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

Interview: Molly Ledford and Billy Kelly

I like to think that Molly Ledford (of Lunch Money) and Billy Kelly (of Billy Kelly) met in the comments section of my NPR piece on Billy Kelly's "People Really Like Milk," but the truth is, they met some time before.

The duo's friendship has produced a wonderful new album, Trees, which will be released next month, on March 20, the first day of spring.  They chatted with me last week to talk about their friendship, recording the album, and a little bit, just a little bit, about trees themselves.

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Zooglobble: Normally I'd start off an interview with the question, "What are your first musical memories?," but instead, let me ask, "What are your first arboreal memories?"

Billy Kelly (BK): We had a mimosa tree in front of my house growing up.  I'd climb my tree, and I remember my grandma sitting in a chair with a white afghan in her lap, saying that I climbed "he's like a little monkey."  And then my dad cut it down -- he said mimosa trees were dirty, so he cut it down.  Not while I was in it.

Molly Ledford (ML): That's the origin story of why Billy is now very flip.

BK: "They cut down his first tree…"

ML: We had a magnolia tree.  I was never a good climber -- I could climb on top a fence nearby, and then get onto a branch, and that was as far as I could climb.  So in "Angel Oak," I could climb that tree, but it's illegal [to do so].  The song "By the Roots" my brother and I would roll Matchbox sportscars around with all these exposed roots.

BK: So that's what that song's about!  I pictured you crashing an actual Lamborghini into the tree… I remember we also had a big oak tree.  I'll tell you at the beginning of the story that Dad cut that one down, too, a couple months ago.  It had a big branch that had a horizontal branch that he hung a climbing rope for that.  He'd say to us, while we were climbing, "You don't want to fall, right?  So you won't."  That dispelled fear of heights that I had as a kid.  Too much, really.  It came back to me when I was 35, and I won't go any higher than a stepladder.  So I'd use the tree to hide from people.  Somebody would come over who I didn't want to play with, and I'd climb 50 feet in the air while my mom was calling, "Billy, your friends are here…."  I should write about that for Trees, Volume 2.  She never takes the bait every time I mention it.

ML: Hey, I've already written a couple songs!

How did the two of you meet?

MK: Well, we met because you posted a clip of the video in progress of "People Really Like Milk."  I thought, "Hey, that's really cool, I'm going to say 'hi' to that person right now" and I reached out to him and bought his record and he thought of me as a nice, crazy fan until he figured it out and we've been talking shop ever since and enjoying each other's sense of humor.

Fast forward a few years, he said he was writing an album about trees.  I've often along the way as work-avoidance behaviors, messed in other people's business instead of doing what I need to be doing.  I said, "Here's a trees song" and I wrote "Standing By You, Sapling," and offered it up to him…  He said, "Hey, you want to do this with me?" and I said, "Heck, yeah!"  Before that we wrote "Pen Pals" together,

BK: I sent some lyrics, then she wrote a verse in about ten minutes.  So I asked, "Do you want to record this with me?"

ML: And I was just having fun writing the words, but I said, "Sure!"

BK: Molly bought [Thank You for Joining the] Happy Club and the e-mail came in with the subject "Lunch Money" -- I still have it.  That's all it said in the "from" line in the e-mail.  It was the first album I ever sold to a stranger.  At the time, I thought it was weird.  It was an adult e-mailing, buying it and not making any mention of kids and it says "lunch money" for no reason.

ML: It was just the address...

BK: Which I know now as I see about 42 e-mails in my inbox that just say "lunch money." About a week later, I started snooping around and I realized who this was, and I reached out to her…  You know, you [Stefan] tried to introduce me once to someone else via e-mail.  It didn't work out at all.  I think he was too similar to me.  Molly knows everybody in the kindie scene  For a while, I kind of fancied myself the Howard Hughes of kids music.

What was the genesis of Trees specifically?

BK: I had written the opening song called "Trees."  We moved into our new house about 4 years ago and there's this massive, massive tree in our yard, a silver maple.  When you walk past the tree -- it reminded me of that big blue whale that's hanging in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.  That awe-inspiring feeling you get walking under.  So I wrote that song, "Trees," and then I afterward wrote "(It's Just a) Dumb Ol' Stick" and "Bonsai."  And that was as far as I got.  Molly was so encouraging.  I hope I'm encouraging to her, but mainly I hope she's encouraging to me.  But I didn't get anywhere .  I put "Bonsai" out [on Again!] because I wanted to get it out there.  Then Molly wrote "Standing By You, Sapling"… And I said, "We should do this."  I should do it with my pal Molly who lives in South Carolina and maybe we'd get to spend time with each other.

ML: There was talk of working with Dean [Jones, producer of Trees].  Normally I'm making records at home with all the other responsibility… Almost like a retreat of song recording sounded like the grand prize.

