success of poprock acts Everclear and Avril Lavigne and the country efforts of Phil Vassar and Marty Stuart, who put Brophy to work on a Grammy-winning track that featured -- not surprisingly -- Emmylou Harris.

In her first album, Hanson had relied—like most Nashville-based country artists—on the session players that dominate Music City’s landscape. The project was undeniably successful—it earned her a Top 15 hit with “Beautiful Goodbye” and an Academy of Country Music nomination for Top New Female Vocalist.

But Brophy pushed her to find the more unique facets of her musical identity, challenging her to not only create the songs but also participate in nearly every part of their sonic interpretation. Instead of bringing completed songs to the same crew of musicians that played on everyone else’s records, they took a different approach to music-making. Hanson and Brophy wrote the songs in tandem and played most of the instruments themselves, usually building the foundation of every track the same day they created any given title.

“It was a different approach for me to play on this record,” she explains. “Willie Nelson has a style, Tom Petty has a style, and their style is what gives their records character. That’s part of the artist and their artistry. And so Nick really encouraged me to not be afraid to play and to share my ideas, whatever they may be. Since it was just he and I in the studio, I didn’t feel intimidated, and if I screwed up, I could play it again. I saw all of a sudden that, ‘Wow, I can do this!’

“It was a challenge for me, but it forced me to just try to be a better musician. I’m really grateful that he pushed me to do that, because I never would’ve had the confidence to do it if I had been in a different scenario. We got something that gave the record a little color, made it a little different—maybe not so pristine, and not so perfect—but it gave it some character. That’s what we were trying to go for.”

Not that other musicians weren’t welcome. Steel player Russ Pahl, drummer Steve Brewster and bass player Jimmy Carter—guys whose work has benefited Gretchen Wilson and Dierks Bentley—were among the players who eventually contributed to Thankful, but they were as an enhancement, not as the end product.

The result is an album that’s engagingly personal and direct. “It’s not only me from a lyrical standpoint, or from a musical standpoint, but even from an instrumentation standpoint,” she enthuses. Finding “me” has been a journey in itself for Hanson. Born in Whittier, Calif., she grew up in La Habra, a neighborhood just a few short miles from Buena Park, where the ACM used to hand out its annual awards.

But the two areas could easily have been a continent apart. Her neighborhood was a lower income, Hispanic section of the La Habra area, where gangs and drug deals were so ingrained in the environment that they were taken for granted.

“I didn’t know anything else, so I didn’t know any better,” she reflects. “I mean, I knew that we didn’t live in the best neighborhood, or that it wasn’t that safe, but now even more when I go home, it’s eye-opening. We really had diddly squat growing up.”

Hanson was the lone Caucasian female on her block, and her peers called her “wetta”—meaning “white girl”—as a sign of affection. But she was an only child, and as a minority in her home area, she often retreated inward to make sense of her uniqueness.

Both of her parents were working musicians. Their relationship began in a cover band, where they played songs made famous by the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and the Doobie Brothers. Jennifer’s mother was a vocalist and practically breathed Linda Ronstadt records. Her father played guitar and would eventually back the Righteous Brothers and Alabama.

But in the early years, the couple struggled financially, and a divorce when Hanson was six years old had a huge impact on her identity. Jennifer’s mother was devastated by the split and turned to alcohol as a temporary salve.

Jennifer often had to fend for herself, and music provided both an escape and a secondary friend. Genre was unimportant. She made her public debut as a performer by singing a Dolly Parton song in second grade. But she also wore out Madonna’s first album.

After her father began touring, Jennifer was able to accompany him on occasion, and her view of the future expanded quickly. “That elevated everything for me,” she says. “Being able to go out as a kid and hang out and be backstage and watch it all go down, that’s when this career choice became tangible for me. I thought, ‘I can do this. It’s hard work, it’s going to take a long time to get there, but I can do this.’”

She moved to Nashville in 1996 and quickly discovered that songwriting was an important means of establishing herself as an artist. That led, in a roundabout way, to becoming a full-fledged musician. “Playing guitar was something that I taught myself once I moved to Nashville, so I’ve only done that the last 10 years or so,” she explains. “I taught myself to play so I could write, not really thinking, ‘I’m going to be become this great guitar player.’ It’s just that I needed a writing tool so that I could write songs.”

She grew quickly with her art. Within two years, she was signed to a songwriting deal with Acuff-Rose, a publishing company that holds the catalogs to such significant writers as Hank Williams, Roy Orbison and Don Gibson. In 2000, she married fellow songwriter Mark Nesler (“Just To See You Smile,” “Living And Living Well”), and two years later, she signed a deal with Capitol Records, leading to her debut album and quick success with the first single, “Beautiful Goodbye.”

Hanson co-produced the project and earned instant respect for its sonic features, an instinctive balance of commercial savvy and artistic integrity. “Beautiful Goodbye,” with its wavy chorus and mature viewpoint, became a hit, and there was reason to believe that subsequent releases would follow suit. But when they stalled, so did her relationship with the label. There was no rancor, only disillusionment, and she asked for her release. It was granted amicably.

But she was also given some outside signs that her career still had steam. The Wreckers recorded her song “Leave The Pieces,” scoring a multi-week #1 single and proving again that her commercial instincts were good. And it provided both an economic foundation and a confidence from which she could begin work on what became Thankful.

She financed the project herself, beginning in the spring of 2006, and channeled her emotions into the work. Along the way, Bucky Covington earned a hit with her song, “A Different World,” confirming yet again that she was creating music that had a place in the bigger market.

Fletcher Foster, a former Capitol executive, moved on to Universal Records South, and asked specifically to get a first listen to her album once it was completed. Impressed, Foster took it to label president and noted producer , Mark Wright (whose credits include Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance” and Brooks & Dunn’s “Only In America”), and in turn, Hanson had a new home.

In conjunction with Thankful’s embrace of change, the label acknowledged the evolution of the marketplace, giving the album a digital release before its eventual physical introduction. And it brought a full-circle completion to Hanson’s five-year journey, an outside acknowledgement that the music she finds so crucial in establishing her voice does indeed need to be heard by a wider circle. Just as the album accepts uncertainty, so she looks at tomorrow with an inability to predict the outward reaction. She guarantees only that her inward reaction is one of renewed determination.

“I have no idea what will become of this album,” she says. “But I will make another record. I’m just gonna keep on making music. That’s the one thing that I have figured out. I’m not going to let anyone dictate whether I’m going to have a career or not. That’s something that I have control over. If I want a career, I have to go get one.”

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Jennifer Hanson - Thankful