How I Got Here: Lucky Diaz (The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced)

With the recent release of Lishy Lou and Lucky Too, Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band continue their run of bright and poppy kids music for the 21st century.

And so, as often happens when I get these "How I Got Here" essays, I was a bit surprised when I got Diaz's recollection of discovering Are You Experienced  by The Jimi Hendrix Experience -- was I expecting something shinier, I don't know.  But I think one of the lessons I'm learning in doing these is that context is everything, and it doesn't take a lot for a piece of music to change your life.

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One of the most vivid days of my childhood -- I believe it was a crisp early evening 1989, and for California, about as Fall as it gets -- I was riding my bike home from a friend's house.  In my back pocket was a Maxwell cassette tape (yes, I know let's all spare each other the- ‘man I'm so old comment’…) with the words "Are You Experienced" scribbled on it. My friend Ben had given it to me. He told me it was a guy named Jimi Hendrix and that I had to listen to him. Ben, already obsessed, had pilfered it from his father's pile of amazing cassettes and LP's which included Bob Dylan, Fleetwood Mac, and the Beatles, among other epic things I had no clue about yet.

At the time, I thought very little about the tape, and to be honest, it must have laid on my nightstand for a couple of days. At this point, I had been learning the guitar for about a year. I was obsessed with Chuck Berry, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, and just about every guitar hero ever to roam the earth. Ironically, I was unaware of the greatest guitar slinger all. The man that defined the term.

I had heard the name Jimi Hendrix before, from my second cousin, April, who our family affectionately coined La Cuckoo. La Cuckoo was older than me by about ten or so years. As a young child, I remember her wearing a tie-dye shirt that sported Jimi Hendrix's iconic image. I once asked her who it was and she told me, Jim Hendrix. I said, "Who's that?" To which she replied, “One day he will blow your mind.”

My 8-year-old self had shrugged it off. I already didn't trust La Cuckoo. She once promised to make me a clown for Halloween. The memory of screaming my head off in horror as she spun me around to see myself in the mirror, only to discover that she instead painted me up to be Gene Simmons from KISS was still fresh. But I digress…

A few evenings later, I noticed the tape peeking out from under some comic books on my nightstand, and decided to finally give it a go. I put the tape in and pressed play.  The intro to " The Wind Cries Mary" began…

La Cuckoo was right.

Mind blown.

Never had I heard the guitar in such an incredible way. A chorus of voices. A true voice. Never had I heard the guitar sing, scream, yearn and expose. The hammer ons, the bends, the technique. Nothing like it now, and nothing like it since.

Song after song, more and more. The first piece of art I HEARD. A masterpiece of Mitch Mitchell on drums, Noel Redding on bass (or Jimi depending on historical accounts). A trio, creating a cacophony of organized insanity. Motown, the Blues, Pop, Jazz -- all of it. THIS WAS A BAND! There, in one vacuum of madness.

I sat there for what must have been three days of a long weekend, coming downstairs only for food and water. In my room, analyzing every second of that cassette tape over and over, side after side. Grabbing my guitar, trying to replicating what I heard, failing miserably, loving every moment of it. When I finally came up for air, I went to my local music shop looking for a Fender Stratocaster of my own.

I never stopped listening to that cassette.  I even packed the tape with me to take to music college.

I still am listening.

Never looking back, experienced. 

How I Got Here: Jeff Krebs AKA Papa Crow (Heart / Dan Zanes)

The first album from Papa Crow, AKA Michigan's Jeff Krebs -- Things That Roar -- charmed just about everybody who heard it with its tender folk.  As if to clear the air, so to his speak, his follow-up, What Was That Sound?, was a five-song EP about flatulence.

Krebs is clearly a man of many talents and inspiration -- in addition to working on his full length follow-up Full Moon, Full Moon (clips here), he's also working on an EP of monkey-based ukulele songs (Monkeylele, clips here) and an EP based on Edward Lear poems (Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue, clips here and here).

