Screen Time (Kids Music and TV Shows)

I have had in my list of potential posts for the site an item I called "kids music TV shows" for at least a couple years. I'd probably been thinking about the idea for long before that. The general idea was to survey the landscape of kids music and broadly cover the wide variety of kids musicians who were making television of some sort in the consumer guide fashion to which, for better and worse, I default.

But in between the time the idea first took hold in my mind and now, something has shifted, and we're in a far more uncertain time for the creation of visual entertainment.

Think back, if you will, to a decade or so ago, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth. No, that's not right. What I meant to say, back when Jack's Big Music Show and Imagination Movers aired on Noggin/Nick Jr and Disney Junior/Playhouse Disney. While their premieres didn't literally overlap (Jack's last show premiered in April 2008, while the Movers' first show didn't air until September that year), in my mind they are lumped together in the golden age of kids music on television.

While Laurie Berkner had already released four albums by the time Jack's Big Music Show premiered in 2005 and had achieved some level of popularity, there's no doubt that her appearance on every episode catapulted her into kids music superstardom. (It was the release of a Laurie Berkner DVD in 2006 that was one of the precipitating events leading to my first NPR piece.) And the show gave guest spots to about a dozen other kids' musicians as well. While I don't think the bump for individual artists besides Berkner was meaningful, I think the idea that there was a modern take on kids music broadly was.

The Imagination Movers' show was very different stylistically from Jack's, but it, too, had a dramatic impact on the Movers' career. While they had achieved a fair amount of success, especially in their New Orleans hometown region, the Disney show significantly increased their reach. I went to their Phoenix-area concert in 2009, and at least a thousand people showed up, outdrawing Dan Zanes. They were a big deal. (They're still popular, but I'm guessing they would be even more so were the show still on the air.)

Certainly the success of those two shows could have led to more shows that drafted kids musicians into leading roles. And my memory going back to the 2010-ish era was that a lot of musicians wanted to be drafted. But almost at the same time that Berkner and the Movers were having success, a couple of other shows laid down an alternative path that I think proved to be the downfall of kids music on TV: Yo Gabba Gabba and The Fresh Beat Band.

YGG debuted in 2007, even before the Movers' show, and Fresh Beat Band debuted in 2009. In each of their own ways, their approaches likely diminished the allure of kids music to both television executives and audiences. With Gabba, the guest musical artists didn't come from kids music -- they came from the world of music for adults. The first season guest stars were very indie -- The Shins were probably the biggest "get" -- and lent the show a certain sheen of "cool" that kids musicians are unlikely to ever provide, certainly not on a kids' show. And as the show became more popular, the guest stars did, too. (When The Roots, The Flaming Lips, Solange, and Weezer are willing to do your show, there's no need to check out Zooglobble for the hot new kids music star.)

The Fresh Beat Band took a different approach, but one that also excluded kids' musicians. By recruiting singers and actors for the band, the producers of the show essentially created the Monkees for preschoolers. (Not a slam.) It was an approach that also proved popular (the show toured live, as did YGG), but one that didn't require any current kids' musicians. And even if you think, hey, a band of kids' musicians created out of whole cloth, that's better than nothing, well, the show was eventually sunsetted, with Fresh Beat Band of Spies, an animated show, taking its place in a way starting in 2015.

In the wake of Jack's and the Imagination Movers shows, and while YGG and Fresh Beat Band were on the air, there was a lot of interest by kids' musicians about getting their own series off the ground. A TV series was held up as the holy grail, the brass ring folks sought. I don't want to suggest that it was the only thing people cared about, or that they were obsessed by it, but... there was no small amount of interest.

It's not like there was no success -- Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band got their live-action series Lishy Lou and Lucky Too on the air on several Indiana PBS stations starting in around 2013. Billy Kelly put together four interstitials called I'm Thinking of an Animal for Rochester, New York PBS station WXXI in 2012. But the successes for Lucky and Alisha and Billy were more regional in nature. And Laurie Berkner's return to kids' TV in Sprout's animated interstitial series Sing It, Laurie! never really achieved the visibility of her first show.

