Listen To This - "If You Want a Song" - The Okee Dokee Brothers (World Premiere!)

If You Want a Song single cover

I don’t know if people are necessarily looking for “happy” entertainment these days, but I do suspect that people are looking to increase the percentage of “uplifting” stuff as part of their family’s entertainment diet. (That diet is probably larger than it used to be.)

May I suggest a recommended daily allowance of Okee Dokee Brothers music? I doubt the FDA would give it its stamp of government approval, but you know I’m right. And also singing. Singing daily is also highly recommended. Pete Seeger would tell you that straight out.

Singing Okee Dokee Brothers songs? Doubly recommended. The Minnesota duo had planned to release their double album Songs for Singin’ in the middle of summer, but taking a look at the weird new world they (and we) find themselves in now, they’re going to release this album full of singalong originals two months early, on May 1. (Two disks! That’s a lot of music!)

The Okee Dokee Brothers playing banjo and guitar

You can hear one of the songs early right here, today.. “If You Want a Song” is rousing singalong that, OK, it’s a little bit about singing, but it’s a lot about other stuff too. But it sounds great whether you blast out the lyrics all on your own or engage in a little call-and-response with whoever happens to be where you are right now.

About the album itself, Joe and Justin say that they got to see Pete Seeger perform live a few years before he passed away and the performance “always stuck with them as an example of how a strong song and a dedicated songleader can get a room full of people singing with spirit.” If you hear echoes of social and political engagement, that’s not an accident. “Life is a conversation,” they say, “a back and forth, a call and response.”

So I’m tickled to be premiering this song today. Whether you’re the songleader or follower, I hope you’ll sing along with this at least once.

Photo credit: Nate Ryan Photography

Listen To This - "What Is a Leader?" - Alastair Moock (feat. Rani Arbo & some smart kids) [World Premiere!]

Massachusetts-based musician Alastair Moock couldn’t have imagined the sort of world he’d be releasing Be a Pain: An Album for Young (and Old) Leaders into. I mean, sure, the year 2020 will feature a United States Presidential election, not to mention many other down-ballot elections — questions of leadership would have been front-of-mind for many adults and probably not a few kids as well.

Alastair and a group of kids

But [practicing physical distancing, gesturing broadly from his home office] this?

Yeah. Not the way most musicians would want to introduce their brand new album to the world.

As I think about it, though, we’re probably thinking even more about leadership and grappling with how a society decides what’s best for all of us. They’re not easy questions — if they were, elected officials and the public wouldn’t be having so many discussions about the best way forward.

In putting together his last album, Singing Our Way Through: Songs for the World’s Bravest Kids, recorded in the wake of his 5-year-old daughter Clio being diagnosed with cancer, Moock says that although he loves putting “words and music together in a harmonious way… you can’t solve every puzzle for every listener.” Moock goes on to say:

When it came to difficult subject matter like life and death, and dealing with fear, my natural instinct to try to offer solutions fell short time and time again. I wanted to tell kids, "everything will be OK." But I knew I couldn't honestly offer that assurance. Instead, I had to learn how to let things lie: ask questions, plant seeds, let the listener meet me halfway with their own experience.

I brought that experience to the also-challenging political material on Be a Pain. This time I went into the project knowing that I wouldn't be able to provide all the answers. I would need to frame songs in a way that kids and parents could do some of the problem-solving on their own –– and, hopefully, also together.

That openness is heard most directly on the album’s opening track, “What Is a Leader?,” which is given its world premiere here. For obvious reasons, a lot of kids music answers questions, but this track mostly just poses questions. Moock comments:

I wondered if, rather than telling kids what it means to be a leader, I could ask them to tell me. I wrote a bunch of musical questions about what a leader might look like, talk like, and do. I thought I might leave the song there, but then it occurred to me: why not ask actual kids to tell me what a leader is and record their responses? That's what my producer, Anand Nayak, and I spent a few months doing. Eventually we ended up with a stockpile of fantastic, varying answers from kids aged 4 to 14 which we were able to weave into the song.

I’m glad I get the chance to share this song right now. In times of great uncertainty, asking the questions and thinking about the answers is one of the most important things we can all do, young and old. Be a Pain is released on April 3; you can also watch Moock live weekly on Facebook and YouTube.

Listen To This - "Just Another Finger" - Mista Cookie Jar [World Premiere!]

Call me the thumb

Sometimes people need some simple entertainment to take their minds off - ahem - more weighty topics. Those weighty topics are suuuuper important, but if we don’t take an opportunity to enjoy ourselves, even for 3 minutes at a time.

Or even just 2 minutes and 48 seconds. That’s the length of the latest release from the steadiest of kids’ musicians, Mista Cookie Jar. It’s a new-yet-old track from the SoCal troubadour — “Just Another Finger” was originally a Dog on Fleas track, but a few years ago MCJ and Dog on Fleas’ ringmaster Dean Jones combined to produce a most righteous mashup. In terms of social importance, an ode to the noble thumb might not be the highest on the list, but a little silliness can be just the trick, even if only for a little while. Dance a bit, if you can, to this release, out today on all the various digital places. Let your fingers (and/or your thumb) take you there…

Mista Cookie Jar - “Just Another Finger” [Bandcamp]

Listen To This: "I've Got The World (for You)" - Justin Roberts (World Premiere!)

Justin Roberts’ “Wlid Life” album cover

You had me at “Justin Roberts.”

One of the kids musicians whose music has been part of our life since our first kid’s toddlerhood,, Justin Roberts, has a brand-new album coming out in just a month. It’s called Wild Life, and of course we’re very excited for it here at Zooglobble HQ, even though we’re long past the first year of parenthood, which is Roberts’ inspiration for his latest album.

