Review: Coal Train Railroad Swings! - Coal Train Railroad
There are not many artists who play jazz for kids, which is a sad thing. Sad not because Jazz Is The American Art Form and more kids should be aware of their country's musical heritage (even though that statement is true). Sad because jazz can be one of the most playful musical forms, and who plays better than kids?
On their second album, Coal Train Railroad Swings!, Nashville's Coal Train Railroad are every bit as playful as their pint-sized primary audience, adding several musical exclamation points to that in the title. From the get-go vocalist Katy Bowser throws herself into the preschool-focused lyrics with abandon. On the swingin' leadoff track "I'm Diggin' Me," Bowser sounds hopped up on pixie sticks as she fully inhabits the bouncing-off-the-walls-let's-play-superheroes! narrator. On big band-inspired "Dirt," I love the way Bowser throws off the word "dirt" at the end of every line, a statement of fact mixed with "what-are-ya-gonna-do?" insouciance. And I think you can probably guess the vocal approach she takes on the gypsy-jazz "I Hab a Code."
Which isn't to imply that the music is just jokey -- they come from a kid-centered focus. Bowser can turn in gorgeous vocals as well, as on "With A Box." And she's very ably backed up by her CTRR co-founder, producer and bassist Christopher Donohue, and the rest of the band. They provide great accompaniment, playful when necessary, solid through and through. The album is very preschool-focused lyrically, which may very well restrict the repeatability for folks when kids aren't around, though the album closer, the gorgeous "On Our Swings," is a worthy successor to the West Coast jazz sound Vince Guaraldi made famous to a broad audience via the Peanuts TV specials.
The album is more appropriate for kids ages 2 through 7, though that's a lyrical distinction -- musically, it works for everyone. You can hear the whole 27-minute album via the widget at the bottom of the page.
I liked Coal Train Railroad's debut, but I really like Coal Train Railroad Swings!. If it's not quite the all-ages classic that Medeski Martin & Wood's Let's Go Everywhere is, it gets close. It's musical, smart, and, most importantly, fun. Definitely recommended.
Disclosure: I received a copy of the album for possible review.
The Muppet Movie is a hard act to follow. Released in 1979, there have been a number of 
Kids' music often resides in the realm of the real -- the concrete here and now. Music from Southern California's 
Folks like Justin Roberts or Recess Monkey aren't the only kids' musicians who can write a musical earworm that will get stuck in your kid's (and, by extension, your) head. Here are a couple albums by lesser-known artists with their own fair share of hooks.
If Mr. Richard takes a jangly-pop approach from the '70s to his songs, on his second album Holy Cow!, Gerry Stanek AKA 
Looking to take a bit of a break after a long tour and giving birth to her son, Portland-based singer-songwriter 
What do I have to do, people? I tell you -- 
I don't think that 
I've 
While DC-area heroes 
A lot of kindie musicians dream of creating their own TV shows.
In fact, these books owe the majority of their charm not to the words but to Endle's cut-paper artwork, which is simply beautiful. It's a collage but with everything meticulously planned and put just in the right place. (Take a look at that cover -- you'd think that it was entirely hand-drawn until you look closely at those bushes.) Both books are nature-based -- Bunny Rabbit presents a series of animals in different light settngs while My Woodland Wish is an ever-so-slightly more narratively-driven book that follows a girl spying on (and interacting with) various woodland creatures. The books are cute, but not too much so -- they don't over-anthropomorphize the animals (or give them eyes waaaaay out of proportional to the rest of their bodies).
Laurie Berkner is without a doubt the brightest female star in kids music (and quite possibly the biggest star, period), so I've been surprised that there haven't been more artists who've attempted to follow in her footsteps. There are obviously lots of successful female artists, for the most part, however, artists like Elizabeth Mitchell, Frances England, Molly Ledford, and Ashley Albert have taken different paths than Berkner's taken, that of melding bright pop takes on traditonal kids' music with catchy new melodies.
On her second album Shining Like a Star, Laura Doherty plumbs a slightly less traditional, slightly less pop-py line than Hope, with such as with the wurlitzer-like keyboard on "Rocket Ship," the country/western-dusted "Quiet as a Mouse," or the circus organ on "Ferris Wheel." Like Hope, Doherty's blessed with a clear voice that elevates the material -- her samba take on the Joe Raposo classic "Sing" is excellent.
There is just barely enough kids' music in the United Kingdom that reaches North America for me to note how little kids' music there is in the United Kingdom whenever I review an album from across the pond. But the genre there is maturing a little bit, as evidenced by the number of albums released by artists best known for playing for adults. Two of the most recent come from 
As gentle as Cooke's album is, Cope's is even more delicate. My Socks is his second album for families, following up last year's What Colour Is Your T Shirt?, and it features hummable acoustic chamber-pop tunes about very preschool-ish issues. The title track is an unambiguous and unironic celebration of, well, socks. Other songs deal with going to the grocery store ("The Very Long Shopping List", which could be a long-lost Burt Bacharach track), bubble baths ("Pour in the Bubbles"), and manners ("Thankyou"). It's mostly mellow mid-tempo stuff about familiar concerns, which makes a song like the peppy "There's a Bear" (most preschoolers having not seen "a bear / over there") stand out even more. It's a good album for a rainy day.
I've already reviewed 
True confession time: I almost never listen to Woody Guthrie's kids' music records. Oh, sure, I 
Somebody just go ahead and give Ashley Albert her own TV show already. In fact, she 
San Diego-area musician Steve Denyes is a prolific songwriter (see 
Moving up the coast to Portland we find 
I've always thought of punk music as being pretty anti-authoritarian, which is why I've been surprised to see a lot of kids punk bands be, well, not anti-authoritarian in their music. I suppose it's not that surprising -- how could you sell your music to the very authoritarians (the parents) you're singing against? But I wonder how many parents see the punk outfits and hear the crunchy guitars and think, "not for my family." Pity.
OK, you have folks like Raffi and Ella Jenkins and Justin Roberts -- people who, once they started recording music for kids, showed little interest to breaking away from that and recording for adults. But there's a long history of "adult" artists dipping their toes into the world of kids' music -- Carole King, Johnny Cash, Harry Nilsson, Tony Bennett, all the way up through They Might Be Giants, Lisa Loeb, and Barenaked Ladies and every artist who's ever recorded a song for kids' music compilation. Some, like TMBG (or Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie long before them), spend a lot of time there, but usually the artists return to the world of checking for fake IDs and adult themes.