If you want to think of the cup as half-full, though, let's not forget Steve Roslonek, AKA SteveSongs, who as "Mr. Steve" served as a co-host and musician on PBS Kids' preschool morning block. And perhaps the biggest success was that of Tim Kubart, who after years playing with the Jimmies and creating Tim and the Space Cadets, made it onto Sprout through co-hosting the Sunny Side Up show. And just this week the Sunny Side Up show became Sprout House, a new morning show on which Kubart -- and other kindie artists -- will now play music. This seems like a positive turn of events, though the expected bump for any artist besides Kubart in terms of visibility should probably be small. As with Jack's Big Music Show, the important part is in the overall visibility, though Sprout's viewership, compared to that of Disney Channel and Nick Jr. of the pre-2010 years, is likely small. Big, in the world of kids music, but small(er) culturally speaking.

Of course, kids haven't stopped watching video, they've just moved to other places -- Amazon and Netflix, and YouTube, for example. But that switch hasn't meant kids music getting featured there. Sure, Amazon includes full-length episodes from Lisa Loeb and Amy Lee, but those are just one-off on-demand productions. (Also note that those aren't kindie-first artists.) Other networks like Ameba and BatteryPOP will offer kids music channels (generally compilations featuring a single artist), but there's less of a sense of kids music as a genre. It's great that that avenue exists for artists, but if you're a parent, you're unlikely to stumble across kids music serendipitously -- you have to seek it out, and most likely, seek out an artist you're already familiar with. And unfortunately for musicians, the amount that YouTube pays per stream is waaaaaay less than even places like Spotify, which many artists already feel pays too little. (If the numbers in the linked article are accurate, a YouTube creator would have to get 150,000 views on a video just to earn $300.)

So after all this hand-wringing, I am going to end with a list of TV shows/channels on the internet that feature kids musicians. If you are one of those dedicated parents looking for serialized shows, or at least a channel that isn't merely videos, this list is for you. Note that I'm deliberately excluding YouTube artist channels such as those from Laurie Berkner, Caspar Babypants, and Patty Shukla that are very popular (Shukla has 385 million views), but aren't featuring shows.

If you're a kids musician whose show has been left off this list, drop me a line!

Ralph's World - Time Machine Guitar [YouTube]

A couple notes: 1) This show is well done -- it features Ralph and a group of puppets learning about music and (eventually) time travel adventures. It is in many ways reminiscent of Jack's Big Music Show. Ralph's been working on the show for a loooong time (his daughter Fiona is now also working on it), so I'm glad to see it finally reach public eyes and ears. 2) Ralph, update the playlist for episode #2!

Miss Nina - Miss Nina's Weekly Video Show [YouTube]

This is a simple show -- every Tuesday morning, Miss Nina posts a simple live-action singalong song. But it's probably that simplicity that's helped her attract more than 14,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, which makes her a star among YouTube kindie musicians.

Lloyd H. Miller - Ursa Major / Ursa Minor [Vimeo]

This is a serialized spy show for kids written and directed by Miller himself. It's low-tech, and there wasn't too much music in the episodes I saw, but fans of Miller (solo or in the Deedle Deedle Dees) may want to check it out.

Dan Zanes - Dan Zanes and Friends [YouTube]

A short-lived series from 2014 featuring, well, a day (a week? a month?) in the life of Dan Zanes, musician.

How Do We Sing? [YouTube]

Finally, How Do We Sing? is a wordless meditation on weighty topics -- dreams, motherhood, death -- as told through the eyes of three puppet characters. One of the co-creators (and puppeteer) is Chicago's Erin Flynn, thought of fondly 'round here for her Dreamer of Dreams album more than a decade ago and who also performed on the most recent Ella Jenkins album. How Do We Sing? is definitely not a bright, shiny, poppy piece -- it's meditative and doesn't feature "kids music" at all -- but may strike some viewers as beautiful. (If you're one such viewer, pitch in on their Kickstarter to make a full-length movie!)

Dad Jokes (Billy Kelly's "My First Comedy Album")

Kids music is filled with funny people, probably because the ability to make kids laugh is vital to survival in dealing with kids all day long. (Also probably because the ability to make yourself laugh is also vital to survival in dealing with kids all day long.) But in a world of funny people, only one person has earned the title Funniest Person in Kids Music, and that would be Billy Kelly.

Thank You for Joining the Happy Club cover

From the very first track of his very first album for kids ("This Is the First Song" off of 2009's Thank You for Joining the Happy Club), Kelly has amused listeners with his deadpan humor and occasionally meta-fictional takedowns of songwriting tropes. Over time his humor has swerved a bit from earnest to dark (something which he readily admits), and his albums have contained varying amounts of humorous and non-humorous material.

