Interview: Justin Roberts

Some of my favorite power-poppy songs for kids ("Recess," "Trick or Treat," My Imaginary Rhino") have come from kids music superstar Justin Roberts, but on his just-released album Lemonade, the Chicago-based musician took a slightly different songwriting approach.  For Lemonade, Roberts wrote and performed the music using the ukulele and took a more stripped-down approach to arranging it on record.

As a ukulele noodler, the idea that a longtime musician would pick up the ukulele as a new instrument and proceed to craft an entire album intrigued me.  In the interview, Roberts talk about which longtime kids duo got him into the ukulele, what it's like to write an album with a uke, and whether he'll be playing it in his upcoming fall shows (for example, in Albuquerque in November and New York's Symphony Space on December 10th).  Also, find out whether Roberts, like me, finds strumming to be the hardest ukulele skill to master.

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Zooglobble: What are your first ukulele memories?

Justin Roberts: Well, I always wanted to play the ukulele and I'd been talking with Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer for years about their amazing Uke Fest in Maryland. I was also getting advice about which ukulele to buy. About a year and a half ago, Cathy and Marcy were staying with me while they played shows in Chicago. I was trying out Marcy's personal uke and said "I think I'll just buy one of these." It was her Kala signature model. And she said, "You can keep it!" This was the ukulele that she had been playing and recording with for years and Cathy and I were a bit shocked. But after I realized she was serious, I knew I would have to actually learn to play. It turned out to be in the inspiration behind most of the songs on Lemonade.

You said you wanted to take a different approach in writing Lemonade than your other recent efforts -- why is that?

I decided I wanted to try to write somewhat simpler songs with a little more space and not as much wall of sound production as I'd done in the past. I wanted it to be welcoming like hearing people play on a front porch. My songs from the first several records are usually 3 or 4 chords and I love songs like that. I just made that my goal when writing songs for this record. Now, you will hear songs that could have been on Recess ("Dodgeball," for example), but we recorded it with upright bass and cardboard box snare instead of with a giant rock band. 

How did you decide to make the ukulele a central focus of your writing?

It was hard writing Lemonade after making a musical ("Hansel & Gretel") where all the content was handed to me.  I'd been writing mainly on my computer since "Meltdown," and I still did it that way this time around, but I tried to start with a song I could simply play on  the uke alone without a million other instruments. That sort of simplicity continued to be the theme as we recorded.  The goal of simplicity also helped me define the musicians we ended up asking to perform on the album (Robbie Fulks, Nora O'Connor, etc.).

How is writing or crafting music on a uke different from how you’ve written music before?

Since I only knew a few chords and sometimes didn't even know what chords I was playing as I moved my fingers around it was like returning to the simplicity of just learning a new instrument.

Justin Roberts Lemonade album cover

This might be a difficult question, but how do you think the music on Lemonade turned out differently as a result of how you wrote the music?

Well, I wasn't thinking of a five-piece rock bank when I wrote the songs and when I recorded the demos. So, I was more like, "Let's add a few notes of piano here or a hand clap there," rather than starting with bass and drums and adding guitars and ten vocal harmonies. I just tried to give the songs what they needed to make them interesting without sticking to a power pop band formula.

What was the hardest thing for you to master on the ukulele -- fingering, strumming, or something else?

I'm still trying to master the strumming. It's hard to not mimic holding a pick when you play with your fingers. But some of it came very naturally like the riff in "Long As I Got You." Every time I picked up the uke, that melody got played.

Are you planning to play the ukulele live?

I already am. It's so fun. I love to change between that and guitar.

Any secret ukulele-playing tips to share?

There are a lot of secrets on the internet. Whenever I was looking for a chord or wanted to learn something new, I turned there. You can also take lessons from Marcy Marxer, the master herself, on sites like TrueFire, Peghead Nation and others. That's a great way to learn.

hoto credit: Todd Rosenberg

Review: Dancin' in the Kitchen - Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer

From the opening lines of "Dancin' in the Kitchen," the title track to Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer's new album, it's clear the duo means business with the album's full title, Dancin' in the Kitchen: Songs for All Families.  "Dancin' in the kitchen / with mama and mommy / dancin' in the kitchen with me…" they sing, with the entire song celebrating families off all stripes -- two moms, two dads, all sorts of families.

Fink and Marxer -- who themselves married each other last year -- aren't the first kids' artists to record a song about people who identify as BGLTQ or even families with gay or lesbian parents, but the inclusion of that song in this album is a step towards including those families as part of the overall diversity of family types in this country (and kids music).  In fact, more than half of the album are not new songs, but songs from artists like Justin Roberts and Uncle Ruthie Buell that fit within the broad rubric of "family," which kindie godparent Marlo Thomas defines as "a feeling of belonging" (it's the definition that the duo says they like most).

The album works best when it's celebrating the everyday-ness of families -- on the title track, for example, or on "Birthday Pup," a Lou and Peter Berryman tune detailing two dogs' many yearly birthdays, which Marxer performs here with Riders in the Sky.  Fink's "Twins," recorded with the Canote Twins (actual identical twins), and their Irish medley with Cherish the Ladies "Howdy Little Newlycome/Ceilidh House Polka" are examples of what I think of as one of Fink and Marxer's greatest strengths -- finding other interesting artists to make music with, and plugging themselves in, as it were, to those musicians' talents, especially when those talents mesh well with Fink's and Marxer's bluegrass and roots music skills.

Some folks may find the balance of "message" (even if it's one they support wholeheartedly) and fun of the music sometimes tips uncomfortably toward the "message," but that may depend on whether or not you feel like you've heard your family's story -- or other families' stories -- before.  I'm a parent of an adopted child, for example, and while I'm glad John McCutcheon's "Happy Adoption Day" has been around for a couple decades (Fink and Marxer offer their own version here), I've always only been "meh" on the song itself.

