Frances England and her favorite Casio keyboard
It has been a long time since San Francisco-based musician Frances England tiptoed her way onto the kids’ music scene with a homemade, handmade slimline CD titled Fascinating Creatures. Nearly 15 years, to be exact. It’s a little hard to remember just how… novel the album sounded at the time. It had a lo-fi sound, and there were just very few kids music artists who were merging a more personal lyrical approach with an indie folk sound. So taken was I that England was the very first interview on this site.
Fast forward lo these many years, and England has moved from sending CD-R’s to the handful of people writing about or playing kids music at the time to playing across the country, earning a Grammy nomination, and recording her first album for the brand new kids’ record label 8 Pound Gorilla Records, an imprint of Nashville’s comedy record behemoth 800 Pound Gorilla Records.
That album, an EP called Honey, is released today and while there are some new songs for England’s fans to enjoy, she also redoes some of her older tracks, including “Daddy-O,” an ode to fathers from that very first album Fascinating Creatures. The gentle, hushed tone of the original is still there, but the new track features some additional guitar work from Ramon Fermin and light drums from Jason Slota to give it a gentle push.
Why did England choose this particular song to re-record? She says that “My husband was definitely the inspiration [for the song], but I was also thinking about my own dad when I wrote it. I included it on this EP because, probably more than any other song of mine, I've heard so many stories from people about what this song has meant to them. It's such a simple, little song but I've seen how families have included it in such important moments, which is why I wanted to re-record it and put out a version of it I was happy with.”
So now the old song has been buffed up and given a new video by England. I’m very happy to get to world premiere “Daddy-O.” Honey is out everywhere today.
Frances England - “Daddy-O” [YouTube]
Photo credit: Meredith Preble
