Published in the Quad-City Times on July 31, 2024

Mac Hanson loves to use the phrase “long walk.”

The bluesy rock songwriter came back to it multiple times during our 40-minute phone interview this week. Hanson called from his car, driving past a PetCo and a Chipotle in his adopted home of Hollywood.

“The long walk” can mean a few things. It can be something akin to “long story short,” an idiom in an apology after one thought becomes five and then twenty. That’s the most frequent use in our conversation, because Hanson is an epiphany engineer. No question has a simple answer.

“Thanks for letting me monologue,” he says when the conversation is over. “I haven’t had an opportunity to in, like, three hours.”

“The long walk” can also be used to define a lengthy road trip, something like Hanson’s six-show summer tour starting in Salt Lake City and ending in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that stops at Davenport’s Raccoon Motel on Wednesday night.

Most importantly, though, Hanson uses “the long walk” to describe a prolonged realization. And Hanson’s longest walk has been the road to using his real name.

Since 2015, he has performed under the moniker Joshua & The Holy Rollers, out of fears that using his last name would attract accusations of nepotism — his three elder Hanson brothers form the boy-band behind “MMMBop.”

But Hanson said he realized after having his first son in 2020 that this mindset was “wrapped up in an unhealthy psychology.” It opened a Pandora’s box of identity crises. 

“I, transparently, felt almost paralyzed by whether or not I was willing to take on the identity shift,” he said. “In the end, it really doesn’t impact anything.”

Hanson hasn’t released music since 2021, but he’s stayed engaged online, creating custom songs at the request of fans on pay-per-video platform Cameo, or riffing in silly self-produced songs with his signature Jack Black grin and Jason Momoa-esque mane of hair.

He’s also been writing prolifically, sitting on a boatload of unreleased songs. It’s this new music that clinched the fact that a name change was necessary. Much of it is about fatherhood, and heads in a new direction than that of the distorted guitars the Holy Rollers name might connote.

It’s important, Hanson said, that it’s his.

“I needed to be able to write a song about my son and feel like it wasn’t the non-sequitur in the record, but the arbiter,” he said.

So two weeks ago, Hanson made his name-change announcement. He haggled over the wording of a lengthy social media post ushering in this new era. “I took a long walk to tell you: Joshua is dead,” it concluded.

The reaction was pleasantly anti-climactic. Most people in Hanson’s life said they saw it coming. His brother, his bandmates, his fans. It took the wind out of his sails, he said, in a positive way.

“Oh, right! I’ve been perseverating over bulls**t!” Hanson said he thought to himself. “What a worthless expenditure of time and energy, and living in a state of anxiety, and in the milieu of unhappiness, only to recognize that you were the only one getting in your way.”

Hanson’s regional identity is a moving target, too. He grew up in Oklahoma but said he didn’t always feel like he fit in there.

It wasn’t until later in life that he connected with his Southwestern roots, which came from finding a bond with Texans and Oklahomans he met in his new home city of Los Angeles. This newfound confidence in his heritage comes out in the music. His songs are swampy. You can hear the red dirt blowing by.

“The Southern rock thing is a thing that happened almost as a consequence of forming an identity,” he said. “And having to form it almost in the absence of the roots I grew up with.”

His musical roots are harder to pin down. It’s The Beatles, Paul Simon and Motown R&B. It’s Queen, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Roger Miller. It’s a whole lot of Aerosmith, whose “Big Ones” singles compilation inspired Hanson’s youthful rock-and-roll aspirations.

When I told Hanson I’m not an Aerosmith fan, he made his case. Here’s the short walk of it: Hanson values the band’s prolificness. He admires songwriter Steven Tyler’s willingness to make a few bad songs.

He lays out an analogy, arguing that if one company sets out to make a perfect pot, and another sets out to make the most pots, the latter group will come out with the better result. There is value in repetition, he said.

“You don’t have to make every song a f*****g hit single!” Hanson exclaimed. “You just have to write.”

So what’s next for Hanson, now that he’s embracing his name and embracing volume?

I asked, and he wrestled with the answer.

“Gosh, am I gonna say this?” he groaned. “Am I gonna say this to a person of publication? Gannon, am I going to do this?”

Hanson finally relented, announcing that he’s planning on releasing one song a month for as long as he possibly can. He’s starting next month with a song about fatherhood called “Finding It.”

He’s also going to keep performing with Eternity Speedway, a new side project that Hanson formed with Lovelytheband guitarist Jordan Greenwald and 5 Seconds of Summer drummer Ashton Irwin. They’re aiming to be the next ZZ Top.

One thing is certain: the new Mac Hanson is going to make a lot of pots. That’s the long walk.

“Does that answer your question?”