Is it possible to chart his albums on a matrix with those two axes? Yes. Will I do that for you here? No. Instead, I will use words in lieu of graphs, even though I love myself some graphs. (I honestly do.)

Is This Some Sort of Joke?, his second and most comedy-heavy musical album, required serious attention to process all the levels of humor being laid on the listener's plate. It was also in parts his darkest album (comparatively speaking -- it's still kids music) as it featured not one but two songs about the potential end of the planet and the human race.

Kelly's third album The Family Garden was his most earnest, a correction, or possibly overcorrection, to the joke-filled and dark approach on Joke?. It's not devoid of humor, but with songs celebrating gardens, American flags, and pen pals ("We Could Be Pen Pals," which featured Molly Ledford), it was definitely a detour from what Kelly's fans -- at least this one -- had grown accustomed to based on his previous two albums. The album does, however, underscore Kelly's basically optimistic nature, a nature that, while present on the first two albums (he sang a song with the Monkees' Davy Jones about the joy of getting a new haircut, after all, on Joke?), could be buried under the jokes and cleverness.

For my tastes, I think the two albums that followed -- 2013's Again! and his Grammy-nominated effort with Molly Ledford from the band Lunch Money, the 2015 album Trees -- were probably the high points thus far of his output. With Again!, Kelly melds the silly ("Ode to Butter") with the sweet ("There's Nothing Like My Town"), with nothing too mend-bending, except for "Don't Tell Me That I Don't Know What I Know (When You Know That You Don't Know What I Know That I Know)," which I'm still trying to work through the logic of.

And the universally-loved Trees finds Kelly's silly songs like "The National Tree of England" and "(It's Just a) Dumb Ol' Stick" nestled in amongst Ledford's earnest and tender rockers. Ledford, in fact, basically inserted herself into the album after Kelly had been talking about recording such an album for years. And it's amusing to hear Ledford's drier wit make Kelly laugh, like on the gentle putdown Ledford uses on "Coniferous Trees," a joke that it takes Kelly 4 or 5 seconds to hear ("I just got that," he chuckles while trying to continue to sing his verse.)

From there, Kelly's 2016 Welp (oh, that title -- that's a dad word, for sure) covers the same tonal ground that Again! covered, perhaps a little more comedic, and with slightly less of a poppy sound. The narrators on tracks like "If I Could Have Your Attention," "My First Protest Song," and "You Remember Steve," which lead off the album, sound like clueless buffoons, which isn't necessarily an approach your hear on a lot of kids music -- you hear buffoons, sure, but they're rarely the ones singing the music. But of course he does have earnest tracks, like "Might It Be Love?" (though I'll admit to probably preferring an earlier, robot-attacking, self-sabotaged attempt at the track).

But on his most recent album, Kelly decides to go all in with the comedy and go where no kids' musician has gone before -- the standup comedy club. The album titled My First Comedy Album is a misnomer, because most of his albums have been comedic at their core, but it is his first attempt at recording a show in a comedy club. (With a two juice-box minimum? Unclear.)

Billy Kelly is hardly the only artist to provide a healthy dose of humor on their albums for the single-digit set. Recess Monkey, for example, have been on the jokier end of the musical spectrum, and wrote an entire song ("Knocktopus") revolving around the first jokes most preschoolers learn -- knock-knock jokes. Josh and the Jamtones did an entire album called Bear Hunt that was essentially a long set of riffs loosely connected by songs that eventually became a movie, as if one of those two-guys-talking-in-front-of-a-microphone podcasts became an animated production. The latest Michael and the Rockness Monsters album Funny Faces features a handful of silly songs that harken back to the era of novelty songs. Cory Cullinan and Richard Perlmutter use comedy to carve an entrance for kids into classical music. And Eric Herman did an entire sketch and music comedy album titled The Incredibly Spaced-Out Adventures of Jupiter Jackson.

One thing you might notice scanning down that list is that it's made up entirely of males. And my perception is that guys tend to be given more leeway to do silly things in kids music, which means that female artists like Joanie Leeds, Sirius-XM's/Wow in the World's Mindy Thomas, or the much-missed-in-kindie Ashley Albert of The Jimmies who traffic in broader humor like their male counterparts above are more the exception. (And women such as Molly Ledford who use humor sometimes more subtly are often overlooked.) It's a little disappointing, to be sure.

