The Return of the Return of the Son of the Bride of the Idea Tree

A few more thoughts to follow up my post from last week.

Look for the second right answer... or trust the first.

One of my favorite "idea" persons is Roger von Oech of Creative Think. He's penned some really cool creative thinking books with great titles like A Whack on the Side of the Head and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants. One of the techniques Roger teaches is to look for the "second right answer" (or third or fourth right answer). We can sometimes find a good answer to a problem or discover a great new idea that might be perfectly workable, and yet, if we don't continue searching at least a little bit further from there, we might miss out on what might be an even better answer or idea.

I agree that looking for "the second right answer" can be a great tool for many creative and problem-solving applications, and I often have to employ that when working on lyrics, where a general sense of what I'm trying to say will come first, and then a better way to say it comes later. However, I find that when I'm creating music, my instinct is usually to go with the first thing that struck me when I was playing around on an instrument. There's something mysterious about music and why it works to create enjoyment, and for me it's almost a Tao kind of thing where I trust to follow whatever the flow is when I'm in the mode of creating something. I may spend a lot of time crafting and honing whatever it was that first came out, or making some adjustments to it, but more often than not I will keep at least some essence of what it was that came out initially.

Sometimes, once I've got part of a song together and I'm recording a rough demo, I'll be brave and continue recording into whatever part of the song I didn't have finished yet, completely ad libbing the chords and/or vocal part. At the time I'll think, ah okay, I'll have to come up with something better for that part later... but when I listen back, it often turns out that there was something about where I happened to go that was quite interesting and useable, perhaps with a bit of work. I might not have recognized it so much while I was actually playing it, but listening back later can give a totally different perspective. (It seems that the bridges of songs are quite amenable to that kind of thing... You can create bridges of all shapes and sizes that will work just great to transport your ears safely from the second chorus to the third verse.) That perspective of time and being able to get outside of what you're doing can be very important to appreciating the work (or not). There's a great story Jerry Garcia used to tell about how he once pushed Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh down a flight of stairs after a concert (yes, Jerry Garcia did that!) because he was so upset at how bad the band had played. But when he and the band listened back to the tapes later, they liked that show so much that they actually released it as a live album.

"Write what you know" and/or "make stuff up".

The old adage about writing is to "write what you know" and I agree that's often very useful; Scott Adams worked for years in cubicle-lined companies before creating Dilbert; Kurt Vonnegut was actually at the Battle of the Bulge that he wrote about in Slaughterhouse Five; and Charles Dickens grew up and worked among the wide cross-section of humanity that he wrote so colorfully about. But then again, Robert Plant was in Morocco when he wrote the song "Kashmir" and most of the Beach Boys never surfed. So I would say that "make stuff up" is also a good motto for writers, perhaps especially for songwriters. I suppose it's easier to get away with making stuff up when writing a song because you're only talking about as many words as might equal about a half of one page of the average novel. Novelists have a much more detailed story to describe and they should probably have a better idea of what the details of their story are all about.

But very few "true stories" are anywhere near 100% as they really happened, so writing what you know can always be combined with making stuff up. I've done that several times... "There's a Monster in My House" was based on a true story... not from me, but from my wife when she was little... though how the song turns out is made up. "Hide and Go Seek with the Moon" was based on how my girls are avid "moon spotters", but that idea was embellished from there. A musical I wrote called A Week in the Life (think The Office with singing and dancing) was based almost entirely on the company where I used to work in customer service, and I used several of my colleagues there as the characters and a lot of dialogue from things I'd noted over the years. But since the day-to-day work in that kind of company doesn't typically involve what we normally think of as "plot", I had to create and embellish a few concurrent plots involving some situations there, some of which had occurred and some of which only sort of happened. By the time the show ran I estimated that it was about 70-75% true to life, and the rest was either completely made up or embellished in some way or other.

When writing songs for kids, how much you write about what you know (or knew, or observe about kids) and how much you make stuff up depends to some extent on what kind of perspective you're coming from as the singer... Are you singing as a kid talking about his own life, or singing as a kid talking to other kids or telling a story to another kid, or singing as an adult to a kid, or singing as a pirate or some other character that is enacting a story for kids? I think Justin Roberts is an absolute master at writing from a kid's perspective, and Frances England does that amazingly, too. It's great not only for kids, who can relate so well to it, but it also helps you as an adult to appreciate a kid's world better. But then making stuff up will probably work better for songs that are more character or story based, or just meant to be purely imaginative or absurd.

Ultimately, I don't know that it really matters all that much if you write from your direct experience or just make stuff up, as long as there's something interesting about it. As Ginger Hendrix said so well in a recent article she wrote about writing lyrics for kids' songs: "Maybe the criterion I'm reaching for is just the word authentic. Is the song authentic or was it written to lure cd-buying parents into feeling like they’re teaching their kids something? I don't know about you, but most days I feel like my kids end up teaching me a lot more than I manage to teach them."

But then, some great kids' songs have lyrics that are really about nothing more than teaching something to kids, sometimes even in a very generic or by-the-book way. For example, perhaps the most popular kids' song of all time has these lyrics: "A B C D E F G, H I J K L M N O P, Q R S T U V, W X Y Z. Now I know my ABC's. Next time won't you sing with me?" Not really the most artful or authentic lyrics ever, and it's totally trying to push a concept on kids... but hey, it's great for what it is and kids love it, so to me that's great kids' music. I almost wonder if the new indie kids rock aesthetic is putting too much emphasis on music and lyrics for kids needing to be oh so artfully hip and brilliant all the time... That's stuff that adults care more about, anyway, and then again, a lot of lyrics for adult songs are pretty silly and insipid and are pushing messages, and yet we still love a lot of those songs, so why should we care if some kids' songs are like that? If we're always looking down our noses at all of those so-beneath-my-level-of-cool Barney-esque kinds of songs, we might be missing out on giving our kids the next great simple and timeless learning anthems like "The Alphabet Song".

The Idea Dream Team = Columbus, Van Gogh, Judge Judy and Joan of Arc.

Roger von Oech talks about the roles of the creative person being the explorer, the artist, the judge and the warrior. First, the explorer has to go out and search for the raw materials that could make up an idea. Then the artist takes those materials and molds them into something. Then the judge looks at that "something" and determines whether it needs more work, needs to be thrown out, or is fit to go forward. And if the idea gets the okay from the judge, then the warrior takes it and fights for its success out in the world. It's not always a linear process like that... sometimes all of those roles are being enacted concurrently, and sometimes what the judge determines gives the artist a new direction which gives the explorer something new to discover, so the process can work backwards as well.

To me, the explorer is always discovering things, no matter where he travels or whether he stays put in his easy chair at home... And it's not the explorer's job to have any thought about what is to come from his discovery, but only to recognize that there is some potential in that moment of discovery. A song of mine for an upcoming album is called "How Big", which began with a feeling my "explorer" had while watching a YouTube video that zooms into a single atom from the far reaches of the universe. Another song called "Heartbeat (The Stethoscope Song)" began when my explorer smiled and laughed while my girls were playing with a toy stethoscope and listened not only to my heartbeat, but also to my nosebeat and elbowbeat, etc. And the feeling inspired by my one year-old (at the time) prying me from my busy work one day by saying, "Daddy... come play!" (with her eyes like Puss 'n' Boots from Shrek) led to a song by the same name.

