Interview: Alison Faith Levy

Alison Faith Levy - credit Danny Plotnick

Many of us in the kids music world first heard Alison Faith Levy as part of the late, great San Francisco kindie band The Sippy Cups, but with two solo albums under her belt, including her most recent album The Start of Things, Levy has carved out an identity in the kids music world entirely her own.

Levy and I chatted by phone a couple weeks ago to talk about she reconciled her love of theatre and of rock and roll, the inspirations behind The Start of Things, and what it's like to parent a musically precocious kid.

Zooglobble: What are your first musical memories?

Alison Faith Levy: I think the first memory I'm really cognizant of is being little, sitting in the back of the car when I was 3. We were driving through a toll plaza in New York, hearing Simon and Garfunkel, and I was singing along. I always sang along.

At 5, we took a family vacation to Jamaica, and I spent so much time outside singing along to the performers playing steel drums that I got a sunburn. When we got home, I plunked out a tune on the piano. At that point, I start getting lessons.

hen did you decide to become a musician?

I was a child of rock and roll, and a collector of that music, but never saw myself as being able to do that. My heroes were Elton John, David Bowie with that big rock voice, and I was a girl with a showtune-y voice. But about the time I went to college, I started hearing indie bands like R.E.M. and I saw that I could do this.

At the same time, I was at NYU [New York University] for a Theatre degree, and they were very intense. So I switched my major to Philosophy.

Do you use that degree?

When I talk with [my son] Henry. I definitely think that way. Helped when I managed a bookstore. It was an interesting time at school, and I think it fit in with me questing for a bigger picture.

So the Sippy Cups went on hiatus a few years back... what led you to eventually making your first solo album, World of Wonder?

When [the hiatus] happened, I didn't even know if I'd do kids music music again. I was doing adult music, playing in the band McCabe & Mrs. Miller with my friend Victor [Krummenacher]. But I still had all these ideas. I played these Storytime Wednesdays, and they were packed, so I wrote some songs. It was so organic -- half of the songs on [World of Wonder] were those for the kids, and the others were directed more inward, so I would just weave the two together.

Were there any organizing principles behind the next album, The Start of Things?

Hmmm... "Pull Your Weeds" is about being yourself, that's somewhat a theme of the album. It wasn't a conscious idea, but as I wrote songs, it came out. I always loved Cat Stevens and that movie [Harold and Maude] "If You Want To Sing, Sing Out" came from -- it's a perfect kids' song. I'd say it's half and half -- half are more direct with kids. But I tried to give each song some emotional truth. Except for "Froggy Dance"... except that's got an emotional truth for me, because it came straight from the old country.

A lot of your music has a definite '60s influence -- have you always liked that sound?

Yes, but when I write a song and talking with the producer, I have a touchstone, jumping-off point. So for "TLC" on the new album, I told my producer [Allen Clapp] I wanted some early-Get Happy Elvis Costello -- the drum rolls, the Farfisa organ. "Rainbow Tunnel" was total Burt Bacharach, which was great because Allen is a big Bacharach fan. He wrote "Do You Know the Way to San Jose," so it was a great sound for "Rainbow Tunnel," which is a song about driving around.

With "Little Dreamer," I was super-specific with the sounds, wanting it to sound like a John Lennon ballad. I really have an open musical palette -- it's a super nice way to honor my influences -- Beechwood Sparks for "Ballad of Boo Ghosty," or Nina Rota and Fellini for "The Froggy Dance."

I don't usually want to ask musicians about what it's like being a parent, because it's not the purpose of the interview, but your son, Henry Plotnick, is particularly precocious in writing and releasing music, so I wanted to ask... what's it like being one of Henry's parents?

We don't know where Henry's life will take him -- he's very gifted, so people want to release his music, a couple albums so far -- but we're letting him lead. He applied and got into the arts magnet school here in San Francisco, but we really want to let it unfold as it will and not put any expectations on him. The only thing we push is taking classical lessons, so he understands technique, repertoire, and the importance of keeping up with those lessons.

He's getting offers from labels, which... I got my first record deal when I was 30, so for me this is, like, "I don't even know what the music business is." What would a record label offer even look like?

So we just want to make sure he's well-trained in jazz and classical. But he's also talented in science, he writes poetry. A lot of people might think we're pushing, but we're not at all.

From my external perspective, it really doesn't look like that at all.

Oh, good. He's got a balanced life, and a lot of good buddies... When it comes to reviews, he prefers reading the more critical reviews, because those are the ones that just aren't about his age. If that had happened to me, I'd've been a lunatic. But I don't even know if his friends know about all that -- they just play.

