Interview: Mr. Richard

Florida's Mr. Richard has no kids of his own, but he's got plenty of fans in the single-digit set. He has three albums of kids' music to his credit, the most recent being Polka Dot Puzzle, and a most devoted fanbase (which helped him take the 2008 KidVid Tournament crown for his "Cheese" video).

Mr. Richard (real name: Richard Peeples) recently sat down and answered a few questions about himself and his music. Read onward for his thoughts on his guitar influences, the problem with delayed gratifications and kids, and the most perfect pop song ever.

Zooglobble: What were your musical influences growing up?
Mr. Richard: When I was little, I knew all the words to “Bottle Of Wine” by the Fireballs, and my brother and I wore the grooves off our copy of “The Jungle Book”, which gave us an early appreciation of Louis Prima. Like most kids, I heard what my parents listened to on records and the radio, so that meant the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and all those great AM pop hits of the late 60’s/early 70’s.

When I started learning the guitar in 9th grade, I was totally into the Rolling Stones, so it was all about Keith Richards. He’s such a rhythm master. I also loved Hendrix and Brian May, but it was Keith’s licks I tried to copy, although my playing is closer to another hero, Dave Davies of the Kinks. However, I am first drawn to the words and emotion in a song, so I always ended up being the front man in bands, with better guitarists handling the gun-slinging duties.

Since you never stop “growing up”, other favorites are the Beach Boys, Elvis Costello, Replacements, Young Fresh Fellows, Wilco, Guided By Voices, and I am drawn to smart-alecks like Todd Snider and Randy Newman.

How did you find yourself playing kids' music?
I always enjoyed the company of kids, even when I was a teenager (which is totally uncool, I know), and worked in children’s theater in college. Working at Disney World puts you in front of lots of children, and in the National Park Service my fellow rangers knew I actually liked getting “stuck” with a school group.

In 1999, I landed a job at the Orlando Public Library as a storyteller, and that was the first time it occurred to me to combine my love of music with entertaining children. I began with traditional kids’ songs, and then performed covers of other children’s artists, which naturally led to writing my own tunes. I left the working world when my first album was finished, in 2004.

What do you prefer -- writing songs, recording songs, or playing them live?
All three are fun parts of the whole process. Writing is great because there are no rules: words first, then melody, or vice versa; there’s no one saying, “You can’t do that”. Recording is always such a journey of discovery, taking a rough sketch and turning it into something full and colorful. But to answer your question, playing your own songs live is such a blast, and when kids laugh and sing and dance to them, that’s the reward.

Where do you get inspiration for writing kids' songs? Has that become easier the longer you've played?
Many ideas are directly from children; listening to them (or eavesdropping), or anecdotes told by their parents. Other inspiration comes from my own childhood, trying to remember feelings and places and things, and frankly, I often think like a child. It’s a gift, really, to have a kid’s sense of wonderment about the world, although it has cost me a girlfriend or two in the past. And yes, writing for kids has become easier. My love of pop music serves me well in the melody department, and by the way, the most perfect pop song ever is “Head Over Heels” by the Go-Go’s, if you were wondering!

What's the hardest part about playing live for kids? The easiest?
Speaking as a full-blooded musician, the hardest part is showing up on time. That, and volume. The volume from the PA has to be low so as to not harm little ears, but loud enough to be heard over the moms’ talking. Any mom will tell you: they don’t get out enough, and when they see other moms, they have lots of catching up to do! So, the chatter level just gets higher and higher as a show proceeds, but I love it because that means they’re having a good time.

The easiest thing about one of my gigs is the kids just shout out the titles, so I don’t have to think about what’s next. Sometimes I do explain that when they are grown and go to a show, they may have to wait for their favorite song to appear near the end, but they usually don’t want to hear a speech about delayed gratification.

What are the differences between playing a small store/library show and something bigger (an outdoor show)? Which do you prefer?
Well, I like both, because of the differences. A small, intimate setting is great for kids to comment and ask questions face-to-face, and allows me to sort of play off that. It’s another thing entirely to have 500 elementary students in the cafetorium singing the chorus to “Underwear” acappella, waving their arms; that makes me feel like Bruce Springsteen. Oh, the power!

