Cool Things I Noticed in a Song #3

Some people, I hear, always dreamed of being back-up singers. The Supremes for Diana. The Pips for Gladys. You know, that sort of thing. I won't lie. I think I only ever dreamed of being Diana and Gladys--but there's a special spot for really good back up.

And that's today's amazing insight into writing really terific kids' music. (And remember, I think about this sort of thing because I want to figure out how to do it really, life-changingly well).

#1 Best Use of a Righteous Back Up Band








"John the Rabbit": Elizabeth Mitchell, YOU ARE MY FLOWER

I love this song for the regular-guy-ness of it. Maybe she should have been Elizabeth Mitchell & the Yes Ma'ams . . . well, I mean, for that song at least. And try to imagine the song where Elizabeth just says those words for herself. Right. TOTALLY not the same.

A well-placed back-up can make a good song really terrific.

I think I'm going to put an ad up on Craigslist so that I can have a righteous back up band for my next CD:

WANTED: Regular people to say context-appropriate words over and over in order to aid impact of children's song. Call 1-800-BEMYRIGHTEOUSBACKUPBAND

I'll let you know if anyboy calls.

Cool Things I Noticed in a Song #2

Part 2 in an infinite series about the minutae of song writing for kids. Click here for Part 1. Or, um, scroll down to the post before this one.

Okay, so today's totally insightful insight about songwriting is all about chord strum. And I'm not going to leave you hanging with a bunch of cluttering personal sharing before I just get right to it and tell you this:

#1 Best use of dramatic chord strum:

(This is so easy to pick. I didn't even, like, think about it--I just KNEW the answer. . . .)

"I Want a Dog": Lunch Money, SILLY REFLECTIONS



Okay, now to the cluttering person sharing.

I chose this song because of its ability to make me wish I were playing it. Don't you just want to set up the microphone stand you have lying around your house and belt that soulful truth-telling line:

"I want a [DRAMATIC, SOULFUL CHORD STRUM WITH A HOLD] Daaaaaaaahhhhhg.
I want a [DRAMATIC, SOULFUL CHORD STRUM WITH A HOLD] Daahhhhh-ah-ah-ah-ah-g . . .
I would name him Al- [DRAMATIC, SOULFUL CHORD STRUM WITH A HOLD WHILE SAYING THE NEXT WORD} Fraaydo."

Not kidding. I want to sing that song everytime I hear it. Love it.

Plus, I think there ought to be more songs that address the reality of the hamster. But more on the insight of the lyrics later . . .

Cool Things I Noticed in a Song

The (always) Lovely Mrs. Davis has posted a fabulously-specific and believable list of kids albums for parents who want to break into listenable kids music (and break out of the primary colored t-shirt thing). I've broken into and out of it all myself, but I'm still going to buy some of the albums she lists.

And she's inspired me. See, I've been listening to kids music in a strangely specific way myself these days. Since a good handful of my earliest songs can all be traced back to single melody that was the theme song for a show starring someone named Uncle Jed, I've been paying really close attention to how other artists add interest to their songs. Really cool lyrics, I get. That to me is the real fun of song writing. But how do you make your guitar and the rest of the stuff sitting around your house turn the song into something even better than just the lyrics could make it. (A real stretch for me as a poet by training.)

So, here's the first in my list of Cool Things I Noticed in A Song.

#1 Best use of non-irritating hand clapping:

"Oh Well": Scribblemonster, CHOCOLATE MILK



Click for a listen to see what I mean. There just aren't that many hand-clapping songs out there that actually make me want to clap. I always practically wreck my car when this song comes on.

Stay tuned for more scintillating insights on the minutiae of song-making.

Nifty New Show

We just booked with WEEKEND RECESS in L.A. for August (8/18). Mark your calendars, all you L.A.-ish people. (I think I know three of you.)

Weekend Recess is a once-a-month kiddie-music frenzy with games (there's even kid karaoke. C'mon.). They've been doing this event monthly at Hollywood's Knitting Factory and have just found a new venue. Pretty cool thing they're pulling off for kidlets in southern California.

We're excited. It sounds like a hoot--which is the standard for our travelling out of town to sing. "Will it be a hoot?"; "Um, yes, Maam, it promises to be a hoot."; "Okay, we'll go."

