Review: Bon Voyage - Jazzy Ash

New Orleans’ musical tradition has produced many memorable artists. But while Jazzy Ash isn’t the first kids musician to use the city of New Orleans as musical inspiration, for a region with such a vital musical heritage, when it comes to kids music it’s still been underrepresented. With her latest album Bon Voyage, Jazzy Ash continues to further fold New Orleans’ rich musical tradition into songs for the kindergarten set.

Jazzy Ash is the nom de plume of musician Ashli Christoval. Although her mom was from New Orleans, her dad from Trinidad, and she spent summers in New Orleans with her mom’s aunts and grandparents, it wasn’t until a couple years ago on that she really started to incorporated the music of the Crescent City into her own recordings.

On Bon Voyage Christoval covers one of New Orleans’ best-known native sons, Louis Armstrong, on “Heebie Jeebies,” a song he made famous. But beyond the Dixieland jazz sound strongly identified with the city, Jazzy Ash uses her bright, playful voice in other genres more commonly associated with the rural areas around the city, like the zydeco sound on “Leap Frog.” And while a couple songs draw attention to their New Orleans origin, for the most part Christoval uses the bayou mixture of jazz, blues, and creole as the starting point for songs that could be appropriate for Louisiana, but might be at home as well in her current home state of California (see the gypsy jazz track “Firefly").

The album is most appropriate for listeners ages 3 through 7, and while you can't stream the whole thing online, you can listen to "Heebie Jeebies" here (and pick up a beignet recipe here.)

With Bon Voyage, Jazzy Ash fully connects with her own family’s musical heritage, yet incorporates those 100-year-old traditions into 21st century kids music. It's a buoyant and warm-hearted album for the younger set. Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of the album for possible review.

Review: Deep Woods Revival - Red Yarn

Long before “kids music” was a category in the record store stacks or iTunes playlists, folk music was the heart of recorded music for kids. And while folk music remains an integral part of kids music, in the modern kids music world, other genres -- rock, to be sure, but also hip-hop, reggae, and others -- have expanded their influence.

Now, I would argue that that increase in non-folk music in kindie has specifically been one of the major contributors toward the vitality of the genre, but others would also argue that something has been lost when the music that was part of the American culture for generations slips away.

Portland’s Andy Furgeson, a puppeteer and musician who records for families as Red Yarn, doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would rail against shifts in musical tastes. Rather, he's viewing it as a challenge to be met head-on. After all, if you title your latest album Deep Woods Revival, by definition you've decided to bring all the energy you can muster to new takes on old classics.

In the case of the traditional song “Buckeye Jim,” for example, it’s a fairly straightforward cover of the version Burl Ives recorded more than a half-century ago with some new lyrics added on. For another track, “Animal Fair,” Furgeson merges two songs from Carl Sandburg’s famous American Songbag, pulling “The John B. Sails” into the mix. Those are just two examples -- the entire album draws on a variety of folk music sources -- Alan Lomax, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Henry Spalding’s Encyclopedia of Black Folklore and Humor.

While the first half of the album is described as being for all kids, the liner notes suggests that the second half is for "brave kids and grown-ups." That half includes songs touching on more serious topics, like death and the not-always benevolent nature of the animal world. The album’s title track, the only song with entirely new music and lyrics, leads off that half and features a chorus of Portland-area musicians standing in for a forest’s worth of critters great and small having a revival.

I think the album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 10. (I think the second half might be of more interest to kindergartners and older, but it's not inappropriate for even the younger set.) You can stream the 36-minute album here. I'd also note that the physical copy of the album features some lovely artwork (dioramas! maps! illustrations!) made by many people, but most notably Ryan Bruce (art direction and illustrations) and Heather Lin (album design).

Red Yarn’s fervor for American folk music is evident on Deep Woods Revival. While folk music has never gone away in the children’s music genre, he forcefully makes the case for its continued relevance in the era of the mp3. Highly recommended.

ote: I was given a copy of the album for possible review.

