How I Got Here: Chris Ballew (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)

Although he may be better known among a certain set of the population as founder of The Presidents of the United States of America, Chris Ballew may eventually be best known for his ongoing string of excellent albums for kids under the moniker of Caspar Babypants.

On September 17, Ballew will release his seventh Caspar Babypants album, a record of Beatles covers called -- naturally -- Baby Beatles .  So when I asked Ballew to write the latest "How I Got Here" entry on albums that were significant influences on kindie musicians, it's not surprising that he chose one of the Fab Four's most famous albums.

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When I was 2 years old in 1967 I got a copy of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. I was right there glued to the speakers as it found its way into everyone's cultural landscape. I started to plant the songs in my wee sponge like musical brain and as it seeped its way deep into my personal musical landscape, the songs and I became fused. Although in later years I would go through a phase where I sort of hated the album for doing away with the small tight little early Beatles rock and roll band I loved and creating the concept album, I could never deny its influence.

The feeling that you are being taken on a fantastical ride into a silly and beautiful and melancholy atmosphere is what I strive to recreate when I write and record music for families. If this is about how I arrived then this album was the mode of transportation for sure.

There used to be a time when I wrote songs that were "serious" about tortured love or big ideas and metaphors. I found after years of scratching at that idiom that it was a frustrating dead end of overstuffed concepts. One day I stumbled onto a man on a chair in the back of a bar in Boston singing songs about frogs and cats and monkeys in the most groovy simple way. That was Spider John Koerner and he gave me permission to write songs that made the impossible possible. After a long break from the Beatles and Sgt. Peppers, I went back to that early source and I was blown away by how connected those songs were to the fanciful imagery of those early public domain folk songs. I had finally found a way to link my early fascination with psychedelic groovy songs to some sort of historical heritage. 

As I dove back into Sgt. Peppers, I had the most intense time travel back to childhood sensations and I felt that this feeling of being connected to childhood and storytelling was the core of something worthwhile and important.  Still, I had to push my way through a bunch of years of missing the mark including almost hitting it with my grownup rock band The Presidents of The United States of America before scoring a creative bullseye hit with Caspar Babypants. The Presidents are very close to my true musical vocabulary but still rely on the sting of innuendo to make the songs sparkle. Caspar is a pure innocent version of the same energy and I find it very sustainable. I hear that innocence when I listen to Sgt. Peppers and I am sure that album planted that seed long ago.

Now as I make simple innocent music for newborns, toddlers, kids and parents I feel like the emotional vocabulary of the album and my own childhood and my new creative enlightenment are all intermingled to make music that feels fresh and familiar at the same time. Without those mop tops and their intense desire to expand their awareness and get out of the spotlight and make a work like Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hears Club Band I would not have found my true musical home. Thanks, Paul, John, George and RIngo!

Monday Morning Smile: "Chairman Meow" - Sarah Lee and Johnny

I have a history with Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion -- AKA Sarah Lee and Johnny --  I wrote some liner notes to Sarah Lee Guthrie & Family's Go Waggaloo  album for Smithsonian Folkways.  So: soft spot, heart.

In any case, they have a new album out, Wassaic Way , produced by Jeff Tweedy, and the video for the first single "Chairman Meow" is so goofy and all over the map (puppets! animation! garishly bright colors!) that your kids will probably dig it (and the groovy safe-for-kids melody).  Not quite a LOLcat, but some sort of funny feline.  (Via DidiPop.)

Sarah Lee and Johnny - "Chairman Meow" [YouTube] 

Weekly Summary (8/26/13 - 9/1/13)

Review: Are We There Yet? - The Verve Pipe

When "adult" artists decide to dip their toes into the kiddie pool (or jump right in), typically their music isn't too far removed from their adult stuff.  Think of They Might Be Giants, or Barenaked Ladies, for example, or even Dan Zanes or Elizabeth Mitchell -- while the topics might be different, the sound isn't unfamiliar.

Which is what makes The Verve Pipe such an interesting case.  If your only picture of the band dates back to their grungy mid-'90s hits "The Freshmen" and "Photograph,"  their two goofy and endearingly earnest albums of kids music, including the recently-released Are We There Yet?  will make you wonder if you're correctly reading the artist name on the album cover.