Both lists above also highlight the fact that comedy crafted specifically for kids is pretty hard to find. Find someone to animate your jokes and craft a 6-, 11-, or 22-minute story around them, and you too can get your own development deal. But sketch comedy for kids, especially audio-only sketch comedy for kids, is reaaally hard to find. As best I can tell, the only folks doing that full-time are The Listies, who are based in Australia, so even though they tour a lot, it's probably too much to expect that they just criss-cross the United States week after week. (Note: I very much recommend listening to The Listies. Maybe they'll change their minds about the States.)

Into this void, then, jumps Billy Kelly, father of two, purveyor of dad jokes, whose puns earn groans from the audience (when was the last time you heard that on a comedy album?). And Kelly certainly does take a few opportunities to speak directly to the kids who are sitting in his mixed age audience, noting that he got them into the [comedy] club and noting that kids do, in fact, catch a break. Like, a lot.

But for the most part, Kelly trains his eye on more absurdist topics, like deciding to forego bird-watching for bird watcher-watching.

He eschews the often dense wordplay and allusion-filled approach of his music for a more laid-back take, like Steven Wright with a higher-pitched voice. (No complaints about airplane food or relationship woes, thankfully.) Kelly plays with the conventions of standup, humor which might work a little better with the adults who know when he's slightly subverting the form. And some bits like "Auditordium" start out sounding like they're just mistakes until you realize that they're well-plotted jokes.

Only once does he break down and turn to music as a frame for his comedy, and that's on the cut called "Dictionary." It's actually a recycled bit from Welp. The music isn't necessary at all for the basic structure of the jokes, though the structure of the song -- whereby the spoken jokes essentially fill the role of verses, and the wordless do-do-do-dooooos the chorus -- probably helps the listener process the jokes themselves, which require a little thinking.

The whole album requires a little thinking, actually. While there are definitely some simpler jokes on the album, this is not something that will amuse your kindergartener. Rather, it requires a level of attention and smarts that may even be out of the range of your second-grader. Unlike the Listies, Kelly offers no fart jokes. This is neither good nor bad, just noting that fart jokes are the fastest method known to science for getting a second-grader, especially a boy, to laugh. In some ways, My First... is most reminiscent of Is This Some Sort of Joke?, his most comedic album up 'til now and the one that needed the highest level of listener attention, though the humor is lighter in tone on this new album.

There are a ton of jokes on the 45-minute-long My First Comedy Album and with it Billy Kelly safely retains his title of Funniest Person in Kids Music, unlikely to give it up until he chooses to retire as GOAT. I hope that there's a second album of standup or pure comedy from him (current odds of him naming it My Second Comedy Album: 50/50?). But I like what happens when he works with artists like Ledford who pushed back on "Coniferous Trees" or with other musicians generally. So I also hope he continues working with others to produce funny stuff as well, because I think that feedback makes the humor sharper. Dad jokes work even better if there's an occasional mom or group of dads to offer up some eye rolls... or make an even worse dad joke. And if other dads and moms want record their own albums of comedy just for the kids and their adults, I think it's time it becomes an actual field.

Video: "Bird-Watcher Watching" - Billy Kelly

I once called Billy Kelly the Funniest Person in Kids Music, and that was against some tough competition.

So the release of My First Comedy Album, Kelly's (not my), er, first comedy album, while a departure, wasn't exactly a surprise. I wouldn't exactly call it "kids' comedy," but in its good nature, curse-free patter, and being devoid of first-date and airplane food jokes, it's certainly kid-adjacent.

You could stream the entire album to see if it makes you or kids chuckle or guffaw or chortle -- man, those are some great words -- but what if you only have about 40 seconds? Then I'd recommend his "Bird-Watcher Watching" bit, helpfully animated by Kelly himself, below.

Billy Kelly - "Bird-Watcher Watching" [YouTube]

Video: "Two Trees, Old Friends" - Molly Ledford & Billy Kelly

This video for "Two Trees, Old Friends," the sweet and wistful song from Molly Ledford & Billy Kelly's incredible album Trees is... well, I hesitate to describe it too much, because you and your kids will only get one chance to see it for the first time, and I firmly believe in the power of wonder and awe.

And I think that's what you might feel when you see this for the first time.

(Tip of the hat to Fort Psych, the Atlanta-based company who put together the video, and Lyon Forrest Hill, who directed and designed it.)

