January 15, 2025

Back to the Island 2025




Greetings from my first day back to "real life" after BTTI 2025! I slept for 12 hours last night and currently feel like I got run over by a truckload of Nyquil after working Hop Jam. I'm not hungover or suffering some contagious illness I picked up while traveling, I'm just too old to live my best life jumping around in a pool for two hours and then travel home on no sleep the next day without suffering the consequences. As I write this, I am exhausted and sore and happy, and I have absolutely no intention of learning my lesson.

Full Band Shows

I always show up at BTTI expecting at least one show to borrow heavily from whatever tour Hanson just finished. It makes sense logistically; content from the latest tour is always going to be the most polished sound without a ton of additional rehearsal, and there will always be fans at BTTI that couldn't make it to a tour stop. It's a fact that I expect and am fine with, but I always secretly hope they get that show "out of the way" on night one so I can move on to more out of the box territory for the rest of the event. I'm happy to report that this year there was no overtly themed Underneath Complete show, just a few tour highlights mixed in. Gold star from me this year on the music assortment!

The first night probably had the most singles, but I loved that it felt like things leaned more into the SIO era with "Make it Out Alive," "Thinkin' 'Bout Something", "Musical Ride," and "Give a Little." "Make it Out Alive" was my favorite of the night, though "Island In the Sun" featuring Phantom Planet was a fun surprise since I fully expected it to be LWEO the moment I saw them on stage.

Night Two felt like fan club night with songs like "Down," "Sound of Light," "Somebody that Wants to Love You," and the forever impressive "White Collar Crimes." I enjoyed all of it, but unpopular opinion time: "Voice in the Chorus" was my fave.

Night Three was the best in my opinion, and I don't think I'm biased just because I lucked out and got a great spot that night. It was a good mix of throwbacks, fan club songs, and fan favorites. I honestly loved the whole thing. "Cried," "Great Divide," and "You Can't Stop Us" would probably top my list if I had to make one. Seriously though, look at this spread of all the content they hit in one show:

(thanks, hansonstage)

By the end of all of the main shows and solos, they had performed TEN songs from Shout it Out including one of the bonus tracks, so I'm considering BTTI 2025 the unofficial SIO year. 📣 🙌

Zac's Solo

Listen, I love Zac. He is definitely in my top 3 favorite Hansons of all time (a joke, obviously, but no I'm not giving a real ranking). The guy is so talented that practically everything he sings ever sounds flawless, and I am truly rooting for his solo show to be my favorite one of these days so I can properly fangirl at a level he deserves. That being said, this was still not the year. I loved hearing "Save Me From Myself," but overall I would say the show was enjoyable without any major "wow" moments. I tried to ask myself what a fangirl-worthy Zac set would look like to me, because it hardly seems fair to say I want something different without being able to identify what would get me excited.

So I went over to hansonstage and looked at the Zac leads page to try to answer that question, and it hit me that I always expect Isaac to have similar sets from year to year because he has the least leads, but if we consider how many songs Zac plays drums on, he might have even fewer options that wouldn't involve completely reworking a song so that he can do it on the piano or guitar. Looking at that list made me want to cut him a little more slack and give him more credit for getting up there and doing an entire show on his secondary and tertiary instruments. (Can you imagine if Isaac had to do an entire solo set without a guitar?) I'll do my best to be happy that he continues to do these shows that are probably out of his comfort zone, but here are a few cheat codes for how to get me excited next time just in case:

"Get So Low,""On The Rocks,""Reading Your Mind," "In A Way," "This is the Jam." Bonus gushing if he can turn "Joyful Noise" or "Wish That I Was There" into solos because I think he could do it and they would sound great!

Isaac's Solo

Isaac gave us the longest solo set with 12 songs, three of which were from his side band Mother Road Sons. Despite getting a couple of songs I had never heard, "Being Me" was still my favorite and reminded me that I don't always need to be chasing rares in order to be happy with the songs they choose. We all got a fun moment of comic relief during "Ordinary Words" when he kept pulling lyrics out of his pocket, eventually dropped them, and kept failing until one of their techs came out and picked up the paper and held it in front of his face to save the day. 

                                     

Taylor's Solo

I couldn't resist captioning an Instagram story I shared from Taylor's show with "Happy annual Taylor Hanson slays his solo set day!" By the third song in, he already had me going "How have I been sleeping on 'Cut Right Through Me,' this sounds amazing!" I got a little brave this year and made a song request during my M&G photo, which is not something I do often. I didn't end up getting "The Luckiest," but there was a brief moment where I heard the opening notes of a song and my stomach immediately jumped into my throat involuntarily. For half a second, I thought it was my request. My heartbeat sped up, and the million butterflies in my stomach alerted me that something epic was happening. A moment later I realized that I was hearing "Bridges of Stone," and that the fangirl part of me must be woven deep into my physical existence because my body recognized what was happening before my brain did. It's kind of wild to think that there were actual physical changes in my body before I even understood what song I was hearing. Music is insane in that way.   