I've come to decide that a good part of the benefits of vacations -- even working ones where you're just working away from home -- is that you don't have to do all the routine things you'd normally do at home.  You don't have to worry about the garbage or the dishes or the laundry or making sure the kids get off to school OK in the morning.

BK: This is why the staycation will never take over the vacation.

How did the recording process for Trees work?

ML: Robert Drake from WXPN and Kids Corner and KindieComm heard we were doing Trees and asked us to do 15 minutes at KindieComm [in 2014].  I went to Lewisburg to practice some songs with him, so it wouldn't be all be new when we got up on stage.

We left the possibility of working together on the songs on the table, but I don't write much with other people.  So we were sending stuff back and forth, supporting each other's songs.

When we recorded, we brought people out of their comfort zones.  That was where the fact that Dean and Billy are really good musicians helped.

BK: Yeah, that's where the collaboration came in.  I'm flip, Molly's emotional.  For the song "Here Come the Trees," for example, [there's a spoken-word part, and] they tried to get me to talk in just a normal voice.  Molly turned off the light [in the recording studio] and just used a flashlight to help encourage me to be myself.  Or on "The Dichotomous Key," which has a really fast, high-pitched part for Molly to sing.

ML: It was like we were all leaning over the same car engine.  All three of us are bandleaders of our own projects, so we'd bring in our own ideas on arrangements… It was suggested that everybody should sing together, like at a funeral, for "Count Your Rings."  That was weird.

BK: We were literally standing together, like at a funeral.  We were so serious.

ML: There were other points where we were dancing around [Billy], on "I, Wood."

BK: While I was doing my Tom Jones impression...

ML: We were feeding off each other.

BK: The whole week was so fun.  They'd be dancing around me, trying not to make the floorboards creak.  It really was a three-way split.

How much did you know about trees before writing and recording the album?  Did you check out a book on California?  [That, readers, is a shout-out to "Coniferous Trees."]

BK: Hah!  Yes, we checked out some books.  Years ago, I was a birdwatcher, and so learned some about trees through that.  I had a casual interest in trees, but by no means was I am expert.  My songs [on the album] were more info-driven and on things that I didn't know [when I started].

ML: I don't really know much about trees -- I thought I would learn more when I started this project.

It's funny, when we announced the project, we'd get letters or posts from people who, in all seriousness, would say things like, "I'm sure you're going to do the birch."

BK: "The willow!"

ML: So on "Trees," which leads off the album, Billy gave me the more dreamy, less technical lines, which really set up the whole structure of the album…  On "Coniferous Tree," his instructions when he gave me the lyrics were that I should make it as difficult as possible for him.

BK: She was supposed to be the Fozzie Bear to my Kermit

ML: So there was the script, and I was really sick that wick.  We stayed with Rachel Loshak (singer and wife of Gustafer Yellowgold creator Morgan Taylor), and she took care of me and was such a mom to me and would send me with concoctions.  I was in a bit of a daze.  I'd kind of lost my place in some of the songs.

BK: I'd get a little frustrated with her interruptions, and then I'd remember that my instructions to her were "Try To Ruin The Song."

ML: I like to think of it as, "That's Molly, daydreaming" and there's Billy, trying to provide real information.

So what from this experience do you take away into the rest of your recording life?

BK: I want to be first and I want to be sincere?  Can I? I love my studio here, working with my band, but the experience of this was one in a million.  The whole week was great, Dean was on point the whole time.  The takeaway was something like this might not happen again -- it was magic and creative.  We talk often about working together on other things, but I don't know if we could recapture it.  Even if we didn't record anything, the week was worth it.

ML: For me, it's the power of working with other people who are also writers of words, of melodies.  It was kind of electric.

It had to happen fast.  Sometimes there's the danger of taking a song and everybody knows it so well, it's lost that brand-new magic.  I've learned that the first time you sing a song, that's the take you want.  Redoing it, you can't recapture the magic, you lose touch with the magic.  I'd tell Dean, "This isn't practice… let's record the vocal just in case."

BK: Half the album is probably first takes.

ML: We did one take "Angel Oak," Count Your Rings," "Acorns" -- the first takes had so much of what they had to have.  We did those songs live.  On "To the Woods," we learned the song together… It was so fun what I want to take away from it in [other] times is to do my best to have that live quality in recording and not get too bogged down in click tracks and having everybody taking their turn.

BK: It was really interesting have three leaders… and no fights.

​Photo credits: J.P. Stephens (Lumos Studios)

Interview Sandra Velasquez (Moona Luna)

Up above in the title for this interview, I've written "Moona Luna" after Sandra Velasquez, because if you're reading this website, you're probably most familiar with the New York-based Velasquez as the mastermind behind the bilingual Spanish kindie band.

But like many musicians, Velasquez wears a number of hats, and so it's just as likely that the intrepid Google-r will eventually find their way to this interview because they're fans of Velasquez's band Pistolera, the Spanish-language band she founded in 2005.

Or maybe you grooved to "Cheerleader," the leadoff single from SLV, the band featuring Velasquez and multi-instrumentalist Sean Dixon.