While We're Waiting Patiently

I can hear that Jeopardy music in the background--you know, the song they play while everyone's writing their answer. While
Mrs. Davis and Bill the Rocker rest up from their Brooklyn Escapade (that fantastic everybody-was-there concert in Brooklyn Saturday), I thought I would keep us occupied so that we don't become cranky with them and tell them to drink some coke and hurry up and tell us what happened. So, while we wait, let me tell you about some nifty blogs I've been watching. They have nothing to do with kids music, but they are cool (And hey, I'm the girl out here on the stage juggling while the real show sets up behind the curtain . . .)

First, go check out Puttermeister ("I write. I knit. I teach. I putter.")


My friend Amy writes all kinda crazy smart stuff about knitting . . and movies . . . and literature . . . . and moving her furniture around for the carpet cleaning guy. If you like pictures of creative process and the weird/true insights of a mega-brain mixed with coffee talk, take a blog stroll on over there.

If knitting's not your thing, but you like Egypt or travelling with small children [now THERE'S a transition], go see my friends' blog about their family trip.


Well, it's actually a geologic/historical sabbatical study mixed with kids climbing pharaoh statues. They're going all over the place--Egypt, Greece, Italy, England, France . . . WITH THEIR THREE CHILDREN (did I already mention that?) If you left your early history education with nothing more than the phrase THE CODE OF HAMMURABI like I did--or you want to see a family completely go for it with their life--check it out.

I'm here for you while you wait.

Our gigs are coming together

We're not completely booked for the Spring and Summer, but here are some fun shows coming up:

MORRO BAY LIBRARY
Thursday, April 12th

SAN LUIS OBISPO LIBRARY
Saturday, April 21st

BREAKFAST WITH ENZO
(We get to sit in and sing with the SF Kid-Music-King)
Saturday, June 23rd

PASO ROBLES LIBRARY
Thursday, July 5th

For all the details, click here.

And if you're looking for something super terrific to check out, be watching Spare the Rock for reports about tomorrow's super-concert in Brooklyn of everybody that's anybody with their own guitar who's ever paid their own money to record anything that's ever been recorded for kids that is cool.

"What's with the perfunctory blog entries?"

Okay, now that hurts. It cuts to the quick. I won't lie.

"I posted that picture of those love boat people."

"Yeah, but you didn't say anything about it."

"Yeah, but it was funny--c'mon. It was GOPHER."

"Okay, Well, I mean . . .if it was supposed to be funny . . ."

So, she's right--my officemate, I mean. (She can't help it--she tells it like it is.) My posts have been lame lately, so I thought I'd just come right out and say it: Hi. My name is Ginger. And I'm a lame blogger (lately).

Thing thing is . . .we're selling our house (as part of an evil family plot of ours to live in more than 1000 square feet). And I've been working like a manic june cleaver freak for about two weeks. Here's my kitchen on 1950's steroids:



Here's my kitchen today:



We, um, found a buyer. Sure, it's good news because we wanted to sell our house--but the real news here is that I can put down the mop and get back to blogging.

Guy.

Today Is the Day I Wish I Lived in Brooklyn.

The coolest radio guy in independent kids music is organizing the coolest live show of independent kids artists. The show's gonna be in Brooklyn. And the list of artists is over-the-top wonderful. Really, everybody doing nifty independent kids music is going to be there. Click here to find out why you wish you lived in Brooklyn too.

I'm Just Saying.

Herman Ripp

Why would I lie about a name like that? He was my 6th grade teacher, and he used to sing.

I'm not talking about cool, early musical influence, or admitting to any sort of early musical dorkiness here. I'm just saying Mr. Herman Ripp, my 6th grade teacher who wore corduroys and had a mustache, used to sing. No guitar. No piano. No tiny little wooden recorder. Just hardbound song books and tunes like Streets of Laredo--sad cowboy songs where men died alone in the middle of the desert.

Here's a verse:

Then beat the drum slowly, play the fife lowly.
Play the death march as you carry me along.
Take me to the green valley, lay the sod o'er me,
I am a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong.

Good times. Mr. Ripp would stand in the front of our classroom and warble those songs like he was about to cry. Then we'd all put the books away and go back to math.

And I even thought to mention it because I was listen to REK's latest studio album,what i really mean, and one of the songs sounded a lot like those old cowboy songs.

And I remembered Mr. Ripp and was struck by how sometimes our early influences aren't so much inspirational as they are, well, influences.

Old Banana Freedom

Important Old Banana Update: I thought you would be so glad to hear that in an act of bold kindness to me, my husband ate a banana that was turning brown. I mean, there I was, asking myself the question "Will I REALLY be able to throw that away and not freeze it?" Everything in me was, well, clenched. And then there was the peel, emptied of my need to decide.