You have a very devoted fanbase, probably the most devoted I've seen -- what do you attribute that to?
It must be my charm and good looks! Actually they could best answer that; but kids like the songs, and nothing is more gratifying than playing to a totally new audience and having them embrace my tunes and dance. Plus I think I’m an honest performer, in that I’m just being myself, and everyone at a show is a part of it, like a gang of friends for that moment in time. Thanks, by the way, for mentioning my fans, I praise them in every interview I’ve done. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the moms (and dads) who bring the kids to my shows every week. I pinch myself when I think how lucky I am to do this for a living, and I owe it all to my loyal fans!

You still play in an "adult" band -- how has your relationship/ participation in the band changed since you've become increasingly busy with your kids' music?
To the point that it just isn’t happening any more. I play an average of 30 kids’ shows a month (I should mention that I don’t have children of my own), and at opposite hours of “regular” musicians. Grown-up shows are at 9, 10, 11 pm, and mine are 12 hours later. But my musician friends are totally supportive and love to play on my albums, my old friend Matt McWhirter being integral to my work.

The past six months I’ve been so lucky to have Rick and Rachel, a mom and dad (not married to each other) play drums and bass. They went from bringing their kids to see me to being on stage. Like good troupers, they love playing so much they even show up to play the non-paying bookstore gigs. So now I have a band of adults playing kiddie rock, which has always been a long-term goal, and we are able to play some of my rocking tunes that don’t really work when I’m the solo/acoustic guy.

What's next for you?
Onward and upward! Like any musician, I want my next album to be better than the last, my next show to reach more new fans, etc. The thought occurred to me that I could stay right here in Orlando and perform the same set for the next 20 years, because not only do kids love repetition, they are a renewable resource: new ones just keep coming along. But I want to share my music with as many families as possible, so more road trips are in my future. Fame and fortune are not as important as being part of kids having fun. It’s my mission on Earth.

Interview: Frances England

San Francisco's Frances England was a Zooglobble first -- the first-ever artist interview on this site. Since that time, England's debut Fascinating Creatures continued to win universal acclaim and England herself added a second child to her family. Two years later, her even-stronger follow-up Family Tree (review) seems certain to attract even more acclaim.

England recently answered some questions about what she's been doing the past couple years, how life has changed for her, and how it hasn't. Read on for Frances' trick to overcoming stage nervousness, the inspiration for "Animal Friends," and her plans for live shows.

Zooglobble: When we last talked 2 years ago, Fascinating Creatures was just beginning to get noticed in the world at large. Can you pinpoint a certain moment at which you said to yourself, "Oh, my, something really big is going on here"?
Frances England: Well, in the wide world of music I don’t know how big this all really is but definitely for me, what happened with Fascinating Creatures was shocking - probably because I had no expectations. Not too long after I began selling the CD online, I remember getting these emails saying that random people in Hong Kong were buying it, then it was Australia, and New Zealand and all these far away places.

And it was just really weird to think about how far this little homespun CD had gone, especially considering where it all got started – in our bathroom. (I wrote all of the songs for FC while my first son, Liam, was taking baths). I was also really blown away to be named the sole winner of the 2007 Oppenheim Award. As a mom, I’ve used that very recognizable seal of theirs to scout out quality products for years, so I was really honored by that.

How did life change for you as a result of Fascinating Creatures' success?
I guess the biggest change that occurred for me was that this record forced me out of my comfort zone in terms of performing and putting myself out there. I’ve always been a behind-the-scenes girl and have never relished being front and center. But suddenly, I was getting invited to come play at all of these great places and for the first year I just said, “Thanks, but no thanks.” I had just had my second son, Rowan, so I was really busy with the kids, but the truth was I was also incredibly nervous about getting up and singing for people.

But I had two big revelations that helped me get over that. First, I realized that I wanted my kids to see me overcome something I was afraid of. My son Liam knew how much I loved singing and playing guitar and definitely picked up on the fact that it was shyness and nerves that was keeping me from singing out for other people. So I thought, how am I ever going to encourage him to stretch himself to do something unknown or scary if I’m not modeling that myself.