So there are a lot of reasons to listen to Velasquez, and I'm offering you one more -- the interview below, completed while Velasquez was on tour, and in which she talks about starting her musical life as a reluctant keyboardist, the impact of songwriting on her life, and the different audiences she plays to.

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Zooglobble: What are your first musical memories?

Sandra Velasquez: I was forced to play piano as a child. So my earliest musical memories of are being forced to practice and playing piano recitals in lace dresses.  I begged my parents to let me quit piano, which they did when I was 13. I bought my first electric guitar and started taking lessons immediately to learn all my favorite Nirvana, Hendrix, and other rock songs. Incidentally, the first band I played in when I was fifteen was as a keyboardist. We mostly practiced instead of gigging. Those were wonderful years because we were so naive in our freedom.

What inspired you to form Pistolera?

I moved to New York City the day after I graduated from music school in 1999 and spent that first summer completely in shock of the lack of Mexican and/or (more importantly) Chicano culture.  I always said that I had I stayed in California I would have just played in a rock band. I started Pistolera out of a longing for trucks driving by with accordion melodies blaring out of them, for taco shops with banda music leaking out of the kitchen. But of course being a rocker at heart, Pistolera was always a blend. Latin music with rock attitude. 

How did the birth of your daughter inspire Moona Luna?

I could have never started Moona Luna without my daughter. I would not have known what to write about! I am the kind of songwriter that writes from personal experiences. I can't make stuff up. 

What have you enjoyed about writing songs for Moona Luna as compared to writing them for Pistolera?  What has been more challenging?

Writing for Moona Luna has taught me that at the end of the day I am a songwriter. Not just a songwriter for Pistolera, or for one demographic. I enjoy writing songs. I'm addicted to melodies. Writing a good song can be challenging no matter who you are writing for. Some songs flow out easily and others you have to work on, put aside, and work on some more. I did find that giving myself a theme for the second Moona Luna album (Vamos, Let's Go!) helped me write.

Has your songwriting for families changed as your daughter has grown older?  As you've grown older?

Now that I have multiple bands I have found that the songwriting just changes with time regardless. There is a the perception that I as the songwriter change the music, but lately I have been feeling like it's the music that changes me. I grow through the music.  It is all equally valid and growth-inducing. 

This may be difficult to answer, but are your Moona Luna audiences mostly filled with families for whom English is a second language, or are they more families for whom English is their primary language?

It really depends on the show. We did a residency in Santa Barbara where we played for underprivileged communities and most were bilingual if not mostly Spanish speakers. This may sound sad, but going to concerts at $15 a pop tend to be less accessible financially to families who do not speak English. When we play free city parks concerts in New York City the non-English speakers tend to be the childcare workers.  This has been my experience. 

Are there gaps that you see (in terms of musical styles, subjects, audiences) that "kindie" doesn't serve well enough?

Kindie audiences, or more specifically, kids, don't tend to favor dark or slow music in a live show scenario. This is just my experience with my own 7-year-old daughter. She likes upbeat music. I do too, but I also love slow, moody, minor and diminished chord music. This is why it's great to have multiple projects because it's hard to satisfy all of my musical cravings with just one band. If I just did Moona Luna I would feel more like an entertainer. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I don't always feel cheery -- do you? It would be unsatisfying for me if my only musical experience was to put on a happy face and dance. I have many moods and thankfully, three bands to express them all. 

You recently released a song -- "Together" -- with Secret Agent 23 Skidoo.  Are there other musicians you and Moona Luna would love to work with?

I loved collaborating with Skidoo. I heard his voice in my head when I wrote the song so I was pretty happy that he agreed to do it. I really love Lori Henriques' new album. She would be fun to collaborate with. 

You have lots of ongoing projects going on -- Moona Luna, Pistolera, your solo album -- what's next?

At the moment I am really focused on SLV, which in the beginning was billed as my "solo project" but it's not really that, though the band name is my initials! It's really a new band and an equal collaboration with my drummer Sean Dixon, who is the drummer for the experimental electronic band Zammuto. (Check them out!). Since we recorded and released an EP with Meshell Ndegeocello in 2013, we have been working on our debut album. It's been over a year and I'm happy to say it's done and the first music video is filmed. It will come out this spring and you can expect to see us on tour this summer. I've started a new Moona Luna album too and hope to escape the cold of NYC and finish the songwriting part of it in February somewhere warm.

Photo credits: Shervin Lainez (Sandra Velasquez), M. Sharkey (Moona Luna)

How I Got Here: Joanie Leeds (Jonatha Brooke: Plumb)

I'll be honest -- when I asked New York City musician Joanie Leeds to write a "How I Got Here" piece on I was half-expecting something about Phish, whom Leeds has traveled further to see than I've ever traveled to see a band.

