When I interviewed Tor Hyams a couple years ago at the Austin Kiddie Limits stage at the Austin City Limits Festival, it was clear he was thinking about how kids music could expand. And now, just like Richard Branson turned his Virgin empire into a fairly wide-ranging affair, Hyams is now doing lots of different kids music-related stuff.
First, he's going to host an hour of radio on Kids Place Live, featuring "America's best indie rock for kids and families." Hyams will be joined by Ziggy Marley "as they talk about life, family, Ziggy's brand-new kids CD and offer a special tribute to everyone's Mother Earth!" (Yeah, that's PR language for you.) Anyways, it airs Friday 4/17 at 11pm ET/8pm PT, Saturday 4/18 at 9am & 5pm ET (6am & 2pm PT), and Sunday at noon ET/9am PT.
But there are a couple more interesting aspects...
Interview: Tor Hyams
I've been sitting on a bunch of interviews from my trips to Austin last September. With the music world once again congregating in Austin for SXSW, it's high time I transcribed and shared them with you.
Given the South By Southwest connection, I thought it appropriate to kick things off with Tor Hyams, who will be speaking at a kids music panel at SXSW Friday.
Among the many roles that California-based Hyams has is producing the Kidzapalooza stage at Lollapalooza and the Austin Kiddie Limits stage at the Austin City Limits Festival, not to mention the Little State stage at the Big State Festival. It was backstage at ACL 2007 that I caught up with Hyams and talked about producing those events and his thoughts about the future of kids music festivals.
Zooglobble: What's been the best part about the Austin Kiddie Limits stage?
Tor Hyams: The best part about the Austin Kiddie Limits is, I have to say, Austin. People are really different. There's no airs about anybody, they're very open and honest and willing to have a good time, and that makes what we do a lot easier.
You produce Kidzapalooza, Austin Kiddie Limits, and the kids stage at the Big State Festival. Big State is more country, while the other two are more rock. How did you decide who you would try to get for Kidzapalooza as opposed to Austin Kiddie Limits?
In Kidzapalooza, we go a little harder-edged. It's just a different energy to that place than here. This is more of a roots-rock kind of energy, where Kidzapalooza is more of hard-rock kind of energy. Some bands fit into both, like the Sippy Cups. Some bands don't work in both. For example, we had the Blisters, Jeff Tweedy's son's band, at Kidzapalooza, but they're from Chicago, and they're kids. It would've been hard to get them out here. I think they would've done well here, but it's just a different thing. So it's really who fits more the roots-rock mold or even country crossover acts do well, but Austin's such a dynamic city that I think you could any kind of act on stage here and it would work.
I saw a quote from Charles Attal, the head of C3 Productions who sort of described the festival circuit as a land grab -- there are a lot of opportunities in a lot of other places to establish these festivals. Do you think a kids stage is something C3 or other entities would be looking towards doing?