The 58-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9.  I think Dancin' in the Kitchen will be popular for its content and message, and a fair number of the songs here would have been appropriate on a wide variety of albums, not just one labeled "family."  Even if every song doesn't work for me, I'm glad for this album's existence.  Recommended.

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

Review: Through the Woods - The Okee Dokee Brothers

There aren't many blockbuster albums in the world of kindie.  There are lots of albums that sell well, and lots of albums that achieve a level of critical popularity inside and outside the kindie world -- but something that combines parts, that's rare.

The Okee Dokee Brothers' Can You Canoe? was one of those rare albums.  It was critically acclaimed as the best album of 2012, winning the Grammy for best children's album of that year as well as taking the top spot in the Fids and Kamily Awards.  It also continued to be one of the few kindie albums (Non-Laurie Berkner/Elizabeth Mitchell/TMBG Division) to make Top 50 charts at iTunes and Amazon.

All of which is to say, Justin Lansing and Joe Mailander, those boys from Minnesota, had a mighty big task in following up that album. Did they succeed with Through the Woods: An Appalchian Adventure Album?

It's hard to say, precisely because of its predecessor's tremendous success. Are all the elements there? Yes -- a big-hearted spirit, a fancy for metaphor, tenderness leavened with humor, it's all there.  But I would be lying if I said I had the same instantaneous reaction to this new album as I did 2 years ago, and maybe the reason it's taken me 3 months to write this review is that I've been trying to figure out why.

The best answer I can come up with -- and it's not a great one, though it is an honest one -- is that it's mellower, its philosophy perhaps more inwardly focused.  Compared to Canoe, whose can-do attitude and celebration of exploration was front-and-center from the first note (my NPR review of the album is one my favorite pieces there and draws heavily on those themes), this new album, inspired by walks along the Appalchian Trail, generally sings in a more relaxed key.  The title track, featuring a lovely descending bass line, is the spiritual successor to the last album's title track, but most of the songs are more content to celebrate tiny moments -- dancing with neighbors in "Jamboree," the gentle love song "Evergreen," the ode to keeping things loose "Out of Tune."

The Brothers do a good job of reworking some well-known folk tunes like "Big Rock Candy Mountain" (featuring Hubby Jenkins from the Carolina Chocolate Drops) and "Hillbilly Willy," their version of "Old Dan Tucker."  Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer each make a separate appearance, with Marxer's banjo playing on "Fiddlestick Joe" of particular note. Dean Jones co-produces with Lansing and Mailander, and Jed Anderson with his usual light (and spot-on) touch.

The album will be most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9.  The album packaging, featuring art from Brandon Reese, is lovely -- it's the sort of thing that warms this physical product fan's heart.  (There is also a DVD with music videos and footage from the trip.)

So, in sum, Through the Woods is an excellent album, one that should provide your family with hours of very pleasurable listening.  If you came to love the band because of Can You Canoe? then you will continue to love them no less after this new album.  And if you, like me, love this album a little bit less, it's OK, too -- it's still pretty great.  Highly recommended.

Review: Got a Minute? - Milkshake

If it's true that behind (or under) many a kids' musician is a child who encouraged (passively or actively) that musician to start making music for families, what happens when those kids grow up?

It's a question we haven't really answered in the 21st century.  ​The Baltimore-area band Milkshake may be one of the first artists of Kindie New Wave to deal.  As the kids of Milkshake's duo Lisa Mathews and Mikel Gehl reach tweenage and even teenage status, the band has suggested that their fifth album, Got a Minute?​, will be their last.

Eleven years after the release of their debut Happy Songs​, the band's changed quite a bit.  Mathews and Gehl are still at the helm, of course, but the band's six people strong at this point and on the new album they bring in a bunch of guest artists, including fellow Marylanders Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer.  That first album had preschool-friendly songs like "Fingers & Toes," but now Milkshake's recording songs like "Girls Wanna Dance" (about middle school dances) and "Workin' Kid Blues" (about doing errands and earning money at age 12).

In some ways, the band hasn't changed -- it's still on the eager side of the kindie spectrum, even if, just as kids do as they mature, some of the song subjects look to the world outside the narrator (see "Baltimore" and "More Than Me").​  They've expanded their stylistic range over time (see on this album, for example, the hip-hop of "More Than Me" or the country of "Lookin Out the Window," the thoroughly sea chanty "We Just Wanna Have Fun," or even the instrumental "Seabreeze"), but for the most part they stick to making pop songs for growing kids.

If there is a weak link with the album it's that the inspiration for the "Got a Minute?" theme, their work for PBS Kids that comprises the final third or so of the album, sits uneasily with the rest of the album.  There's nothing horribly wrong with the songs, it's just that the 18-minute block of more simplistic 1-minute songs targeted at 4-year-olds feels tacked on at the end of a more ambitious (in many ways) 36-minute album that precedes it.

The first two-thirds of the album are most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 11; the last third for kids ages 5 and below.  You can hear several tracks at the band's music page.​

After I listened to Got a Minute? once, on future spins I tended to skip past the opening track, a kinda-barely funny skit where Lisa and Mikel try to get their band into the studio to record a song only to find out that each bandmate is busy.  Upon reflection, though, I think I figured out what Mathews and Gehl were doing with that track -- it was their take on how our kids, who once followed us everywhere, eventually move on to their own things -- and we parents need to move on too, in some way.  If Milkshake is indeed moving on to other things, they've left their kindie fans with one last album that will no doubt please them.  Recommended.

[Disclosure: I was provided a copy of the album for possible review.]​