The annoyance some parents feel upon hearing the classics of kids' music isn't due to the melodies themselves. The melodies, in fact, because they've survived for centuries in some cases, are some of the best ever. Parents' anger, rather, is a result of repetition and, sometimes, poor execution. The littlest things, like providing the barest minimum of interesting accompaniment and slightly different (but real) instrumention, can push the date of the inevitable "I can't take this anymore!" way out into the future.
Oh, to have the energy of Pepito, the titular squirrel the latest EP of 
First off is Austin's 
1. There once was a band from Seattle
Some artists are busy 
Freed from his devotion to the alphabet (see: A-H, 
It's 
It's not often ignorance can make for a better review, but it just might in this case. Selected ignorance, in any case. I was actually familiar with 
First up is my favorite of the trio, New England singer-songwriter 
This review sort of felt like a 
I could take a lot of time talking specifically about Gustafer Yellowgold's Infinity Sock, the fourth 
Deciding to record an album inspired by spending time with students at a school for children with alternative learning styles, as 
Just in time for Earth Day, 
It is hard to make an "Earth Day"-themed album.
The sight of Nicola Heindl's illustration immediately brands it as a Putumayo disk. But take off the animated cover of Acoustic Dreamland, the latest collection from 
It's not easy to review 
I'm not sure whether covering obscure 
As someone who listens to a lot of music and reviews it on occasion, there's nothing quite like discovering a new artist with their first CD. Don't get me wrong, it's lots of fun to hear an artist you like a lot clicking on all cylinders, but the pleasure in listening to someone like, say, Justin Roberts, is that of hearing a sound you and your family have sort of come to expect performed wonderfully. Putting a CD into the CD drive and hearing a new, unfamiliar sound and voice -- that can be thrilling when that sound and voice click.
It's hard to review benefit albums because the worthy cause behind most such albums makes reviewing the music itself difficult. Who wants to say the album's bad if the cause is good? In the case of Joey's Song for Kids, Volume 1, luckily, the songs are mostly pretty good.
Always a little bit under the radar, Los Angeles' 
I'd heard about the music that guitarist Tom Gray of the British band 
The second show, Flyaway Katie, was based on Polly Dunbar's book, which (the book -- and presumably the puppet show) is about a girl who dresses up very colorfully and becomes a bird (briefly). As you might expect, there are lots of songs about colors -- a moody one about gray, a mellow one about green, and bright one about the yellow sun. It's more orchestrated than the first show -- literally, in some cases, as strings make an appearance on several songs, and Gray even duets with another singer on one of the tracks. (My favorite track: "The Red Bus".")There's also a Mark Mothersbaugh-like instrumental "The Mice Theme" that is very pretty though makes less sense without the context of the puppet show itself.
The newest show is Penguin, which debuted just last year. It's also based on one of Polly Dunbar's books about a silent penguin. Without visuals for the puppet show, it is easest perhaps to follow along to the narrative arc in this album. (There's another fun instrumental in "A Lunar Tune," all spacy and with bleeps and bloops.) That may make things confusing if you're listening without benefit of the book (who exactly the singer singing to in the funky second-line-like "Say Anything" is not clear unless you know it's boy singing to his silent penguin). But I think the songs here are the most engaging and most beautiful of the three albums -- "Penguin's Song" could easily rest outside the kids music world.
The music of the South Carolina band 
Is it uncharitable of me to say I don't understand why 
One thing that's been striking to me is the relative absence of an independent Australian family music scene, at least viewed from the American vantage point. One might think that the tremendous success of four nice blokes in bright t-shirts might have spurred a lot of imitators and counter-revolutionaries, but that doesn't seem to have been the case. In fact, you can argue that the Wiggles have had a lot more influence on the American kids music scene, either through imitators (the Fresh Beat Band), people headed in the opposite direction (many of the artists on this site), and folks with their feet firmly planted in both camps (Yo Gabba Gabba!).
Whatever daydreams I had of becoming a rock star when I was a young turk have long since faded away. But I have wondered about recording some basic, traditional songs for my kids, if only for them to have a record of the songs we sang when they were kids.
I think we can agree that England -- the entire United Kingdom, actually -- has not carried its weight in the kids music new wave. Few artists have attracted any attention here in the States, and even those artists would admit that the independent family music scene is as small there as it is large on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Upon first report, 
If it's November, it must be time for another album from Chris Ballew's family-music alter ego, 
Over the past couple years, I've received a number of Spanish-language kindie albums. I've wanted to like them, I really have, but found that very few were worth spinning for the music alone. Whatever pedagogical value they may have had -- and most of them were designed to teach Spanish -- most were musically unremarkable. Albums from Dan Zanes and Mariana Iranzi -- albums that incidentally weren't designed to teach Spanish -- were the exception. Of course there are classic albums from Suni Paz and José-Luis Orozco, but they are far more traditional in their sound. So I greeted the news of 
This is probably a Zooglobble first. I've double-dipped reviews before for albums getting re-releases, but this is essentially a triple-dip. It's for the LA band 
Give New York's 
Not quite sure how I've managed to write this website and not review a disk from 
This is the year of the kids music EP, apparently. First 
I'll go ahead and say straight out that since I 
Seattle's 
I wouldn't expect a kids album from Los Angeles' 
If you have any tie to the family music genre, then you are undoubtedly aware of 
You can make a big impression in a small amount of time. With his debut family EP Luckiest Adventure, 
Let's see if I can write the review for Move Over Lullabies... It's Time for Wake Up Songs!, the spring EP from Maine's 
There's not much secret to the appeal of Seattle's 
Ah, 
Having said all that, Jazz Playground is my favorite of all the Putumayo "Playground" series disks, and that's saying something. The nature of jazz is such that it covers lots of styles and permits fresh interpretations of songs we've heard dozens if not hundreds of times before, and as a result, there's a nice mix of new and old, providing new perspectives -- and isn't that one of the major points of the Putumayo concept anyway? The album deftly navigates the line between over-reliance on English language voices (which you can get anywhere) and non-English language songs (which can be hard for English speakers to fully appreciate, no matter how funky the liner notes are).
