Listen To This - "If You Want a Song" - The Okee Dokee Brothers (World Premiere!)

If You Want a Song single cover

I don’t know if people are necessarily looking for “happy” entertainment these days, but I do suspect that people are looking to increase the percentage of “uplifting” stuff as part of their family’s entertainment diet. (That diet is probably larger than it used to be.)

May I suggest a recommended daily allowance of Okee Dokee Brothers music? I doubt the FDA would give it its stamp of government approval, but you know I’m right. And also singing. Singing daily is also highly recommended. Pete Seeger would tell you that straight out.

Singing Okee Dokee Brothers songs? Doubly recommended. The Minnesota duo had planned to release their double album Songs for Singin’ in the middle of summer, but taking a look at the weird new world they (and we) find themselves in now, they’re going to release this album full of singalong originals two months early, on May 1. (Two disks! That’s a lot of music!)

The Okee Dokee Brothers playing banjo and guitar

You can hear one of the songs early right here, today.. “If You Want a Song” is rousing singalong that, OK, it’s a little bit about singing, but it’s a lot about other stuff too. But it sounds great whether you blast out the lyrics all on your own or engage in a little call-and-response with whoever happens to be where you are right now.

About the album itself, Joe and Justin say that they got to see Pete Seeger perform live a few years before he passed away and the performance “always stuck with them as an example of how a strong song and a dedicated songleader can get a room full of people singing with spirit.” If you hear echoes of social and political engagement, that’s not an accident. “Life is a conversation,” they say, “a back and forth, a call and response.”

So I’m tickled to be premiering this song today. Whether you’re the songleader or follower, I hope you’ll sing along with this at least once.

Photo credit: Nate Ryan Photography

Fids and Kamily Awards -- the Best Kids Music of the Year -- Announced for 2019

Last month, the 14th edition of the Fids and Kamily Music Awards were announced. The annual survey of kids music writers, programmers, librarians, and other enthusiasts from across the country produced a list of their favorite kids music albums of the year (late 2018 through most of 2019) — a dozen ranked winners plus another 13 honorable mentions, a full 25 honorees. The winner in this year’s awards was the excellent don’t-call-it-a-holiday-album Winterland by The Okee Dokee Brothers, but you should go check out the entire list of recognized albums.

For what it’s worth, here’s my own personal ballot for this year’s F&K Awards. They’re not ranked because I gave them all equal weight in my ballot for this year’s awards. So, in alphabetical order by band:

Alegria - Sonia de los Santos

Finding Friends Far From Home - Oran Etkin

I’m from the Sun - Gustafer Yellowgold

Baby on the Subway - Camille Harris

Shake It and Break It - Randy Kaplan

Growing Up - Josh Lovelace

Buenos Diaz - The Lucky Band

Winterland - The Okee Dokee Brothers

A Cheerful Little Earful - Diana Panton

Backstroke Raptor - Story Pirates

This year’s process was bittersweet for me as F&K co-founder Bill Childs and I decided that this year’s awards would be the last. We wrote up our thoughts in this post, but the TL;DR is basically that kids and families aren’t listening to albums as much as they’re listening to streams these days, and there aren’t nearly as many people writing about albums, either. (It’s been awhile since this here website has tackled an album review, to provide a very pertinent example.) Bill and I have been clear that there will be no more Fids & Kamily Awards (though the website will live on for many years), but we are both hopeful that there will be something that replaces F&K in some way — we are both ready to participate in whatever might take its place.

I look at my list above and while I think it’s a solid list of ten excellent albums, I also see how I could’ve listed different albums who brought joy in other ways. And so I always enjoyed F&K because while it was based on people’s personal lists of favorites — personal lists that certainly were affected by each judge’s personal experience and tastes — by combining those lists, I thought it more closely arrived at something like a consensus. I don’t know if the idea of consensus is worth pursuing anymore, but for more than a decade, I hope the awards shined more light than there otherwise would be on albums popular and insufficiently noticed.

Better Late Than Never: 2016 Children's Grammy Nominee Reviews

One of the embarrassing things about writing about the nominees for the 59th Annual Grammy Award for Best Children's Album is that even though I did so in late January 2017, many months after the 5 nominated albums were released, I had only reviewed one of the 5 nominees, Frances England's Explorer of the World.

So while I'm transitioning out of more intensive review mode into something... else, I did want to make sure I added a few words about each of these nominees.

As I went back and listened to these albums, or at least these following four albums, I was struck by the idea that these albums weren't necessarily albums that took incredible creative leaps beyond what the artists had done before.  Instead, these albums are good examples of the type of music some of kindie's most popular and consistent artists have to offer.

