Rockin' In The Wee World
Curtis Ross
The Tampa Tribune
November 10, 2006

As a music lover, you answer to no one. Your tastes are impeccable. Friends gasp in awe at the size and selection of your CD collection. Were there a seismograph for hip, your iPod would send it off the charts.

Then you have a kid. Suddenly, the tunes filling your head are more Disney than Decemberists. "Old MacDonald" replaces the MC5, and "The Wheels on the Bus" ousts "This Wheel's on Fire."

If only there were some middle ground. If only there were artists making music adults and kids can both enjoy. A passel of artists is aiming to do just that, including Laurie Berkner, who has been compared to Sheryl Crow and Indigo Girls; pop-rockers Milkshake; and even Jack Johnson, the singer-songwriter who wowed the younger set with his sentimental soundtrack songs to last year's "Curious George" movie.

In some cases, though, these are performers to whom hip parents grooved in years past. Quirky popsters They Might Be Giants have cultivated a younger audience with CDs, videos and a book aimed at pre- and grade-schoolers. Dan Zanes, formerly of roots rockers The Del Fuegos, has become one of the biggest names in family music with a series of CDs drawing heavily on folk.

More recently, Jason Ringenberg, who led alt-country firebrands Jason & the Scorchers, has adopted the Farmer Jason persona. Jon Langford and Sally Timms of agit-punks The Mekons are part of the animal-themed Wee Hairy Beasties, which plays a hyperkinetic mix of country, punk and blues.

Ringenberg sold enough copies of his independently released CD "A Day on the Farm With Farmer Jason" to have earned a major label contract and a spot on the Jamarama Kidsfest tour - sort of an Ozzfest for the sippy cup set. (The tour comes to Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater on Nov. 12.)

Kids music is just one part of They Might Be Giants' workload, and Wee Hairy Beasties (which also include Kelly Hogan and Rick "Cookin'" Sherry) aren't likely to give up their day jobs.

Zanes, however, has seen his own profile soar. The Del Fuegos never were able to break out of the college radio market and were dropped by their label after three albums.

Now, though, Zanes is one of the best-known family entertainers and is developing a series for the Disney Channel. Children's music is one of the few bright spots for the music industry. From Jan. 1 through the end of May, children's music sales had nearly doubled, from 3.7 million to 6.4 million, from the same period in 2005, according to Nielsen Soundscan. For the week ending Oct. 15, children's music sales for the year were 11.1 million. Music sales of many other genres are down.

For most of those involved, the impetus was to create music their children would listen to yet wouldn't drive parents crazy.

"A lot of things we bought for our kids because the cover looked nice, seemed really tame and had not much to do with the way kids really are," Langford says.

Wee Hairy Beasties' album "Animal Crackers," on the other hand, captures some of the manic, frantic silliness of children. Langford claims it's close to what he does with his grown-up bands The Mekons and Waco Brothers.

"We're pretty silly," Langford says. "Our own shows are pretty ludicrous, so it didn't seem that much of a leap to get on the same wavelength as kids."

Says Ringenberg: "Frankly, it's not that big a difference between playing to drunk college students and to hopped-up 5-year-olds, as far as the behavior goes."

Rattling Parents' Cages

Several artists stressed that children's music need not be sanitized, either lyrically or musically. Playing keyboards for The Lounge Lizards, Evan Lurie shocked jazz fans with irreverent and unorthodox takes on tunes by Thelonious Monk. Writing songs for the Nick Jr. television series "The Backyardigans," he finds children less easy to rattle. Not so their parents, though.

For each episode, Lurie writes four or five songs in a specific genre. He has covered reggae, rai, klezmer, Gilbert & Sullivan, Kurt Weill and more.

The only style of music that got nixed was avant-garde jazzman Sun Ra's, Lurie says. "The producers worry more about the parents than the kids. They don't want to scare the parents. You won't scare the kids."