I'm watching the five that are currently yellowing in my kitchen and telling myself, "You can do it, Ginger. You know you can."

I put my dukes up to whatever god is in charge of banana bread-on-the-fly and threw out all the old bananas in my freezer. There were 24. I had 24 old bananas in my freezer. Because someday I might make banana bread.

It was like risking the wrath of some meaner, more survivalist-oriented version of the pillsbury dough boy.

And now I have no backup plan, no means of pulling off a homemade baked good on the spur of the moment. I am embracing the bakery. I am saying yes to the high skill level of others. I am eschewing homemade.

Who knows what will happen to me at Christmastime (which is in like 11 months). I don't know what will happen. This is a crazy I-don't-have-any-way-to-make-banana-bread sort of a ride. Hold on tight--no! Don't hold on tight. Let go. Put your hands in the air. Feel that feeling like you might fall off.

Yes.
I have no bananas.

But what if you need to make banana bread, Ginger? What will you DO?

I don't know. I really, honestly, don't know. I'm shaking my head as I write this. I just don't know.

But when I peer into my freezer and see the vacated place that those bananas held, I have a feeling that seems like . . . freedom.

Standing next to the boat

I've been thinking about the way we lose them, our children, I mean --about the way some days I go into my son's room, and there is another boy there, someone more lank, who can--as if the skill snuck into him in the night--read words and share with his brother, someone who refuses to eat carrots. And I have this sad longing for the other boy, a sort of cocktail of regret and relief: so glad he's learned this next thing, so sorry I wasn't kinder to him before he did--longing, I think, for the chance to be with him in his other state like I could be now that I see it really will have an end.

It's something like that thing of slogging across the river in order to get to the boat you needed to get yourself across the river.

But I can't seem to see the end of these stretches of not-getting-there that he passes through--until he's on the other side, and I have, just by waiting for the hard thing to pass, missed something. Missed the chance to be the one who would be sturdy and kind enough to love him real well while he wasn't anywhere he needed to be yet.

And maybe that's why I like to sing--to celebrate those other moments behind me, those other boys behind me.

Like standing there next to the boat, pants wet and all, and singing back across the river to him--singing loud so hear can hear me.

A Really Nice Big Brother

Okay--so there's the issue of Nate's niceness to his mother for dressing up in this MACARONI & CHEESE costume in the first place. (Check.) Then, there's the issue of his extra niceness, for holding up one of our postcards (his sister Coral really loves our CD). (Check.) Then, there's the grand finale of high school guy niceness that he didn't lose his, well, macaroni, when his mother emailed me this picture. (Check. Check.)

We think Nate is great.

Because I Prefer to Enter a Conversation Once Everyone's Left the Room

I'm conflict avoidant. I can't talk about it. Really, I am.

Everyone's been talking about Laurie Berkner. Okay, not everyone, but still--people I think are important are talking about her. (That was who *I* think; not, who I *think* . . .)

I haven't thrown my indie kid music hat into the ring yet because 1. (See opening line) and 2. I've been chewing on the whole thing. There's something in the conversation that I'm not sure we ever got to (maybe because it sort of heated up ever so slightly, and I might not be the only person who tends to ditch the kitchen when the stove's on high).

I think Mrs. Davis kicked off an interesting conversation about artistic legitimacy, actually.

Her bent--as this reader understands it--is not that Laurie Berkner is crummy (which seems to be how most reader's interpreted what Mrs. Davis said) but that her not-crummyness is shared by others, while her get-paid-to-do-that-all-the-time is not.

Here's a story. (As far as you know, it has to do with what we're talking about.) When I was in graduate school studying poetry, these published poets used to come to our workshops and read their work and then we'd have a Q & A and within the first three minutes somebody would ask, "How do you get published?" The published poet then inevitably launched into a sort of there-must-be-beer-in-the-air-I'm-so-relaxed kind of discussion about how it's not really *about* getting published, man.

And I always wanted to get up and yell BUT YOU'RE PUBLISHED.

I didn't, of course. I just set out to get published . . . like we all did. And it was really hard. And by the time the three years of that two-year program were over, I’d written scads more than I’d ever published. Was I a poet if I wasn’t published much? I really wanted to keep writing poetry.

Ten years later, I’m still writing poetry. I haven’t published much at all since those years in grad school. Here’s what I’ve done, though: I’ve decided that it’s okay for me to write poetry. And in my life I’m trying to point myself toward the sign that reads YOU GET TO SAY WHAT YOU'RE GOOD ENOUGH TO DO and away from the sign that says IF YOU GET A CHECK, THEN THAT MUST MEAN YOU WERE GOOD ENOUGH TO DO IT AFTER ALL.

