The Ketchup Report, Vol. 10

The Ketchup Report hits double digits! It's summer, time for festival season, and I think it's safe to say that until a kindie act rocks the Pitchfork Festival (and maybe even after then), DidiPop has the coolest festival gig, playing a set for families at the Wilco-curated Solid Sound Festival at the MASS MoCA museum (yes, I know that's redundant) this upcoming weekend.

Attention, good people of Chattanooga, Tennessee and environs, Dave Loftin and the Saturday Morning Cereal Bowl radio are sponsoring a show with Lunch Money on Sunday, July 10. I'm a fan of radio folks putting on concert series, so I hope this does well. Plus, the show will be ten tons of fun. More details here. I know, I'm a big fan of Kindiefest, but the Children's Music Network has been around for a long time, and if you attended Kindiefest, you might also get quite a bit out of attending their annual conference, which is in Cape Cod this year from September 16 through 18. Barry Louis Polisar, who has a lot of opinions about the current state of the genre and isn't afraid to share them, delivers the keynote. More details here.

Concert Recap: Dan Zanes (Scottsdale, AZ, May 2011)

It's been a couple weeks now, but I didn't want to forget to mention the show Dan Zanes put on here in the Valley of the Sun. He and the Friends played at the lovely Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts on a Saturday afternoon. Having now seen Zanes in concert three times, there's not much he and the band can do to surprise me at this point. He's got ten albums, and since a concert of 75 minutes or so only has time for maybe 15 songs (I think they played 16, including the encore), there must always be a handful of songs that are favorites of one fan or another that they don't get around to. Doesn't matter much, anyway, because Zanes always seems to be on a single-minded mission to lead a party, not a concert, and as soon as the first song ended and he invited folks into the mosh pit up front, and a bunch of families were happy to oblige. "Fine Friends Are Here," "Malti," and many more -- there were always people dancing up front and up and down the aisle steps. I was there with Little Boy Blue, and while it took him nearly an hour as he sat shyly in his seat, eventually he dragged me down front (it was for the gigantic train of "Catch That Train!").

While I say there isn't much that Zanes can do to surprise me in concert, his long-standing tradition of bringing in local talent to perform with him at his shows, is still one of them. As it turns out, I saw a neighbor there who mentioned that the daughter of one her friends would be performing with Zanes. Sure enough, six songs in, a young girl strode out onstage and played "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" with the band. The girl's name is Bebe, and she's the daughter of Eileen Spitalny, one of the folks behind the well-known Fairytale Brownies. The Spitalny family is also an even bigger Dan Zanes fan than I am, having seem him and the band even more often than I am. Maybe that's why she was totally unfazed by going out on stage and playing a song with a band in front of hundreds of audience members. (More poised than I'd be, probably.) Beyond Bebe, the "formal" musical guest were the Valley View Latin Jazz, a group of middle school students. They played a couple songs, plus an encore, with the band. Nothing like adding fifteen or so musicians to the stage... So, yeah, another fine DZ show. I realize that suggesting that folks see Zanes in concert is not swimming against the critical current, and in fact a lot of you probably have already done so. But if you haven't, you owe it to yourself to see how he works to bring everyone together at a show. And if you have, it's still possible to be pleasantly surprised. Disclosure: I received a pair of tickets for the show from the SCPA. Photo credits: Spitalny photo

Austin Kiddie Limits 2011 Lineup Announced

The lineup for the 2011 edition of the Austin City Limits Festival (September 16-18, ugh, the humidity!) was announced this morning and, yeah, that top of the bill is pretty darn good. Stevie Wonder! Arcade Fire! Alison Krauss! Kanye West! My Morning Jacket! I've run out of exclamation points! (OK, now I have.) Still, scroll down a bit and you'll find the lineup for the Austin Kiddie Limits stage, not in a particularly friendly way, but the brainy among us can figure it out. As with the Kidzapalooza lineup, you can split the AKL lineup into 2 basic divisions. The first are the folks you'd most typically find here at this site... Sara Hickman Heidi Swedberg Mariana Iranzi Brady Rymer Recess Monkey That's a good lineup (heck, I've put on shows featuring three of 'em), and I think they're all a good fit for the AKL stage. Beyond that we have The Paul Green School of Rock, Q Brothers, Peter DiStefano & Tor, the Barton Hills Choir, and Quinn Sullivan, all making return appearances to the AKL stage. (Sullivan's performance may very well be the most crowded the stage gets all weekend.) So, in other words, while first-timers may find these performances worth sticking around for (and I think even I could be tempted to see the Barton Hills Choir), should we make the trip down to Austin again, I think it'll be an opportunity to broaden some of the kids' musical horizons... time to camp out in the gospel tent or catch Abigail Washburn.