The other big revelation was at my first public performance, which was at Enzo Garcia’s breakfast sing along here in San Francisco. Enzo had invited me to play a couple of sets and before going up to sing I told him how nervous I was. He told me not to worry – the kids would love it all. When I told him it was the parents that made me nervous, he said, “The parents aren’t here to watch you - they are here to watch their children respond to the music,” which was true and so comforting to me. I think it made me realize that performing this kind of music is not about any one person, but about a community coming together to celebrate something really fun and joyful. What a relief!

How did life not change for you?
Well as I mentioned, we had our second son about the same time I released Fascinating Creatures, so really everything has changed because our family changed. But as is probably the case with the majority of your readers, our world is very child-centered and my schedule seems to revolve around drop-offs, pick-ups, playdates, and a never-ending stream of weekend birthday parties. None of that has changed…good times.

Two years ago, you said you were beginning to write songs for another album -- how did writing the songs for the new album differ from how you wrote the songs for the debut?
Well, I did write almost all of the songs on Family Tree about two years ago so everything about that process is really fuzzy (life with a newborn will do that to you). But in terms of how I write songs, I don’t really spend time coming up with a list of topics I want to write about. I generally just sit down with the guitar and a melody floating around my head and see what comes...

The inspiration for the title track is fairly obvious -- the birth of your second son Rowan. Did other tracks have a specific inspiration?
The song “Animal Friends” is about endangered animals and it was inspired by my son Liam’s passion for the ocean and sea life. One day we were watching a PBS special by Jean Michael Cousteau and Liam saw how sharks’ fins are removed to make shark fin soup. It’s so brutal and wasteful, and Liam was totally aghast that anyone would ever eat such a thing. A week or so later we were walking in our neighborhood and happened to pass by a Chinese restaurant that had shark fin soup listed on their menu. It was so shocking to him and he immediately wanted to run home and write a letter to the restaurant telling them how BAD this evil soup was.

Anyway, it was this urgency to right such an obvious wrong that was so inspiring to me. And I think Liam’s reaction is typical of most 4, 5, 6 year olds. At this age, kids have such an innate sense of right and wrong and justice, and I wanted to write a song that spoke to that and talked about what powerful players they are in changing the world for the better.

I asked last time, I'll ask this time -- what are your kids' favorite songs on the album?
Well, when he’s not listening to the Beatles or David Bowie or Justin Roberts, Liam is really into “Spring Has Sprung,” “Animal Friends,” and “Free to Be Me.” And Rowan, my 20 month old, seems to love “I Scream, You Scream,” probably because he can hear himself and a handful of other kids screaming at the end of the song. He’s also completely enamored with our drummer, Jeff Koch, so I think he’s biased towards the more rockin’ numbers...

How was the process of recording different this time around?
We started recording Family Tree at home, after we put the kids to bed (which usually meant sometime after 9 pm.). And then inevitably, Rowan would wake up around 11:30 ready to nurse. So I sound really sleepy in all of those recording – they are actually really funny to listen to now – the tempo is so much slower than the final versions.

After about 6 months of this, I stumbled upon a great little studio here in San Francisco called Snoppy Quop, and I began recording there with Tim Thurman (guitar) and Jeff Koch (drums) and a few other friends. We ended up doing about half the record at the studio, and half at home. A lot of people seemed to respond to the intimate homey feeling of Fascinating Creatures, so I wanted to hold on to that, but also wanted to tighten things up, especially on the more indie-rock songs, which was a lot easier to do in a studio.

You're playing live in Charlotte for the Tricycle Music Festival -- are you preparing anything special for that?
We are so excited about going to Charlotte. Tim and Jeff are coming too and we’re planning on playing songs from both Family Tree and Fascinating Creatures. Something we’ve started doing at live shows that the kids (and parents) have really responded to is adding a projector slideshow of photographs to accompany some of the songs, especially the slower ones. I wanted to add an interesting visual element to the live shows and because some of the images are synchronized to the lyrics, it really seems to help the kids connect to the meaning of the songs in a much deeper way. So we’ll be doing that in Charlotte too.

What else do you have planned (e.g., videos, tours, world domination)?
I have lots of ideas for a children’s book and maybe even some videos so we’ll see what happens. To be honest, right now I’m just having a lot of fun playing with Tim and Jeff and we are excited about the shows we’ve booked for the summer. I’ve always wanted to be in a band and I really couldn’t have found better people to play with -- Tim and Jeff are two of the nicest guys on earth and both of them are dads at my son’s preschool, where all of this got started.