You are.  And the silliness and tenderness shown on their first album, 2009's A Family Album, continues here.  If the first album was more evenly split between silly and sincere, the mix tends more toward the silly on this new album.  My inner "Weird Al" Yankovic approves of this shift, with "Scavenger Hunt," a spiritual and lyrical sequel to "We Had To Go Home," kicking off the album with a singalong (if quick) chorus, an amusing list of hunt requests, and a gratuitous shout-out to a '90s boy band that I won't ruin further by mentioning.  Songs like "I Didn't Get My Note Signed," "I'm Not Sleeping In ('Cuz It's Saturday)," and "My Principal Rocks" ("That's when I saw a picture on his arm / Inconceivable, a tattoo on my principal / Who's playing in a rock and roll band.") have a similar tone, with a slightly incredulous narrator faced with slightly outlandish results of familiar situations.

It's not that bandleaders Brian Vander Ark and Donny Brown are entirely cut-ups -- ballads like "Great Big World" and (especially) album closer "All Grown Up" are unabashedly encouraging and tender, and if all eleven tracks were like that, it'd be too much, frankly.   But scattered among songs like "You Can Write A Song" (which features background vocals by Jack Forman and Drew Holloway of Recess Monkey and another entirely unexpected and sly tribute to another musician familiar to the music-nerd parents of the album's target audience), they provide a nice contrast.

The 36-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 5 through 9, and most appropriate for your wisecracking first grader on your Friday night family sitcom. 

In preparing to write this review, I gave some of The Verve Pipe's post-"Freshmen" music a spin, and I'll say that hearing it helped me bridge the gap between that mid-'90s music and this new music -- it was shinier, slightly less... angsty.  One thing that can be definitely said about Are We There Yet?  is that the band fully embraces its role of class clown with songs that will put smiles on the faces of all but the most curmudgeonly of listeners.  Fans of A Family Album  will find this every bit as winning, and even if you're not a big Verve Pipe family of fans, you'll enjoy a lot of this new effort.  Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of the album for possible review. 

Review: The World Is A Curious Place To Live - Lori Henriques

Who are the inheritors of the edutational mantle passed on from Schoolhouse Rock ?  While the crunchy pop purveyors of, say, the Bazillions have distilled a handful of lessons into 3-minute songs whose chord structures and arrangements would fit on any AAA radio station, who took the less-poppy and more obscure route that some of those songs from 40 years ago took?

Lori Henriques, that's who. 

Her 2011 kids music debut, Outside My Door , was one of those "unlike any other CD" CDs for which the phrase actually fit.  A mixture of 1970s piano jazz, Broadway exposition, Sesame Street , and, yes, Schoolhouse Rock , the album eschewed pop-rock for jazzy explorations of birthdays, twins, and more subjects of kid-concern.  It was smart without being snooty (yes, she rhymed "goat turd" with "awkward").

On her new disk, The World Is A Curious Place To Live, the Portland, Oregon-based Henriques even more fully embraces her inner Schoolhouse Rock  nerd.  From the album title, which isn't so much descriptive as it is sage advice, to the songs within, which deal with topics scientific, mathematic, and linguistic.  In fact, the 35-minute album can even be thought of as 3 separate and sequential EPs on each of Henriques' obsessions.

The first EP, featuring the most scientific songs, includes the album's strongest songs.  With its celebration of curious people both famous and close to Henriques' orbit, the opener "Curiosity" features a bouncing chord accompaniment and her evident delight in the wordplay. (For good measure, Henriques throws in a scat line or two.)  On songs like "Crunchy Privilege," you can hear why she cites Cole Porter as an influence.  And while Henriques having fun moving her fingers quickly to match the lyrics, the two strongest tracks on the album are "When I Look Into the Night Sky" and "Dinosaur," two  ballads.  The former, an ode to wonder and amazement, is based on "Saint James Infirmary" and has a lovely video to match.  The latter is wholly original, simultaneously an honest-to-goodness love song for a dinosaur and a wry recounting of millions of years of evolution ("We've still got the ants / And they're still crawling round on our floor").  I can't see this playing on too many radio stations, but it so totally nails that combination of earnestness and nerdiness that's one of kindie's most appealing strains.

The other two EPs-of-a-sort are fun, but don't quite reach the heights of the preceding songs.  The counting songs are brief and for the most part meld familiar classical melodies with skip-counting lyrics for numbers 2 through 6 ("Counting by Six is Sublime" to me works best).  The language songs include a Norwegian travelogue ("When in Norway") and, appropriately for Henriques, a wordsmith at heart, a celebratory ode to words themselves ("Vocabulary").