But since the series is about albums that influenced kindie musicians as musicians, the line from jamband to crafter of poppy melodies for kids is unclear, and, sure enough, Leeds' submission was far afield from Phish -- it's Jonatha Brooke's 1995 album Plumb.

Leeds is releasing her sixth album for families, Good Egg, this week, but even with a full schedule of album release activities, she still took the time to writeabout how Brooke's production, music, and lyric, especially on that 1995 album, inspired Leeds early in her career... and how their paths eventually crossed.

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Ever since I was little, I grew up listening to 105.9, the Classic Rock station in Miami, Florida. To this day, when I’m on tour and pass a classic rock channel in a new city, I can’t help but tune in and listen to that gritty goodness. The screeching voices of AC/DC, the vocal range on Robert Plant, and Eric Clapton’s complex guitar solos make me feel empowered.

In 10th grade when I started learning to play the guitar, I noticed the lack of female-led bands in my music of choice and in wanting to find music that sounded more like my own voice so I could strum along, I turned to strong female singer/songwriters like Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell, Sheryl Crow, Ani DiFranco, Paula Cole, The Indigo Girls, Alanis Morisette and Shawn Colvin. These ladies got me through high school but when I went to college and started writing my own original music, my heart skipped a beat when I first laid ears on Jonatha Brooke. 

Most would categorize Jonatha as a folk-rock singer, but truth be told she jumps from genre to genre on every CD she releases. The CD that changed my life as a songwriter was Plumb. From the moment those drums pounded and guitars strummed on the "Nothing Sacred" intro and her powerful soprano, shrilly but soothing, weaved in and out through the octaves effortlessly, I was hooked. The pad on the background voices was so impressive. I always wondered, “did she come up with that on her own or did the producer? It’s SO brilliant.” Then came in “Where Where You” with it’s rockin’ country flair loaded with hooks, harmonies and rhythmic delicacies a la Bonnie Raitt. Her lyrics spoke to me and I knew that my own songwriting needed to come a long way until I would be satisfied. It would be years before I started writing music for children but I was leaning the ropes, the songwriting tools that would catapult my creative juices and soul. 

At the time, I was writing pop music, mostly about heartbreak and finding love as many do in their late teens and early 20s. Jonatha was the queen of digging deep with her stories of relationships and life gone awry so I studied her techniques. She wasn’t all breakup tunes, though. She quoted the Declaration of Independence in her song ‘War’ and ended the CD with a bagpipe infused "Andrew Duffy’s Jig."

This was inspiring to me because I wanted to be a singer/songwriter that couldn’t be dragged into the dreaded genre box. I studied the way she hammered her guitar strings in a percussive way on songs like "No Better" and “West Point” but then tugged at your heartstrings on the piano, guitar and accordion-drenched, "Inconsolable." I would listen to this particular song on repeat and just cry. “Cause you were the one sure thing / The one sure thing / Maybe I’m not crazy just inconsolable.”  She made me want to start using a dictionary and thesaurus when I wrote my own tunes and work harder on furthering my creativity in my lyric writing. I picked up a rhyming dictionary so that I could explore new words and sounds if I got stuck on a lyric. 

When I wrote songs, I would typically sit with a tape recorder (now my iPhone), my guitar or piano, think about a topic I wanted to write about, then start playing chords. Within minutes, the words, melody and chords would all come out at the same time. To this day, this is still my technique.  Many songwriters draw upon life experiences to create the best art and Jonatha is a shining example of turning pain into power. I always aspire to do the same. She plays a ton of instruments (guitar, piano, bass, drums…) and this always impressed me beyond words. 

Years later, I was playing at a children’s concert and was speaking with a parent who found out I was a huge Jonatha fan and it turned out, they are best friends. I nearly fell off my chair when she told me. I was shocked when this parent gave me Jonatha’s cell phone number and told me to call her.  Later that week I had tickets to a Woody Guthrie Huntington’s Disease tribute in which she was performing. Woody suffered from the debilitating disease and before the show Jonatha invited me to chat with her. She told me all about her mother who was suffering from another degenerative disease, most likely Alzheimer’s Disease, and how she had to run right home after the performance to get back to caring for her mom. I was so impressed by her strength and dedication.

A few years later, as I was working on my 5th children’s CD Bandwagon with producer Dean Jones. I wrote a song called "Family Tree." The inspiration came from my grandmother, Sylvia Nusinov, a genealogist who has traced our family tree back many generations (which is difficult if you are from originally from Europe and members have perished in the Holocaust). I had just found out that Jonatha’s mother had passed away and she was writing a self starring one woman musical about her mother’s life, My Mother Has 4 Noses (Tangent… I actually saw it this year it at a GRAMMY event with Okee Dokee Brother Justin Lansing - it was incredible!).  When I penned the song, knowing how close Jonatha was with her mother, I wrote at the bottom of the page “Jonatha Brooke maybe sing harmonies?!?!?!” 