Of course, many things that the explorer thinks are noteworthy don't even get past the artist, much less the judge. The artist takes all of those little nuggets of possibility and tries to turn them into something more tangible. Sometimes that works, and sometimes not. The artist often has to mangle and warp and twist the basic materials to create something he is happy with. Sometimes my artist will spend an undue amount of time trying to make something workable that just isn't... but that's to be expected, because he's good friends with the explorer and doesn't want the explorer to feel like his discovery wasn't at least given a good chance.

I think many artists can give too much weight to their judge. And then again, if you've seen any of the Americal Idol audition shows, you know that some people don't give their inner judge nearly enough power to stop them from embarrassing themselves on national television. I don't think I need to elaborate on what the judge is all about, only to say that there are times when you have to remind your judge that absolute perfection is not really a viable option in art, and that sometimes it is okay to let things through that are a little rough around the edges.

One thing to be really wary of is paying too much mind to anyone else's "judge" when they make a judgement about your work, especially when it's still in progress. I'm not a huge fan of creating artistic things by committee, and so I adhere to the advice I was given when looking for feedback on my first musical and handed out scripts to several people whose opinion I valued... The advice was to completely ignore individual criticisms. One person, even someone whose opinion I respect greatly, or even someone who is hugely successful in the same line of work, might really dislike some particular thing about my work, but if I change that aspect of the work to please only that person, I might have just changed something that everybody else but that person would have liked just fine. Everyone has particular tastes and preferences, and one person's opinion about something in particular should never supercede the artist's vision and inspiration for the work. But if you get what seems to be a general negative consensus about something from several different people, then it is worth looking into. It's still not necessarily worth changing, though... sometimes the artist just knows best about their own work... but it's certainly worth sending back to your explorer and artist to look into.

The ancient Greek sculptor Polyclitus once did an experiment where he worked on two sculptures simultaneously, one in his private workroom and one in the room where he often entertained guests. Whenever someone commented on the viewable sculpture, Polyclitus would change it as they suggested. When both sculptures were finished and showed to the public, the private one was declared a masterpiece and the public one considered an artistic disaster. When asked how the two sculptures could be so drastically different in quality, Polyclitus answered, "Because I made this one (the private one) and you made that one."

The bottom line is that my judge, and the judges of the people that I've chosen to work with, are hard enough to get past for my artist, but my work is my work because of the particular back-and-forth that my artist and judge have with each other. If I listened to recommendations of other people, some of my most popular songs wouldn't even have made it to the album or been finished in the first place, and my musical wouldn't have been produced, etc. Or, what was released would have been less of my work and more of a work by committee (which of course created the camel while trying to make a horse). Not to imply any bitterness or disaffection for people who have criticized my work, either during its creation or afterward... that's certainly not the case at all... but only to emphasize that everyone has their own opinions, and the ultimate opinion concerning the value of my work and whether it's worth creating is the one I have of it. Heck, ninety-nine out of a hundred people might dislike a movie or song or book, but there might have still been some real value for that one person for it to have been created and released. And that one person may be me, the one who created it, but sometimes, that's enough to justify its creation and existence.

In my Thinking Outside the Box assembly program, there's a point when I play a brief game of Simon Says with the kids, at which point I hold up a picture of Simon Cowell. That always gets a laugh, but I make a serious point afterwards that there are a lot of Simon Cowells in the world, and when you are trying to think creatively and come up with new ideas, sometimes you have to be strong and brave in the face of all the Simons that you might encounter. That's one of the main jobs of the warrior, to stand tall in the face of opposition and to keep your idea alive not only in the world but also in your own heart and mind. You could have an idea that you think is really great and tell it to your very best friend and suddenly they become a Simon and say, "That's not going to work." or "That's dumb!" And they very well might be right... but they might not be. You might really know best about how great that idea is and what its potential is. It's not worth getting upset with a Simon or taking offense, though, because they might not be able to see the idea in the same way that you do, and some people just aren't good about evaluating the worth of ideas... they need to see things in a finished and concrete form to be able to appreciate them. And they might not know that there could be something very valuable for you to experience and learn as you work with that idea. But the world is full of hugely successful things that were initially rejected... the first Harry Potter book was rejected by dozens of publishers... the Beatles were turned down by many labels... etc. So keep that in mind as you send your warrior out into the world, and make sure that they are well equipped with perseverance, strength, faith, determination and some really thick armor.

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I've enjoyed sharing these thoughts with you, and I'll compile some more for another "Idea Tree" feature sometime down the road. Please share your own thoughts and stories about how your ideas have come to you and how they came to fruition (or not). I would love to reference some other artists' experiences for the next installment.

The Return of the Son of the Bride of the Idea Tree

It's time to grab a bushel basket and head back out underneath the ol' Idea Tree and see what's ripe for the pluckin'... As I said in the original "Idea Tree" post, I believe that ideas for songs (and other things) are available in abundance, and it's mostly a matter of our climbing up into the idea tree to look for them, or catching them when they fall, and then trying our best to turn them into a delicious idea pie. Of course, my original post didn't begin to cover all of the ways and means of how song ideas happen, or how the ideas themselves develop into actual songs (or not), so I thought I'd add some more thoughts along those lines. I'd also like to encourage other musicians, writers, artists, entrepeneurs, etc., to contact me and share about how your ideas came to you and/or how you honed ideas into something fully realized. I'll probably do an "Idea Tree III: Jason's Revenge" at some point, and I'd love to include some of your stories for that.

I'm going to break this up into two installments. Check back next week for the second part...


Symphony No. 9 for Bagpipes

Sometimes a song idea doesn't start out so much as a song idea, but an idea that seems intriguing in another sense, as in, hey, wouldn't it sound great to record a song using nothing but an orchestra of bagpipes (it probably wouldn't)... Or, gosh, wouldn't it be cool if I could somehow commemorate the founding of the first curling club in Loch Leven in 1668 (it probably wouldn't)... And so there isn't a song idea, per se, but the idea that intrigues you can help to lead you in some unique songwriting directions. For example, the sonic nightmare of a bagpipe orchestra is likely to create some interesting lyrical possibilities and story ideas, and deciding to do a song about the anniversary of the first curling club is going to challenge you to find a way to write something exciting about a subject that just isn't very exciting at all (no offense meant to curling fans, but let's face it, the sport is pretty boring to watch).

We were in Utah last year and caught a show by my friend, Sam Payne. Sam is an outstanding original singer/songwriter in the general vein of Bob Dylan, Sting and Bruce Cockburn, and he also happens to be an incredible scat singer. I'd seen him perform a couple of times before, but this particular time I had one of those intriguing ideas that wasn't so much a song idea, but a concept idea, where it was like, hey, wouldn't it be awesome if Sam could scat sing on a song of mine (it probably would).

I mentioned it to Sam and he said that he'd love to do it, so at that point, the idea became slightly more than just an idea... it could actually happen. (It's usually good early on in an idea's gestation period to make sure that it even has the potential to grow beyond that stage.) The problem was that we would have a very limited time when we would be able to record him while passing back through Utah, and we really didn't have the actual song idea yet, so we had no idea what to actually record... what tempo, what key, what chords, etc. We thought, well, we could just record him ad libbing a bunch of scatting and hopefully work it into something later. And what we ended up doing wasn't so far removed from that, though we did end up having the very bare bones of a verse for a song and some specific chords for Sam to scat over.