What can you tell us about the World of Wonder musical you're working on?

There's some interest on the part of a new local musical theatre company, so we've been doing readings and getting feedback. Based on that, I did a rewrite and wrote a new song.

I'm learning how to get a stage musical on its feet. I don't have a firm commitment [from a company] yet. I'd love to get it onstage now, but doing so needs a lot of people. I've seen the full production in my mind, though, and it's great.

Before I joined the Sippy Cups, I did some work on writing a musical for adults. But this is working backwards from the way it usually works, where the songs move the story forward. Maybe Mamma Mia worked, but mostly it's other way around.

I see how the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" comes down from the ceiling, though. Putting it together is a lot more work, but I want to do it right and more stuff like that in.

Big Time Tot Rock Band - credit Danny Plotnick

I've often thought that Fountains of Wayne songs would make for a great Mamma Mia-like musical...

Yeah... and where's the David Bowie musical?!? C'mon!

I'd love to write something organically from scratch from start fo finish -- that'd be a huge artistic and technical leap.

What's next for you?

A ton of performances -- the live band performances [with the Big Time Tot Rock Band] have really ramped up. Mostly local [gigs], but now I've booked something in New York for October.

Creatively, I want to get that World of Wonder musical up on its feet. And maybe do that Sharon Jones 12-piece soul band. Gotta find the horns for that.... That, and raising a high school kid.

Photo credits: Danny Plotnick

Video: "The Froggy Dance" - Alison Faith Levy

I'm looking forward to hearing Alison Faith Levy's brand new album The Start of Things, which gets a release on April 21. While a lot of Levy's kids music (both solo and with The Sippy Cups) has a big Wall of Sound, er, sound, the first song from the new album to get a video comes from a very different musical place.

"The Froggy Dance" is based on a nonsense poem handed down through generations and set to music by Levy. Levy turned to animator Maddie Loftesnes to bring to (visual) life the silly animals Levy sings about like the frog-bird. It's handmade and silly and fun.

Alison Faith Levy - "The Froggy Dance" [YouTube]

Itty-Bitty Review: Year-Round Sounds - The Hipwaders

For a reviewer, the beauty of releasing an album loosely themed around different seasonal activities is that regardless of when one gets around to reviewing it, it's still timely.

So let's give it up for the Hipwaders' Year-Round Sounds and its opening track "Mic Check." Yes, it's literally a song about a mic check -- a short, sharp power-pop song that at 61 seconds packs more hooks in than most songs three times its length -- and not about the new year. But of course it's a perfect way to start out the year, er, album. (Perhaps they can conclude their next album with a song called "Mic Drop.") And if you're looking for another alternative take on the New Year, that's followed up by "Kings & Queens," all about babies and again a perfectly appropriate "start of the year" song. Onward through the year, covering spring (a cover of "Peter Cottontail" and the swirly "Gaia She Knows"), school ("The Books I Like To Read" and "Smile About"), plus Halloween and Christmas (including an appropriately Bakersfield-y cover of Buck Owens' lost Christmas classic "A Very Merry Christmas").

The album is most appropriate for kids 4 through 9. At 14 tracks and 30 minutes in length, the album flies by and if your family doesn't dig one of the songs (or if it's July and and you have no interest in their appropriately Bakersfield-y cover of any Christmas song), another one's coming up shortly. (Listen to samples via the player at the bottom of this page.) While it's not quite the classic that the Hipwaders' last album, The Golden State, is, Year-Round Sounds still satisfies. Fans of the Hipwaders, power-pop, or of noting celebrations big and small will find a lot to like here. Definitely recommended.

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

Video: "Just Not Me" - The Hipwaders

For my tastes, Bay Area band The Hipwaders ranks right up there with Recess Monkey and Caspar Babypants in having kindie's best set of videos in terms of quality, quantity, and diversity. Their latest video for "Just Not Me," off their new album Year-Round Sounds, pulls in another animator into the Hipwaders' fold, Will Guy of Goopymart, and with just a handful of touches (the tattoo parlor, the backwards "E" in the title character's graffiti, perfectly captures the narrator's... recalcitrance to mind rules. Much fun.

The Hipwaders - "Just Not Me" [YouTube]

Monday Morning Smile: "Unpack Your Adjectives" - The Corner Laughers

Anything from Schoolhouse Rock is probably the prototypical Monday Morning Smile, something geared to both parents and adults. So when the Hipwaders' Tito Uquillas mentioned to me that he really liked a version of "Unpack Your Adjectives" by the Bay Area not-specifically-for-kids band The Corner Laughers, I knew I had to check it out. Sure enough, this live version of the classic SR track is sweet, highlighted by Karla Kane's vocals.