I sent her my demo via email, left her a voicemail and she actually returned my call and said she would love to do it. FREAKOUT! I couldn’t believe my songwriting hero was going to sing on my record. I invited her to the studio and as always, I was blown away by her unbelievable talent. She is also one of the coolest people I’ve ever met and she made me laugh a lot. I also literally broke out in hives during the session because I was so nervous to direct her! "Family Tree" went on to win 1st place in the USA Songwriting Competition which was a major songwriting accomplishment of mine. 

I really do have Jonatha to thank for shaping my songwriting career, going WAY beyond "Family Tree."

Interview: Rainbow Beast and Rock Band Land

Describing Rock Band Land as a songwriting class for preschoolers and early elementary school students seems like such a poor description of the group pictured above.  You know, the ones standing in front of archery targets with definitely-not-apples on their heads and significant amounts of eye makeup, just like every preschool songwriting teacher, right?

But before I launch into this interview with the San Francisco-based group, I think it's important to understand at its core what they do so that you're better able to understand the flights of fancy they lead.  That's Brian Gorman, drummer and creator/co-director of Rock Band Land (RBL) on the left, and Marcus Stoesz, guitarist/keyboardist and RBL co-director on the right.  Together they head up RBL, which transforms into Rainbow Beast when bassist Jen Aldrich joins the two of them for recordings and live shows.

Now that you have your bearings, prepare to lose them, as the RBL and Rainbow Beast process is nothing like any songwriting class you've ever taken, either at age 5 or 35.

Zooglobble: What are your first musical memories?

Brian Gorman: I grew up in a loud, large family. My parents were never really into music, but it was the most important thing ever to my older brother and I. I remember being about 5 or 6 and we, and a group of our friends, had a Queen 45. I think it was "We Are The Champions," and we would listen to it relentlessly in my friend's backyard. We all agreed that we would each take turns sharing the record. We destroyed it within a week. 

Marcus Stoesz: I spent a lot of time hearing songs in church when I was really young, but the first music that actually captured my imagination were Casio keyboard demos and rhythms. I didn't realize until much later in life that these were based on actual songs and styles of music, I just thought that this little machine was a genius device. I started taking proper piano lessons at 7, and I can still play my first recital piece, "Ballade" by Friedrich Bürgmuller.

Jen Aldrich: One of my first strong musical memories is of listening to Cat Stevens' song "Moonshadow" many times over. It was the first song that really got under my skin and put down roots. There was something both creepy and comforting about it, and it was my first real awakening to the visceral power of music. 

When did you first start writing songs?

Brian: I was an avid music fan long before I realized that I too could actually create this magic. I didn't start writing songs till I was in my twenties. I was living in Japan and playing in a busking band of international misfits. We were writing really ambitious material - stuff that was way out of our ability to play - but we did a decent job of it and had an unbelievable amount of fun. 

Marcus: I was lucky enough to have a full upright piano in my living room, so I would spend a lot of time tinkering with it when I was really young. I started making up songs when I was 6 years old. I relished in creating variations on "Heart and Soul", because you could play just about anything over that progression. When I picked up the guitar in the 7th grade, I pretty much made up everything that I taught myself, just combining different chords that I found interesting. I think I wrote my first proper rock song in the 8th grade.

What was the inspiration for Rock Band Land?  Was it hard to convince parents to bring kids to a music-writing-focused workshop/class as opposed to one where the kids mostly just play music?

Brian: I started what later became Rock Band Land while working as a touring musician and preschool teacher. I was unimpressed with what I heard people encouraging kids to listen to and selfishly was going mad listening to sugary sweet music that I thought underestimated my students' intelligence and artistic sensibilities. At first it was an experiment: one afterschool extracurricular program just to see what would happen if I took some of the kids' ideas and help them shape them into a song. This was very much the rough and loose beginnings of what Marcus and I would later refine.

We have been very lucky. Rock Band Land has taken zero convincing. All of our advertisement has been done via word of mouth. The fun that we have in RBL is infectious; any kid who is in the audience of one of our The Big Shows (the culminating show for our Rock Out classes) wants to join one of our bands. 

Marcus: Brian answers the first question most fully, but the simple answer to your second question is "no".

Can you give a very broad overview of how you work with the kids to develop the songs?

Brian: In the second week of a Rock Out [class] we brainstorm and collect musical and narrative ideas for what will later become that band's song and story.

For the music, we discuss the difference between music and noise: noise are sounds randomly coming together without any specific thought or intention behind them and music is collection of sounds that have been intentionally assembled to rock your face off.

Though it's a bit of an oversimplification, we use the idea that all music is based in patterns, so when a rocker offers up a rhythmic or melodic idea to be considered for the song it has to be in a repeated pattern - this can be just one note played in a specific rhythm, the relation of a few notes creating a simple melody, or more involved chord progressions. We write down or record ever idea and generally before we even finish the rock out session Marcus, Rock Band Land's Maestro, is already stitching together the ideas of different rockers and the music for the song starts to come together.