I suppose that any song could include some scatting, but since in this case the person scatting wasn't going to be the same person singing the song, then it seemed a little more appropriate for the scatting to have some specific kind of focus or to be representative of a character. So thinking in terms of character and thinking of words that might go with "scat" led to the phrase "scat cat", and then a picture grew from there of a downtown alley where a cat is meowing all night long (or in essence, singing and putting on a show). Most of the people who live there love him and his "singing", but there are a few people who have to get up early every morning and don't appreciate his late night vocalizations, so they yell out their windows, "Scat cat!" and the cat misinterprets that as an invitation to start scatting. We had no idea initially where that basic premise would lead or if we could even make a whole song out of it, but it was enough to go on to create a very rough demo of the first verse and give Sam some chords to ad lib over. He was truly amazing, recording several wonderful takes having never even heard the chord changes before, and so then we had the raw materials for what might become a song. From there it took a lot of mental and musical wrangling to figure out where to go for the bridge and last verse, but thankfully, we eventually found a cool way to resolve the story and finish the song. But for quite a while it was nothing more than a smidgen of a song with some great scatting included, inspired by an idea that wasn't really an actual song idea.

("Scat Cat" will be on my upcoming Snail's Pace album, available for preorder here. You can hear a sample of the first two verses below. By the way, if you want your voice to be on "Scat Cat", I'm still accepting submissions for about another week to add to the third verse for the final mix. Click here for details.)




It's all been done... woo hoo hoo... but so what?

One thing I did when I first had the idea involving the phrase "scat cat" was to Google it and see if any other kids' performers had done a song like that. Best I could tell, they hadn't, so that was good. (As it turns out, a recent episode of Noggin's Jack's Big Music Show featured a character named Scat Cat who sings a scatting song, but that came out months after my song was finished and the song is nothing like mine, thankfully.) But then again, so what if there had been another "Scat Cat" song already? Song titles can't be copyrighted, and as long as your inspiration for the idea was indeed your inspiration, then the odds are that it will be unique enough to be worth creating. Well, I mean, there's a point when public familiarity with a title sort of makes it off limits... It would be difficult to comfortably do a new song called "Stairway to Heaven" or "Bohemian Rhapsody" or "One Eyed One Horned Flying Purple People Eater" (I was really disappointed when I found out there was already a song with that title.)

Especially in the kids' music genre, there seems to be a number of general subjects that get a lot of attention, such as the alphabet, animals, pirates, opposites, cleaning up your room, imaginary friends, and the list goes on. But I've found that there is always a new and interesting way to approach the same general idea if you look hard enough for it and find your own take on it. I touched on this very briefly in the last "Idea Tree" post, about how Justin Roberts' "sock album" would be different than anyone else's. And I recently covered Little Nashville and Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang, both of whom have a song that is a Red Light/Green Light game... which isn't just a similar subject, but an identical subject... and yet, each song is fun and cool in its own way. It's always great if you can find subjects to write about that haven't really been expressed before, but there's no reason not to cover some of the same subjects that have already been done if you can put your own stamp on them. There have been times when I've been looking for ideas for songs and I've thought, well, what kind of typical "kid subjects" haven't I covered yet? I realized recently that I haven't done an "alien" song yet, so I was going to start thinking about an idea for an alien song, but when I was going through a mental list of typical kid song subjects I had another idea that sounded even better... to do a song that combines several of those kid subjects together. So that's now in the works for an upcoming album. And that's a good example of one idea leading to another, and one "already been done" idea leading to something that hasn't been done yet, or at least, not as far as I know.


Slot Machine Lyrics

For me, creating the music is the fun part of songwriting, where you get to make noise and play with sound and arrange notes and chords into colorful shapes and textures. I hate to make all musicians everywhere seem less cool than public perception has granted them for so long, but in essence, we're all just interior decorators that use notes and sounds instead of fabric and furniture. (I sometimes have to chuckle at musicians who takes themselves so darn seriously, when I picture them in that sense.) But for lyrics you sometimes have to really think, and that can be like actual work! To put it another way... Writing music is like playing with a really awesome giant robot toy, and writing lyrics is like filling out the registration card and rebate forms that came in the box with the giant robot toy; you know you should do it and you know you'll get something good out of it, but it feels like much more of a chore to actually do. Then again, when lyrics seem to come with ease in a rush of inspiration, that is very cool, but that just isn't often the case for me. I can spend a lot of time, months even, poring over one or two lyric lines for a song... which seems strange when it's a song about something silly like a cowboy with a ridiculous name or a stink bug who insists that he doesn't smell... but to me there are few things that can jolt you right out of the illusion of a song quicker than a lyric line that is clunkily worded (like how the phrase "clunkily worded" is clunkily worded) or feels wrong for the character of the song.

Sometimes working on lyrics means sitting quietly with a notebook or driving somewhere with a voice recorder nearby and trying to think it out, and other times it means playing through the song and sort of scat singing along with the vocal melody until a word or phrase comes out that sounds good where it landed. My friend Steve Brown of the great "BNL meets Simon & Garfunkel" band Border Crossing defined this as the "slot machine method" of lyric writing, and that's a perfect description of it. The first time through, one thing might lock in, the next time through another, and before you know it, you've won the jackpot, especially if the words turned out to be, "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away." Odds are, the whole song won't need to be done that way, but once you get a few key phrases in there and have more of a direction and context for the words, then you can usually finish it from there by thinking it out.

Speaking of "Yesterday", that is a great example of using "placeholder" lyrics, which is a common thing for songwriters to do. Placeholders are lyrics that don't necessarily mean anything, but fill in the spaces of the melody for the time being until you are able to get the real lyrics together later. The original placeholder lyrics for "Yesterday" went like this: "Scrambled eggs, ohhh baby, how I love your legs". And then there's the classic Homer Simpson placeholder for the song that practically wrote itself: "Baby on board, something something, Burt Ward." Much as I try to use "Burt Ward" when I can, my placeholders tend to be just "la la la"s or the like, which becomes confusing for my girls, who learn to sing the song that way from the early demos and then at some point are surprised to hear that actual words were added and they have to relearn everything. (I suppose that "la la" would be easier to replace in your memory than "Burt Ward".) I once had a placeholder for the chorus of a song that went "blah blah blah blah", and for the longest time I couldn't get any actual lyrics in there, and then I finally realized that those were really the perfect words as it was, because the rest of the song was about someone who kept asking for advice but never listened to any of it, so it pretty much all ended up sounding like, "Blah blah blah blah". It made for an easy to remember hook and the song became a favorite back when I was playing the coffeeshop circuit in Western New York.


Well, duh...

