Hanson is playing Wednesday night at Durham's Carolina Theatre. If you arrive early enough, you can take part in a preshow ritual where you'll be asked to remove some clothing and participate in a physical activity.

Get your mind out of the gutter, it's not that kind of party. It's the "Barefoot Walk," in which band and audience walk a mile without shoes.

Hanson started doing these walks before every show last year as an extension of some of the themes on its latest album, "The Walk" (3CG Records). The band came up with the scheme in conjunction with the shoe company TOMS, which donates one pair of shoes to impoverished people in Africa for every pair it sells.

"We met with them and said, 'Here's the idea, we walk one mile barefoot in every city. You bring the shoes and we'll help you sell 'em,' " says Isaac Hanson, calling from a tour stop in Indianapolis. "'That's nuts,' they told us, 'but it's also awesome.' 'Exactly,' we said. 'Everything crazy has the potential to be really cool. The question is, just how crazy are you willing to be?'"

The young man is just getting warmed up.

"I think this is a valuable part of our goal to motivate our fans to take action on issues of poverty and AIDS in Africa," he continues. "There are 12 million kids with no families because of AIDS, 25 million have died so far and there will be 25 million orphans by 2010. It's staggering. We don't have the solution -- nobody does, it's complex. But by beginning to ask questions and giving people direct ways to have an impact, that has a compounding effect."

A decade ago, when Hanson was a wildly popular pop trio with an average age of about 14, you probably wouldn't have picked it as Band Most Likely to Emulate Bono. But even at their adorable peak, when 1997's "MMMBop" was blaring from the radio every 15 minutes, the Hanson brothers (Isaac, Taylor and Zac) never quite fit in with the late-'90s wave of teen idols.

"Nah," the 27-year-old Hanson says with a laugh. "We always used to say, 'Think of us as old guys with really high voices.' Or I guess you could say we were proof that ambition is blind."

Ten years later, Hanson is still making pop as pure as it is hard to classify. "The Walk" doesn't fit neatly into any category, although it evokes classic pop, rock and soul (especially the Jackson 5). And if you pay attention beyond the hooks, the lyrical sentiments aren't too far removed from what you'd find on a U2 record: "Have no fear when the waters rise, we can conquer this great divide."

This grew out of the band's travels in South Africa and Mozambique while making "The Walk," where the band's growing activist inclinations crystallized some of the yearnings of its new songs. While in Africa, the Hansons enlisted kids from an orphanage to put together a children's choir, which is heard on three tracks. In fact, these children are the first singers you hear on the album, on a chant called "Ngi Ne Themba" ("I Find Hope").

"We were certainly inspired by a lot of things going on in Africa," Hanson says. "The album carries a lot of those themes, which we've been privileged to talk to our fans about. We feel like there's an opportunity for greatness here. We all spend so much time thinking we're not capable of doing anything -- 'Dude, I can't figure out how the heck to do anything about this.' But Nelson Mandela said at Live Aid, 'Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great.' Our great grandparents fought a world war, and this is our war. We've got the opportunity, so let's make them proud."

david.menconi@newsobserver.com

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