Video courtesy of Yelena

Phantom Planet

I feel like I have sufficiently rambled about loving Phantom Planet in my posts about the Underneath Experience Tour, so I'm going to keep this short. They did a very short impromptu acoustic set on the beach by the bonfire on the first night. It was only maybe three songs, but it was such a great chill, laid back vibe that I wish it could have been longer or later in the week. Their regular show was a full-length set of most of the songs I loved on tour and several they never had time to include, plus a bonus appearance from Isaac. Alex told us a story about how he tried to crowd surf one time and immediately fell to the ground and injured his ribs, then trusted us to try it out and not do the same. Things ended well this time, but they totally planted a few guys in the area just to be safe. 

Here's a video of Isaac joining in on "California." No crowd surfing in this one.



Games

I am excited to report that this is no longer the segment where I try to politely express being a little bit over Family Feud and give suggestions for how to make it better. In past surveys, I have asked for:

-A game other than Family Feud
-Limiting teams to just one round instead of two so more people get the opportunity to play
-Consider having each brother be an actual part of the teams

I know I'm not the only one to give that feedback, but y'all, ALL of these things happened, and I was shocked. For the first time, we got Pictionary instead of Family Feud. Isaac and Taylor were team captains for opposing teams, and every time a team member went up to draw, they would take that person's seat and participate in guessing. I was there for the first night and thought it was a lot of fun and entertaining to watch, especially when Isaac and Taylor ended up drawing head to head to break the tie at the end.

If you haven't been before, the general vibe of any team game night can probably be summed up by the image of Taylor drinking a dirty banana but abandoning it, someone offering it to Isaac, and Isaac loudly proclaiming "I don't want Taylor's dirty banana" followed by 14-year-old-boy-level cackling from the entire audience. MON era me would be so scandalized.

I attended the second session of Mario Kart with Zac and was lucky enough to get to play (and lose). I had fun during my turn, but I do wish there was some way to increase the number of people who get to participate or make it a little more interactive for those that don't get the chance. Props to whoever thought he said "Favorite boyband" when he actually said "Choose your poison" and got him singing bad NSYNC while I was playing.

The First Annual Hunger Games

Here's a new segment that I did not anticipate having to write, but here we are. If you've been to a few BTTIs, it's no secret that getting front row has become progressively harder each year. For a variety of reasons that I won't get into, this year Island Gigs/the hotel said no more waiting by the stage. We got a push notification from the IG app on the day of the first show stating that the stage area needed to be clear until 7pm (the show was at 9pm). I know there was a lot of general happiness over this decision and I have nothing against trying to make things more fair, but it felt like their plan started and ended with sending out that notification and no real strategy to enforce anything. They kept changing the times people could show up to each show, giving different instructions to different people because they kept changing what was happening, giving more information to people in person vs. what's being sent out in the app....the idea might have been solid, but the execution was not.

Island Gigs may know Hanson fans are next level after years of watching them camp by the stage, but to be fair, they've never stood in a GA venue and watched the stampede roll in at doors. Maybe they truly didn't think through how to actually enforce their vision or anticipate that telling us not to be there until 7 didn't mean people would go chill elsewhere until 7. It meant the usual crowd was just going to form as close as they were allowed, and people who may have naturally shown up a bit later are suddenly curious enough to be there before 7 to see what happens and if it might benefit them. It resulted in most shows having a semi-circle of fans lying in wait around the perimeter of the stage, inching in the closer it got to the time we were allowed to be up there. There were multiple stampedes that got sent back for running too soon, the front row lineup changing just slightly each time. I watched this all from the sidelines up until the final day when they changed the strategy and I found myself deciding I might as well try my luck.

For Taylor's solo show, they did a random drawing of numbers. We'd reach into a bag, draw out a number between 1-100, and be allowed to the stage area in that order. These were handwritten with no lines underscoring what was the top and what was the bottom. Did I have an 18 or an 81? Was that a 25 or a 52? 66 or 99? Not everyone got one, and not everyone knew about it. They were going to do it again for the last show, but then decided it wasn't worth the hassle and just let everyone cluster again.