At this point, I'd accept just about anything as his musical inspiration.  As it is, Krebs offers up two albums -- Heart's 1976 hit album Dreamboat Annie and Dan Zanes' [in my view totally overlooked] Sea Music.

***** 

The first album that I remember becoming completely obsessed with was Heart's debut Dreamboat Annie.  As a youngster, I always had an ear to the radio and I kept lists of all the songs on American Top 40, making notes of songs I liked and disliked. I had heard the singles “Magic Man” and “Crazy on You” and felt an immediate connection to the album after successfully lobbying my mom to buy it for me. I wonder how many times I listened to this in my room with the headphones on, memorizing the liner notes, lyrics and photos. I knew which drummer and which guitarist played on each track. The pictures of Heart on the inside cover foldout made me want to start a rock band; it seemed like the most exciting thing one could do. Within a few years I had a little garage band of my own.

On Dreamboat Annie, Heart served up mystical tales of love, rock and roll, and the sea. Ann's sultry voice was way up front, and she could wail or sing a ballad with equal power. I loved the way Nancy Wilson's inventive acoustic playing contrasted the muscle of Roger Fisher's electric. There were more soft songs here than rockers, though the rockers were the hits. It all worked sonically for me, and I would never tire of spinning this album. There are numerous albums like Pink Moon, Revolver, and Rain Dogs that were probably more influential on me later in life, but Dreamboat Annie was my first love.

Fast forward a few decades to when my wife and I were expecting our first kid. I'm on YouTube searching for kids songs and click on Dan Zanes singing “All Around the Kitchen”. Here's a guy with whacky hair, a purple suit, a cheap guitar and a diverse band singing a silly, rocking song while dancing around with kids. I was floored by the vibe! This video opened a door for me into the possibilities of what family music can be. I checked Dan's catalog and ordered Sea Music as I was most drawn to it.

What an album! I immediately loved the feel of these old sea shanties. The sound is natural, simple, homemade; it's the sound of a bunch of friends singing around a campfire (or on the deck of a whaling ship). Guitars, banjos, accordions and mandolins provide the backing. Take “All for Me Grog” for example: Zanes has a boy (backed by other kids) sing this boozy lament—it even has “arse” in the lyrics! Now, that's pushing the limits of family music, and certainly one of my all-time favorite recordings. What Zanes was doing seemed so appealing and I really tuned into family music, checking out dozens of kids music CDs at the library and finding what worked for me, artists like Elizabeth Mitchell, Dog on Fleas and Frances England. I was writing my own family songs before my first boy was born. I have since bought most of Dan's amazing family music albums, but Sea Music remains a favorite as it was my first.

I have lived close to the water for most of my life. I grew up on Lake Michigan, worked on San Francisco Bay boats for many years, and now my family and I live a couple of blocks from Lake Superior. Maybe it's just a coincidence, or maybe it has something to do with why the sea-themed Dreamboat Annie and Sea Music were such big influences on the music I make.

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!

How I Got Here: Key Wilde (Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets)

As half of the country-punk (punk-country?) duo Key Wilde and Mr. Clarke, the Texas-bred Wilde has produced a couple great albums of often raucous music for families.  So Brian Eno -- whom I'm most familiar with through his work with the Talking Heads and his album Music for Airports  -- was not the first artist I expected Wilde to mention in my series featuring kindie musicians talking about albums that have influenced them as a musician.

But here he is, praising Eno for his 1974 album Here Come the Warm Jets , and he explains how that helped set him off on his musical path, and even draws a link between that nearly-40-year-old album and a track off his latest album, the excellent Pleased To Meet You .

***** 

There have been many favorite records over the years I could list as influences but one in particular stands out and seems worth mentioning here: Here Come The Warm Jets – the first solo album by Brian Eno. I must have first discovered the record while working at a record store in Houston – my summer job following my sophomore year in college. Needless to say, the majority of my wages that summer went right back to the company store. My appreciation for diverse genres of music (and my record collection) expanded quite a bit in those two months.