Kindiefest 2011: Sunday Concert in Videos and Pictures

If Kindiefest's Saturday night showcase was about introducing new(-ish) names (and one longtime favorite) to a new crowd, the Sunday afternoon public concert was more about a lineup guaranteed to draw in, you know, the public. There was indeed a nice crowd, both of conference attendees as well as local families. (It's not a coincidence that the conference is held in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, famous (and perhaps occasionally reviled) for the sheer number of families who live around there. And unlike the showcase, with its brief 20-minute sets that may subconciously lead artists to forgo contemplation for excitement, the public concert, with 30-minute sets, and a more passive audience, allows for more variation in styles.

For example, the concert kicked off with a set from Oran Etkin, who tells stories (either more traditional stories or about the instruments themselves) via jazz. He was very engaging with his young audience. Most of his songs are originals, but here he is with a take on a piece Dizzy Gillespie made famous... Oran Etkin - "Salt Peanuts" [YouTube]

Next up was the delightful Heidi Swedberg and the Sukey Jump Band. The Brooklyn iteration of the band included Phillippa Thompson (who sometimes plays with Elizabeth Mitchell) and multi-instrumentalist Dean Jones. The set was similar to the one she played here in Phoenix in January, but the more enclosed nature of the performance here led to something occasionally hushed. I spoke with Elizabeth Mitchell a little bit later and she, too, enjoyed it... Heidi Swedberg and the Sukey Jump Band - "When You Get Old" [YouTube] And that was just two down...

Suzi Shelton: Live in Your Living Room for Mother's Day. Or Office.

It's been awhile since the last album from Suzi Shelton, but she's getting ready for a new release, and for Mother's Day she's doing another concert through StageIt, which lets artists broadcast their concerts and stream them wherever people want to see them and have an internet connection. She's doing a 20-minute concert this Mother's Day, May 8th at 2 PM (NY time) -- go here to purchase tickets, $2 per computer. And, if you're a divorced parent, your kid(s) may find this free download from No Ordinary Day speaks to the situation they're in and the emotions it generates. It's not quite a Mother's Day song, but it kinda is, a little bit.

Kindiefest 2011: Artists' Showcase in Video and Pictures

Be it SXSW or Kindiefest, there are different reasons to see an artists' showcase at a music conference. You can see your favorite bands, or perhaps bands you're familiar with but are curious to see and hear them live. And sometimes you stumble upon a new favorite. The Kindiefest 2011 artists' showcase on Saturday night was for me a combination of all three, which suggests how well the lineup was put together. Now, I should note that though the lineup featured several artists I'd consider my favorites, I'd never actually seen any of them perform live. (That would have to wait for Sunday's public performance, for whom I'd seen half the lineup live.) But as someone who puts together shows here in the Phoenix area, that live aspect is important to me. This summary is long, but I encourage you to skim the entire thing, you never know when you'll find your new favorite artist.

The lineup kicked off with Billy Kelly and the Blah Blah Blahs, faced with the unenviable task of starting the show while everybody filed back from dinner or a run to their hotel rooms. That and selecting from a bunch of great songs. They went meta ("This Is The First Song" -- they should close with that one day), sweet ("Family Garden"), doubly sweet ("Pen Pal," duetting with Lunch Money's Molly Ledford), and classic ("The Legend of Johnny Box"). The last song featured none other than Johnny Box himself, played by... well, let's just say by someone very familiar to Zooglobble readers. Good stuff.

From there it was on to The Pop Ups, whose set was basically a very abbreviated version of their PASTA! musical. Were there puppets? Yes! Were there apes in capes? Yes! Was there lots of hand-clapping? Yes! Was there lots of pasta? Well, you'll just have to see the musical for yourself to see the answer. But it's hard not to see how the musical would be very popular with the 5-year-old set. The Pop Ups - "Pasta" [YouTube] But we were just getting started, with six more artists to go...