Let's start with the act that's been the most prolific for the longest time, Seattle trio Recess Monkey.  The biggest -- and really only -- novelty of Novelties, the band's 13th (!) album, is the fact that it was released on Amazon Music and can only be purchased or streamed there.  Aside from that, it's another  solid collection of pop-rock songs pitched at your favorite ever-so-slightly snarky 7-year-old.  Yes, the song "Sweaty Yeti" is every bit as silly as that title might suggest.  Compared to other albums of theirs like Desert Island Disc, Novelties dials up the clown prince factor, and dials down the emotional factor which, while never prevalent, sometimes played a supporting role.  But this is immediately identifiable as a Recess Monkey album and given the large role the band has played in encouraging other kindie musicians and their consistency (13 albums in, like, 12 years), the Grammy nomination was deserved.

Next we have Press Play, from New York's Brady Rymer and the Little Band That Could.  If Recess Monkey's calling card has been silliness and high energy, Rymer's has been emotionally open roots rock, and he's been offering it for even longer than Recess Monkey, albeit at not quite as frenetic a pace.  (Press Play is Rymer's eighth album for families, dating back to the year 2000.)  Rymer sings unironically about the virtues of trying new things, being kind, and the blessings of family.  They're the kind of sentiments that, stripped of Rymer's energetic singing and his harmony-filled Little Band That Could, could feel cheesy or trite.  But Rymer's music has always managed to move past that and make those valuable notions on tracks like the country-tinged "Dress in Blue" and the horn-and-organ-aided "Chain Reaction" fun to dance to.  Rymer earned another Grammy nomination for Press Play, and it's because his music usually goes down as comfortable as a plate of burger and fries in the hometown diner the band is posing in an album photo.  

The only one of this year's nominees who had previously won a Grammy (for Can You Canoe?), The Okee Dokee Brothers, came back with the final album in their three-part "Adventure Album series," Saddle Up.  As you can probably guess from the title, after traveling down the Mississippi River and up the Appalachian Trail, this time the duo went out west, spending a month on horseback in June 2015.  So there's more of a cowboy theme to their music, though I wouldn't describe this album as the boys going full Riders in the Sky.  As with the album's two predecessors, this album gently weaves a few more traditional songs (such as "Ragtime Cowboy Joe") into the originals.  One of the niftiest tracks is "Sister Moon and Brother Sun," which features Navajo lyrics on a story with Native American roots -- its mere presence on a "Western" album is, if not groundbreaking, at least noteworthy for its relative rarity.  The album features a slick DVD, and while the boys didn't earn another Grammy for this one, I think the three Adventure albums are definitely one of the most critically (and, comparatively, commercially) successful trio of kids' albums of the 21st century.  Fans of the Okee Dokee Brothers would likely have taken this just as much to heart as their two previous albums.

Last on this list of reviews is the actual Grammy winner this year, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, a previous nominee and first-time winner for Infinity Plus One.  Skidoo continues to be the most vibrant practitioner of hip-hop for the younger set -- nobody else is as consistently intricate lyrically and musically.  I don't think Infinity Plus One is quite as... weird as its predecessor The Perfect Quirk, but it is far out, man.  Literally.  Because as you might guess from the album art, Skidoo's got a serious deep space vibe going on here.  A song like "Pillowfight Pillowfort" seems in the distant past at this point.  I'd say the whole album is more space-inspired than space-themed (the killer track "Secret Superhero" isn't really about space, for example), but in more than a couple places he proves to be a huge Carl Sagan fan.

As always, one of the secret weapons of Secret Agent 23 Skidoo albums' high repeat listenability is the depth of the musical arrangements.  You might hear "hip hop" in terms of the album description and think there's no connection with, say, Brady Rymer's roots-rock, but tracks like "Young Soul" and "Long Days & Short Years" would not sound out of place at all on Rymer's album.  (Actually, can we get a Skidoo/Rymer collaboration?  Thanks in advance.)  Infinity Plus One is a very solid collection of songs targeted more at the upper elementary school crowd, and while I think any of Skidoo's albums are a worthy entry point to his work for your family, this newly Grammy-crowned work is definitely an excellent place to start.  I'd recommend all these albums -- hopefully I've given enough clues to suggest which might be most appropriate if you're entirely new to kids music.