With a name like Wild Life, you might think that the album is full of revved-up rave-ups — Roberts is pretty good at those — but tracks like “I’ve Got The World (for You)” are a little more reserved. Think “Wlid Life” as in messed up, tousled hair rather than anything disastrous. Roberts’ lyrical warmth and ear for hooks remains as sharp as ever, even as he plays more in the key of Paul Simon (hello, Graceland!) than Paul Westerberg.

I’m happy to feature a world premiere of “I’ve Got The World (for You)” for your listening pleasure. I’ve got a feeling this and the whole album will feature in a lot of parent-infant time in the year ahead.

Wild Life is out on February 28th — preorder or pre-save the album at your family’s favorite listening place here.

Video: "Ding Dong Merrily On High" - Charlie Hope (World Premiere!)

Sing A Festive Song album cover

It is always a good time for music from Charlie Hope, her clean, crisp voice a tonic for the dreary days of winter (or summer!).

Sing A Festive Song! is Hope’s 2017 holiday-themed album, and included a lovely version of “Ding Dong Merrily On High.” Hope rewrote the lyrics to remove the most religious parts of the text, but kept the er… glorious “Gloria,” which requires a long intake of breath before the singer the gently descending line. In other words, the absolute best part remains.

It may be a couple years after the album release, but now the song has a video that’s every bit of delightful. It’s directed by David Cowles and Jeremy Galante (this is not the first time by any means their work has appeared on this site, often in conjunction with They Might Be Giants’ music) and features a bunch of happy, playful, and singing gnomes. Festive for the winter holidays, no matter which winter holidays your family celebrate. And it’s a world premiere!

Charlie Hope - “Ding Dong Merrily On High” [YouTube]

Mr. Fred Rogers, Unknown Songwriter

Mister Rogers on set in red cardigan

There’s been lots of press coverage recently about one Fred Rogers, aka Mister Rogers, a name that makes people of a certain age (like, say, mine) immediately think about his classic American TV program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. This coverage is prompted primarily by the release this month of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which stars Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers and focuses on Rogers’ friendship with a journalist assigned to write a profile on him. But it’s also true that interest in Rogers has only grown in the years since his death in 2003 and I don’t see it fading much even after the movie leaves theatres.

Even though Rogers is best known for his program for kids, much of the interest is driven by adults, and some of the most affecting material doesn’t necessarily lean on his program to make its emotional or psychological point. For example, Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote a long, detailed profile of Hanks titled “This Tom Hanks Story Will Help You Feel Less Bad,” a headline that mimicked Rogers in its directness and truthfulness. (It did indeed!) In drawing parallels between Hanks and Rogers as adults and decent people, it doesn’t focus on Rogers’ interaction with kids.

For a look at Rogers’ life that focuses more on kids, give Carvell Wallace’s podcast Finding Fred a listen. It is a very affecting look at Rogers’ career and talks at a pleasingly broad set of people about Rogers’ impact on them, not only close co-workers and associates, but also kids, but those Rogers met, but also those Rogers only affected through the TV screen. Wallace is explicitly trying to figure out how Rogers’ lessons might be relevant today, not only to kids but to adults. (Really, go listen, it’s excellent.)

But I realized in listening to Finding Fred that I hadn’t fully appreciated how important music was to Rogers’ life. Lots of people may know he was a Presbyterian minister, but he wasn’t ordained until he was in his mid-thirties. He graduated with his Bachelor’s degree from Rollins College in Florida more than a decade before. His major? Music composition. (For a fuller exploration of Fred Rogers’ life as an artist, I highly recommend Jeanne Marie Laskas’ long New York Times Magazine article titled “The Mister Rogers No One Saw.”

Compared to Sesame Street, which started in 1969, just a year after Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, I don’t think Rogers’ music has had nearly the cultural impact of that from Sesame Street. There are probably a variety of reasons for that, including the broader musical palette of Street and the use in later years of modern pop and rock hits as the basis for kid-friendly and educational parodies. Instead, what Rogers offered on his program were songs with simple language, sung directly to children.

They weren’t necessarily simple musically, and Johnny Costa’s jazz piano and his trio provided an appropriately cool and calming underlay to Rogers’ singing. But they probably didn’t capture the public imagination in total the way the Street oeuvre did.

All of which is to say that Fred Rogers is a comparatively underused songwriter from my perspective. Are there tribute albums to Rogers using his music? Sure. There’s 2005’s Songs from the Neighborhood, featuring artists like Amy Grant, Donna Summer, and Ricky Scaggs. Just last month, another tribute album, Thank You, Mister Rogers, features similar artists such as Sandi Patty, Vanessa Williams, and Lee Greenwood. (Hats off to Jon Secada, who appears on both albums.) And there are a couple more jazz-inflected albums from individual artists. But Sesame Street or Schoolhouse Rock seem to have had a much bigger footprint in terms of having their songs covered by other artists.

And kids’ musicians? If there’s a cover of a Mister Rogers song on a kindie album somewhere, I’ve missed or it’s escaped my memory. The closest I could find was Lori Henriques’ “Free Ride Everyday” — not a Fred Rogers song, just one inspired by the man:

While of course the title of this post is tongue-in-cheek, it’s not totally tongue-in-cheek. Rogers’ lyrical directness is probably somewhat out of style (it’s not a lyrical style I have always preferred over the years), the emotional empathy of the songs would be a powerful message. (And I am always interested in more songs about emotions.)

Kindie artists, you know what to do.