Interview: Tyler Stewart (Barenaked Ladies)

Tyler Stewart was the last of the founding members of the rock group Barenaked Ladies, which means he's only been with the band for 18 of its 20 years of existence. He's been the band's drummer ever since. Stewart chatted by phone last week about what his kids listen to (Neil Young and High School Musical, just to begin with); his views on the relative merits of Barney, Sesame Street, and Beethoven; the genesis of their first kids' CD Snacktime; and what's to come for the band. (Photo courtesy Wikipedia.)

Zooglobble: I'm going to start the with the question I always ask whenever I interview someone and that is -- what were your musical influences growing up?
Tyler Stewart: Well, my parents are pretty young so they were into popular and good music. My dad was a big fan of British rock bands like the Who, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones, and my mom was really into Motown music and soul. There was always good music playing in my house.

Specifically, what do you listen to with your kids?
Well, my kids, their dad's a musician, so it's a pretty varied catalog, and my wife, too, has pretty good taste in music. My iPod has 14,000 songs on it, they run the whole gamut. Recently my daughter Millie was saying, "Gawd, I'm so tired of this old people's music -- I don't want to hear any more Neil Young." My daughter's nine. "I like Neil Young, but not all the time." Yeah, I'm guilty of that.

Right now they're heavily into High School Musical. High School Musical 1 and 2 is like the Grease of today.

Both my daughters really like Alison Krauss and her fiddle music. Of course they love the Beatles, the universal music of all time. And we really love to listen to They Might Be Giants, their three kids' albums, together. They know every word, and they love 'em.

Do they listen to the Alison Krauss-Robert Plant CD?
You know, I haven't gotten that one yet. I can't believe I haven't... They like the live record she did, the 2-CD one she put out 4 years ago -- they really like that one a lot.

My kids, they run the gamut, they like all kinds of different music. That's sort of my goal. When I got them iPods, I filled them with all kinds of varied different kinds of music so that nothing seems surprising. I don't want them to have any musical prejudices or fears at that age. So that when they want to listen to Hilary Duff, OK, we'll put on Hilary Duff...

But that's their own choice, and they've listened to everything else...
And it's for them. When you become a parent, you really realize that some stuff is for kids. I think my epiphany with that came with Barney, and I said, I don't really like this very much. But my child is absolutely enthralled and loves it. And I realized, this is not for me.

Who in the band first broached the idea of doing a kids', a family friendly, CD?
Well, I think it's one of those things we always thought we had in us, when we started to have kids. It's funny when you're in a band and one day you realize, wow, there's more kids in this band than band members, 11 to 5, more than 2-to-1.

One of the things you spend a lot of time with when you're in a rock band is juggling. Trying to juggle your family life with being away on the road and still putting enough dedication and craft into your art and also still being a present father. That takes up so much of your energy. And then it was almost collectively we thought, you know we could do a record for kids, and have our kids involved. We are parents, we listen and watch enough kids' entertainment as it is, why don't we make something that we really like, too. Because every so often something comes along in the land of kids' entertainment that just blows everyone away, like The Incredibles. Or I remember back in the '70s there was the "triangle-heads" thing with Harry Nilsson...

The Point?
Yeah, The Point! Made for kids, but everyone loved it. Most Disney fare, in general. You watch something like Mary Poppins, and everyone is thrilled. You know, bridging that gap between kids and parents.

So we knew we had that sense of play. We knew that we understood children and what makes 'em tick because there's so many hanging around the band -- we thought, hey, we could do this. And then our manager, Mr. Shrewd, Terry McBride, said, "For the first fifteen years of your career, I worked your [---] right off and had you on the treadmill. But now that I have children, I understand." He said it'd a great idea for you to put out a kids' record.

In the grand scheme of the changing music business -- now artists are selling very few records. Careers have got a whole different shape because of the internet. The traditional models of putting a record out, and touring, and going to radio to sell a song, all that stuff has really changed in the past 5 to 10 years. We were at the point in our career where we were coming to the end of our major label record deal and we decided to do things on our own and navigate things differently. One of the philosophies behind that is to use your assets, to realize that everything you do, now that it's not owned by a major label company, is an asset. (Photo courtesy Nettwerk.)