Very finally, I would be remiss if I didn't re-remind you of the review I did for Frances England's Explorer of the World, the other album nominated in this category.  I described it as "more experimental than most kids music," and if the four albums above are more refinements of the artists' individual artistic paths, I think Explorer shows off England's exploration (appropriately enough) of new paths, particularly in the music arrangements.  Tracks like "City Don't Sleep" feature sonic collages featuring everything but (and probably including) the kitchen sink.  This album was every bit as worthy a Grammy nominee as the four albums above, and I just didn't want you to forget about it as you were considering the albums above.

 

59th Grammy Award Nominations for Best Children's Album

... or, as I call it, the final victory of kindie.

Last month, the nominations for the 59th Annual Grammy Awards were announced, and while I continue to be less than completely convinced of the value of Grammy awards for kids music, there's no doubt that the awards are still considered a Big Deal throughout the recorded music industry, kids' musicians included.

First, let's list the five nominees in the category of Best Children's Album:

Explorer of the World cover

Explorer of the World

Frances England

Frances England Music

Infinity Plus One cover

Infinity Plus One

Secret Agent 23 Skidoo

Underground Records

Novelties album cover

Novelties

Recess Monkey

Recess Monkey

Press Play cover

Press Play

Brady Rymer and the Little Band That Could

Bumblin' Bee Records

Saddle Up cover

Saddle Up

The Okee Dokee Brothers

Okee Dokee Music

 

The Grammy Awards will be announced on Sunday, February 12 -- the biggest awards in the evening, the rest of the awards (including this category) that afternoon.  And unlike most of the nominees, the kids' nominees take the opportunity to play a benefit concert the Saturday the day before the concert.  This year, the concert is on Saturday the 11th, and if you've got kids and live in Los Angeles, it's worth checking out getting tickets.  (You can read more about the history here.)  I went to last year's concert, and, yeah, it's a good time -- the public is unlikely to get to hear these five artists play together.

The annual Grammy weekend has also become the closest West Coast analogue to KindieFest/Kindiecomm, thanks to an annual industry-only luncheon also held on Saturday the day before the awards ceremonies.  This year is no exception (details here), and for those musicians who haven't had a chance to attend either the Grammy-related luncheon or the East Coast gatherings, it's definitely worth considering whether a day or two in the L.A. area might be within your budget.

I've been writing this site for more than 12 years, and when I started, the word "kindie" hadn't even been coined.  Yes, artists like Dan Zanes, Laurie Berkner, and Justin Roberts had released multiple albums, and of course artists like Trout Fishing in America, Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer and Raffi were walking along the paths Pete Seeger, Ella Jenkins, and others had created.

When I researched the Grammy nominations for the kids music awards (non-spoken word) handed out in February 2004 and February 2005, bookending the start of this site, I was a little surprised to see that it wasn't a collection of Disney retreads -- both years are pretty solid collections of albums from artists familiar to this site.

But I think it's fair to say that those lists come more from a folk-music tradition with some gentle pop thrown in.  I think that the Dan Zanes nod in 2005 is the only album that could safely plant both feet in the "kindie" tradition as it's been most popularly understood -- pulling in rock and other musical traditions beyond folk and pop, and not dependent upon music labels for funding and distribution.

This list, on the other hand, while pulling in elements of folk music and pop, feels like its heart comes from indie rock and some hip-hop.  At this point Brady Rymer (nominated for multiple Grammys) and the Okee Dokee Brothers (winners and nominated multiple times) seem like Grammy royalty, and only Rymer had released an album before 2005.

And unlike lists of recent years, on which Rymer, the Okee Dokee Brothers, and Secret Agent 23 Skidoo had previously appeared, there was no "exception" this year.  No non-kids artist making an album for kids, no spoken-word recitation of a book, no... nothing.  Just five artists all easily described as kindie stars, with roughly 35 albums for kids between them.  I don't want to say it's the perfect "kindie" list, because that implies a qualitative hierarchical distinction that I'm not trying to make.  But I'm not sure I could come up with a list that is... more kindie (as it's currently defined in terminology and example) than this one.

I don't want to say "my work here is done," but I think it's fair to say that one of my goals when I started this site more than a dozen years ago -- raising the visibility of great kids music that drew upon a broad range of musical styles -- has been accomplished.  I'm not taking credit for any of it -- that belongs to the artists themselves -- but I think it's time for me to think (again) about how to further expand the visibility of kids audio to an even wider audience, and to think (much more) about how to further expand who creates kids audio to an even wider creator base.  Because the two are related, and the two are how when we talk about kids music a dozen years from now, somebody will talk about a Grammy list that builds upon the paths the Okee Dokee Brothers and Secret Agent 23 Skidoo further blazed, but doesn't include them, either.