Why such a tiny review for such a big superstar as 
If you're going to title your second kids' CD Funky Fresh and Sugar Free, you better bring at least a modicum of funk, am I right? Luckily, Oklahoma's 
If you go over the 
Based in the Twin Cities, 
I know already did a 
It's taken me a little time to fully appreciate 
I'd like to think I have a good record of introducing new artists worth following to the world, but I can't be first all the time. As you'd expect, 
It's been too long since we've heard from Los Angeles' 
The problem with "subgenre" albums in kids music is they sometimes become jokes. "Hey, everyone, wouldn't it be funny if we did "Wheels on the Bus" reggae style? Or "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in polynesian tiki music?" And, yeah, maybe it's funny at first, but it gets old. And even if it's not meant to be funny, at some point the subgenre needs to move forward, to write songs that honor where they're coming from but at the same time are very much for kids. After all, those toddlers and preschoolers eventually hit grade school, where "Wheels on the Bus" is, well, not appreciated in any style.
New York's Robert Burke Warren, AKA 
There is lots of interest in musicians who create new worlds and new songs for the youth of today (and tomorrow). But there is something to be said for making old songs sound new with verve and joy, and so I'm glad 
This is a disk that's been sitting on my desk for awhile, and I've actually listened to it a fair amount since receiving it a few months back. I feel slightly bad about this, some sort of cognitive dissonance between the desire to tell folks about a good CD and my inability to, you know, tell folks about a good CD.
This is the noisiest kids' CD you'll hear all year. 
One of the most welcome trends of the past decade, kids music-wise, is that artists who spend most of their time making music for adults don't have a problem occasionally making music for kids, joining the lucky group of folks for whom making music for families is a full-time gig. Often these albums appear at the midpoint of an artist's career -- think of They Might Be Giants, or Barenaked Ladies, or The Verve Pipe -- well after they've established themselves. But I think we've gotten to the point where up-and-coming artists -- potential Next Big Things -- feel like recording family music is a perfectly acceptable detour along the way.
First, let's get this out of the way -- Banjos For Babes is a lot better than its cover might lead you to think. While I admit that the 4-year-old daughter of Atlanta neurologist/banjo player 
It's hard to review an album when in one sense you've been reviewing it for a couple years now. From the 
The first time I heard 
The most ambitious kids music holiday album of the year comes courtesy of 
To say that the collaboration of 
Robert Burke Warren, AKA 
Let's stop for a moment to appreciate 
There are 3 operative points of comparison when discussing 
Books are so 20th century, right? Then why do people insist on continuing to write them? Who knows, but in the case of 
As a reviewer, I tend to dislike absolute statements because you never know what you'll hear or read or see afterwards that will cause you to regret your previous absolute. So with that in mind, let me say this with no "possibly"s or "maybe"s to get in the way:
The advantage of Field Trips with Recess Monkey, the first DVD from Seattle's 
Is it poetry set to music, or music made of poetry? That's the question posed by these two albums.
The debut album from Twin Cities band 
Although the Baltimore band 
I am perhaps not the best person to judge a 
I've been watching a lot of kids music DVDs lately, and I've found that my appreciation of the individual DVDs is roughly commensurate with my appreciation of the artist. Or, to be all math-like, E(d) = E(a) * PQ. (Enjoyment of DVD equals enjoyment of artist multiplied by the production quality of the DVD.)
A small delight.
Where would kids music be without Belinda Miller and Hova Najarian, the hosts of the 
There's this ice cream shop in San Francisco called 
One of the signs of the maturation of the kids music genre is that there are more debut albums with a sense of confidence. Rather than tentative steps into what might be an unfamiliar world, more folks seem to have a very clear understanding of what their sound is and how their image might support it.
I 
The kids music resurgence has been relatively brief, and so we haven't necessarily had the time to watch too many bands mature and change their sounds over time. An exception is the Bay Area band 
It's hard to write a review about Field Trip, the recently-released fifth album from Seattle's 
I hesitate to call the DC-area-based duo 
At the risk of over-simplification, I think there are five kinds of kids music albums:
Giving Family Photograph, the first album from the bi-coastal 
I'll start this review of Family Time, the first kids music album from 
With about 30 years of recording behind them, 
The story of Brooklyn's Libby Shapiro isn't terribly novel at this point. As she puts it in her PR materials:
Rather than record a full-length follow-up to their fine 2007 collection Educated Kid, the Bay Area band 
I've been listening a lot to Pink, the third album from the DC-area band 
I wouldn't say that 
It's a sign, I think, of how popular 
Little Boy Blue is very much in a "big machine" phase. Books about trucks, asking when the recycle truck is going to be here, he's generally nuts about vehicles in a way his big sister Miss Mary Mack never was. This means we also get subjected to some less-than-completely enjoyable soundtracks accompanying the big machine videos on loan from the library.
It's pretty easy to think of one kids music band from Australia, but once you get past the multicolored gents in the Wiggles, naming a second gets a lot harder if you're here in the Northern Hemisphere. But Australian Sherry Rich and American-born partner Rick Plant make the case for 
What do you get when you cross the Beach Boys with some fuzzed out guitars and synthesizers and mix in a tiny hint of Barney? 
However you feel about 
One thought I had upon spinning Here I Am!, the upcoming first album from 
Austin's 
It seems like kids music is the new "side project" for an increasing number of musicians. What better way to deflate expectations and clear out a little creative room than by deciding to create music for the elementary school set? I don't mean that negatively at all -- in fact, it's that "anything goes" approach that helps to make the genre vibrant.
Well, there's certainly no flies on New York's 
Sesame Street Playground, the latest globetrotting collection of kids music from cultural omnivores 
When I say that Wag Your Tail, 
While Virginia trio 
I suppose Portland, Oregon-based 
Let's think about the kids music artists who have released three easy-to-recommend CDs in the past five years. Hmmm.... Dan Zanes, Recess Monkey, Justin Roberts, Ralph's World, and... who? I mean, if you expand that time frame out a bit, you could add They Might Be Giants, Elizabeth Mitchell, maybe Laurie Berkner. But to be that consistent over that amount of time says something -- that's an all-star list of kids musicians right there.