So we put out a Christmas record. That's something that'll be out there forever; it's not based on a hit single or a tour, it's based on people picking it up and playing it every Christmas. We did some TV soundtrack work, we did the music for a Shakespeare production, and a kids' album fits into that milieu of us branching out and trying a whole bunch of new and different ways to get our music and our name out there.

I know that you are not the main songwriter in the group, but were the songs written for the album, or were there a lot of tunes or lyrics that were written 5 or 10 years ago and you just had never found the proper place on your "adult" albums to put something?
No, all these songs were task-specific. We came in and we wrote songs for this record. Kevin Hearn contributed a lot of songs. He really took it on and said, this is great, I'm writing kids' music. And Ed [Robertson] wrote a whole bunch, too, and Steven [Page] and Jim [Creeggan] and myself also wrote songs. It was really a bandwide effort. We're very excited by the fact that we got together with this task-specific and essentially wrote and recorded a whole album within a month-and-a-half. Recorded it all in three weeks. It was just quick, bam-bam, the way we did it. And I think that kinda shows in the material as well. Sometimes when you're making a studio record -- coming off our last studio record, where we put 30 songs on it, spent a lot of time, six months, working on the record -- it was kind of liberating to just go in and have a sense of fun about it, and not being to precious about it.

And there are at least 2 or 3 songs on there that aren't much more than a minute. They're song fragments -- you could have spent a lot of time trying to flesh that out, and you thought, no, this is nice. Why exclude it?
Exactly. There are some little perfect moments on there. And you think of the attention span of kids, too, it's not always so great. You can blame Sesame Street for that. [Laughs.] I remember reading this scholarly critique of Sesame Street and how it was a perfect reflection of the new television generation. But that was my absolute favorite show. Barenaked Ladies have probably been more inspired by Sesame Street than any of the works of Beethoven or Shostakovich.

That snippet... I love snippets like that. They get right to the point and move on to the next thing. It's like humor. The longer the setup usually the worse the joke, but the more spontaneous and quick something is, the more you're laughing.

The PR materials implied this might be a one-off thing, but if this did really well, or even if it did really poorly, but you had lots of fun, would you consider doing another kids' album?
Yeah, sure. Like I said, the way we approach our whole career now, anything's possible. The collective will would have to be there. "Hey, this is really rewarding and exciting." On the other hand, it's really special that we did this. The experience was fun and liberating, sometimes you want to protect those experiences -- sometimes when you revisit something it doesn't have the same kind of charm or loses its luster. But at this point in our career we're not saying no to anything, except perhaps a reality show based on our drug addictions. Because we don't have any... The main thing for us is that we keep making and performing creative and fun music that people want to listen to. We're 20 years in now, any way we can do that, that's great. Mostly it's about satisfying our own creative urges and keeping our fanbase dancing.

What's next for the band? You're doing a promo tour for the CD, are you planning on any other concerts? You're going into the studio later this year for your next "adult" album?
That's correct, the next A-dult album.

A-dult
Triple X. [Laughs]

That's what you should name the next Barenaked Ladies album. Triple X. Just to differentiate it from Snacktime.
Yeah, that's basically it. We decided to not tour this record per se, large scale. We may end up doing a few shows here and there. It'd be fun to do a "family fun day," or something like that. But as of right now, those are just in the elementary planning stages, so we're just going to do this promo run and see how that goes and sort of get down to work writing the next studio record. It's kind of a pivotal moment for us -- it's our 20-year anniversary. We have a boxed set coming out too in the next little while with all our Warners stuff...

Interview: Tor Hyams

I've been sitting on a bunch of interviews from my trips to Austin last September. With the music world once again congregating in Austin for SXSW, it's high time I transcribed and shared them with you.

Given the South By Southwest connection, I thought it appropriate to kick things off with Tor Hyams, who will be speaking at a kids music panel at SXSW Friday.

Among the many roles that California-based Hyams has is producing the Kidzapalooza stage at Lollapalooza and the Austin Kiddie Limits stage at the Austin City Limits Festival, not to mention the Little State stage at the Big State Festival. It was backstage at ACL 2007 that I caught up with Hyams and talked about producing those events and his thoughts about the future of kids music festivals.

