Back To Austin

It's true, folks, we'll be heading back to Austin in late September for this year's Austin City Limits Festival, and in particular, the Austin Kiddie Limits stage. Now I can engage in my own schedule-balancing as I try to figure out how to maximize my time at the AKL stage while not missing good shows elsewhere around the festival and simultaneously making sure my daughter is having a good time and not getting too tired.

That's right, Miss Mary Mack will be joining me again, and I'm hoping she'll help her dad out a little more this year, what with her new-found experience as a returning festival-goer.

We'll be staying with the Official Brother, Sister-in-Law, and Nephew of Zooglobble, since the Official Mom of Zooglobble will be out of town that weekend. We'll also be flying into Austin instead of Dallas, thereby saving us 3 hours of driving each. Yay!

And, no, I am not the secret replacement for Brian Eno in David Byrne's set (probably my most-anticipated non-AKL set).

But wait, there's more!
Yes, as Bill mentioned a couple weeks ago, there will be another Family Music Meltdown, with a lineup that we (Bill and I, your humble hosts) think will include:

Mr. Leebot
Telephone Company
Laura Freeman
Joe McDermott
Super Pal Universe

Those of you around the Austin -- especially those who aren't going to ACL -- won't want to miss this. $5/head, infants free. The fun starts at 6 PM Saturday Sept. 27th at Ruta Maya Coffehouse in South Austin.

My Little Corner of the World Is Still Here

Hey there... a post with no new news other than to say sometimes life outside the kids music world takes precedence. OK, that's, like, all the time with me, but I'm clearly able to find some time for this little corner of the world.

Usually.

"Real life" has gone all squirrely and to say I'm busy is a massive understatement. The family's healthy, everyone's doing fine, no problems at all, but my ability to post stuff and even reply to the most basic of e-mails has been dramatically reduced on a temporary basis.

Rest assured, all will return to normal -- such as it is -- soon.

And I guess this is appropriate here:

Not That I'm Against RSS Or Anything...

But if you're just relying on your RSS reader to follow this site, you'll miss some great stuff in the comments.

For example, the biggest kids music blogger fite! since the great Berkner-palooza-gate of January 2007 is a discussion on XM Kids between Bill and myself. The comments in both are worth reading, and I've updated my post with some more thoughts. I'll add one more thought here, and that's that expanding the universe of kids music has been one of my biggest interests from the very beginning of this site. The more voices interested in the genre -- be it radio stations or websites -- the stronger the genre will become.

In addition to thoughts about the state of the genre, you might have missed the numerous comments on kids songs as-yet-unrecorded and kids songs not-recorded-for-a-long-time. Do you have any suggestions? Join in.

We're also giving away a copy of Dan Zanes' new album Nueva York!. Entering that contest is one thing your RSS reader can't do for you...

Even if you just read by RSS, I do want thank all of you for continuing to stop by on a regular basis.

We Just Flew Back From the Pacific Northwest...

... and, boy, are our arms tired.

So, yeah, we were gone for almost a week. I'll have a little to report from the trip (the bit is actually kids-music-related), but let me get through the e-mail and mail and stuff that was dropped off at the doorstep first. (And, if you haven't read it, there's a nice YAKMA about Dan Zanes that mentions Bill and Amy.)

(Note: My wife has many good ideas. The "take a day off after a long-ish vacation" idea is near the top of the list.)

A Brief Note to Readers, Listeners, and Hangers-On

To those of you who've e-mailed or commented this week, either first-timers or long-timers, thanks a bunch. I'm trying to get to the e-mails, listen to the CDs constantly appearing in our mailbox, and, you know, post stuff here.

I've also got more interesting things in the works, which you will learn about in hopefully the not-too-distant future.