In my last column, I talked about how to bring rock to your kids, and featured rock music for kids performed by bands who actually listen to rock music. And I hope you have a sore neck from (carefully) banging your collective heads.
“But Bill!” you protest. “Billy Bob! Billiam! Billy Budd! Dollar Bill! What about music for those of us who fear the distortion pedal or, indeed, any instruments that plug in? What about some bands for those of us who still haven’t forgiven Dylan for going electric?”
Have no fear, my pre-Newport-1965 friends. If you’ll cut it out with the Herman-Melville-inspired nicknames, I’ll hook you up.
Asylum Street Spankers: Mommy Says No! The Asylum Street Spankers, out of Austin, Texas, are generally not a band for kids. But their all-acoustic music (for years they publicly eschewed the “demon electricity” at live shows) has always had a sense of humor and fun that seemed like it could translate to kid-dom, and their late-’90s brunch shows in Austin earned them a lot of younger-set fans. Finally, the band recorded Mommy Says No!, and it’s a surprising, hilarious, and at-times-touching album. The musical style is in line with the Spankers’ prior work, which is to say it’s all over the place, but with a creamy nougat center of talent, humor, and honesty.
You haven’t heard Nirvana’s “Sliver” until you’ve heard it in high-power bluegrass, and the title track rocks harder than you’d think possible on all-acoustic instruments. But just a few tracks later, you’ll tear up when hearing Christina Marrs wistfully wanting to be a superhero’s helper in “Sidekick” (“Why don’t you just think about it? We could have cool matching outfits, and a secret best-friends’ handshake – it’d be so great.”). “Don’t Turn Out the Light” takes a familiar theme – fear of monsters in the dark – and makes it unmistakably the Spankers’, complete with a musical saw. Throw in a cover of Harry Nilsson’s “Think About Your Troubles,” the hilarious and almost-inappropriate “You Only Love Me for My Lunchbox” and its tongue-twister involving “pheasant pluckers,” and “Boogers,” and another half-dozen tracks without a single dud, and it’s the best family album of 2007 so far. AsylumStreetSpankers.com.
Peter Himmelman: My Green Kite. Okay, Himmelman isn’t really all that folky, and in fact this (his fourth record for kids) has plenty of electric guitar, drums, et al. But many of these poppy songs have a folk sensibility at their core, albeit with some quirkiness and an utter lack of condescension. Himmelman, a native of Minneapolis suburb St. Louis Park, shares his hometown with the Coen brothers, Kraig Johnson (Run Westy Run and Golden Smog), and Al Franken. Maybe they’re adding quirkiness to the water? In any event, this album is a good time throughout, with knowing lyrics about the smaller bits of life (“Have You Ever Really Looked at an Egg?” and “Feet” come to mind) and some touching songs about some of the more challenging parts of being a kid (“My Father’s an Accountant”). PeterHimmelman.com
Nerissa and Katryna Nields: All Together Now Singing in the Kitchen. This record, from the sister duo who led the popular folk band The Nields, is clearly the folkiest of my three selections. Having grown up singing in the kitchen with their parents, this western Massachusetts duo recruited various family members (including their lawyer dad) to record the whole record live, with no overdubs and no production tricks. The result is an immediate and intimate success, mostly made up of traditional songs and covers (Tom Paxton’s “Going to the Zoo,” Shel Silverstein’s “The Unicorn,” and the traditional “The Fox”) and a couple of lovely originals inspired by the next generation in the Nields family. For post-dinner or minivan sing-alongs, you can’t do much better than this. Nields.com
Other good picks: Ginger Hendrix (hilarious, cool, and accessible, GingerHendrix.com); Hullabaloo (“organic free-range folk” that’s a bucket of fun, HullabalooBand.com); Ben Rudnick and Friends (jam-band-inspired, goofy folk fun, with a great new record out this year, BenDRudnickAndFriends.com).
Bill Childs is a Minnesota native and law professor in western Massachusetts. He and his 7-year-old daughter produce a kids’ music radio show, “Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child,” weekly; check it out at SpareTheRock.com. Contact him at show@sparetherock.com and tell him other artists he should know about.