Zooglobble: What's been the best part about the Austin Kiddie Limits stage?
Tor Hyams: The best part about the Austin Kiddie Limits is, I have to say, Austin. People are really different. There's no airs about anybody, they're very open and honest and willing to have a good time, and that makes what we do a lot easier.

You produce Kidzapalooza, Austin Kiddie Limits, and the kids stage at the Big State Festival. Big State is more country, while the other two are more rock. How did you decide who you would try to get for Kidzapalooza as opposed to Austin Kiddie Limits?
In Kidzapalooza, we go a little harder-edged. It's just a different energy to that place than here. This is more of a roots-rock kind of energy, where Kidzapalooza is more of hard-rock kind of energy. Some bands fit into both, like the Sippy Cups. Some bands don't work in both. For example, we had the Blisters, Jeff Tweedy's son's band, at Kidzapalooza, but they're from Chicago, and they're kids. It would've been hard to get them out here. I think they would've done well here, but it's just a different thing. So it's really who fits more the roots-rock mold or even country crossover acts do well, but Austin's such a dynamic city that I think you could any kind of act on stage here and it would work.

I saw a quote from Charles Attal, the head of C3 Productions who sort of described the festival circuit as a land grab -- there are a lot of opportunities in a lot of other places to establish these festivals. Do you think a kids stage is something C3 or other entities would be looking towards doing?

Yeah, it's something I'm looking towards doing right away, especially with the Kidzapalooza brand, if not both. Obviously, Kidzapalooza would be a little easier to transport because it doesn't have a city's name in it, but Austin Kiddie Limits is a great brand and it could easily travel. In fact, in a way the kids idea could move even faster than the grown-up idea. There's less at stake, the ticket prices aren't as high -- parents just like going out and seeing great music.

The difference in what we do here and at Chicago is that we have legitimate recording acts on stage. Whether they're signed or not, it doesn't matter, but are they playing real music for the whole family as opposed to dumbing it down. So if you're dumbing it down, you're talking to the wrong people. We believe children are much more in tune and intelligent than grown-ups are because as grown-ups we forget a lot of this stuff, the purity of why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing.

James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem at his set on Friday said Austin Kiddie Limits was great because nobody in the audience is reading the blogs saying, 'That guy is over.' They're either crying and asking mommy to go home or they love it.
Yeah, that's right, there's no hip factor to contend with. "Oh, they didn't play all their songs from their first album that we loved." It's really a pure place where it's really just about the music. The other thing about kids watching as opposed to teenagers or grown-ups watching is that you really have to be good. Kids don't care about who you are, what you're wearing, what the image is. They feel that stuff, the energy of the performer, and if you're not good, they'll walk away, they don't care. They get nothing out of it besides the purity of the music. Some of the main stage performers who come over here get a little nervous because they know that, just because they are whoever they are does not guarantee them an audience.

Do you go out to solicit the special guests, or do they come to you?
Both, really. This year, I went out to Big Sam's Funky Nation from New Orleans. I love them, and they agreed to play. But then you have Ziggy Marley, who asked us. It's really just got to be like that, because they're not getting extra money, we don't pay them. It's really got to be a labor of love. We're not as well funded as the other stages, obviously, and so if they want to do it, we let them do it, and we're happy to have them. It's wonderful for the kids and obviously it gives the parents something extra, too.

Any future plans, anything you're looking forward to doing?
I want to take Kidzapalooza on the road to several different cities, not the whole country, but several different major cities. This year is the biggest year we've done for Austin Kiddie Limits yet and I want next year to be better. Every year I think there's no way we can top that, but there's always a way. Whether it's just making parents more comfortable or whatever. Which is why I like working these things so much because it's always a challenge and that's what gets me going.

Interview: John Flansburgh (They Might Be Giants)

They Might Be Giants were my first musical discovery. Meaning, up through and including most of high school, I was a fairly straight-laced, MTV-watching, Columbia-House-12-for-a-penny-ing music listener. And, then 20 years ago this September, they released Lincoln on the Bar/None label and that was the start of an entirely new musical direction for me, one where I actually sought out music rather than taking whatever was most easily consumed.

