Review: My Neighborhood - Johnny Bregar

In every reviewer's career, there are the artists you find, follow devotedly, and wonder why the rest of the world isn't quite as enamored as you.

Exhibit A, for me, I think, is Seattle's Johnny Bregar.  I thought his first three albums Stomp Yer Feet!, Hootenanny, and Dragonfly were on par with any recent three-album set from just about any artist you'd care to name.  While they were received positively, with radio airplay and cuts on a couple of Putumayo Kids albums, he hadn't received the attention that his peers (Justin Roberts, TMBG, Elizabeth Mitchell, a few others) had.

And then, 3 1/2 years of silence.  Much of that silence is because Bregar has been struggling to find his singing voice (literally).  And while that condition isn't fully resolved, Bregar has finally released his fourth album for kids, My Neighborhood.  For fans of the first three albums, it is good to hear Bregar's voice once more.

While I don't think Bregar's included too many more guest artists than on Dragonfly, he brought enough guests to his Bainbridge Island studio to make his rootsy Americana with a hint of bluegrass seem like a small party.  There's a mellow, soulful vibe to the album's best tracks, even a bit of wistfulness at points.  The title track recounts a stroll through the narrator's neighborhood, evocative of Mr. Rogers if he'd had a chance to listen to some Jack Johnson.  The next track "Weekend" evokes the best of the Counting Crows sonically in service of praising the fun of Saturdays and Sundays.

While Bregar still invites some younger kids to sing along (as on the uber-confident rocker "Yes I Can"), he's mostly moved on from the preschool songs he originally made his name on.  (I will admit to being tickled pink that Bregar, who I once called "the next Raffi," includes a simple, sing-along version of the Raffi classic, "You'll Sing a Song".)  Bregar's playing (and that of his guests) is unfussy, but there are some nifty instrumental turns.  I will admit to skipping forward past "Pancho," but the vast majority of the songs stand up to repeated spins.

The songs here are most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9.  You can listen to selected tracks by going here and clicking on the "Listen Now" button.

I've laid it out as best I can without coming over to your house or minivan and commandeering the CD player or iPod and making you and your kids listen.  My Neighborhood is what we expect good kids music to be these days -- musically rich, thematically diverse, and (for older kids, anyway) lyrically sophisticated.  Please please please try it.  Highly recommended.

Best Kids Music 2011: Big Ideas

Nope, we're not done yet with our look at the best in kids music from 2011. For the second year in a row, I'm going to list big ideas from the past year. Not so much albums or songs, but concepts or trends I think will continue to have big impacts.

Inspector Widget: Maybe this is just the blogger/website operator in me, but the biggest trend of 2011 to me was the full flowering of web businesses designed to make it incredibly easy for artists to share their music with the world. Unlike the trainwreck that Myspace was from almost the beginning, these new entities let artists share (and sell) their music with a minimum of fuss and distraction. I'm talking about websites like Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Noisetrade, and Topspin. Now, all of these entities existed prior to 2011, but there was a definite increase in the usage of these entities by the music world in general, and kids music joined right in. Rather than making listeners come to the artist, these embeddable widgets make it easier than ever to meet potential fans where they are -- on Facebook, on Twitter, or on music sites that know a good thing when they hear it. (Ahem.)

Widgets Aren't The Only To Have Your Music Heard: 2011 wasn't just the year of the widget, there were lots of other innovative ways kids musicians got their music out in front of fans both current and potential. One of my favorite (and potentially most important) is from The Bazillions, who have established their own Roku channel to provide instantaneous streaming of their videos to literally millions of households. (Details here.) But iPhone apps, iPad apps, Kickstarter campaigns, and circus collaborations were other ways that kindie musicians tried to reach folks who might not have thought of kids music beyond the big box artists.

Two Heads are Better Than One: Sugar Free Allstars and Secret Agent 23 Skidoo. Little Miss Ann and Suzi Shelton (with an assist from Baze and His Silly Friends' Marc Bazerman). Recess Monkey and Dean Jones (collaborating on the next Recess Monkey album, In Tents. Just a handful of the individual song collaborations between artists whose collaborations might not have occurred just 5 years ago when the scene was a lot more scattered and solitary. Collaboration has always occurred, of course -- folks like Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer and Bill Harley have reached to make music with others for a long time. But connections happen so much faster now that I expect that such collaboration will soon become the rule and not the exception.

Fourteen Heads Are Better Than Two: I mentioned this concept last year in the wake of Kindiependent, the Seattle-area cooperative promoting six local bands. But other areas continue to create their own support groups. Besides AMFM in LA and Let's Play! in San Francisco, which both formed in 2010, the Windy Kindie Chicago Cooperative set up shop this year. And the most active cooperative is probably KindiePDX in Portland, Oregon, which teems with activity, advice, and, well, support.

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention kinDIY, the self-organized wiki-style site (founded by Bill Childs and Susie Tennant, and which I'm an administrator of) designed to help kids' musicians navigate the complex world of kids music.

Ending the Damn "Finally": Jeff Bogle at one point this year suggested a simple piece of action that he thought (and I agree) would go a long way towards increasing the visibility of kids music -- having musicians suggest to their audiences other musicians they might enjoy. In my words, it's up to musicians to end the damn "finally." You know, those "finally"s that say, "Finally, kids music the whole family can enjoy." That statement is a lie, shows ignorance on the part of the speaker, and worst of all, it conveys the idea that the kids music genre is incredibly small when just the opposite is true. Musicians need to convey to their audience the truth, which is that they are part of a long-standing tradition of making music for families that has never been as vibrant as it is today. Some artists have done that in the past, and more are doing it today, but there's room for a lot more. Even if you're not collaborating with anyone else on record or on stage, it's time to share the love more broadly.

Video: "I've Got a Goat" - The Not-Its

Not much in the way of videos for awhile, and now they come in clumps. First Recess Monkey with a sentimental video, now their Seattle Kindiependent buddies The Not-Its release a video for "I've Got a Goat" off their fine Tag, You're It! album. (And I'll have another one for ya tomorrow.)

If you ever needed to see animated animals give their own "devil horns" rock salute, you're in luck. Also: I think if Laurie Berkner ever wanted to cover a song written by a fellow kindie artist, she could much, much worse than picking this one.

The Not-Its - "I've Got a Goat" [YouTube]

Video: "Flying (Reprise)" - Recess Monkey

With FLYING!, Recess Monkey put together the best kids' album of 2011, at least according to one august group of folks. The band liked the title track so much, they put it on the album twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. Now, truth be told, the album closer is wistful and more for the parents than the kids. So, yeah, the video for the reprised version is likely to elicit one or two "Awwwwwwwww...."s.

Recess Monkey - "Flying (Reprise)" [YouTube]