As on her debut, the only accompaniment is Henriques' piano, which she nimbly plays.  The age range may differ by section -- older kids probably won't find the number songs as interesting as the language and science ones -- but there's a sweet spot between the ages of 5 through 9.  Henriques has joined Justin Roberts and decided not to have her latest album streamed on Spotify, but you can stream samples on iTunes.  And, as with her debut, the album packaging from her brother Joel Henriques is lovely.

I think the thing I love most about The World Is A Curious Place To Live  is that Lori Henriques clearly practices what she sings, offering up celebrations of the world outside of ourselves.  Her jazzy-pop-by-way-of-Broadway-and-Carnegie-Hall is still unique in the world of kids music and worth being curious about.  Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of the album for possible review. 

Interview: Justin Roberts

Justin and NRNP Todd rosenberg lowres.jpg

One of the first interviews I ever conducted for this site was with Justin Roberts (that's him in the middle, surrounded by his Not Ready For Naptime Players).  And while I like to think I've had a good 7+ years in the meantime, Roberts' has been even better.  Four albums later, including the Grammy-nominated Jungle Gym and Roberts' most recent album, 2013's Recess, Roberts' career is stronger than ever, a kindie superstar respected by his fellow musicians and adored by his many fans.

So even though I've had a handful of conversations with him since then, I was looking forward to talking with him not only about his most recent album but also about making a career out of his music.  Roberts chatted by phone with me last week about food, emotions, and music-making, and what might come next.

Zooglobble: I usually start off my interviews with what your musical memories are from growing up, but I want to mix it up a bit and ask you what your favorite food memories are? 

Justin Roberts: That's pretty much what touring is for us -- figuring out where we're going to eat...

I think my favorite food memory is more nostalgic. It's from Michigan, where my grandmother lived from the age of 15 to 95.  We were touring up there, and some relatives offered us the use of a lake house to stay.  We went to a nearby restaurant there called the Sandpiper and the moment I stepped inside, I remembered it instantly.  One of those classic restaurants that feels like it's out of another time.

We were three people out of place in this restaurant, and the waitress talked with us about how we got there.  I said that this was my grandmother's home and when I mentioned her name, the waitress teared up, knew exactly who she was. 

How do you go about finding food when you're on the road?  

Checking Yelp, asking folks.  Once we played in Lafayatte [Louisiana], and someone recommended a restaurant in Breaux Bridge, with lemon ice box pie.  Now, I'm not a pie fan, but I ate that, and thought, "Oh, this is why people like pie." 

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I remember Liam [Davis] and I were doing a lot of library shows in New York once.  We would accost the librarians to get suggestions.  This was on Long Island, near Marathon, Suffolk County, so it tended toward Italian. One place they recommended was Steve's Piccola Bussola.  We'll go out of our way for that.

We want to find local places -- there's a lot of tediousness to traveling, so finding a place that feels like home goes a long way.

It's been more than fifteen years since the release of Great Big Sun; you've probably been playing for kids for more than twenty years, right?

Yes, it was 1992 and I'd moved to Minneapolis to play with my band, Pimentos for Gus.  My first job as a preschool teacher, I told 'em I was a musician, so they asked me to play.  At first, I did stuff like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," but I got bored with that.  I was a big Van Morrison fan, so brought that in.

The first song of mine was "Giraffe/Nightingale," which I loved played for kids.  I thought it was sort of a boring song -- there's not a chorus, it isn't fast, but I remember going to the open house, and the 4-year-olds sang it by themselves.

We were studying apples, so I wrote "Apple Tree."  I was not even remotely thinking about [a career in kids music], but it felt really natural.  I kept writing kids' songs even after leaving the preschool job.  I really recorded Great Big Sun for myself.

So more than fifteen years after that, how do you challenge yourself?

As early as Not Naptime, I was thinking, "what else can I possibly write about?"

For me, the biggest change was that as the band began to develop, that caused other changes.  On Way Out, the presence of a drummer, of trumpet in writing changed things.

Technology, too -- it's easier to record yourself now.  To some extent with Meltdown!, and definitely beyond that, I write at the computer.  I'll create a poorly programmed drumbeat and bass [with guitar] -- keyboard and piano are more of a mystery to me.  The vocals will be layered.  It made it exciting to write.

With Lullaby, it was a bit of a switch -- how do you keep in interest with the tempo slow? The idea for "Polar Bear" I'd had many years before, but didn't do anything with it.  So I thought that instead of guitar, what if it were a cello?

You wouldn't have thought of that fifteen years ago...

Definitely.