I take that brief personal detour for two reasons:
1) In one sense, the fact that I've got this website charged with finding great music for kids and families is due, in some small way, to that 20-year-old album.
2) It provides an interesting perspective to me as I consider the words of John Flansburgh, who founded the band as a duo with John Linnell 25 years ago and who now navigates with Linnell both a very independent course as a band but also one that has them working with many large media corporations.

Flansburgh, who, along with Linnell and the rest of TMBG, has released two excellent album in the past 12 months -- the adult-oriented The Else last summer and the kids-focused Here Come the 123s last week -- took some time out from his busy schedule to answer some questions about the new CD/DVD set. Read on for Flansburgh's thoughts on the influence of "Sesame Street" on their work for kids, how they went about picking animators and directors for the video, the future of the Podcast for Kids, and much more.

Zooglobble: What sort of music did you listen to in your childhood?
John Flansburgh: My mom avidly listens to a bunch of quite specific music that is very non-rock and very non-kid: Noel Coward, Joan Baez, Louie Armstrong, Lotte Lenya (which was very mysterious to me as a kid). West Side Story and Cabaret were routinely played at top volume to inspire housecleaning. I had some Beatles and Monkees albums I bought with birthday money that I essentially memorized, and some very odd kiddie albums I inherited from a distant relative that were truly strange. One was called Happy Birthday to You! and even at a very young age I was suspicious it was a bit of a rushed effort. Side two got pretty grim.

You've mentioned Sesame Street as an inspiration for your kids' CDs -- is that the music, the visuals, or both?
Both. Personally, as abstract or maybe as obvious as this sounds, when we first embarked on kids' stuff I felt it was important that it be focused directly to kids. I know that notion contradicts what a lot of people say is our kids' stuff's fundamental appeal, but for me it was the essential difference from our adult efforts. I never wanted anyone to walk away from the kids' stuff thinking we were rock guys some how goofing on kids or kids' stuff. No inside jokes for adults allowed, and no pandering. Sesame Street was very good at avoiding any kind of pandering vibe that poisons so much kids' stuff. Also, Sesame Street, and specifically the Muppets on Sesame Street, established this perfect tone. They balanced educational material with very original ideas and actual entertainment. It's breezy.

Did you primarily write the songs for the album in a concentrated burst, or was it a case of polishing up song snippets you'd written sporadically over the past few years?
The writing took place over about a year, with videos going into production almost as soon as the first songs were written. The videos take a long time to produce. There was a saying back in the MTV rock video days "Good, Fast, and Cheap. Pick Two" which is to say you can only ask for so much out of a production unless you have gobs of dough. We have to deliver the entire DVD on a smaller budget than the average episode of an animated series, but obviously there is a much more focused effort within each video, so affording the animators as much time as possible, along with a lot of freedom, is the strategy.

Some of the songs on Here Come the ABCs ("Rolling O," "Letter Shapes") seemed inextricably tied to their videos while there isn't a single song on Here Come the 123s that doesn't "make sense" purely based on the audio -- did you approach writing the songs and creating the videos differently this time around?
That is a very astute observation. I really loved the more instrumental stuff on the ABCs and the gentle tone of those videos, and I would be happy if there was stuff like that on the 123s, but we were actually working to meet two very different challenges with each DVD.

With the Here Come the ABCs DVD we were essentially required to deliver an
hour-long program because of the kooky way "full length" DVDs were shelved in stores, and I guess even priced at the time. As silly as it seemed, even if we had done a 45 minute DVD it would have been hidden somewhere in the back of the store, and that would have just killed the project. Because our songs are rarely over three minutes, the challenge of achieving a sixty-minute program become a bit of an obstacle within the creation of the DVD. Those leisurely instrumentals were actually another way to keep an hour-long DVD program rolling along.

Since then, that weird DVD length requirement has completely disappeared, so this time around we were thinking we'd be free to just go about our merry way with a shorter disc. Then, about half way into making the 123s, Playhouse Disney decided it couldn't really afford to broadcast interstitial songs - that's the show biz term for songs between their TV shows - for much more than a minute and a half. That interstitial exposure is a big part of what makes folks aware of these discs, so it's important that the stuff work on the Disney Channel. It kind of fell to us to restructure the videos for broadcast to either fit the new length, or live with the longer songs getting edited down in some blunt way. So, to really just make it easy on ourselves, and to make sure the songs being broadcast would have the right structure, we just started writing all the new songs shorter. Of course writing short songs was pretty natural for us, but since a lot of the kids' songs are lists or stories, it occasionally got tight keeping it under ninety seconds. "One Dozen Monkeys," for example, would definitely have been more leisurely if it wasn't for the broadcast structure.