Molly Ledford & Billy Kelly - "Two Trees, Old Friends" [Vimeo]

Tim Kubart, Kids Music Grammy Winner, First Among Equals

In the insular world of kids music, news that Tim Kubart won at the 58th Grammys the award for Best Children's Album for his album Home spread quickly and was met with universal acclaim.

In part, it's because Home is a really good album, filled with as many big pop hooks as you might find on a Taylor Swift album.

But there were lots of good albums nominated (the Fids and Kamily Awards agreed with my own assessment), and this was a year in which I would have been satisfied with whichever of the five nominees -- which also included Molly Ledford and Billy Kelly, Lori Henriques, Gustafer Yellowgold, and Jose-Luis Orozco -- won this year's award.

Now, outside the kids music world, well, I'm going to assume that that outside world is pretty big judging by the number of hits my site's received in the past 18 hours or so on pages such as that Home album review up there and my rundown of the list of nominees.

That's why it's what Tim did after his name was called and he and his bandmates jogged down to the stage to accept the award is what will endear him for a looooong time to the rest of us who've spent years in this genre.

58th Children's Music Grammy nominees at Lucky Strike Live

In his speech, which you can view here, Tim thanks a kajillion people in the many different roles he plays -- at one point, after thanking the "Tambourine Army," Kubart says, "I know a lot of this doesn't make sense, but it does to a lot of people." Simply by naming his fellow nominees by name and giving a shout-out to the fact that they were all independent artists (and first-time Grammy nominees, to boot), Kubart gave a boost to the genre. I'm sure that the other four nominees were disappointed that they didn't win, but Kubart's good-hearted nature and generous speech made it easy for them on social media to congratulate Tim. (As somebody noted on Facebook in a status update, "my thumbs are broken from hitting 'Like' so much.") It was really a "first among equals" sort of moment, and while kids music has many good ambassadors, and needs them all (and more) to reach that wide world still unaware of the excellence in this field, there are few I can think of who wear that suit as well and as gracefully as Tim.

Jose-Luis Orozco and band at Lucky Strike Live, Feb. 13, 2016

I should note that, yes, I did party with Grammy nominees on Saturday. The five nominees all played 3-song sets in Hollywood at Lucky Strike Live for an audience of bouncing kids.

I hung out at the back for the most part, listening to musicians I'd known for many years. While I hesitate to call them "friends" because I respect the distance and perspective necessary to observe and critique the genre, these are musicians whose effort I respect and whose company is worth having. That photo I took above with the nominees all together? I saw similar photos from the ceremony itself on Monday. While I've had lots of mixed thoughts over the years about the Grammy Awards and their value, if they can bring together artists once a year on the West Coast to party and celebrate what they do, then in my book, they've done enough.

58th Grammy Award Nominations for Best Children's Album

I am of mixed mind when it comes to the Grammys. I'm a fan, of course, of celebrating outstanding achievement in the kids' music world, but sometimes the nominees have been... interesting. Which isn't to say that we should celebrate or denigrate a process depending on how much we personally like or dislike the results, but given the tremendous fluctuation from year to year of what type of albums are getting nominated, in the runup to this morning's announcement of Grammy nominees, I deliberately kept a low-key attitude.

But, hey, setting aside any qualms I have about the Grammys and kids music generally, the list of nominees for Best Children's Album at the 58th Grammy Awards was announced this morning, and it is a fine, fine slate of nominees, including some of the best (and nicest) folks in the kids music genre. It features four newer artists and one legend, Jose-Luis Orozco, who, though his album tends somewhat more toward the folk/educational sound that may not catch as many modern listeners' ears as some of the other nominees here, is, as I said, a legend who I was surprised to find out earned his first Grammy nomination this morning. It's well-deserved.

In any case, here's a list of the five nominees and some links to let you explore further. The Grammys will be awarded Monday, February 15, with the awards in categories like Children's Album to be awarded earlier that weekend.

¡Come Bien! Eat Right!

Jose-Luis Orozco

[Review]

Bilingual album celebrating healthy eating, Orozco's first album on Smithsonian Folkways

Dark Pie Concerns

Gustafer Yellowgold

[Review]

Funny enough this should appear under Orozco's album -- this is all about food, too. But about as far away as possible from that album in style, lyrics, and just about everything else. Wonderful, but in its own way.