The Corner Laughers sometimes back up fellow Bay Area musician Alison Faith Levy, so they're no strangers to kindie, and while they're not writing kids music per se, most of their jangly indie pop would pass kindie muster, lyrically too, if not necessarily as verbose as George Newall's "Adjectives"...

The Corner Laughers - "Unpack Your Adjectives" (from Schoolhouse Rock) [YouTube]

Interview: Tito Uquillas (The Hipwaders)

I tend to think of Tito Uquillas' Bay Area band The Hipwaders as being one of kindie's "old guard" -- not that they've been around as long as Raffi or Trout Fishing in America, let alone Ella Jenkins, but having released their self-titled debut in 2005, their sharper guitar-pop was one of the early examples of the kindie wave that swept over the kids music world in the second half of that decade.

So Uquillas has some history and perspective on kids music in the past decade. His band's also got a new album coming out, Year-Round Sounds, on September 23. The new album features a number of songs celebrating seasons and holidays. In our chat, he and I talk about favorite holidays, the stop-and-start process of recording this new album, and how he views the balance between his day job as a paramedic and the rest of his life.

Zooglobble: What are your favorite holidays?

Tito Uquillas: As a kid, always Halloween, that was always fun. Dressing up, trick-or-treating, those things. Now they're fun from a different perspective. As an adult, it's even more fun when we play, we dress up a bit. For Halloween shows, I would dress up with a wig and costume beard and felt invincible, it was a great confidence booster. Now that I've been playing for a while, I'll just dress up with a hat.

Christmas shows are a blast, too. For Christmas we always dress up as a Victorian band. Because everybody’s in the spirit.

It’s probably a tie now between Halloween and Christmas.

You did an entire EP of holiday/Christmas songs (A Kindie Christmas) -- what are your favorite holidays to write songs for? Is it easy to write for a particular holiday?

I’ve been writing songs since I was 15. I always liked writing jingles. I remember writing a fake commercial for "The Starving Martyrs," who would starve for whatever your cause was. The Christmas album included songs I'd written over time, some dating back to the 80s and I realized I had almost a full album.

The problem is it’s not until the actual holiday that I come up with a song. People will hear it and ask, “Aw man, you have that recorded?” And I'll say, “no, you have to wait a year.”

We've got a new song that was based on a tangent of a discussion between the bassist and drummer about the animal the chupacabra. It's a fun song -- it’s a good feeling when your latest song is your band’s favorite song to play.

But, no, it’s [not a particular holiday but] whatever inspires you in the moment. Writing about something [on demand], that’s hard. Sometimes I can do it “on spec.” There’s a song on the new album ("We Can Be Heroes") written as a theme song for an animated series. The cartoon was going to be shown in Europe. And then the studio got an attorney and said that it would be better to just be made for Wales. So the song would have to be sung in Welsh. That wasn't for me. So now it's on the album...

Can you talk a bit about recording with Willie Samuels?

I work in a town called Crockett, which is the home of the C&H sugar factory. A firefighter there went to school with Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. I thought Green Day [recordings] always sounded good, so I tracked down the studio where they recorded their stuff. I once thought you just hired a studio, but it’s not like that, you have to find an engineer. I found Willie Samuels, but he'd moved to a different studio, a top-notch studio, and I thought there was no way I could afford that.

But that's not how it works. We set up a budget, and sometimes you get kicked out. For our album The Golden State, which we also recorded with Samuels, we got kicked out for Lady Gaga. Samuels recorded spoken word with Danny Glover, with Al Gore. He recorded 20-piece salsa band. So we recorded at odd days and times.

I've recorded whole albums at once and didn’t like intensity of recording 14 songs. So we had 6 songs for a session, which was much more relaxed.

Besides he does what he wants. He doesn’t like hand percussion, so on one song he mixed it really low. I know what to expect.

How do you view the interaction between your day job as a paramedic and your life as a kindie musician?

I just celebrated my thirtieth anniversary as a paramedic.

Congratulations!

Thanks, I think. You know, if there was ever a panel at a kids music conference on being a “slacker,” that’s me. I've got to get that balance going between job, and marriage, and music.