The record had been out for a few years and was certainly not Eno’s latest release at the time. Of course, being an obsessive music aficionado, I knew who Eno was. He had been a founding member of Roxy Music – one of my favorite bands – but had left after the second album. And there were the collaborations with Bowie and Talking Heads. And he had produced the first Devo album – was talked about as the “go-to” producer who brought elements of chance and “Oblique Strategies” into the recording studio. So I thought of him as an eccentric, yet somewhat ascetic, technical wizard who tinkered with synthesizers and created ambient records like Music For Films and Music For Airports.

So to discover this quirky singer-songwriter with compelling, absurdist lyrics and catchy melodies mining the history of rock and roll completely knocked me out. The backing band, featuring everyone in Roxy Music except Bryan Ferry, sounded to me like the Velvet Underground – probably my favorite band at the time. And I immediately fell in love with Eno’s voice. There was something so English – the accent, the colloquialisms – that really appealed to me in contrast to all the British singers who tried to sound American. (This appreciation probably later led to my collaboration with Mr. Clarke.)

I listened to the record endlessly. I had been writing and recording odd little songs for a while but now felt like I might actually make a record of my own someday. And I imagined it would be a record like Here Come The Warm Jets. The conflation of several different styles and genres seemed completely natural to me. I overlooked the various components and influences – here was an original sound that I would thereafter label simply “Eno”.

Why not pull out all the hooks and cadences and gorgeous vocal harmonies? Why not write a song like “Baby’s On Fire” that begins with the following lines delivered with snarling sincerity:

Baby’s on fire

Better throw her in the water

Look at her laughing

Like a heifer to the slaughter.

And the song gets even more bizarre as we are introduced to a couple who collect discarded cigarette butts from ashtrays and successfully market them:

Juanita and Juan

Very clever with maracas

Making their fortunes 

Selling second hand tobaccos.

Add to the mix a searing guitar solo by Robert Fripp and you’ve got a number one hit that will probably never be played on commercial radio.

“Cindy Tells Me” (which seemed to me a wink to Lou Reed’s songs that transcribed a personal confession from a female confidante – “Candy Says”, “Stephanie Says”, Lisa Says”) is a 50’s progression with bouncy piano and falsetto harmonies.

But it was the second side of the album that really knocked me out. Side two opens with “On Some Faraway Beach” – a lovely song that instantly crept into my head and has never left. The piece begins with a simple melodic piano part repeated over and over throughout the song as more pianos (22 in all) are added along with other instruments  and lilting vocal harmonies. The song gradually builds for over 4 minutes and culminates in a haunting lyric about being swept away into eternity.

I acquired a four-track cassette recorder around that time and spent endless hours layering simple instrumental bits and multi-tracked vocal harmonies. (I now have boxes of cassette tapes gradually deteriorating in my parent’s attic)  For the final track on our album Rise and Shine – a song called “Pekepoo” – we deliberately tried to channel the spirit and structure of “On Some Faraway Beach”. The resulting track was originally nearly 8 minutes in length and cutting it down to 4:58 was painful and not entirely successful.

“Dead Finks Don’t Talk”, with its shifting tempo and background vocal chants, was unlike anything I had ever heard before and remains one of my favorite Eno creations. Though not intentional, I see a direct connection between that song and “Conversation” - one of my favorite songs on our most recent record Pleased To Meet You.

Here Come The Warm Jets ends with a predominately instrumental title track (Eno repeated this strategy on his follow up record Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy) but the penultimate tune, “Some Of Them Are Old”, is the loveliest of all. A melodic hymn with Eno multi-tracking all the vocal harmonies:

People come and go and forget to close the door,

And leave their stains and cigarette butts trampled on the floor,

And when they do, remember me, remember me.

I will always remember this record and the joy it has brought me over the years. And I hope to someday create a song that will impart a similar joy to some listener – young or old.