Is releasing a kids' music album in November like releasing a movie in January? Because December 31st is the deadline for having your movie considered for the upcoming Oscars, it's implied that studios dump all their really bad movies in January. So, if you just miss the October 31st deadline for 
I've been waiting a long time to review this album, longer than I should. I'd been waiting for Austin, Texas artist 
With the release today of their One Day Soon EP, San Francisco's 
With several albums for adults under their belts, you would be forgiven for thinking the New York band 
It's been nearly 7 months since I first watched (
With their latest album, Massachusetts' 
So, really, if you're pressed for time, you don't have to read this review of Alphabutt, the first kids' album from 
In this era when kids are supposedly growing up too fast, it isn't necessarily easy being 
Though there are many charms of kids music, subtlety is usually not one of them. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you, but most kids' music is direct and to the point, especially lyrically.
Over the course of four albums, the Seattle trio 
I admit it. I'm old. Not, like, Social Security old, but old enough that if I use the phrase "OMG" I mean it ironically. I am old enough, however, to have a kid who, though she isn't quite out of the "kids music" phase yet, will start listening to music I haven't introduced her to.
Imagine if Kanye West decided his next album would be a bluegrass album. Or if Metallica felt they had a polka album in them. How would their fans react? How would the bluegrass or polka purists react? Most importantly, would the music be any good?
A number of months ago, someone e-mailed me and suggested I check out the kids music of Boston-area musician 
Ralph Covert has few peers when it comes to kids' music songwriting -- Justin Roberts?, the guys from Recess Monkey?, Molly Ledford from Lunch Money? -- the list is short. Over the course of six original albums in his guise as 
I'd like to think that my 
Andy Blackman Hurwitz, mastermind of the ever-expanding 
New York's 
Southern California-based singer-songwriter 
It's unfair, but I'll start this review of Pop Fly, the sixth solo kids' music album from Chicago's 
There's nothing terribly fancy about Ditties for Kiddies, a benefit CD for the 
Maybe it's been a long and sleepy week, but I'm very taken by this CD.
One of the things I like most about the kids' music genre is the feeling that artists are following their own muse, no matter how skewed, when they jump in. Oh, sure, with everybody thinking that kids music is the Next Big Thing, there are more than enough CDs that scream opportunism. But there are still plenty of musicians making their music, their way.
It is possible that Brooklyn-based 
I hesitate to use the phrase "the most unusual kids' album you'll hear all year," because, I assure you, no matter how unusual a particular kids music album, I've heard odder ones (don't get me started). So let me describe Ladybug One, the second kids' CD from the Seattle-area 
The first, and most TMBG-like in sound, is Austin's 
Now if Mr. Leebot sounds like TMBG from 20+ years ago, on his debut Playground Fortune Teller, the Bay Area's 
The 
Here it is, the most eagerly anticipated kids music release of the year. 
Another month, another breezy mix CD from 
Despite the fact that jazz is one of the great American art forms, its current popularity among the population is not exactly mass-market. As a result, I'm hesitant to call Let's Go Everywhere, the first kids music CD from the popular modern jazz trio 
When you release as many albums on a regular basis as 
The second album from LA's 
I can't say that I've been the biggest 
Sometimes a record just gets away from you. I can't pinpoint any particular reason why I never reviewed Best Friends, the 2006 debut album from the Los Angeles wife-and-husband team of 
Austin's 
If you've read this website over the past five or six months, you know how big a fan I (and the rest of my family) have become of Austin's 
Sometimes people hear kids' music and think, "Hey, I could do that!" Sometimes those people decide they'll try their hand at writing and recording kids music of their own. At which point they find out it's lot harder than it looks. (No, I'm not speaking from personal recording experience, just lots of personal listening experience.)
I've been trying without much luck to come up with an interesting hook for this review of Lucy's Parade, the debut CD from the LA-based band 
I have been a fan of Rhode Island-based 
I love what 
A hazard in reviewing kids' music is the need to be conversant with a broad range of musical styles. For "adult" music, editors generally wouldn't have the same person reviewing classical music and metal, but in this field, well, anything goes.
When the Seattle band 
I have come to think of Morgan Taylor, the creator of 
May as well get it out of the way -- yes, it's 
The latest in 
The 
Though this is the best kids music album title (or at least most amusing to parents) since the Sippy Cups' "Electric Storyland," people who expect Dean Jones' Napper's Delight to be a traditional lullaby album or a goofy riff on a traditional lullaby album will be disappointed.
How to describe Jump in the Jumpy House, the recently-released third CD for kids from San Jose, California-based artist 
Spend 2 minutes and 16 seconds, listening to "Educated Kid," the title track and leadoff single from the Bay Area trio 
I play the violin and not the fiddle, so my bluegrass bona fides are slim. But I'm familiar with Del McCoury, who's been making bluegrass music for a long time, and making music with his sons for a couple decades or more.
There is no other way to say this, so I'll state it up front -- I am going to be unfair to 
Despite the fact that everybody and their drummer is recording kids music these days, it still takes a certain amount of courage for an artist to release a kids' CD as their very first album.
Can sequels upstage the original?
For those of you wondering, yes, this album is better than its cover. Usually.
In reviewing this CD, let me be clear from the start that ours is not, for the most part, a television-watching household. It's not really a principled stand as much as it is a reflection of our busy lives. We just don't have much time to watch TV if we want to do other things like, you know, bathe and eat.
In 2002, Belinda and Hova compiled their first Greasy Kid Stuff collection, filled with their broadcast's most popular songs from 7 years of Saturday-morning radio shows. This collection has a very goofy vibe to it that owes as much of its energy to Dr. Demento as it does 120 Minutes. Finding out from the liner notes that the very odd "There's a New Sound (The Sound of Worms)" was "without a doubt the most-requested song" on the show in the mid-'90s is a bracing tonic in thinking about what kids actually like to hear. Although I think the silly outweighs the rock, even the silly has a lot of rock to it (check out the surf "Ants in My Pants"), and the rock -- exemplified by the Mr. T Experience's cover of "Up and Down" from Schoolhouse Rock and the by-now-immortal "Jockey Monkey" from James Kochalka Superstar.
The sequel, released a couple years later, is more at the 120 Minutes-end of the GKS spectrum. With tracks from Cub, Supernova, and They Might Be Giants, the album has much more of an indie-rock feel. "Dictionary" is another great indie-rock track, done by Muckafurgason (two-thirds of which would later become the kids' band The Quiet Two. But the less-familiar names also turn in enjoyable tracks, most notably the surprisingly sweet (with pointed commentary near the end) "The Dinosaur Song," from Drew Farmer.