I give an absolute high five to Laurie Berkner for going for it in her wildly goofy kids music. But the cash she's made isn't what inspires me or makes me think she's great. It's the "chops" she showed for just recording her songs in the first place.

May we all have chops. May we all record our own goofy songs. May we all not wait for our bank accounts to tell us we're good enough. Amen.

Am I a Good Parent?

I ask this question all the time--to myself (don't worry--not to my kid). Here's the blessing I got the other day in the car. It was a spontaneous recitation by my four-year-old. He was apparently trying to show me that he knows what's what:


#1 (And he did announce the numbers): No tv before school.

#2: No little boys going on the computer to check emails.

#3: No going into somebody else's house

#4: No pushing old ladies.

#5: Be nice to old ladies.


My question is finally answered. You know what you need to know, grasshopper.

Have a Super New Year

From our family to yours.

My Christmas Present to You: THRIFTING 101

I love to thrift shop. I do it for all my friends. I take my kids and they do it for all their friends. I don't know your size, though.

So, I am offering THRIFTING 101--all kinda wise thoughts about how to get the most out of a thrift store.

Merry Christmas. May you enjoy thrifting forevermore now.

Love,

--ginger.

THRIFTING 101

BIG PICTURE THRIFTING TRUTHS:

Keep your standards high: say no to rips, tears and stains. The feeling that you can get anything “out” with Tide is just a feeling. If the stain is a crunchy one that is clearly just the lunch of the person who donated it, that’s one thing. The rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t wear it just as it is, don’t buy it. (You won’t hem it, sew it, take it up, tuck it, or anything else. Sorry, but I know you, and you won’t.) The exception to this rule: if something’s missing a button but has an extra one attached, I will get it.

. . . but not too high: it’s easy to be slurped up into the frenzy of “OhmygoshIjustgotthatfor65cents!!!!” Don’t lose sight of the obvious. For example, when you find a beautifully-intact cashmere sweater for $7.00 that fits you just right, throw off the feeling that it’s just TOO MUCH money. Buy it.

Pay attention to how it fits: the torture of thrifting is that it is possible—and a regular occurrence—to find something that you love that just doesn’t fit you right (too tight in the boobs, too loose in the boobs …whatever). The upside of thrifting is the treasure hunting and the comically low prices; the downside is that when you find something, it won’t be available in 7 handy sizes. Don’t buy something (even if it’s cute and cheap) if it doesn’t fit well. You’ll just put it back into thrift-store-circulation when you get it home if it doesn’t fit well. And remember: $1.98 is cheap only if you actually buy something you like. Otherwise, it’s just like hucking $1.98 out the window: you COULD have purchased a double tall latte with that cash.

Become an owner of fabric softner: okay, there’s the smell. Let’s not pretend. There’s the smell. Right now, as I write, I’ve just thrown away (and then fished out of the trash) my favorite black vinyl jacket. It stinks. It’s cute, but it’s got a significant must that I can’t seem to shake with laundry products. I’m in the process of experimenting with various smell-good softeners. More on this as the research lays itself out.

Or become a wearer-of-perfume: this is really information for thrifting 201 because probably your naturally aromatic personal smell trumps thrift-store-must with just a few items hanging in your closet and on your back, but once you begin to integrate additional pieces and branch out into coats, you run the risk of having the must overwhelm your personal essence. I believe that this could be fought off with the right purchased scent. I haven’t, of course, done this yet. But it seems like it would work.

SPOTS IN A THRIFT STORE NOT TO MISS:

Shirts are an easy beginning (especially at the places that sort by color). Housewares: always a sure thing for a cheap cocktail glass or a plastic plate with a picture of the little mermaid. If you’re a basket-lover, get ready to die and go to heaven. Don’t miss: men’s belts (I hover there, waiting to find a western jobby to attach to a buckle I like that’s currently attached to a belt that I don’t); tablecloths and napkins; all the weirdly smushed together accessory bins (who doesn’t need snow gloves for 25 cents?).

SPOTS IN A THRIFT STORE TO PLAN ON SKIPPING:

Any category of clothing that would cover a “trouble” spot (for me, that’s my, well, behiiiiiiiiiind, so I skip “pants”); socks; shoes (though I do watch for cowboy boots, which somehow seem different and less able to deliver an old foot fungus than your basic old shoe); women’s belts (almost always made of plastic); all the chotchky—c’mon, do you really NEED that porcelain donkey?