Review: Tomorrow Is a Chance To Start Over - Hilary Grist

Tomorrow Is a Chance To Start Over cover

It didn't occur to me until I sat down to write this review, but the label that has released the biggest, most diverse set of original music for kids and families over the past several years is a book publisher: Montreal-based The Secret Mountain. They've released 23 albums over the past decade and more -- some totally in French (as would befit a publisher based in Montreal), some in English, some in languages from around the world. Their book/CD collections have featured lullabies, folk music from around the world, even a couple books from the longtime kids musicians Trout Fishing in America. And while some of the albums are re-releases of albums, dressed up with the accompanying book, many (like the Trout Fishing) albums are entirely new.

The 23rd and latest album from The Secret Mountain is a book/CD titled Tomorrow Is a Chance To Start Over, a "Bedtime Story and Dream Songs" collection from Vancouver-based musician Hilary Grist. In both its music and its accompanying pictures, it is to my mind the most modern- looking and sounding release from TSM. Grist has four folk-alt-pop albums for adults under her belt, and this new album sees her turn her attention to that most unconditional of love songs, the lullaby. The title track is one of the most gorgeous songs you'll hear all year, for kids or not. Its message of dropping worries, that tomorrow is, well, a chance to start over, is reassuring for sleepyheads of all ages, and Grist's vocals are somehow soaring without being totally inappropriate for a sleepytime disk.

With the exception of "Cradle Song," a reworking of Brahms' Lullaby, which concludes the album, the rest of the songs are original lullabies. Some of them like "Fall in My Loving Arms" and "I'll Be There sound as if they might have been originally written for an adult audience (though not inappropriately so), others ("Say Goodnight" and "City of Green and Blue") feel more kid-centered. Of course, the beauty of many of the best contemporary lullaby albums lies in part in the ability of the singer to pull together different songs to weave an overall mood of unconditional love. And songs like "Float Away," "Le Petit Oiseau," and "Still" help produce that mood. The album starts out a little "loud" for a lullaby album, but by the end, it's all very

The book features an original story about brother and sister Ira and Isabelle, who find themselves struggling to fall asleep and so take a boat far away but instead of finding a Sendak-ian collection of wild things, are greeted by a robin who encourages them to drop their worries and fly. (The theme leads well into the title track.) The siblings' clay characters were created by Grist, and the photographs -- a first for a Secret Mountain book as opposed to illustrations -- a distinctive mixture of collage and tiny models by an artistic team led in part by Grist's husband Mike Southworth. Babies won't appreciate the photographs, perhaps, but their parents certainly will. You can also hear Grist read the story as the album's first track.

I think that most successful lullaby albums work for both the target age range of kids ages 0 through 5 as well as their parents, and by that measure Tomorrow Is a Chance To Start Over succeeds quite well -- it's a lovely collection of songs, with some memorable images to match. Here's hoping The Secret Mountain continues to bring new artists like Grist into their fold in future years. Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of the book/CD set for possible review.

Itty-Bitty Review: Sundrops - The Harmonica Pocket

The Seattle-area duo The Harmonica Pocket (songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Keeth Monta Apger and his wife Nala Walla) have always been led by an animating interest in the natural world, but never quite as fully as on their fourth family album Sundrops, which is officially released today. The theme -- sunshine and rain -- is a pretty genius one (especially for a Pacific Northwest band) and the dozen tracks here explore (mostly) the beauty of both sun and rain.

The album starts off particularly strongly -- the country-folk of "Sing In the Sun," followed by the pure pop goodness of "Raindrops," which features fellow Northwest musician and co-producer Johnny Bregar on the Hammond B3. That song, with the lyric "We'll dry off someday / It's just water anyway," and "It's Gotta Rain (If You Want a Rainbow)," give you a good sense of Apgar's songwriting attitude. (They also feature the small band Apgar and Bregar brought in to fill out the sound.) Much of what follows is also an enjoyable, amiable folk-pop shuffle through the natural world -- I particularly liked "Digga Dog Kid" (a duet with Chris Ballew AKA Caspar Babypants, who knows his way around songs about being outside) and their reworking of "You Are My Sunshine," featuring many new lyrics. I didn't like "Are You a Monster Too?," which didn't seem to fit in at all amongst the sun and rain songs, but since I greatly adored "I Love Ukuleles," a song featuring wordplay around the phrase "I love you..." (and Marcy Marxer on ukulele as well, natch) perhaps I just didn't like "Monster," period.