I like the stress of my job, which is sick in a way. As a paramedic we’re used to handling very stressful situations. When I was 10, my mom got cancer and passed away when I was 12. And that messed me up a bit as a teenager. I was quiet and didn’t come out of my shell until 15 or 16. I wanted to control the situation more than I could before.

I had a band at 15 and that was a relief. The music thing was much more satisfying. Much later in the Hipwaders, we’d play at children’s hospitals and parents would be crying out of gratitude. Wow, thirty years of being a paramedic, nobody ever cries out of gratitude. The 2 things parts go hand in hand. The job is very clinical.

The performing part of the band has actually helped me. Learning to play to the room, looking around making sure everyone is calm, cracking jokes, making sure everyone is put at ease. It’s almost like a performance too, having to treat a patient.

I imagine a paramedic team is sort of like a band, everyone with their own roles and strengths.

Yeah… I like going to different people’s houses and cultures. The last call I was on had this Middle Eastern war rug hanging -- it's a map of Afghanistan with pictures of guns, artillery. When the Afghans kicked Russians out, they made these rugs -- our military would buy them, so would Afghanis. The call before that was the tackiest house, looked like something from King Louis XIV; it was owned by an elderly Russian couple. To me, that’s always fascinating. Or seeing different religious shrines. Especially in the Bay Area, which is so diverse -- Cambodians, Phillipines, Middle Eastern.

How do you integrate those two parts of your life? I was recently having a discussion online with some kids music folks and talking about how major corporations are selling only Dora the Explorer or Kidz Bop album, but also the huge changes in the recorded music industry make it easier than it's ever been to be a part-time creative.

It’s three parts, actually -- family, job, and creative life. I always have to have a project going -- in between bands in my youth, I might have had a visual arts project. Now it’s just music.

The Dora and Kidz Bop stuff -- I don’t even think about that. That’s a multimedia thing -- TV, merchandise, it all goes together, there’s no way the kindie crowd can get into that. People ask me, "Can you play Frozen?" I say no, it’s just not me. I like Frozen but I really don't like show tunes. I had a partner doing pediatric care, and he was talking about preschool theme shows I don’t know at all.

The band is happy that we can make albums, play shows, and maybe release an occasional video and not use our own money. But I’m really cognizant of maintaining the balance between family and playing shows. We can usually make a day of it as a family. I don’t want to disrupt that balance. If I were offered a two week tour on the East Coast, I'd probably say, “Ahhh, I don’t know” unless they paid us a lot of money.

I’m not big on the PR thing now -- we can’t take time from our day jobs and tour the country. So written press is not that important to us. Being a regional act is fine for me. We can get plenty of bookings; there are a half dozen musical acts and we all get gigs. I'll do it yourself and hope for the best.

You’re not going to get rich, but you’re not going to go broke, either.

Lots of people record, teach music. I’m not sure I could do it every day or every other day as a job. What if I had to teach preschool, would I have to write more preschool songs? That’s not me. Laurie Berkner is really good at it, but a lot of the other preschool songs I hear are insipid. I'm fascinated by people who do it as a job. It's not for me, worrying about [it as] a job. Hopefullly it’s working out well [for them], that they can retire.

Are their new tracks on the upcoming album you’re proud of?

“Kings and Queens” song was fun to write. We’ve had Gunnar Madsen sing [Ed: and Charity Kahn also duets with Uquillas on the album], but never an actual musician. I was listening to a podcast with Mike Myers, who has a reputation for being difficult. His was saying his art has a quirkiness, particular style.

Sometimes musical guests dilutes that. I was really struggling with the keyboard part on "Kings and Queens", but couldn’t get it out of my brain on the recording. So Chris Wiser from the Sugar Free Allstars came on board, said, "Oh, you want a funky clavinet... strings on the chords." My wife said, "You can play that," and I'd say, "Yes, but I can’t get it out of me."

Oh, and the Buck Owens Christmas song ("Have a Very Merry Christmas") -- I couldn't make it just like Buck, then realized, I'll just make it an R&B song. Also, I realized that there were just 2 bluegrass song covers and those weren't available on CD, so it was "Oh, nobody’s recorded that."

What’s coming up?

We have a new video (hopefully within a couple weeks) for “Just Not Me.” Visually, I thought it would be a funny cartoon. I saw Thessaly Lerner’s videos, which were a little Ren & Stimpy-like. The animator's cartoons are a little more edgy. He’s doing the animated video for that. There's an album release show in a couple weeks, and Halloween shows and Christmas shows are already lined up. We'll record a new song, too. Got feedback from one woman who said her kids had [Year-Round Sounds] constant repeat. That was nice to hear.