I have a lot of "well, duh" moments like that when I'm writing songs, where I'll be banging my head against the wall about some lyric or some musical part, only to realize there was an obvious answer all along. One catch phrase that I try to remember is, "If you're looking really hard for something, it's probably right in front of you." The chorus for "There's a Monster in My House" (listen below) goes "There's a monster in my house, and it's coming after me. There's a monster in my house..." And then there's a little chord sequence repeated from the intro of the song. For a long time I kept thinking there needed to be a fourth line to go over that chord sequence which would rhyme with the "coming after me" line. I tried all kinds of things but only ended up with piles of crumpled up paper in my brain. And there are a lot of things that rhyme with "me", so it was particularly frustrating that I couldn't come up with a good line there. Then at last I had the "well, duh" moment I needed where I realized, hey, maybe it doesn't even need another line there at all. These are the little battles and discoveries that are all in a day's work for songwriters. I have habits and expectations for phrasing and vocabulary, both musically and lyrically, that I can glomp onto for certain songs or sections of songs, and sometimes it can be very difficult to step outside of those and see that there was something better right in front of me all along.

One more example of that is "No Big Deal" (listen below), which my wife, Roseann, and I collaborated very closely on. We had the music down and had a direction for the lyrics to basically be a "don't sweat the small stuff" kind of thing, and as we were working on the words we were wondering what the hook and the title would be. We kept saying things to each other like, "Yeah, it should be about how that kind of stuff is really no big deal, you know?" "Yeah, exactly, it's no big deal." "Right, but what should the title be?" "Hmmmm..." That went on for a while, far longer than I'd like to admit, and then... Can I get a "well, duuuuh!"




Check back next week for the next installment, The Return of the Return of the Son of the Bride of the Idea Tree.

Barry Louis Polisar

A while ago, Melissa Block from NPR wrote an article about kids' music (click here and scroll down the page to read the article) that made me pause and wonder... The first paragraph said: "I'm the mother of a 4-year-old girl, so I spend a good amount of time in the company of kids' music. And I've become pretty choosy. I don't have a lot of patience for music that panders to what I consider to be misguided notions of what adults think kids must like. Excessive goofiness? Out. Phony silly voices? Out." I read that and thought, kids don't like goofiness or silly voices? Huh?? Having two young girls myself (ages 4 and 2), and having played shows for thousands of kids, one thing that I continue to observe on a daily basis is that kids love to be silly and goofy, even excessively so, and they also love that in their entertainment. In fact, if they love something silly and goofy, then they'll often love it again and again and again and again. If anybody likes goofy and silly things excessively, it's kids. I'll readily agree that goofiness and silly voices do not necessarily make for good kids' music; there still has to be some quality and charm to the "goofiness". And silly voices need to have character to them and be "cast" well to fit with the content of the song. And certainly there is a lot of room in kids' musical palettes for all kinds of other kids' music that is more straightforward or even serious... But to imply that it is a misguided notion that kids like goofiness or silly voices? Well, that's a very misguided notion to me.

The timing of that article was good, though, as it coincided with my receiving some CDs by longstanding children's music artist, Barry Louis Polisar. Barry has been creating and performing kids' music longer and more consistently than anybody else I am aware of (his first kids' music album came out in 1975), and he has been more successful doing that than just about everybody else in the field (over 350,000 units in print), and a lot of his music definitely falls into the goofiness/silly voices category.

Barry sings about and celebrates the way that kids are, not the idealized way that grown-ups want them to be. And a really great thing is that he lets you know up front what he's all about. His albums have titles like: Naughty Songs for Boys and Girls, Off-Color Songs for Kids, Stanley Stole My Shoelace and Rubbed it in His Armpit and Other Songs My Parents Won't Let Me Sing and Old Enough to Know Better: The Worst of Barry Louis Polisar. If you're a parent and you see a title like Naughty Songs for Boys and Girls, you should know the kind of music that's on there. Barry's music will not be every parent's cup of tea, and there are probably some kids who won't take to it, either, especially if they're used to less provocative kinds of kids' music. And I wouldn't play his songs yet for my girls... they're too young to appreciate it. But I think that most elementary school kids will find a lot to love and laugh at in Barry's songs, and Barry speaks to that audience like no other.

Sure, some of Barry's songs may seem kind of obnoxious on the surface, but a lot of them work on a level that is more than just obnoxious. For example, "Don't Put Your Finger Up Your Nose" is some darn good advice. And there are quite a lot of his songs that might seem to be a little unsettling at first until you hear how they resolve. A good example of that is "When Suzie Sneezed" from the Old Enough to Know Better CD, where the first verse goes: A friend of mine came by last night / Said, "Come on out and join the fight / Between Robert and Richard and Susan and Jimmy / 'Cause they just started beating up Timmy / 'Cause Timmy hit Billy who just hit Steve / When Steve hit Laura after Jack and Johnny / Hit Tommy and Richard hit Emily / Who accidentally pushed Debbie when Suzie Sneezed." The first time I heard that, I was thinking, is this really a kids' song about a fight club?? And it builds up in the second verse, escalating to tanks and guns. But it starts to change in the third verse: So I said, "What would happen if you tell Jimmy / You're sorry you hit him and that he hit Timmy. / Maybe Timmy would go and shake Billy's hand / Hopefully some day, they'll understand. And it continues on from there with the one kid trying to convince the other not to keep fighting, so it ends up being a great message about how misunderstandings can escalate into all kinds of craziness, but how at some point you can turn things around with an apology or a kind gesture.

"I Don't Brush My Teeth" may initially seem to glorify slovenliness, but it becomes clear that the protagonist suffers socially from his habits. I can imagine sensitive parents thinking that "Never Cook Your Sister in a Frying Pan" is giving kids all kinds of terrible ideas for how to hurt their siblings, but the final verse reveals its skewed take on the Golden Rule. And a song like "I Don't Wanna Go to School" seems rebellious until you get to the great punch line at the end. Barry's work is loaded with that kind of thing... He's really quite brilliant at playing with expectations, and kids definitely like to have their expectations played with when they're being entertained. Heck, probably 80-90% of all comedy is merely setting up an expectation and doing a twist on it. Not that it's easy to do well, though, and Barry is definitely a master in the vein of Shel Silverstein when it comes to that. And like Shel, Barry has the ability to turn some very clever phrases, such as the "stereotype" line from "That's What Makes the World Go Around": Some folks jog, some smoke pipes / Some are mono-toned, some are stereotypes / Right side up or upside down / That's what makes the world go 'round.

Barry also has a number of regular songs, without any twists or turns or controversial subjects or titles, and they can range from being quite sweet to very funny, such as "I Need You Like a Donut Needs a Hole", "I Miss Grandma" and "I Wanna Be a Dog" (which has been covered by several other kids' musicians... and should not be confused with Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog"). There are also some terrifically poignant songs like "Mom and Dad Are Always Right", which shows a kids perspective on parents who are always critical: Dad says he was stronger when he was half my age. / Mom never got dirty when she went out to play. / I guess they both were perfect kids when they were young like me; / They always did what they were told and that's how I should be.

Barry does a lot of silly character voices throughout his work, but even his usual singing voice might be considered kind of cartoonish as it is. It's definitely not the most polished voice, and yet it has an exuberance that works great for his material. You get the sense that he really is the kid whose point of view he's often singing from, who eats a bit too much sugar cereal and is trying to make the best of understanding his world. Fans of the Violent Femmes should like Barry's voice, as it's very similar in tone and phrasing to Gordon Gano, and Barry's music is often somewhere in the neighborhood of the Violent Femmes and John Prine.