The story for the song, and what will also be the basis song's lyrical content, is written with the entire band after we collect the musical ideas. The process is entirely led by the rockers' ideas and interests. We have 4 basic rules that guide us through the process:

- The story must be original

- Anything can happen in a Rock Band Land story, but its message must have some sense of redemption

- Potty words are hilarious, but not allowed in the stories because once we go down Poop Road there is no coming back (occasionally a diaper or some underwear will make it in the story, usually as some comic relief at the height of some tense spot in the story arc)

- If a rocker doesn't like an idea that someone else has suggested, it is their responsibility to change the idea into something that they think is better. This is possibly the most important rule for our stories as it makes each member of the band accountable to themselves to find something that they like in the story, to better it if they think it is lacking, and it sets up a dynamic of respect for each others' ideas even if we don't agree on a specific point.

Rock Band Land is largely an exercise in improvised creative collaboration. The first rule of improvising with others is to take whatever your partners are saying or doing and say, "Yes, and..." and then you build on whatever they just offered. This 4th rule of our story writing is basically our rockers always saying, "Yes, and..." and thereby supporting their bandmates' creativity and the process itself.

Marcus: Brian and I both lead different sections of the creation process, namely the musical idea collecting section, which I lead, and the story writing section, which Brian leads. Since we work with really young kids, most of them don't necessarily have the know-how to create cohesive parts but they do know what patterns are, and I've heard some really intricate patterns come out of the mouths or fingers of a 5 year old. We spend about 30 minutes jamming and listening to each other play different instruments, and by the end of that process I have a good idea of what the key or mode will be, the tempo, some of the melodies, etc.

After going through the story writing process, Brian and I take everything we have learned and been inspired by and then write the songs. We bring the songs back to the kids the next week, and they can hear some of the parts they contributed in the context of a fun and engaging song. 

What's the hardest part of the process for you? What's the most fun?

Brian: The hardest part is balancing the infinite amount of creativity and projects that pour like hot lava from the great Rock Band Land volcano with the limited amount of time that we have on this earth. Rock Band Land is rich with ideas and causes Rainbow Beast to be an exceedingly prolific band. We are very lucky for that and it's paramount to us that the quality of everything that we do and make for our rockers and with our rockers stays extremely high. Sometimes the press of time can threaten those high standards, but fortunately we've always found a way to pull it off. 

I honestly love every bit of our process, but there is nothing like that moment when the band's story all of the sudden coalesces from a series of seemingly random ideas into a piece of collective art. It feels very much like watching something come to life. It's magic. 

Marcus: The hardest part for me is wrapping my head around the sheer volume of songwriting put forth in the 2nd week of class. Often times I worry that a song isn't cohesive enough, or too long, or too wordy, and there's always a part of me that can't accept and wants to fix these perceived problems. This is pretty much impossible, because once the songs have been written, that ship has sailed. It's time to record scratch tracks and create Word documents, not rewrite the songs.

The upside to this is the feeling of relief I always get in the 4th week, when I start recording the rockers' voices and begin my guitar and Jen's bass overdubs, when the pieces of the puzzle all start falling into place. The recording session with the kids is my favorite point in the class. Leading them through the song, a song that they all know and love, always feels triumphant. I also love the quiet recording session I have at home, recording keyboard or guitar overdubs, when I can let my creativity run free.

Has writing songs with kids affected your music-making and writing for adults?

Brian: Without a doubt, creating with kids under the simple rules that we have in Rock Band Land, has made me a better collaborator and artist in general. I have long played in a math-y, progressive band called Tartufi. For years we pushed ourselves as hard as we could to write and arrange wildly complex, layered music. What I have learned from RBL and Rainbow Beast is the great value in letting simple ideas shine through.

My writing is has been freed by our process in Rock Band Land. I rarely feel inhibited or experience any sort of writer's block. In the past I may have been attached to my words and afraid to edit. Now everything is fair game and if something doesn't work out I just move on and create something else.   

Marcus: I definitely think so, though it's hard to put into words. I think it reinforces my belief that often the most simple of musical choices are also often the best. The kids' spontaneity when rocking out is inspiring and refreshing. Also, because of the prolific nature of the Rock Band Land process, it's really honed my songwriting chops. 

An oft-repeated maxim in kids music is "don't talk down to kids."  What does that phrase mean to you?

Brian: It means to always remember that kids, no matter how cute you think they might be, are complex people too and their ideas matter and they deserve respect as individuals.

Marcus: I haven't heard much kids' music, but my first, kinda self-righteous response is, "Well then, start writing songs like that." I can't listen to much kids' music because it feels condescending, at least to me. 

Jen: To me, it means meeting kids at their level with honesty and respect. Answering their questions with as much real information as you can for their age, giving them room to express themselves without jumping in to finish their ideas or correct them, and engaging with their thoughts and ideas with the same curiosity and patience you would show to any other person you are just getting to know.

What's next for the band and the Rock Band Land program?