Two is better than one. Or, in this particular case, fifty-one is better than two.
My Best Friend is a Salamander, released in 1997, was Himmelman's first album for kids and families, and the first thing you might be struck by in listening to it is how it could have been released this year. Ten years later, and Himmelman's still taking socially exciting trips. What is different is just how... odd those first songs were. While on his excellent 2007 release My Green Kite he's singing about kites or feet --fairly recognizable subjects treated in mostly recognizable ways -- early on he had a much more skewed, Shel Silverstein-esque approach. He sings about his best friend... who's a salamander. In "Larry's a Sunflower Now," a dreamy adult-sounding pop tune, the narrator (who poured water all around the subject to help him grow) tells Larry's worried mom," Look at the bright side / There's nothing you can do / Larry's gettin' lots of fresh air / The sun is on his faces and / Birds are in his hair today." Himmelman's fascination with rhyming wordplay -- which continues today -- is most evident here on the gentle "An Ant Named Jane," though a number of other songs have the touch of spoken-word.
Like many people my age, I grew up on PBS shows. Sesame Street, Electric Company, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood -- all of them great. (And so was Scooby-Doo, but that's not relevant here.) So it's been a little weird to me that the great TV kids' music show of this generation -- Jack's Big Music Show -- has never been anywhere near PBS.
Let's get the negative out of the way right from the get-go: "Turn Off the TV" might just be the worst kids' song you'll hear this year. Not only is it very "you should do this," it's also done in a faux-rap style. The combination may just make your kids want to turn off the CD player and turn on the TV for several hours watching Spike TV or something.
Years from now, when there are sections in amusement parks called LaurieWorld, in which you can ride the "Buzz Buzz" bumblebee ride (you must not be any taller than 48" to ride) and eat a "We Are The Dino-Chicken Nuggets Family-Pack," younger families might wonder when exactly it was that 
I'm already tired of PTA fundraisers, and our daughter has just cleared kindergarten.
One of the advantages of having listened to and reviewed kids and family music for a decent period of time is that you get to see bands and artists grow over time.
With all apologies due to Spinal Tap, there's a fine line between sweet and schmaltzy in children's music. Topics that in one musician's hands produce a moment of "A-ha! That's how life is!" in another's hands produce a moment of "Duh. Of course that's how life is." Frankly, the same track can produce those two moments in two different families.
After listening to hundreds of kids and family CDs over the past years, I've developed some resistance to the charms of a cutesy album title. A classic album title twisted into a kiddie pun does not a good album make.
Another week, another collection of kids' songs from artists whose regular gigs usually occur well after the target audience for these compilations have gone to bed.
I’ve long believed that 
In the late 1990s, the only record company that seemed to anticipate the forthcoming resurgence of kids music was 
Readers who find that the number of songs that they and their family enjoy off that album is fairly high may find themselves interested in another release of kids and family music which predates even the music on the Smithsonian Folkways collection. 
Amidst the explosion of musical styles in recent kids music -- indie rock, country, rap, what have you -- the pure children’s pop tune or album has almost been forgotten. I don’t know whether it’ll ever make a complete comeback (Billy Joel isn't exactly burning up the adult pop charts nowadays, either), but Seth Decker and the Missing Piece won’t be to blame if it doesn’t.
There are singers, and there are entertainers. In the former camp, I'd put artists like Elizabeth Mitchell, whose interpreter of songs is rivaled by few in the kids music genre and who have glorious voices.
Beware the music of a new parent.
New Jersey-based 
You know, it's a shame that the ice cream truck industry seems to have withered away. (At least it has in our neighborhood.) Who can resist ice-cream-on-demand? Well, perhaps the industry's demise can be traced to the lack of variety in ice cream songs, with parents and kids rushing indoors at the slightest hint of another overly familiar ice cream truck song.
Listening to Seattle-based 
There are many types of kids' music albums, but one genre that's been mostly avoided is the very personal kids' music album. Now, there are a number of musicians who feel compelled to record intensely personal lullabye albums upon the arrival of a child into their family, but those generally end in, if not disaster, at least a goopy mess. Is it possible to make an album that draws upon a particular artist's life but speaks to many families?
My general rule on albums is that one awesome song usually makes an acceptable album; two, pretty good; and three awesome songs makes for an excellent album worth getting excited about.
The first album, Truly Hairy Fairy Tales, from New York musician 
The second album the man had was Music Tales, the debut CD from Florida-based 
Finally, the most traditional story-telling album is Tell Me A Story, a collection of folk tales from around the world, collected by 
I like deadlines. Be it at work or trying to finish a review, it usually helps me to have a due date, however artificial, staring me in the face.
I posted my 
OK, to begin with, no, that's not the best album cover I've ever seen ("What exactly is she looking at?," you might be thinking). But parenting is about not judging things by their cover and expecting everything to be perfectly designed, because if you do, you'll be disappointed and miss out on some cool stuff.
One of the downsides to the recent increase in attention paid to kids' music -- what, there are downsides? -- is a proliferation of music that uses kids' songs as jokes, applying traditional songs to non-traditional song forms. The albums aren't so much for the kids as they are for the adults.
Take a toy instrument-obsessed guy, mix in some classic kiddie records, and through in a whole both of sampling technology, and what do you get?
I don't know if the New York-based band 
Phredderiffic is the third album for kids from the uni-monikered artist whose six-letter name starts with the letter "P."
The advantage to the reviewer of an 18-minute CD, such as the 2006 self-titled debut from Southern California-based duo 
You think kids' music has taken off (again) in the past few years? Think about yoga. Seems like whatever available retail space isn't being taken up by a pharmacy is being occupied by a yoga studio. The idea of "yoga songs for kids," therefore, could very easily be one exploited for a quick buck, resulting in a horrible-sounding, goopy mess.
Lost amid all the talk of hootenannies lately is this crucial point:
Over the course of just a few years, San Francisco-based 
It is probably accurate, though way too simple, to characterize 
I appreciate artists like 
Talk about double lives -- Los Angeles-area-based Gwendolyn Sanford spends some of her time 
As way of introduction to the self-titled 2005 debut from Vancouver, British Columbia's, 
Longtime fixtures of the Austin music scene (with fans in the U.S. and abroad), the 
I lived in Minnesota for a portion of my "tween" years (though they didn't call them that then), and not only do I still have the Minnesota-shaped cutting board from my seventh-grade woodworking class to prove it, I still remember spending a portion of fifth grade learning all about Minnesota.