I asked Barry if kids' tastes have changed over the last thirty years. He said that adult sensibilities change over time, and he's been around long enough to watch the styles of kids music go left, then right, then left, then right again, but that is probably more about the adults' tastes than anything... Kids have remained constant—laughing and giggling at the same things they did years ago. So it's no wonder to me that kids have made Barry so popular for so long. Barry speaks with their voice, and sometimes that voice is a very silly and goofy one, and kids love it. As opposed to advocating bad or obnoxious behavior in his songs, Barry is really making fun of it and trusts that kids can tell the difference. On his website, he says, "I have used my writing to hold a mirror up to kids, bringing things out in the open where they can be laughed at rather than swept under the rug." Elementary school is often the last chance for kids to really be kids and laugh at themselves and allow themselves to be goofy and silly without being so self-conscious, before things start getting a lot more mixed up and tense in middle school and high school. So I say, and I'm sure that Barry would agree... until that time... Excessive seriousness? Out.

Barry Louis Polisar website

Little Nashville

I should probably say up front that country music is not my forte, in any sense. It's not that I don't like country music... in fact, I like a lot of country music that I hear, but the thing is... I just don't hear a lot of country music. And I suppose that although I like a lot of the country music that I hear, I typically don't like it enough to really want to hear much more than I do, or to actively seek it out. Then again, there's a lot of sort-of-country-music that I've really been into over the years, including The Allman Bros., Johnny Cash, BR5-49, Neil Young, The Grateful Dead, Lyle Lovett, Chris Isaak, John Mellencamp and others. I also went to a Garth Brooks concert once in Buffalo when I was offered free tickets, and had to admit that I had a really great time and gained a much better appreciation of Garth as a performer and songwriter, and also for country music as a genre. I've also been caught inadvertantly singing along to country-ish songs like "Man, I Feel Like a Woman" (hey, it's super catchy... what can I say? Um... I trust that everyone who reads this will keep that to themselves...) But regardless, I still don't think I would typically choose to buy a ticket for a country music concert, or buy the latest Dwight/Toby/Keith/Alan/Kenny/Carrie album.

I guess what I'm trying to do here is to paint a picture that country music isn't really my thang, and I probably should have just said that to begin with and left it at that... But I also wanted to temper that by saying that once in a while I can appreciate it. And that's the setup I'm trying to give here, because I want it to have as much impact as possible when I say that the Little Nashville CD really blew me away. This is one terrific album of music, and I think it even transcends its genre. Like when you hear Bob Marley, it's great music, as opposed to just being great reggae.

I'm going to have some difficulty comparing things on this CD with other country artists or sounds, without having a great knowledge of the difference between Dwight, Toby, Keith, Alan, Kenny and Carrie (well, the difference between the guys and Carrie, yes...), so I may not even try. I can imagine a country music fan reading this and thinking, "He said that song sounds like Kenny Chesney, but it's totally an Alan Jackson thing." But I'll do my best to paint the picture.

The album kicks off in fine style with the upbeat "Welcome to Little Nashville", which immediately lets you know what you're in for. The production is great, and the guitar playing and singing by J. Juliano (or Sheriff Jay Hawke) is top notch. Again, a real country fan might know better, but from what country music I've heard, Jay's singing and guitar-playing is as good as anything I've ever heard in the country genre. I know Vince Gill is an amazing guitarist, and Jay's playing sounds as sharp and confident as Vince's.

Next up is the rollicking fiddle standard, "Turkey in the Straw", which is bound to elicit laughter on the "running down the street with a bear behind" line. The CD also covers several kid classics including "You Are My Sunshine", "I've Been Working on the Railroad", "The Hokey Pokey" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider", all done in a uniquely vibrant country style, and each with a different feel to it. "The Hokey Pokey" for example, is in the style of "Achy Breaky Heart", and in fact, it would seem that Billy Ray sort of ripped off "Hokey Pokey"... the chords are exactly the same and there's the similar hokey/pokey, achy/breaky wording. "I've Been Working on the Railroad" has a fast paddleball kind of sound and really cooks. I also like the vocal phrasing on "Dinah blow your horn". These songs retain the essential feel and qualities of the original, but deliver them in fresh and exciting ways.

There are some originals, too, and two of them in particular are really terrific. "A Little Different" is a whistling acoustic ballad that reminds me of the Motel 6 "we'll leave the light on" music. The song is very memorable, with some unexpected but perfect chord changes, and there's a cool message about accepting others for whoever or whatever they are. A square said to his Momma, "I saw a circle in town. You know how we've got these four sides? Well, he's just big and round." Momma Square said, "Let me explain... You're a shape, and he is, too. Hey hey hey, it's okay if he's just a little different than you." It's a simple, cute story and brilliant for the picture it paints.

The other original standout is "Like Mommy and Daddy", which is a really sweet country pop duet between Jay and Rosanna Spencer (aka Miss Laura Lee Goodheart). The voices complement each other beautifully and the song is both very catchy and very touching as kids describe how they want to do things just like their parents. It reminds me of a quote I read recently by James Baldwin: "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them."

The Little Nashville folks sent me a CD with a few songs previewing their upcoming album, and there are more great things in store. "Green Light" is another Red Light/Green Light game song, but is totally different than Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang's "Red Means Stop", and goes to show how the same idea can yield many different variations. "That's My Dog" is a very catchy pop song that could be a big hit on the country stations, at least musically speaking... I'm not sure if kid-themed lyrics are ready to break through on the pop or country charts just yet.

I wonder if people who are into the new era of kids' music but who have no taste for country music are going to give this a chance with their kids. I certainly hope so, because it's such a standout in the kids' music field, its particular genre notwithstanding. There should be no question that Little Nashville will be a hit among kids and families that already have a big appreciation for country music, but it should really transcend that label, and I hope it is embraced by others like me who aren't really into country music all that much. I still have no real desire to turn on a country music station or to go and buy a Toby Keith record, and yet I liked this so much that I immediately wanted to listen to it again after it was over, and have done so several times since. It's kind of like the old Life cereal commercials, where they didn't expect Mikey to like it so much... Well, go ahead and call me Mikey, 'cause this is some really tasty stuff. And if Mikey likes it, then you might, too.

Little Nashville website

Updates? What updates??

So I said in my last post that I was going to get caught up on all of the CDs I've been sent during the last few weeks while I was on the road. Well, you've heard about what happens to the best laid plans, right? A few days into the trip, my 4 year-old daughter put a CD (Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang, one of her current favorites other than the usual "daddy songs") into the CD player. No problem with that, right? There wouldn't have been, except that there was already another CD in the player at the time... and it's not a multiple disc player. So we ended up being without tunes for a while there, and I was too busy with shows to stop anywhere to get it fixed until a few days ago.

But in the first few days of the trip and over the last few days I was able to listen to some discs, so there will be some new updates arriving shortly, including features on John Hadfield, Mr. Billy, Little Nashville and Barry Louis Polisar. And I still have a big stack of CDs to get to, so there should be more coming soon, though I'm not going to make any promises this time!