Brian: This week we are producing one of our The Big Shows. In the near future we have new sessions of Rock Out, summer camps, and our album release shows that we are in the production phases of right now. These shows will be massive, mutli-media spectacle of rock music, storytelling, comedy, and video - imagine a punk rock, DIY version of A Prairie Home Companion and that will give you some sense of what we are going for.

We are going to continue producing our Broadcast Podcast and all of the songs and stories from our regular session. In the spring we will continue our World Tour of San Francisco Schools where we bring the Rainbow Beast show to public schools. 

We are steadily working towards developing some sort of television / webcast show with our production partners The Werehaus. We have a few sketch comedy bits that we are currently producing as well as a new music video. 

In the next year I'd like for us to start exploring producing a book or a series of books based on the RBL stories, I'd like Rainbow Beast to develop into a touring act, I want to partner with animators to make some new shorts based on our stories. I'd like for us to create bite-size music lessons that we can share with kids online. I'd like for us to develop an interactive web magazine for kids. I'd like for every kid everywhere to be able to experience Rock Band Land and Rainbow Beast.

Marcus: We're going to keep writing hundreds of songs. We're going to uncover some great mysteries in the forest and in the glaciers of Columbia. We're going to spread out the Rock Band Land territory to link the worlds of the Muzziluhmonks and the Doldies. I'm going to keep singing as high as a 6-year-old. Brian will continue to throw up diamonds. Jen will continue to triumph over all the meanness in the world by overwhelming it with niceness. It will be awesome. 

Photo credits: Kristen Sard

Interview: Justin Roberts

One of the first interviews I ever conducted for this site was with Justin Roberts (that's him in the middle, surrounded by his Not Ready For Naptime Players).  And while I like to think I've had a good 7+ years in the meantime, Roberts' has been even better.  Four albums later, including the Grammy-nominated Jungle Gym and Roberts' most recent album, 2013's Recess, Roberts' career is stronger than ever, a kindie superstar respected by his fellow musicians and adored by his many fans.

So even though I've had a handful of conversations with him since then, I was looking forward to talking with him not only about his most recent album but also about making a career out of his music.  Roberts chatted by phone with me last week about food, emotions, and music-making, and what might come next.

Zooglobble: I usually start off my interviews with what your musical memories are from growing up, but I want to mix it up a bit and ask you what your favorite food memories are? 

Justin Roberts: That's pretty much what touring is for us -- figuring out where we're going to eat...

I think my favorite food memory is more nostalgic. It's from Michigan, where my grandmother lived from the age of 15 to 95.  We were touring up there, and some relatives offered us the use of a lake house to stay.  We went to a nearby restaurant there called the Sandpiper and the moment I stepped inside, I remembered it instantly.  One of those classic restaurants that feels like it's out of another time.

We were three people out of place in this restaurant, and the waitress talked with us about how we got there.  I said that this was my grandmother's home and when I mentioned her name, the waitress teared up, knew exactly who she was. 

How do you go about finding food when you're on the road?  

Checking Yelp, asking folks.  Once we played in Lafayatte [Louisiana], and someone recommended a restaurant in Breaux Bridge, with lemon ice box pie.  Now, I'm not a pie fan, but I ate that, and thought, "Oh, this is why people like pie." 

I remember Liam [Davis] and I were doing a lot of library shows in New York once.  We would accost the librarians to get suggestions.  This was on Long Island, near Marathon, Suffolk County, so it tended toward Italian. One place they recommended was Steve's Piccola Bussola.  We'll go out of our way for that.

We want to find local places -- there's a lot of tediousness to traveling, so finding a place that feels like home goes a long way.

It's been more than fifteen years since the release of Great Big Sun; you've probably been playing for kids for more than twenty years, right?

Yes, it was 1992 and I'd moved to Minneapolis to play with my band, Pimentos for Gus.  My first job as a preschool teacher, I told 'em I was a musician, so they asked me to play.  At first, I did stuff like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," but I got bored with that.  I was a big Van Morrison fan, so brought that in.

The first song of mine was "Giraffe/Nightingale," which I loved played for kids.  I thought it was sort of a boring song -- there's not a chorus, it isn't fast, but I remember going to the open house, and the 4-year-olds sang it by themselves.

We were studying apples, so I wrote "Apple Tree."  I was not even remotely thinking about [a career in kids music], but it felt really natural.  I kept writing kids' songs even after leaving the preschool job.  I really recorded Great Big Sun for myself.

So more than fifteen years after that, how do you challenge yourself?

As early as Not Naptime, I was thinking, "what else can I possibly write about?"

For me, the biggest change was that as the band began to develop, that caused other changes.  On Way Out, the presence of a drummer, of trumpet in writing changed things.

Technology, too -- it's easier to record yourself now.  To some extent with Meltdown!, and definitely beyond that, I write at the computer.  I'll create a poorly programmed drumbeat and bass [with guitar] -- keyboard and piano are more of a mystery to me.  The vocals will be layered.  It made it exciting to write.

