Founded in 200, The Secret Mountain initially focused solely on music CDs for children in Canada and France. It started released book/CD cominbations in 2003; in 2005, it started releasing titles in the U.S. market. Over that time, though they've covered a broad range of musical artists, from longtime Canadian artists to Trout Fishing in America to a collection of Jewish lullabies from around the world, one theme that runs throughout their collections are an attention to detail and quality in their product. I recently talked with The Secret Mountain's founder, Roland Stringer, about the genesis of his company, how the book/CD combinations come about, and more about the company's latest release, Sunday in Kyoto. Zooglobble: What were your earliest musical memories? Roland Stringer: I was born in 1960, so I was part of that whole wave that grew up on the Beatles. I had that cliched scene of my sisters going crazy because they were watching the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. I grew up in a small French-speaking town in Western Canada, so I heard a lot of traditional French music on the radio. As I grew up, in pre-teen years and beyond, I listened to Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel -- these North American artists. What led to the founding of The Secret Mountain? By the end of the '80s, I was doing artist management, music publishing, touring, a lot of everything. By chance, one of the artists I was working with did their first children's record in 1990. It was a project for freinds and family, but it went over well. So I produced kids records through the '90s. In 2000, though, vinyl was gone, and the CD is a piece of plastic. I though it'd be nice to give the kids something more imaginative, involving storytelling, pictures, drawings, with music from around the world. I was wanting to work with illustrators on one end, storytellers on the other, and they really were doing the same thing. I was just coming up with the package. You know, I was always interested in looking at the vinyl -- I remember studying those album covers from the Who or Genesis. How do you decide on the music?