Kids don't seem to mind a little mayhem in the lyrics, either, Langford says.
Langford recalls loving folk songs he heard as a child sung by Burl Ives.
"They were vicious," Langford recalls - "animals killing each other and people dying. We were going to do a Burl Ives' tribute album called 'Songs of Blood and Slaughter.'"

Langford and his fellow Waco Brothers took that to heart when recording "The Fox" for a children's compilation album, 2002's "The Bottle Let Me Down."

"It's mayhem," Langford says - "people chasing and catching, cutting people up with forks and knives. It was a big hit with the 4-year-olds."

Parents also enjoy music that doesn't talk down to the kids.
"Dan Zanes, whatever he's doing, I didn't want to throw them [his CDs] out the window of the car," Langford says. "It's pitched really well to both kids and adults. It's family music."

"We were so happy to find some music that was lyrically appropriate for kids (lots of old folk songs) but was still musically interesting and not mind-numbing for us to listen to (repeatedly)," Zanes fan Dawn Goddard of St. Petersburg writes in an e-mail.

Goddard and her husband, Ethan, began listening to Zanes when son Hudson, 3, was born. Ethan appreciates the fact that Zanes posts song lyrics and chords online, which is "consistent with his supposed philosophy that music is all about sharing and playing together."

Zanes' philosophy comes from his folk background. Prior to playing rock 'n' roll, Zanes attended Pete Seeger concerts and borrowed Leadbelly albums from the library.

"I was trying to update the Folkways (record label that specialized in folk music) that I grew up with," Zanes says. "Those always seemed really inclusive. They were made for everybody to listen to."

Inclusion is much on Zanes' mind. This year's "Catch That Train!" CD includes a version of the spiritual "Welcome Table," which Zanes intended as a comment on the immigration controversy.

"It just makes me crazy," Zanes says of the debate. "Where are the family values in that?" Zanes says the feedback he gets from parents on issue or message songs is mostly positive.
"I think people appreciate it," Zanes says. "I think there's a lot more room to explore social commentary and have songs that relate to the here and now."

Ringenberg, the son of a farmer, has long supported programs aimed at helping family farms. He tones his advocacy down a bit as Farmer Jason, but the message still is there.

"I don't think I've politicized it too much," Ringenberg says. "I try to teach [children] subtle lessons about ecology and being good to animals and being a steward to the earth."

Bringing Families Together

Of course, kids music doesn't have to teach a lesson. It can just be fun.
They Might Be Giants - John Flansburgh and John Linnell - have put smiles on listeners' faces with their oddball tunes since the late '80s. They began appealing to a younger crowd at the urging of the Rounder record label, which asked them to record the album "No!" in 2002.

"I don't know what they were thinking," Flansburgh told the Tribune earlier this year. Maybe Rounder knew something the Johns didn't. "No!" was successful enough that the Giants followed it with a book/CD ("Bed, Bed, Bed") and a CD/DVD, "Here Come the ABCs."

Some parents and kids, though, prefer the Giants' grown-up output. "I think a lot of TMBG non-kid stuff is perfect for kids too," Stephanie Meckfessel of St. Petersburg writes in an e-mail.

The Goddards found "Bed, Bed, Bed" "bizarre." "We kind of think their regular albums are pretty good for kids!" Dawn Goddard writes. Husband Ethan plays the Giants' "James K. Polk" on his ukulele for Hudson.

The song is "a nice little history lesson," Goddard writes. Whether it's a message song that opens a dialogue between parents and child, or a simple folk song that the family can play and sing together, this music has the potential to bring families closer together in a way "children's music" can't.

"When my daughter was born, I found a lot of music that was particular to the experiences of children," Zanes says. "What I didn't find was all-ages music.

"I wanted to be a part of process, too," Zanes says. "I wanted music my daughter and I would both connect with. I wanted a shared experience."

That's why Zanes prefers to call his music "family music," or, his own term, "21st century all-ages social music." "It just rolls off the tongue," Zanes says with a laugh.