As for the Colorado trip, it was a really great time. There were so many incredibly enthusiastic audiences, and I can't wait to go back as soon as I can. I will be sure not to schedule so many shows together like that, though. It had been a few years since I've been to Colorado and I forgot how the altitude can affect your energy. I was halfway through my first song on the first day when I thought to myself, "Uh oh." But thankfully, I was well stocked with Powerbars and made it through okay.

I think that there is some kind of magical "show must go on" power that invigorates performers. There have been times in the past when I've been really sick or exhausted and felt like I could barely move, and I had to really force myself to make it to the show at all, but once I got out to actually perform, I felt fine, or at least, fine enough to do the show alright. And then, once the show is over, the tired sickness comes right back, but there's some kind of adrenalin thing that makes it work out for the show itself. I know other performers have told me the same thing. Knock on wood, but I can only recall one time in my life when I had to cancel a show for being sick, when my voice was completely lost from laryngitis and hadn't come back at all the day before the show. I hated to cancel, but I felt like I needed to give the venue enough warning to find someone else. And as it turned out, there was a rockslide on the interstate the next morning when I would have driven out there, so I probably wouldn't have made it anyway. Perhaps my body somehow knew that and said, "Ah, forget the show-must-go-on thing... you're staying in bed, dude."

Anyway, stay tuned for some new posts, and also Part 2 of The Idea Tree, which I've been working on here and there.

Colorado, CD catch-up and a "Snow Day" video

Hey all... I'm heading out to Colorado tomorrow for several shows in Colorado Springs, Denver and Utah. The Denver and Utah gigs are school assemblies, but the Colorado Springs shows are at public libraries, so if any of you happen to live near there, please come out and see a show. Here are the dates:

03/27/07 - East Library, Colorado Springs CO - 9:30 and 10:30 am
03/27/07 - Old Colorado City Library, Colorado Springs CO - 6:30 pm
03/28/07 - Rockrimmon Library, Colorado Springs CO - 10:30 am
03/28/07 - Cheyenne Library, Colorado Springs CO - 1 pm
03/28/07 - Fountain Branch Library, Colorado Springs CO - 4 pm
03/28/07 - Ruth Holley Library, Colorado Springs CO - 7 pm
03/29/07 - Penrose Library, Colorado Springs CO - 9:30 and 10:30 am
03/29/07 - Briargate Library, Colorado Springs CO - 2 pm
03/29/07 - Sand Creek Library, Colorado Springs CO - 7 pm

When we get back from Colorado, I'll have about a day at home to throw out junk mail, and then we're off to Oregon for some shows. Here are those dates:

04/13/07 - Pottery Barn Kids, Tigard OR - 10 am & 11 am
04/14/07 - Silver Falls Library, Silverton OR - 1 pm
04/21/07 - Children's Performing Arts Series, Albany OR - 11 am

I've got a pretty large pile of kids' music CDs that I've been sent but haven't featured here yet. In some cases, I've listened to the CD but haven't written anything yet, and other CDs I haven't even had a chance to listen to yet. I will try to at least listen to everything on this trip, and also try to catch up on writing a few posts on my days off. As I've said before, I can't guarantee that I'm going to feature everything that I receive, but I'll try to get to as much as I can. Whether I feature everything or not, I want to say that I really appreciate everything that I receive, and it's very cool to be able to hear so much of what's going on in the kids' music genre these days.

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My wife, Roseann, has been doing toony style graphics here and there over the years (for example, she did the pirate and cowboy to the right of my main website page), and she's starting to learn some basic animation movement. We did sort of a test animation for my song, "Snow Day" (a nice short song to start with!), and it turned out very cute and funny, so we went ahead and posted it to YouTube. You can see it below... (I think I'm going to have to buy her an actual animation program and a graphics tablet so she doesn't have to mouse-draw MS Paint pictures and sequence them in a video editing program anymore... That's also what we did for "The Elephant Song" video and wow, that is tedious!)

"Scat Cat!" wants you!!

Hey, how would you like to be on the next Eric Herman album? All you need to do is record yourself, or your kids, or your dog yelling "Scat cat!" and send me the file, and I'll try to work it in to the final recording for the song "Scat Cat!" from my upcoming Snail's Pace album. If you need direction on how to do it, listen to this sample. (The tempo is 113 bpm and the words would come in on the second and third quarter notes of the measure.)

I need a man's part and a woman's part for different verses, but if your recording isn't used for one of those solo parts, then I should be able to be use it near the end of the song, where there is supposed to be a big crowd of people yelling that. It's probably not likely that you'll be able to pick your voice out among the big crowd of voices once I mix them all together for that part, but you can still honestly say, "Hey, that's me there!" and add it to your rock star resume.

So if you have a microphone, record two or three takes of that phrase (careful not to overload it with the yelling) and send the file(s) to me at eric(at)butter-dog(dot)com in WAV/AIFF or highest possible quality MP3 format, please. Recordings should be completely dry, with no effects or normalizing. If you don't really have a microphone to record with, try your video camera. They often have decent microphones, and you'll just have to export the audio from the camera into your soundcard and capture it. To do that, you can use the Sound Recorder program that all Windows machines come with, or download the free Audacity audio program. (Feel free to ask if you need more help as far as recording, capturing and saving a sound file.)

Everyone who submits a recording will get a free download of the full song when it is released and a $1.00 discount for the Snail's Pace album. A free copy of the CD will go to the man and woman chosen for the solo parts.

Uncle Moondog

That's right, it's another "uncle" here at Cool Tunes for Kids... First Uncle Rock and now Uncle Moondog.

Uncle Moondog is a very cool cartoon dog who lives on Sunshine Island. Musician Mike McManus produces Uncle Moondog's music with great flair and versatility, and his self-titled first album is a favorite of mine in the kids' music genre, with very memorable hooks and melodies and fun production and arrangement throughout.

The album starts off with the bouncy and catchy "New Goldfish", which introduces the dawg and his new pet goldfish, Timmy (see the video below). Next up is "Percy the Pelican" which has a great B-52s meets The Munsters kind of riff. "Stanky Socks" has a see-saw hook to it, as Uncle Moondog describes his most foul hosiery. "Bampy's Bungalow" starts with a "Centerfield" riff and has a Jimmy Buffet feel. "Dancing With My Dog" is next and it's my favorite on the album... a fast country-ish tune with a terrific hook and some really nice doo-wop backing vocals. I'm not really sure why a dog would have a dog, and the concepts of these songs don't always make that much narrative sense in terms of a character/story arc, but so what, they're a lot of fun and this isn't meant to be a story or concept album. Uncle Moondog's voice (which is somewhere between Dr. John and McGruff the Crime Dog) is an especially perfect fit for the bluesy "Bathtime Blues". The doo-wop comes out in full for the very cute "Penny", which is my wife's favorite track. This tune has some quite tasty tremolo guitar, and there is a lot of really sweet guitar playing throughout the album. The Uncle shifts to an 80's pop/rock/new wave sound (somewhere vaguely in the range of Gary Numan and The Cars) for "Shufflin' My Feet". The album ends with the reggae track "Porpoises, Pelicans and Palm Trees", which includes some amusing interludes with Timmy, the fish.

