This month, Telluride Arts proudly features long time local, Scrapple star, KOTO host, Geoff Hanson as the Featured Artist of the month. Get a glimpse of Geoff through his answers to a few questions we asked him:

Early Telluride Memory:
I walked into the Telluride Times Journal in December 1990. I had only been here a few weeks. I showed the editor Marta Tarbel an article I wrote on The Neville Brothers in college and told her it was a sample of my work when it was in fact the only article I wrote in college. She told me Rasta Stevie was heading out on the road with his Reggae band 8750 and asked me if I would like to write the column while he was gone. I’ve been writing about music ever since.
 
Book: The Alchemist, Paolo Coehlo, (if room for more…) The Universal Baseball Assoc., Robert Coover, Jitterbug Perfume. Tom Robbins, The Summer of 49 David Halberstam, The Art of Fielding Chad Harbach, The Brothers K , David James Duncan, The Confederacy of Dunces, Soldier of the Last War Mark Helpern
 
Favorite Moment on Set; We were shooting our fictional pig roast in Ophir and we were a little light on extras. I asked, “Is there anything going on today{that would explain why there were so few etras}?” And someone replied. “There’s a {real) pig roast happening in Ilium.” We went down there and shot some footage including the shot of the pig on the spicket that appears in the film– no animals were hurt doing the shooting of “Scrapple.” Life was imitating art. As filmmakers, we saw ourselves as conematic miners, trying to hit the vein of ‘70s life in Telluride and that was the kind of moment that affirmed that we were hitting the main line. People who were here in the ‘70s pretty much all say we nailed it.
 
Song: “Further on down the road” by Taj Mahal. It was the song I had in my mind when I sat down to write “Scrapple” – a guy riding a motorcycle with a pig in the sidecar set to that song. I also produced a version of it with Taj and The Phantom Blues Band that I think stands up to the various versions of that song.
 
Morning or Night: The first cup of coffee is the best part of every day. Other than that, night.
 
Favorite Interview: My favorite interview was the one I did backstage at the Bill Graham Mid-Summer Music Festival in 1991 with Taj Mahal. I was in a room with four other journalists in a panel kind of setting and it was clear none of the other people knew anything about him. It became a conversation between Taj and me and we really connected. It was the beginning of a very meaningful relationship.
 
Favorite Show: If I had to pick a single show in Telluride it would be Pearl Jam at The Ride in 2016. Here’s a Telluride Top 10 I put together, of a column and when you look it, you can’t help but be blown away by the quality of music we get in Telluride. 
1. Pearl Jam, 2016

2. Allman Brothers, 1991 

3. Neil Young, 2016 

4. JJ Cale, 1994 

5. Robert Plant, 2018

6. Steve Winwood, 2014/2017 
7. The Band, 1994 

8. Johnny Cash, 1997 

9. Sturgill Simpson, 2018. Widespread Panic, Little Women and Blues Traveler, late night show at the Sheridan Opera House, 1991 

10. Gregg Allman/Sharon Jones, 2015
 
Favorite View: I love the way the mountains change as your perspective changes. For instance, when you look at Wilson from the ski area, Lizard Head is on the left. But from other vantage points, it appears on the right. I love the way light and clouds change Ajax every day, and the way sunsets light up the Wilson range. I love driving down Keystone Hill and Wilson and Sunshine appear on your left and then they disappear. You can live here for decades and see the mountains differently every day.
 
Inspiration: Creativity