The Barry Louis Polisar Tribute Album: Potentially Awesome

No, that's not the name -- it's my verdict.

I've known for awhile of the tribute album consisting of Barry Louis Polisar covers, produced by Polisar's son Evan Aaron Cohen of the Radioactive Chicken Heads. But now it's got a name -- We're Not Kidding -- and, more importantly for the purposes of this website, songs for your listening pleasure.

I use that phrase "listening pleasure" advisedly, because the songs I've spun thus far have been uniformly winning. I started out with the familiar names -- Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke, Elizabeth Street, Tor Hyams, Ham & Burger, The Boogers -- and all of those tunes worth the time. (Check out the electric guitar on Key Wilde and Mr. Clarke track.) And then I moved to the unfamliar, the top of the page. After 4 songs, some fabulous, none less than interesting, that's when I realized that this could be, well, potentially awesome.

A 2-CD set could be too much Barry Lou, but the combination of Polisar's songwriting with the varied musical approaches and high quality production (never Polisar's strength) make me very eager to hear the final product, set to be released this year.

New Milkshake Album Will Arrive. Once They Start Working On It.

It's been awhile since the 2007 release of Play! the last full-length from Baltimore band Milkshake. Which isn't to say they haven't been keeping busy doing various things (I, for one, was amused by the Milkshake comic book they put out), but, y'know, living on the other side of the country as I do, I tend to be less interested in the live shows.

But in their latest newsletter the band says they've been "hard at work writing and rehearsing as we prepare to record our fourth CD next month." They say that the CD will focus on and by "inspired by all kinds of things 6 - 9 year-old kids might find themselves thinking about." Most intriguingly is the news that the CD will be produced by music veteran Tor Hyams. The selection of Hyams, who we recently noted was working on producing the Paul Green School of Rock album promises to give the release a little bit of an edge. Although the band has many charms, few would accuse them of being particularly far along the "edgy" spectrum.

For those of you interested in one of their songs for the under-6 crowd, here's what might be my favorite video off their Screen Play DVD:
Milkshake - "Bluebird"

Tor Hyams: The Richard Branson of Kids Music

When I interviewed Tor Hyams a couple years ago at the Austin Kiddie Limits stage at the Austin City Limits Festival, it was clear he was thinking about how kids music could expand. And now, just like Richard Branson turned his Virgin empire into a fairly wide-ranging affair, Hyams is now doing lots of different kids music-related stuff.

First, he's going to host an hour of radio on Kids Place Live, featuring "America's best indie rock for kids and families." Hyams will be joined by Ziggy Marley "as they talk about life, family, Ziggy's brand-new kids CD and offer a special tribute to everyone's Mother Earth!" (Yeah, that's PR language for you.) Anyways, it airs Friday 4/17 at 11pm ET/8pm PT, Saturday 4/18 at 9am & 5pm ET (6am & 2pm PT), and Sunday at noon ET/9am PT.

But there are a couple more interesting aspects...

First, his website says he's going to be a judge for the NAPPA awards. Seeing as John Wood has done those awards for what seems like forever (I think he basically founded the music awards), this is a fairly tectonic shift, akin to replacing Johnny Carson with Dave Letterman. (Oh, wait, that didn't actually happen. But you get my point.) Nothing is official on the NAPPA website (they don't have their 2009 judges list posted), but that's a big deal.

And an even bigger deal is his newly-created label Happiness Records, which features a distribution deal with E1 Entertainment. Besides re-releasing the A World of Happiness compilation Hyams produced, his new "Kidzapalooza Kollection" will feature songs from folks who've played the Kidzapalooza and Austin Kiddie Limits stages (the Kidzapalooza Collection Vol. 1 edit: Tor reports below it's now just Kidzapalooza Vol. 1, no "Kollection"), and new albums from the School of Rock All Stars and Secret Agent 23 Skidoo.

Now, I must say that I don't quite see the market for a collection of songs from (comparatively) unheard bands slapped with a Kidzapalooza label. Don't get me wrong -- it'll be a fine compilation. I just don't think it'll sell well. (And spelling "Collection" with a "K" is almost as bad as pluralizing with a "Z," though the Kidzapalooza name has a relatively long-lived history.) But releasing an album by Secret Agent 23 Skidoo and hopefully giving it better distribution? That is first-rate.

If Hyams starts ballooning around the world, though, then I think it may be time to stage an intervention.

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.