How I Got Here: Frances England (The Wiggles / Galaxie 500)

While many kindie musicians found their way to the field as a detour from or second gig ​in addition to life as making music for adults, San Francisco's Frances England had a much more down-to-earth origin as a kindie musician.  She was a mom and recorded an album as a fundraiser for her son's preschool.  The result, 2006's Fascinating Creatures​, sounded like nothing else that was being released at the time.

England will release her fourth family music CD, Blink of an Eye, in August.​  In anticipation of that release, I asked her to contribute to the "How I Got Here" series, featuring kindie musicians talking about albums influencing them as musicians.

When I read her piece, my first thought was of a comment musician/producer Dean Jones (who produced Blink of an Eye​) made of England, that she was an artist who had a very clear idea of what she wanted her music to sound like and, more so than many artists, would sometimes consider and then decline his suggestions.  In that context, her praise for the Wiggles is even more illuminating.

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I recorded my first family music CD, Fascinating Creatures, in 2005 and during that time there were two albums in high rotation at my house:  The Wiggles' Yummy Yummy and Galaxie 500’s Today.  My son Liam was three years old and someone had given him Yummy Yummy as a birthday gift.  At the time, I had no idea there was even such a thing as a children’s music genre.  I was the first in my circle of friends to have kids and I was still finding my footing with parenting and all that goes along with it.  

So the Wiggles were a total revelation.  I remember watching Liam’s face light up the first time we popped in the cd and heard songs like “Fruit Salad” and “Crunchy Munchy Honey Cakes.”   The melodies were so catchy, the lyrics were so sweetly silly and every song was so obviously written and sung for kids and for kids alone.  No winks or ironic nods to parents or older siblings. Nope, it seemed that Greg, Murray, Anthony and Jeff could care less what anyone over the age of 7 thought of them or their songs, and I loved them for that.  So we must have played Yummy Yummy hundreds and hundreds of times that year and after a while I started going a little crazy. 

My release, when I had a rare moment alone, was to get in my car, roll down the windows  and crank Galaxie 500’s Today album.  This is one of my favorite albums of all time and it’s lo-fi, dreamy-pop rawness was the perfect antidote to Yummy Yummy.  Today is one of the most nostalgic sounding albums I’ve ever heard and songs like “Oblivious” and “Tugboat” and “Parking Lot”  can actually make my chest ache, because somehow these songs conjure up vivid memories of days gone by, for me.  Arrangements on the album are mostly sparse and fuzzy and, to be honest, it doesn’t really sound like anyone in the band was particularly great at their instruments.  But for me, Galaxie 500 had what matters most:  heart, a great vibe, and some awesome hooks.

So these two albums probably played the biggest influence in the writing and recording of Fascinating Creatures.  I didn’t really know what I was doing then but I did know that I wanted the songs to be, first and foremost, engaging to kids and talk about things they could relate to.  And I wanted it to sound fuzzy and lo-fi and nostalgic.   

Since then, I’ve recorded 3 more children’s CDs and will be releasing my latest one, Blink of an Eye, which is produced by Dean Jones, on August 6.  I’m also releasing my first ever non-kids album later this year called Paths We Have Worn (also produced by Dean). I’ve been doing this for a while now but still feel so truly lucky to be part of this community of indie family music makers.  And now a lot of the albums that influence my writing are actually made by my friends who are also part of this community.  It’s a really good place to be.

How I Got Here: Dean Jones (Laurie Anderson: Mister Heartbreak)

Dean Jones is the mad genius behind Dog on Fleas and, as an in-demand producer, about a quarter of ​the kindie albums you'll hear in 2013.

​With the upcoming release of his latest solo album, When the World Was New​, on May 14, Jones authored the latest in the "How I Got Here" series, featuring kindie musicians talking about albums influencing them as musicians.