I like bridges -- a lot of bridges on Recess are keyboards, which, like I said, are more of a mystery to me. As a result, the songs went in a different direction.  I've been doing some in-stores recently, and find I can't do some of them by myself. [Laughs]

Regarding challenges... the song "Otis" came out of an interest in writing a song about elevators.  It's actually become a fan favorite, but when I started, I thought, "how can you write a song that won't be boring?"  Then [drummer] Gerald [Dowd] mentioned the Otis Company, and I thought that was the hook.  Then I added in how the 13th floor is often missing, and I had this vision of heading downtown.

Some of the underlying themes... the underlying emotions are important.  With Recess, there are lots of songs about freedom, so you step outside the situation and think about how that applies.

You know, I've written exactly one kids' song, and that was for puppets, so emotional underpinning isn't my strength.  But more than any other kids' artist, your songs tap into some deep emotional well inside me.  As a songwriter, how do you tap into those emotions?

It's a little mysterious -- I'm tapping into some deep-seated emotions inside myself.  The story tells itself in some manner.  Like on "School's Out," there's that feeling of love.  The boy says "don't want to make you cry," even though this will be gone.  That has resonance.  The subjects they're studying, at first, they were just details I filled in at the beginning of the song -- knights in armor, math, and outer space, all standing tall.  But at the end, they mean something more.  Stuff comes out and it's emotionally resonant.

With "Trick or Treat," of course, I had to write a Halloween song, but don't care really about the holiday.  I had this memory of my brother sorting out candy, which became the line "put every piece in alphabetical order."  Or the "sky halfway dark," reflecting the passing of fall.  It's a fun rock song, but it's emotionally resonant to me.  It makes that connection for me.  When I hear others' reactions, I think, "Oh, good, that worked for me, but not just me."

It can be any other art -- the connections they make is why I keep songwriting.

I also wanted to say how I much I liked the comment you made in the Recess review about "Redbird" and the journey from freedom to unconditional love.  Because when I wrote the song, I wondered, does this make any sense on the album?  Did it feel right?  When I read your comment, I saw that it did.

Besides the emotional connection, you use dedications more than other musicians.  Some are pretty obvious, like the song about a dog ("Every Little Step") is dedicated to, well, your dog, but others?

Sometimes they're very specific.  Like on  "Sandcastle" [from Meltdown!] I wrote it thinking about a friend (an adult) who'd recently lost his mother.  I also dedicated "Doctor Doctor" [Way Out] to her, she was a doctor and also a friend to me. It's a song about a kid scared getting shots.  I also remembered how I felt when I'd been bit by a chipmunk and had to get shots.

Sometimes they're a bit of an afterthought.  On "Wild Ones" [from Lullaby]... I'd always had a connection with Pierre by Maurice Sendak.  Sendak died while I was working on that song, so it was a bit of a tribute to him.  I just remembered the joy of reading in bed... Have you seen the documentary Spike Jonze did on him [Tell Them Anything you Want] while filming Where the Wild Things Are?

I haven't, actually.

You should.  He was such a curmudgeon, his only friends are his dogs.  He says, "I didn't choose to write children's books -- this is just what I do."

There's something about kids' metaphors for grief about a friend's mother dying, or memories.  Something about that is emotionally resonant.  I love the connection it creates with families.

I'm getting a lots of notes from families with school starting saying they're playing "Giant Sized Butterflies."  I make a connection with myself, but some is so much of a surprise to me -- after the fact, I say, "Oh, wow."

So how are you going to challenge yourself in the future?

I've got a couple different ideas.  One is I've talked with a couple theatres about writing a musical, writing new songs.

I've long thought that Fountains of Wayne songs would make a great musical.

Yeah... you know, Robbie Fulks has been playing these shows on Monday night and he played "Prom Theme" -- that sort of aching nostalgia is like the high school version of what I'm trying to do, like the Beach Boys songs about the end of summer heartbreak.

And then for the longest time, I've wanted to do an album of Craig Wright songs.  A few years ago, I recorded him singing some unreleased songs of his.  He's one of my favorite songwriters.  Maybe after all this work for Lullaby and Recess I'll just book some studio time and record it.

And you're working on a couple books -- are they finished?

For one book the artwork is almost finished. It's by a great illustrator called Christian Robinson -- it'll be out a year from now.  (The other book has a story.)  It's taken awhile, but I've made some changes.  I've done it twice, and it's gotten better.  It's in rhyming verse and features a character in "Billy the Bully," Sally McCabe, and tells the story from her perspective.

Photo credit: Todd Rosenberg