I didn't win with the reaping raffle, but in a stroke of total random luck, my friend and I found ourselves in the right place when the IG staff member decided to allow people to start lining up for the final show. We went from not going to try to get into the cluster to well, if we're in the front and center of this mess, we might as well try. So I have to confess, I sat on the beach for two hours behind an imaginary line between two folding chairs in what turned out to be the weirdest game of red light/green light of my life. It was every bit as childish and arbitrary as it sounds. My final thoughts before being allowed to move forward was this is how Katniss must have felt when deciding if she was going to run for the cornucopia or run for shelter. The staff member stood directly in front of us and had us take one large step forward at a time until we made it to the stage, which wasn't foolproof but was way better than if he had just said "Go!" and let us run. In the end it worked in my favor and I got a great spot without putting too much time in, but man, I sure hope this was a unique experience. I assume there will be some more official system in place by next year.


Winning (with) The Stanley Cup

This year's 12 year repeater gift was a Stanley Cup, and as the last person on earth who did not own an insulated cup prior to this moment, my life has been changed. One day I used it to get a virgin strawberry daiquiri, drank half of it, left it in my room....and it was still frozen 12 hours later after the show. I had no idea these things worked so well and will absolutely be bringing it back. But the usefulness doesn't stop there, friends. My roommate Rachel walked into our bathroom one evening and walked right back out and shut the door. "There's a bee sitting on the counter," she tells me. We've been friends long enough that I know my role in this scenario. I'm removing the bee, or we're not using the bathroom for the rest of the trip.

I looked around the room for anything to catch it in, and my eyes reluctantly landed on my new Stanley (thankfully empty at the time). I managed to trap the bee under it successfully on the first try, but the catch and release portion of the plan went a bit sideways. I tried to slide the cup over a flat box so I could carry it outside, only to realize that the edge of the counter was slightly curved, so the bee escaped and decided to just hang out on the outside of the cup while I was holding it. I did not actually intend for the cup to become a murder weapon, but I suppose it beats sleeping with a live bee in our room and finding out once and for all of if my roommate who is practically allergic to everything can add bees to the list. Sorry, my buzzy little friend, but a million thanks to whoever decided this was the year for cups! I had no idea how many uses I was going to get out of it in a single trip.

It proved itself useful one final time as it came time to pack my extremely wet swimsuit from the pool party, and I realized I am apparently size 30oz Stanely Cup in swimwear. A+++.


The Pool Party

For this year's pool party, I got in the pool for the first time after years of standing around the perimeter. I expected to freeze, but it was actually a little warmer than in the daytime. Definitely not going to put a lot of extra thought into why. Anyway, I figured if it ends up being the final year at the Jewel, it could also be our last afterparty located by a pool, and I might as well experience it at least once. I combated the cold by jumping the entire time. It worked, but the muscles in my lower half have since filed a formal complaint.

Taylor jumped in at the end as has become the tradition, but he took his shoes off first and tossed them down ahead of him. Instead of landing conveniently next to the pool exit that I assume was his goal, I watched them land directly in the pool, followed by him profusely apologizing to someone. Apparently one hit someone in the head on the journey down, and now they can mark being nailed in the head by Taylor Hanson's shoe off their bucket list. He cannonballed in with a magnificent splash, and then it was all over. The cover photo up at the top is the aftermath left behind in a sad little pool of yesterday's news the morning after.

Until Next Time

As you've probably heard, it seems that this is the end of Jewel Paradise Cove as we know it. We found out about a week before the trip this year that the property had been sold, and we've since heard a dozen different stories about what the future holds for us. Maybe the new buyer will renovate, maybe it will be torn down and rebuilt, maybe it won't be done in time for the next BTTI, or maybe it will and the new owners won't want to take on Island Gigs as a customer. Maybe we'll be somewhere else in Jamaica or somewhere else entirely (*cough* St Lucia? I can dream). Maybe we'll be right where we've been the last three years but finally have working hot tubs (again, I can dream). It's not the first venue change we've had at BTTI, and it probably won't be the last, but the location has never been the main draw for me so much as the music and the people anyway. Cheers for 12 years, and here's to looking forward to lucky #13. I don't know where I'll be going, but as always, I can't wait to go back.


P.S. I know how much I enjoy being sent candid photos from fellow fans capturing a moment of me with Hanson, so when I found myself with a great spot during Pictionary Night 1, I tried to take at least one photo of every group that played. I do not promise quality or that you're not blurry or hidden in the photo(s) I took, and I can't swear I didn't get distracted and miss someone. I thought the easiest way to share was to put them all in this public album on my blog's facebook page. Feel free to save/use them if you find yourself!

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