The Portland-based artist 
British dance/electronica band 
If you weren't convinced by the cover that Aminal House (yes, that's spelled correctly) had some Beatles influences, the liner notes, which thank, among others, Billy Shears, would seal the deal.
Compilations are notoriously hard things to compile. Any fool can put together a CD of good or popular songs, but their appeal as a single entity often fades after time. (Really, who listens to those Now! CDs, like, six months later?) The key is finding some loosely unifying theme or spirit to guide the collection.
Nearly ten years ago, New York City musician (and parent) David Weinstone, dissatisfied with assorted kids music programs, decides to start one of his own. The result, 
When I review a CD that I'm not enamored of, it's often because I hear something that somebody else might appreciate or because I think the artist shows promise.
It's Alan Lomax for the kiddos.
Get this man a TV show. Now.
With experience singing in Old Town School of Folk Music Wiggleworms classes, Chicago-based Ann Torralba would seem a logical choice for recording a CD targeted at the preschool set. And sure enough her debut kids' CD as "Little Miss Ann," Music For Tots, is geared for exactly those kids. A folk-poppy blend of traditional kids' songs, covers, and originals, the 22-minute disk is notable for its arrangements, which take out-of-the-ordinary approaches to familiar songs. Sometimes these arrangements sound great, such as on "You Are My Sunshine," which is given a different melody and jazzy percussion background, or "Pirate Ship," which employs a tin whistle to fun effect. Other tracks' arrangements aren't as endearing (the rhythm on the Pete Seeger-inspired "Edamame" was just, well, too angular, for example), but Torralba gets points for at least trying something different. (And I particularly enjoyed the Torralba originals.)
Not Naptime, the title of the 2003 album from Chicago-based 
Usually when I review CDs that aren't of the most recent vintage, it's because I want to go back and touch on a reasonably well-known CD and see whether or not it's stood the test of time (recognizing that that test might just be two or three years long). I've been writing reviews in one form or another for five years now, and even though I might not have reviewed everything, I've heard quite a bit, and heard of a lot more. But every now and then I stumble across a CD that makes we wonder how this escaped my radar screen.
The first region-specific release in its Dreamland series, 
Austin-based artist 
Now, if the first album occasionally suffers from a bit of preciousness, Hickman's 2001 follow-up Toddler suffers in no way whatsoever in that regard. In about 43 minutes, Hickman records 31 tracks of silly songs, playground rhymes, and a few stories that do a much better job of showing how simple it can be to just sing for your kids. In writing notes on the CD, I repeatedly used the word "fun" to describe the tracks. From the instant-classic playground chant "I Like My Boots" (co-written by Hickman and 8-year-old Kristen Nichols) to the zippy "Weenie Man" to the ear-wormy melody of Hebrew folk song "Hiney Rakevet," Hickman seems to be having a blast. It's multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and a blast of energy from start to end. Unlike Newborn, Hickman also uses a few more instruments (on both albums, the playing is great).
You might think 
The books themselves are OK -- Saaf's drawings are fun and filled with fun details, but he's illustrating the title tracks' song lyrics which don't, in and of themselves, have much of a plot. They're nice to look at, but not the most compelling books by themselves. The books also have notes, chords, lyrics, and liner notes for each of the songs on the EP, to help the readers who want to play the songs on their own.
In 2003, 
When playing toddler standards, simplicity works wonders, but it's also nice to take a slightly different approach from the hundreds of recordings that have preceded you. Josh Levine for Kids, from New York City musician 
After hearing his debut kids' CD Stomp Yer Feet!, I saddled the Seattle-based musician 
Another week, another bluegrass-inflected album for kids from New York City.
A former participant on the PBS show The Kids Zone, Illinois-based 
This is not your father's bluegrass.
Let's get the song out of the way -- was there a better song this year that spoke to how kids and parents really interact than "Nerves?" The answer, in case you hadn't guessed, is no. And even though the hard-charging chorus is supposed to be the voice of the child narrator, most parents would probably admit they've felt that their children were getting on their nerves at some point during the week. (And the rest are lying.)
Over the course of its two previous albums, the Baltimore-based band 
OK, let's get the cover out of the way. Yes, it's bizarre. No, I can't explain it. And, yes, the album inside is better.
Although it has signed very 21st century artists such as Gustafer Yellowgold and Robbert Bobbert (Robert Schneider), 
Based in Portland, Oregon 
There are those who, upon hearing Rockin' In the Forest With Farmer Jason, the recently-released second album from 
Not For Kids Only, the 1993 album from David Grisman and Jerry Garcia, is great idea for a kids' album. Two stellar musicians playing songs meant for singing along with, as the liner notes ask the listener to imagine hearing Grisman and Garcia playing songs after a large dinner gathering. (Can I be invited? I make a killer cranberry sauce.)
dyspeptic, adj., or, causing, or having dyspepsia (impaired digestion; indigestion).
I can't say that my initial expectations for Colours Are Brighter, the kids' music compilation put together by Belle & Sebastian trumpeter/bassist Mick Cooke, were very high. Franz Ferdinand doing kids' music, along with a whole bunch of other bands, only a few of which were familiar to these American ears? The whole thing sounded nothing more than a quickie album thrown together to cash in on the sudden popularity of music for kids. (OK, a quickie album designed to raise money for Save The Children's 
The first thing you need to know about 
Detroit is not afraid of you and will beat your... OK, this is a family website, but it's true. The Detroit Tigers are back in the World Series and if The Family Hootenanny is any indication, they can turn out kid-rock with the best of 'em. (Well, they can turn out Kid Rock, too, but that's for another set of music blogs altogether.)
I don't think I'm the only person who, when they saw the cover to the latest 
Based in New York City and led by mother of two Audra Tsanos, 
When 
Sad about the closure of CBGB's? Have no fear, 
It's safe to say that the fine folks at 
I've received a lot more kids' music this year than I have time to review here on the site. There are many reasons why I don't review something -- it's absolutely awful, it's too far past its expiration date, it's not really kids' music -- all reasons that I'm willing to throw out the window at any time, I should note. But what about those albums that I'm, well, only lukewarm about?