With Lullaby, it was a bit of a switch -- how do you keep in interest with the tempo slow? The idea for "Polar Bear" I'd had many years before, but didn't do anything with it.  So I thought that instead of guitar, what if it were a cello?

You wouldn't have thought of that fifteen years ago...

Definitely.

I like bridges -- a lot of bridges on Recess are keyboards, which, like I said, are more of a mystery to me. As a result, the songs went in a different direction.  I've been doing some in-stores recently, and find I can't do some of them by myself. [Laughs]

Regarding challenges... the song "Otis" came out of an interest in writing a song about elevators.  It's actually become a fan favorite, but when I started, I thought, "how can you write a song that won't be boring?"  Then [drummer] Gerald [Dowd] mentioned the Otis Company, and I thought that was the hook.  Then I added in how the 13th floor is often missing, and I had this vision of heading downtown.

Some of the underlying themes... the underlying emotions are important.  With Recess, there are lots of songs about freedom, so you step outside the situation and think about how that applies.

You know, I've written exactly one kids' song, and that was for puppets, so emotional underpinning isn't my strength.  But more than any other kids' artist, your songs tap into some deep emotional well inside me.  As a songwriter, how do you tap into those emotions?

It's a little mysterious -- I'm tapping into some deep-seated emotions inside myself.  The story tells itself in some manner.  Like on "School's Out," there's that feeling of love.  The boy says "don't want to make you cry," even though this will be gone.  That has resonance.  The subjects they're studying, at first, they were just details I filled in at the beginning of the song -- knights in armor, math, and outer space, all standing tall.  But at the end, they mean something more.  Stuff comes out and it's emotionally resonant.

With "Trick or Treat," of course, I had to write a Halloween song, but don't care really about the holiday.  I had this memory of my brother sorting out candy, which became the line "put every piece in alphabetical order."  Or the "sky halfway dark," reflecting the passing of fall.  It's a fun rock song, but it's emotionally resonant to me.  It makes that connection for me.  When I hear others' reactions, I think, "Oh, good, that worked for me, but not just me."

It can be any other art -- the connections they make is why I keep songwriting.

I also wanted to say how I much I liked the comment you made in the Recess review about "Redbird" and the journey from freedom to unconditional love.  Because when I wrote the song, I wondered, does this make any sense on the album?  Did it feel right?  When I read your comment, I saw that it did.

Besides the emotional connection, you use dedications more than other musicians.  Some are pretty obvious, like the song about a dog ("Every Little Step") is dedicated to, well, your dog, but others?

Sometimes they're very specific.  Like on  "Sandcastle" [from Meltdown!] I wrote it thinking about a friend (an adult) who'd recently lost his mother.  I also dedicated "Doctor Doctor" [Way Out] to her, she was a doctor and also a friend to me. It's a song about a kid scared getting shots.  I also remembered how I felt when I'd been bit by a chipmunk and had to get shots.

Sometimes they're a bit of an afterthought.  On "Wild Ones" [from Lullaby]... I'd always had a connection with Pierre by Maurice Sendak.  Sendak died while I was working on that song, so it was a bit of a tribute to him.  I just remembered the joy of reading in bed... Have you seen the documentary Spike Jonze did on him [Tell Them Anything you Want] while filming Where the Wild Things Are?

I haven't, actually.

You should.  He was such a curmudgeon, his only friends are his dogs.  He says, "I didn't choose to write children's books -- this is just what I do."

There's something about kids' metaphors for grief about a friend's mother dying, or memories.  Something about that is emotionally resonant.  I love the connection it creates with families.

I'm getting a lots of notes from families with school starting saying they're playing "Giant Sized Butterflies."  I make a connection with myself, but some is so much of a surprise to me -- after the fact, I say, "Oh, wow."

So how are you going to challenge yourself in the future?

I've got a couple different ideas.  One is I've talked with a couple theatres about writing a musical, writing new songs.

I've long thought that Fountains of Wayne songs would make a great musical.

Yeah... you know, Robbie Fulks has been playing these shows on Monday night and he played "Prom Theme" -- that sort of aching nostalgia is like the high school version of what I'm trying to do, like the Beach Boys songs about the end of summer heartbreak.

And then for the longest time, I've wanted to do an album of Craig Wright songs.  A few years ago, I recorded him singing some unreleased songs of his.  He's one of my favorite songwriters.  Maybe after all this work for Lullaby and Recess I'll just book some studio time and record it.

And you're working on a couple books -- are they finished?

For one book the artwork is almost finished. It's by a great illustrator called Christian Robinson -- it'll be out a year from now.  (The other book has a story.)  It's taken awhile, but I've made some changes.  I've done it twice, and it's gotten better.  It's in rhyming verse and features a character in "Billy the Bully," Sally McCabe, and tells the story from her perspective.

Photo credit: Todd Rosenberg