I should point out there was a hidden upside to the short song requirement. Because the animators had less to animate by about half for the same budget as the ABCs, the actual quality of the animations went way up, and people seem to dig the higher visual quality.

You have now been officially behind the curtain of They Might Be Giants' professional challenges! May I apologize on behalf of the band! [Ed: I've already told John there was no need to apologize.]

How did you go about selecting the animators for the videos?
It's mostly six degrees of separation from the folks at ColourMovie. With just a few exceptions out of something like twenty five companies we have hired, they are all friends of friends with the folks at ColourMovie (who created the videos for "Alphabet of Nations" and "Even Numbers"). I met David Cowles working on a pilot for Disney. The Homestar fellows we met on our own. I did find one team of people, the company Feel Good Anyway, just by doing a Google search of motion graphics companies, and Matthew Canale was either a film student or soon out of school and he actually contacted us through our myspace page. I don't think that is going to happen again! But then again, his reel was amazing.

The John and John puppets have a bigger role this time around (on the DVD, in the Podcast for Kids). How much of the puppets' appearances were improvised? And who came up with the idea for the Podcast for Kids, anyway?
The podcast was just an idea that came up after the success of the adult podcast. Obviously it's a way to find a new audience but it's also something for kids that was looser than the DVDs. The podcast is exactly the kind of thing I feel we're good at--it's totally self defined but semi-structured and has a device we can kind of hide behind and jam off of. My wife Robin Goldwasser made all the puppets and styles them with a lot of handmade props which makes it a lot of fun. Filming the puppets is just a very easy way for us to be ourselves but also be characters.

The podcast is scripted, and sometimes more fully than you might imagine, but there is a big layer of improvisation on top of the scripts to energize it. Because the weekly episodes are often organized around calendar events, and we're shooting weeks ahead of the post date, it has to be planned out. I'm happy to report the podcast basically gets stranger and stranger over the next few months.

Kids' voices play a big role on Here Come the 123s, either in the background or on choruses, and Hannah Levine's vocals are featured prominently on a few songs. Are there any particular bonuses or challenges to having kids in the studio?
John recorded the Henry tracks at their house, so I'd imagine it was about as casual as any other day there. Hannah Levine is kind of a different story. When she was recommended by her uncle Dan Levine, who plays trombone in TMBG, I didn't assume she'd be a ringer. It was just an experiment to get another kind of voice on the project. She is, and I mean this in the most positive way, a professional kid actor and singer. She's got an agent, and she seems to work pretty regularly for a kid in school. She can do line readings any way you ask, and takes direction with an adult's level of comprehension. It was really amazing. I also believe she is lucky because both her parents are very hard-working performers based in New York--not LA--and I don't think she is being raised with any big fantasies about what "it" is that she is doing. I get the feeling that performing to her is just an interesting part of her life, with school and everything else. It's fun. I've seen my share of stage kids, and honestly I'm not a big fan of that scene. I am happy to report she has got a seriously good handle on it.

You have been quoted as saying you're thinking of continuing a series of "educational" albums on other subjects. Do you think you'd ever release another album like No! -- that is, an album targeted at kids but without an ostensible theme?
I would be happy to do that. I don't think it's that important to us that the albums be educational at all. I'd even be into doing something that has a story arc. It was only after No! came out that we got any understanding of how young the audience for most kids' music really is, and looking back on it I think that realization was part of what pulled us toward the ABC and 123 themes. Writing for such a young audience without the themes might have ended up feeling like an obstacle. We're interested in writing for older kids too, but that has its own challenges. For better or worse a lot of preteens are really into their own culture now. Tween music and gaming are powerful, powerful things.

What's next for the band (either for kids or for adults)?
We just started talking about the next rock album and I think we're going to find a way to change it up. It's gotta be great. That's all I really know. No rest for the weary!

What's your favorite number?
When I was a kid it was seven. I haven't really thought about it since!

(Photo credit: Joshua Kessler)