There are albums (in all genres) that you can drop in and out of, where your attention can wander without ruining the overall effect. And then there are albums whose enjoyment depend upon a sustained mood, whose parts are greater than the whole.
Originally released in 1961, 
Take away the cover art of a child sleeping next to their stuffed animal, and there's nothing about 
How to describe New York-based 
There are two basic approaches to putting together a genre-specific compilation of music, approaches which for brevity's and wit's sake, I call 
Boston-based folk-pop artist 
Chicago's 
I work with someone who has a goal of learning something new, however small, every day. In that spirit, what I learned from "Getting To Know You," the opening track on 
You don't see too many kids' music acts with a live album. 
When I've contemplated how I would put together the inevitable 
You know what's refreshing about See You on the Moon!: Songs for Kids of All Ages, the 2006 compilation from Canada's 
When did I know how seriously I'd started to take this whole "kids and family music" thing? When I spent $25 for an out-of-print kids' music CD -- to be specific, the 
If Smithsonian Folkways is looking for another kids' musician to join Elizabeth Mitchell on the label, I've got a suggestion: how about 
I wouldn't be here if not for 
I'm not usually one to be swayed by the cause behind an album, but when the first sentence of an album's press release includes a statement that "kids need to know they can be creators and not just consumers," that can exert a strong pull on me. With his 
It’s hard work reinterpreting classic kids’ tunes -- it takes imagination and a little bit of brazenness. Originally released in 2004, Erin Flynn’s debut Dreamers of Dreamshas enough of both. Flynn, who now teaches at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago (and appeared on their Wiggleworms Love You album), recorded the album in Philadelphia with a large and talented Co-Op Band, giving her freedom to take musical chances. My favorite reinterpretation is their version of the classic “Mary Mack,” which starts off slowly and gradually picks up speed before becoming a full-on punk version. In “Twinkle,” Flynn uses “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” as a jumping-off point for original music (reminiscent of Guster) and sky-centric lyrics. The original songs, while decent, collectively may be too earnest for the adults and too abstract in places for younger kids. (I tried but couldn’t resist, however, the best song the Partridge Family never sang, “Join In With a Song.”) The 40-minute album employs many musical styles -- the punky “Mary Mack,” for example, or country and bluegrass on the “Train” medley -- but most commonly has a folky, jam-band feel, thanks especially to the adept percussion work. The album is best for kids age 3 through 7, with sound clips (and the album) available at the 
If I had a dollar for every time my name was spelled incorrectly, we'd have replaced the flooring in our house long ago. So I understand the decision by Los Angeles-based musician Melissa Szilagyi to drop her surname and perform simply as 
Sometimes it's easy to review kids' music -- a little of bit of this, sounds like that, there are songs about food. Then an album like The Great Adventures of Mr. David (2006) comes along, making the task much more difficult. Whatever it is (and it's many things, sometimes all at once), this is not a typical kids' album.
The great risk in going back and listening to an artist's early work is that you won't like it as much as the later work that drew you to the artist in the first place, thereby also diminishing your original enthusiasm. Thankfully, that didn't happen for me when I listened to 
The creation of music industry veteran Andy Hurwitz, the supergroup 
It took several months and several listenings to 
For those of you who adore Sandra Boynton's comically plaintive drawings of pets and her whimsical sense of humor, but found the Broadway show stylings of Philadelphia Chickens a little too, well, Broadway show-stylish, her 2005 album/book Dog Train really brings the rock. Or, well, as much as any album that features three separate episodes entitled "Cow Planet" can bring said rock. Boynton and her musical collaborator Michael Ford have recruited a... diverse collection of musical performers to perform their (mostly) humorous songs -- Alison Krauss, Hootie and the Blowfish, and Blues Traveler, among others. As is often the case with albums where a collection of performers tackle the work of another artist, the best work is done by the least expected -- the Screaming Trees' Mark Lanegan bringing his Tom Waits-esque voice to "Sneakers," or the energetic "Pots and Pans" built up to a percussive crescendo by the Bacon Brothers and Mickey Hart. The best song on the CD may be the most familiar -- the wonderful "I Need A Nap," which pairs "Weird Al" Yankovic with Kate Winslet ("this is Ms. Winslet and Mr. Yankovic's first duet together," the liner notes wryly comment). It takes a Titanic-worthy overwrought ballad and applies it to the overwrought words of a cranky kid. It's very meta, and very funny. Less successful, though, are the fairly straight songs (Alison Krauss sounds wonderful on "Evermore," but she'd sound wonderful singing the "Weekly Clipper") and the "Cow Planet" interludes. The album will probably be most appreciated by kids ages 4 through 8 and people of a certain age remembering the soundtrack to their high school and/or college years. (Hey, I liked the Hooters. And the Spin Doctors CD. And the Hootie CD. I'm just sayin'.) You can hear clips from all of Boynton's CDs 
The 
I would call 
Trinidad-born and Bay Area-based, 
Long before Laurie Berkner, long before Raffi even, there was Pete Seeger. His stepmother spent a lot of time recovering folk songs from historical neglect, and her stepson put many of those on record. He was incredibly productive in doing this for Folkways Records, recording 54 albums for them. One of those albums, originally released in 1960, Seeger's Song and Play Time, received a new release on CD in 2001.
You don't often get a second chance to make a first impression, the cliche goes, and that's especially true in children's music. A cheesy song is enough to make the parent quickly hit the eject button lest the children get too attached to music that drives the parent absolutely nuts; a poor album cover will doom the CD before it even reaches the player. So it was with 
Unfortunately for New York band 
We really have Meg Ryan and the diner scene to thank for this. Jazz musician and erstwhile Broadway star Harry Connick, Jr. got his big break when he was asked to record the soundtrack to the movie When Harry Met Sally. The soundtrack was good, but the massive success of the movie was what pushed Connick into the national consciousness. More than ten years later, Connick repaid the favor -- sort of -- with his 2001 album Songs I Heard, on which he reworked Broadway and film showtunes. It's not a traditional kids' album, but when said tunes come from beloved sources such as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, there's clearly a kids' music theme to the album. The best tracks are those where Connick lets loose his band and really swings. The opening cut, "Supercalifragilisticexpiadlidocious," is well, that word, on which Connick, Jr., backed by a New Orleans brass band, almost makes us forget Dick Van Dyke. (Connick's voice is smooth as always.) Other uptempo tracks such as "The Lonely Goatherd" and Dixieland stylings on "Spoonful of Sugar" also benefit from Connick's big band and his traditional jazz arrangements. They're definitely a new, jazzier version of the original, but they're not so different from the original that kids won't enjoy them. Less successful are the slower tracks -- I can't see kids recognizing "Maybe" (from the musical Annie) or enjoying the string-backed version here. On the whole, Songs I Heard is a playful album. It's probably too long with some songs too obscure for kids to enjoy the whole thing at one sitting but parents wanting to discover some new showtunes or hear new spins of classics may find this worthwhile and "have what she's having."
