Jeff Hanson was a singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist

Multi-instrumentalist

A multi-instrumentalist is a musician who plays a number of different instruments.The Bachelor of Music degree usually requires a second instrument to be learned , but people who double on another instrument are not usually seen as multi-instrumentalists.-Classical music:Music written for Symphony...

 whose voice was described in a 2005 Paste

Paste (magazine)

Paste is a monthly music and entertainment digital magazine published in the United States by Wolfgang's Vault. Its tagline is "Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture."-History:...

review as an "angelic falsetto

Falsetto

Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...

, a cross between Alison Krauss

Alison Krauss

Alison Maria Krauss is an American bluegrass-country singer, songwriter and fiddler. She entered the music industry at an early age, winning local contests by the age of ten and recording for the first time at fourteen. She signed with Rounder Records in 1985 and released her first solo album in...

 and Art Garfunkel

Art Garfunkel

Arthur Ira "Art" Garfunkel is an American singer-songwriter, poet, and actor, best known as being a member of the folk duo Simon & Garfunkel...

 that is often (understandably) mistaken for a female contralto

Contralto

Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...

."

Biography

Hanson was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...

. He started learning guitar at four years old and by the age of 13 formed the emo

Emo (music)

Emo is a style of rock music characterized by melodic musicianship and expressive, often confessional lyrics. It originated in the mid-1980s hardcore punk movement of Washington, D.C., where it was known as "emotional hardcore" or "emocore" and pioneered by bands such as Rites of Spring and Embrace...

/indie rock

Indie rock

Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...

 band M.I.J. with bandmates Ryan Scheife (bass) and Mike Kennedy (drums). Seven years later the band released a 7", an EP and a full album on Caulfield Records.

He began a solo career in 2003 and was signed to Kill Rock Stars

Kill Rock Stars

Kill Rock Stars is an independent record label founded in 1991 by Slim Moon and based in both Olympia, Washington and Portland, Oregon. The label has released a variety of work in different genres, making it difficult to pigeonhole as having any one artistic mission...

 Records after sending in an unsolicited demo tape. He released three albums for the label, Son in 2003 and Jeff Hanson in 2005. His third album for Kill Rock Stars titled Madam Owl was released on August 19, 2008. Hanson's solo albums were recorded at Presto! Recording Studios

Presto! Recording Studios

Presto! Recording Studios is located in Lincoln, Nebraska, and run by brothers Mike Mogis and A.J. Mogis. The studio began in the brothers' North Platte, Nebraska basement and around 1995 moved to the basement of a Lincoln home. First known as Whoopass Recording Studio, the name was later changed...

.

Since 1996 Hanson resided in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Hanson was found dead on June 5, 2009 in his St. Paul apartment into which he had recently moved. The cause of death was mixed drug toxicity. The medical examiner

Medical examiner

A medical examiner is a medically qualified government officer whose duty is to investigate deaths and injuries that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortem examinations, and in some jurisdictions to initiate inquests....

's office was unable to determine if the death was accidental or intentional.

Discography

• 2000 Radio Goodnight (as part of the band M.I.J.)
• 2003 Son
• 2005 Jeff Hanson
• 2008 Madam Owl

External links

• Official website
• Factsheet for Hanson from the Kill Rock Stars website, with MP3
  MP3
  MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
  
   recordings
• [|HANSON Biography written by Kenyon Hopkin] of Allmusic
• Profile on MySpace
  MySpace
  Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
  
  
• February 2005 interview with Pulse of the Twin Cities (also available here)
• Jeff Hanson on NPR Music