While Uncle Moondog's voice is well-fitting and engaging for a cartoon dog, the voice of Timmy, the fish, may be an issue for some people. It's your basic Chipmunks or "Flying Purple People Eater" kind of voice, and my feeling is that it would have been better in smaller doses. Timmy appears in the first song, and that's fine, but then he's also in the next few songs and by then you may have heard enough of him, especially with certain words and phrases of his cutting through in a more piercing way. Your kids will probably have a higher tolerance for Timmy's high-pitched, silly voice, though, so don't let that get in the way of enjoying what is a great album, regardless of that.

I don't have Uncle Moondog's second CD, Baloney Cake, but from samples online it sounds like more of the same, which is a good thing when "the same" is as well-written and well-produced as the first album. Uncle Moondog has an eCard video of "The Birthday Song" from Baloney Cake available on his website at this link.

Uncle Moondog's website

Uncle Rock

Uncle Rock (aka Robert Warren) is a cool kids' performer from Chichester, New York, which is in the area sometimes considered "upstate New York". I say "sometimes", because the definition of "upstate New York" is kind of strange... You'd think it would only mean the part up near the top, and yet, I've also heard it referring to Uncle Rock's area in the Catskills, in which the "upstate" probably means "up" as in up from sea level. Also, having lived for many years in Western New York, I've actually heard references to the Buffalo area as being "upstate", which I can only assume means that for some people, anywhere that isn't New York City is "upstate". And then again, those of us in Buffalo often referred to areas like Syracuse and Rochester (there's an awful lot of "chesters" in New York) as "upstate", so who knows where it really is.

But in any case, "upstate" is actually a good description for Uncle Rock's music and how it makes you feel. He has two kids' music albums, the first of which I've only heard a few samples of, and the more recent, Plays Well With Others, which I'll focus on here.

On Plays Well With Others, Uncle Rock quickly proceeds to bring the rock to the table with the heavily T-Rex influenced opening track "Rock Out!", where he incites legions of kids to dance with their daddies, mosh with their mommies and groove with their grannies. T-Rex gives way to The Blues Brothers in the bridge with a cop of the "Everybody Need Somebody" riff. The folky "Playin' Possum" is next and is very cute and features a rippin' snore solo. "Picnic in the Graveyard" has a memorable anthemic melody, describing a holiday celebration of one's ancestors. This is both a beautiful song and a really wonderful holiday (see the video below), and thematically the track leads nicely into the acoustic ballad, "Brand New Butterfly". Throughout the album, Warren sounds vocally like a more polished version of John Kay (Steppenwolf), or a less polished version of Kenny Loggins, and "Brand New Butterfly" particularly shows off the nice timbre of his voice. "Shoe Bandit" is one of those kids' songs that has a particularly funny and clever observation about kid/parent life, and I will now be singing this song every time my girls and I are frantically looking for their shoes so we can go out somewhere. "Break a Few Eggs" is a catchy life-lesson with a nice laid-back groove. "Sugar Talkin'" has an instantly memorable catch-phrase ("It's the sugar talkin', not me"), and could have been a real hit if it wasn't a bit sloppy in spots. Better produced is "Rock & Roll Babysitter" and then "I'm a Pirate", which covers several pirate cliches in the lyrics and has a great musical vibe and a nice "Arrr!" lead-in to every verse. "Disco Nap" is kind of a strange concept and never quite locks into its groove, rhythmically, but the album closer, "Connected" is a beautifully realized ballad, both musically and lyrically.

One thing that my wife mentioned about this CD (though she liked the album a lot, otherwise) was regarding the overabundance of kids singing along on many of the tracks. And it's not so much that there were kids on a lot of tracks... there's certainly nothing wrong with that... but that in this case it is kind of hit-and-miss as far as whether they are effective or not. Kids can make a kids' music recording sound cute and add excitement to the mix, but if they are too much out of tune or off rhythm with the main vocal line that they are supposed to be following, it's one of those things where it may sound funny and adorable the first time... but after that it can be kind of disconcerting and difficult to listen to. But Roseann wanted me to mention that her ears are particularly sensitive about that kind of thing when she is producing music, so it may not be a problem for everyone. It didn't bother me nearly as much, though I do know what she means by that and agree that there is some level of that on this CD. Not to make Uncle Rock such an example of this, though, as there are many kids' CDs, even by some of the biggest names, that have that same kind of problem, but since it came up I thought it might be worth mentioning now.

There are two cover tracks, the first a medley of "Magic Carpet Ride", "Hey Bo Diddley" and "Magic Bus", and the second an acoustic version of "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka. Neither of these really worked too well for me, with "Pure Imagination" vaguely reminding me of my old coffeeshop gigs when someone would request something that I only kinda knew how to sing and play. There's just not a strong sense of confidence in his performance on that track. But thankfully, Uncle Rock's original tunes are excellent, so I think if he focuses on them and works a little on getting the overall recording production a bit more polished (while still retaining some of the nice edge and grit that he has), then his CDs will continue to be among the best in the kids' music genre.

Uncle Rock website

Planet Kid Vid

Mr. Billy and Monty Harper are popular kids' music artists from the Midwest, and they've started a new blog site with various kids' music videos from around the web. For example, today they are featuring two videos by Eric Herman (who dat??).

It looks like Planet Kid Vid will be a great place to have a lot of kids' music videos gathered together, so fit as many kids as you can on your lap and crank up the cheap computer speakers and be prepared to hear, "Again! Again!" as you sift your way through the videos there. And if you're a kids' artist with videos, you might want to get in touch with Monty or Mr. Billy and see if they'll post them there.

Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang

When you listen to the first couple of songs on Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang's latest album, Get Up & Dance, your brain may have a hard time putting together what you're hearing... well, perhaps it's just my brain that has that problem... On the one hand the music is very down and funky, almost like Sly and the Family Stone at times, but then there's the voice of Gwendolyn singing, and... well... her voice is about as far removed from Sly Stone's voice as you could possibly imagine.

There are several words and phrases to describe Gwendolyn's voice, along the lines of "cutesy wootsey", "Barbie doll", "bubblegum", and "Chipmunks without helium". I imagine she might list Helen Kane ("I Wanna Be Loved by You"), Bernadette Peters and Betty Boop among her vocal influences. I doubt she'll want to use "the Betty Boop of kids' music" as a tagline, but there is that kind of cartoonish and kittenish quality to her voice. Ultimately, though, as a singer and entertainer Gwendolyn is unbelievably adorable and smile-inducing in a completely wholesome way, and contrary to Betty Boop's flirty flapper-ness, her voice paints a sunny picture of Shirley Temple and Cindy Brady having a tea party with their Raggedy Ann dolls. Her voice combined with the punchy and upbeat music from the band has an effect that might actually be prescribed by doctors as a mood enhancer. If you don't feel good when you listen to this music, then you're just way too jaded, duuuude. Lighten up, already, and let the sunshine in!