Dean's piece on composer/musician/performance artist Laurie Anderson's ​mid-'80s album Mister Heartbreak​ is a little bit like the album itself -- you can focus on the words and get some meaning, but you can also just focus on the sounds, the contour of the piece, and get a pretty good sense of its influence on him.

***​

Laurie Anderson's 1984 album Mister Heartbreak is one of my all time favorite records.

It's a little hard for me to talk about music.  (Kind of like dancing about architecture.)  But this album is more than just music to me.  It's a sculpture.  It's stories.  Sound.  Color.   It puts me in a mood.  I can't describe the mood that very well.  Open.  Playful.  Thoughtful.   Meditative.  

This album certainly changed the way I hear music.  And it really clarified for me the fact that I'm as much in love with SOUND as I am with music.  Is there really a difference?  I think so.  I know that I have fallen in love with the sounds on the Beatles records.  And Tom Waits records.  And I have always been drawn to certain sounds, like the Indonesian gamelon instruments, and  the various one and two-stringed fiddle type instruments found in various societies as far from each other as Mongolia and Mali.  I also like the sound of all kinds of birds.  Is it their song or just the tone and timbre of their voices?  I like the sound of footsteps, grass rustling, breathing, trees rubbing up against each other.... the list goes on and on.  Tongues touching teeth.  

Somehow this album made it quite clear to me that one could make music that could be closer to sculpture than to any traditional song form.  The sounds evoke images in my mind of elephants, sunrises, movement, and space.  Wonder, and longing.  All kinds of feelings come up.  The sounds are sometimes like a world of their own.  I could live in them.  

"He was an ugly guy.  With an ugly face. An also-ran in the human race.  And even God got sad just looking at him.  And at his funeral all his friends stood around looking sad.  But they were really thinking of all the ham and cheese sandwiches in the next room."

Laurie Anderson is a master of language.  An amazing storyteller and poet.  She loves to look at big things like humanity and love, and stories like Adam and Eve, and rethink them from her unique perspective.   And her delivery, mostly spoken, not sung, is so much more musical to me than most singers are.  The nuance of her rhythm and phrasing is incredible.  I love to listen to music, whether it's instrumental, sung in English, or any other language, and I often just tune out the words.  It's just how I listen.  Sometimes I tune into lyrics, but often it's just a texture.  And with Laurie Anderson's voice I am happy to just let the lyrics ebb and flow in and out of my conscious listening.  But I can listen to this record twice back to back and allow myself to follow her stories more on the second listen.

Here's a bit of her Adam and Eve retelling:

"And the woman liked the snake very much.  Because when he talked he made little noises with his tongue, and his long tongue was lightly licking about his lips.  Like there was a little fire inside his mouth and the flame would come dancing out of his mouth.  And the woman liked this very much.  And after that she was bored with the man.  Because no matter what happened, he was always as happy as a clam."

Maybe I'm seduced by the sound of Laurie Anderson's voice, but I think her writing is genius.  

Something that sound sculpture like this allows for -- words don't have to rhyme.  You don't have to have everything be totally divisible by 4 or 8.  You can, but you don't have to.  The words can fit into spaces.  You can leave spaces.  Or not.   Even the music doesn't always have to be divisible by 4.  It can be in no time signature.  

So, what are the sounds on this record?  Well the guitars don't often sound like guitars.  And I still don't know who's making what sounds most of the time.  The sounds are hypnotic and magnetic.  Laurie sometimes puts her voice through a vocoder, which was a pretty new thing at the time, well before it became a Top 40 gimmick.  Some of the instruments listed:  plywood, kayagum, electronic conches, iya and ikonkolo, bamboo, gato, Synclavier, bowls.  Adrien Belew plays some of the greatest guitar you will ever hear.  Peter Gabriel, Nile Rodgers, Bill Laswell, and William Burroughs are heavily featured.   

I was thinking about my latest album, When the World Was New, and realized what a debt I owe to Laurie Anderson, lyrically and musically.  It may not sound at all like her, but she's in there for sure.