The 40-minute Sundrops is most appropriate for listeners ages 3 through 7. Its mellow sound and open-hearted lyrics will make a nice accompaniment for both rainy afternoons and sunny Sunday mornings. Recommended.

Note: I was given a copy of the album for possible review.

Itty-Bitty Review: Turkey Andersen - Turkey Andersen

The debut EP is the proof-of-concept of the recorded music industry. It's not intended to be perfect, it's just supposed to be an introduction, something that says, this could work - this does work.

Such is the case with the debut self-titled EP from Turkey Andersen. Who is Turkey Andersen? Well, I don't think he and Northampton, Massachusetts musician Henning Ohlenbusch have ever been seen together at the same time. More importantly, though, in the course of 8 songs and 16 minutes, these songs put smiles on faces and quirky, poppy earworms in brains. "If a Sandwich Was a Sandwich" is the most brilliant 30-second song ever ("If a sandwich was a pillow then the bread would be the pillow case," the song starts out, and maintains that level of rational absurdity for another 25 seconds). The centerpiece of the album is "Time Travel Clothes," all about the trouble you can get into if you wear the wrong clothes while traveling through time. (We've all been there, right?) I also find "Hot and Stuffy" very funny and also educational about how to get a room to the right temperature.

You can stream the album here. It'll be most amusing to kids ages 3 through 7. Its combination of TMBG quirkiness and songwriting with Jonathan Richman-esque earnestness and vocals is pretty much instantly appealing. If this debut is proof-of-concept, then I think it's proven that Turkey Andersen needs some investors. More, please. Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a (digital) copy of the album for possible review.

Review: The Start of Things - Alison Faith Levy

Kids' music in the 1960s -- that is to say, kids' music before there was even a name for it -- basically took the folk music path that was one of the dominant musical strains of the era. For Pete Seeger and Ella Jenkins, there was some distinction between folk music for adults and that for kids, but it was a distinction more of presentation than of subject matter. And that folk music orientation was basically the default kids' music option through the '80s if not the '90s until the kindie wave swept through at the start of the 21st century.

Imagine, however, if other musical strains of the decade -- psychedelic pop, Phil Spector's Wall of Sound production -- also found themselves working their way into kids' music with songs for the youngest listener. Were that to have been the case, Alison Faith Levy's brand-new album The Start of Things would be a stellar example of that alternate reality rather than sounding so unique in today's kindie landscape.

Levy first came to the attention of the kids' music world as a member of the Bay Area band The Sippy Cups, which started out as a kid-friendly cover band for the music of the '60s and '70s before gradually becoming a band which wrote its own psychedelic-inspired kindie pop. The band had been on hiatus for several years before Levy released her first solo album, World of Wonder, in 2012. While there were echoes of the Sippy Cups' psychedelic and Wall of Sound production on that first solo album, it's much more pronounced on The Start of Things. The opening title track features a groovy organ, horns, and the theme of how it's OK to be nervous when tackling a new project (first day of school, opening night of a play, etc.). It's my favorite track on the album, just a great pop song for kids that a lot of adults might sneak into their own playlists.

The track "Pull Your Weeds" envisions a friendship between Cinderella and Snow White and the empowering lyric (printed on the inside of the CD package, so clearly resonant with Levy) "Do your thing / Love what you do / Appreciate your beauty / Pull your weeds and / Stand your ground / And the world will come around." While "The Start of Things," Pull Your Weeds," and songs like "Rainbow Tunnel" and "Little Dreamer" sound like they could easily be part of a musical Levy is working on based on World of Wonder.

Other songs, however, are rooted more in interactivity -- the raucous "Are You Happy?" runs through a series of emotions that the kid-listeners are encouraged to mimic. The "Ballad of Boo Ghosty" is a silly little story about a ghostly friend, while "The Froggy Dance" is a nonsense poem. Given these tracks, the 32-minute album will be most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 6, though some of the songs mentioned earlier in the review have a slightly older age range.

The Start of Things has a '60s-inspired sound, but it still sounds fresh. That colorful and rainbow-adorned album cover nails the vibe of Levy's bright and empowered songs. Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of the album for possible review.