This album is nothing but fun from start to finish, and is almost as participation-inducing as a Jim Gill album. Needless to say, my girls (ages 2 and 4) loved it right off the bat. The title track has a great "Twist and Shout" kind of feel and is guaranteed to get your little ones up and moving, and perhaps you, too, unless you have officially reached the age of "fuddy duddy". "Red Means Stop" is a take on the old Red Light/Green Light game and is heavy on that aforementioned Sly Stone sound. The participation continues heavily on "Run Baby Run", which changes nicely from fast to slow parts. Other highlights for me include the very catchy toe-tapper "Sweet Marmalade", which would have been a big hit for CCR, Three Dog Night or The Brady Bunch (or if you prefer, The Silver Platters); "Bicycle Ride", which reminds me of Elton John's upbeat 70's tunes; "Ode to Pets", a rock 'n' roll song which cleverly introduces the band members' pets; "Snuggle Wuggle", a sweet lullaby that I have a hard time listening to without chuckling because I keep thinking of Nanny G singing "Peek-A-Boo" to Frasier; and "Out in My Garden", which starts with a really cool laid back riff that quickly folds into a fast bluegrass song, complete with some tasty jaw harp.

I don't have the band's first album, but listening to samples on their website tells me that there's a lot more yummy stuff on that CD; "Farm Animal Friends" is a really cute (gosh, there just aren't enough synonyms for "cute" to supply me for this article) folk song, featuring a "wall of Chipmunk sound" as Gwendolyn harmonizes with herself way up in the vocal stratosphere (see the video below); "Please" features some virtuoso slide whistle playing and more engagingly adorable vocals; there are more Brady Bunch hits with "You Can Be Anything" and "Freedom of the Heart"; "Anatomy" names various body parts in the verse and then goes into a great chorus; "I Don't Think I Like It" is funny and catchy in a Monty Python "I Like Traffic Lights" kind of way, but I'm not sure if the accent of the singer is supposed to be German or Oriental; and "Little Monkey", which is a bit of a cop of both "Da Doo Run Run" and "I Love a Rainy Night", but is still fun in its own way.

So unless you're just a plain old grumpy grump, you and your kids should really love the effervescent Gwendolyn and her highly musical gang. Even if you are a generally happy person, you are bound to feel your mood being enhanced. And certainly if you need something to pick you up and cheer you up, this will do the trick, in which case, take two CDs and call me in the morning.

Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang website






Here are my girls having fun to Get Up and Dance...

Ginger Hendrix

In my recent post about performing for an audience of kids I mentioned that Dan Zanes has an instant advantage with a kid audience because he has that uniquely crazy cool look. Well, I think that Ginger Hendrix also has an instant advantage as a music performer... no, she doesn't look like Dan Zanes... that probably wouldn't work so well for a woman... but she automatically has an essence of cool about her because of her name. Ginger Hendrix! Wow, how cool is that?! 'Ginger' is a sweet spice, and also the name of the great drummer from Cream, Ginger Baker, the legendary singer and dancer Ginger Rogers, and of course that sultry starlet from Gilligan's Island. So she's already off and running with her first name. And 'Hendrix', well gosh, it would be hard to find a first name that wouldn't sound cool with that... Ebenezer Hendrix. Cool. Bertha Hendrix. Still pretty cool. Dweezil Hendrix. Very cool. I almost wonder if 'Ginger Hendrix' is even her real name, but I certainly wouldn't blame her if she did change her name to that, because it's so great of a name. (Note to self: should have gone with Eric Hendrix. D'oh!)

As if it wasn't enough that Ginger has one of the best... names... ever... she also endears herself to kids right off the bat on her debut CD of children's music, Macaroni Boy Eats at Chez Shooby Doo, by using the word 'stinky' abundantly in the first song, "Stinky Trash", and evoking the very funny image of "a nose with legs". Ginger has a voice that varies between being strong and a little raspy/bluesy, almost like a more restrained Janis Joplin, and being very pretty and smooth. Her singing is a little unpolished at times, but her voice and her phrasing are both filled to overflowing with all-important character.

The next two songs on Macaroni Boy are just kind of okaaay for me, and I might have sequenced them later on the disc (though I've second-guessed the track order on all three of my own CDs, so I'm certainly no expert in that regard!), but the CD really takes off from there in a big way. The fourth track is the title track, which is a story song about a kid in a restaurant and the persistent waiter who tries in vain to sway the boy from ordering his beloved "macaroni, that creamy cheesy treat". There's a brilliance to the waiter's offerings such as "angel tooth pasta", "artichoke flannel ragout" and "wild billy goat hoof cheese", because it's that kind of mish-mash of words that kids likely hear when fancy waiters deliver their spiels. There's almost a "Cheese Shop" feel to this track, and the only complaint is that it just kind of ends after the fourth verse, and I was expecting some kind of Python-esque punch line or ending. But it's still a lot of fun, and you can even make a game out of it. My daughter, Becca, and I have been playing it together a lot lately, where we take turns being the waiter and the kid. Whenever Becca is the waiter, she tends to use the word "sausage" a lot, as in "peanut butter sausage ice cream". "Sausage" is just one of those particularly funny words for kids, you know, like "stinky".

The rest of the songs on Macaroni Boy are very charming, too. "My Daddy Loves Tools" is about a daddy who loves tools, though I'm sure you could have guessed that from the title, and includes some percussion sounds to go along with the tool descriptions. "Let's Pretend" has a great melody and sense of imagination and participation. "Funny Word Dictionary" has some cute definitions like "baa squeezy swish swish", which means "that sheep is wearing panty hose". The first time I heard "Rocking My Cat to Sleep" I wasn't paying close attention to the early part of the song and so when I heard only the later part I thought it was a sadly sweet (or sweetly sad) and poignant song about pet loss. But then I heard the first part where she says she likes rocking her cat to sleep, so now I'm not really sure what it's about... maybe dogs are just too big to comfortably rock to sleep? I think I liked it better as a coping with loss kind of thing, but I still think it's very beautiful, regardless. "There Was Another Old Woman" is an amusing parody that replaces fly and horse swallowing with women's fashion.

The CD ends with four tracks recorded at an intimate live setting, and it is these tracks which really shine a bright light on what a great kids' performer Ginger is. With the rest of the album being almost entirely arranged with only her voice and guitar, I kind of wonder why she didn't just do the whole album as a live show. It would have made for a more consistent recording and I'm sure many of the other tracks would have also showed off her sense of humor and the audience participation in the live setting. But anyway, the first of the live tracks is "Teacher Mary School", which has a very simple and very catchy hook (most of these songs do, by the way) and a funny participation part where Ginger asks "One of our favorite things to do is..." and the kids always answer "Play!" Ginger acts as if that is the greatest answer each time it is given, which is a wonderful way to respond. "The Breakfast Song" includes more participation and amusement from Ginger and the kids as they turn what they had for breakfast into refrains, though I wasn't crazy about the coffee verse at the end (what is it with so many kids' musicians with songs and references about coffee??). The CD ends with a very sweet ballad called "My Mommy Loves Me", which includes some verses that keep it real, like "Sometimes I hit my brother and I make him cry. Sometimes I miss the potty, even when I really try." And then she brings it home with the title of the song, sung with a neat waver on the word "lu-uh-uves". Oh yeah, very nice.

Ginger has a unique and well-developed sense of humor and comedy which is rare and delightful. For adults, it's not so much laugh-out-loud humor as it is big-smile-on-the-face humor, but for the preschool audience that seems to be her ideal target, I'm sure there are many squeals of laughter when Ginger and her guitar are in the room. Ginger Hendrix not only has an amazing name, but she is a terrific all-around entertainer who really plays around in that wonderfully colorful bounce house that is a child's mind.

Ginger Hendrix website