Why are there not more great jazz albums for kids? You have wonderful melodies infinitely adaptable to the improvisational technique that is one of jazz's trademarks, and yet the number of really good jazz albums geared for kids is small. Hayes Greenfield's 2002 release, Jazz-A-Ma-Tazz, is one of those few albums, great for introducing kids to jazz.
With its stylized cover photo of San Francisco, little about the packaging of George Winston's 1996 album Linus & Lucy: The Music of Vince Guaraldi suggests "kids music." Indeed, we had this in our own family long before we had any idea what a Baby Bjorn was, let alone struggled to make those snaps, well, snap. But through his scores for 15 Peanuts television specials and one movie, Guaraldi's music may be more familiar to Americans old and (especially) young than that of just about any jazz composer. So it's with the nostalgic thoughts of repeated viewings A Charlie Brown Christmas that many adults may be tempted to get this album, both for themselves and for their kids. Winston, a pianist better known for his New Age(ish) soundscapes and lesser known for his affinity for Hawaiian slack key guitar, plays things pretty straight here. His renditions of two familiar cuts from the Christmas score, "Skating" and "Linus and Lucy," sound much like the original recordings, with only a little flourish at the end of "Linus and Lucy" to distinguish itself from the original. Guaraldi was often backed by his own Vince Guaraldi Trio, so Winston's solo piano does have to do a little bit more work than Guaraldi's original piano work did with other musicians. Other highlights include Winston's rendition of Guaraldi's hit "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" (again, not so different from the original) and the brief "Bon Voyage," but there really aren't bad tracks. One of the main reasons to get this album is the broad net Winston casts across Guaraldi's work, both Peanuts-related and not -- sadly, it might just be the best Greatest Hits album out there for Guaraldi. Whether or not the kids will be interested in this album is another question entirely; this is probably one of those CDs the parents will play much more for themselves than for their kids. Which isn't a bad thing, either.
With its Giselle Potter-illustrated cover, the inattentive adult might be fooled into thinking that this is another Ralph's World CD. Clearly, Verve put some thought into how to market this compilation. But with Lionel Hampton, Oscar Peterson, and Ella Fitzgerald (twice!) among those heard on the disk, somebody also put at least a little thought into the music itself. The 11-track, 28-minute album is a nicely sequenced mix of jazzy renditions of children's standards (Ella's versions of "Old McDonald" and "The Muffin Man"), silly novelties (Louis Prima's "Yes! We Have No Bananas"), and other kid-friendly songs. While the presence of Hampton, Peterson, and Fitzgerald are nice, for a person like myself whose jazz knowledge is about a quarter-mile wide and a foot deep, the Louis Jordan, Blossom Dearie, and Carmen McRae tracks are pleasant discoveries. (And while Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" doesn't really fit the swinging attitude of the rest of the tracks, it's a great cut, so we'll let it slide.) If I had any qualms with the disk it would be: a) I wish a disk entitled "Jazz for Kids" would have more than one semi-instrumental track (Peterson's boppy "Mumbles"), and b) I wish the disk's liner notes would've been seriously upgraded, giving more than just each track's title, artist, and release date. But as a whole, this is a pleasant collection of vocal jazz tracks from the mid-20th century and should please even those proclaiming to be allergic to jazz. Recommended.
[Here because Robbie sent you? Welcome! If you dig this album, there's plenty more great music here at the website (but few carp). Explore and thanks for stopping by!]If you're an adult, and you title your debut kids' music CD Songs For Kids Like Us, you've implied a certain level of (im)maturity to the prospective listener. On his 2006 kids' music debut, Virginia-based 
With her third studio album, Tall and Small (2006), set to be released next week, 
How best to describe the San Francisco-based 
Pity the preschool children's musician. Forced to play the same set of familiar songs at least some of the time, yet Raffi (and before him, Ella Jenkins, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, and Woody Guthrie) got there first and staked their claim. Few artists have managed to make a career out of playing the songs that the above artists perfected. (And believe me, many have tried. And failed.) Laurie Berkner is perhaps the only modern artist who's completely succeeded, and her fame is as much for her original music as it is for her rendition of traditional classics.
I doubt Lester Bangs used the word "gentle" to describe music in his reviews, but he probably didn't write reviews of kids music too often. There's no better word, however, to describe 
The 
Let's see... rock songs with not a little bit of theatricality. Lots of nautical themes. Band out of Portland, Oregon. We're talking about the Decemberists, right?
There must be a scientific study out there verifying what a lot of parents already know through personal experience -- your child's endurance when it comes to dancing outpaces yours. Sure, you go to the gym three times a week, but your kid, he's Lance Armstrong with the stereo on.
I think the best way to introduce this review is by talking about how much stuff our daughter has. I'm not talking about massive amounts of overblown toys and games. I'm just talking about her stuffed animals, which almost crowd her out of her bed. Or her My Little Ponies, which she decorates with her ponytail holders. Kids' lives are defined as much by objects and things as they are by people -- favorite books, favorite clothes, favorite foods.
I initially approached 
The folksinger Woody Guthrie was a prolific songwriter. Best known as the composer of "This Land is Your Land," Guthrie wrote and wrote and wrote. (Billy Bragg and Wilco combined to make two enjoyable Mermaid Avenue CDs in which they took songs from his large store of unreleased lyrics and added new melodies.) In addition to writing many songs with a more political bent, he also released a couple kids’ albums in the mid-1950s. Both these albums have been released on CD by Smithsonian Folkways records.
The Elvis of children's music would have to be Raffi. His own "Behind the Music" episode wouldn't be nearly as interesting as, say, Motley Crue's. But the category of "children’s music" didn’t exist in record stores before Raffi -- and this CD -- came along.
I've talked before about Elizabeth Mitchell's first CD for kids, 