Why I'm not cool. (And also a list of my TOP 5 Dream Concerts.)

I feel like it's time to set the record straight: I'm not cool.

There. I said it.

I did not arrive to music-writing via The Ramones or The Violent Femmes or any sort underground railroad of coolness. (I took the bus marked "reeeeeeeallyy dorky youth group girl" through the mid-80's, walked the rain-soaked sidewalk of "painfully-self-evualuating-20-something" in the mid-90's, and rode in a gas-guzzling SUV blaring, more-or-less bad radio as the new millenium approached.) I didn't begin to find my musical self until, well, a handful of years ago. (And, don't worry--now I drive a Honda.)

I didn't have my first real oh-this-is-what's-so-terrific-about-live-music experience until a year or so ago. Pete and I went to see Robert Earl Keen with some friends at a big hamburger place/music venue that mostly sets up for college kids and we yelled our heads off (okay, maybe it was just me yelling my head off) and squished up to the edge of the stage and screamed CHRISTMAS SONG (because that is one of his best, after all) and we left sweaty and when I walked out I thought, "That's what people mean when they say they like to go to shows."

My best concert before that one? Get ready: Amy Grant. Hold on. Here's the deal. There was a time (back in the pre-Baby-Baby/per-Vince-Gill/pre-bad-pop days) when she was the voice of one girl talking from her heart for those of us in jr. high who couldn't. I know I loved that concert for the same reason we all love concerts--somebody's up there pouring your heart out for you, or yelling or laughing their head off for you: it's you up there. Really, it's you.

Here are the five concerts on my list that I really want to see before it's all over for me:

#5: Robert Earl Keen again. That one was easy.

#4: Gillean Welch. This girl sings real songs. And I would want to see her in a bar with those wagon wheel tables and wood chips on the floor.

#2:Dan Zanes. I've never seen him, and I think he's doing with his life what many of us want to be doing: having a good time while he's helping other people have a good time too--plus I want to get up close enough to figure out what product he uses to get his hair to stand up like that.

#3:Daniel Lanois & Emmy Lou Harris together. This would be a sort of marriage-dream come true--my all-time favorite artist singing with my husband's all-time favorite. I would need backstage passes to make this dream real. And a new outfit. Yeah. And cowboy boots for Pete. Yeah.

#1:Barbra Streisand. It's true--this will be the real concert event of my lifetime. ALL THAT DRAMA! I will have experience YEARS of emotion just by SITTING (and, um, paying $1000). It will be the pinacle of the-artist-feels-for-me experiences. Really.

There. I said it. Now you know.

My Boy Loves NIGHT RANGER

It's all the buzz! We did our guest dj set for Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child, and my 6 year-old chose Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" as one of his picks. You can't believe all the BUZZZZZ about it--I mean . . . . there's like tv crews, news reports, bloggish uproar. . . um, I mean Bill and Scribble Jim and I emailed about it.

In order to set the record straight to ALL THE PUBLIC who are TALKING ON AND ON about this, I pose this question: What's the strangest song your kid has ever loved?

I mean, when I started listening to the crazy mix of 80's songs my friend Sunshine put together for me for my birthday last year, I didn't really expect "Sister Christian" to be the one that my boys (6 & 4) would be yelling, "play it again!" about from the backseat.

C'mon, let's put together a list: what are the strange ones that made you shake your head and go, "Really? You like THAT one?"

My Pretend Interview with Barbra Streisand

(This has been lovingly moved from my website over here to my blog, where it will live on in perpetuity. . . in my opinion, everyone should sit down with Barbra in their mind and let her ask you questions.)

A pretend interview wherin Barbra Streisand asks Ginger Hendrix Oprah-esque questions about her music, her life, her self.

Pretend Barbra: Ginger, are you surprised by the sudden success of Macaroni Boy Eats at Chez Shooby Doo?

Ginger: I don’t want to sound immodest, Barbra, but I’m really not. We’re hungry for real music—music that tells the truth and doesn’t shy away from words like (if you’ll excuse me) “potty” and “stinky.” We want to sing what we know to be real. All this singing about rainbows and unicorns has left us with a gaping inner space that is crying to be filled.

PB: Yes. I know what you mean. I felt that way when I filmed Yentl. Before we get ahead of ourselves, how did you get started on this journey, if you will, to music?

G: Interestingly to me, it was a path I happened upon, stumbled upon if you will. I was at home with my kids (and I mean that in a life-style sort of a way as opposed to just a “here’s what was going on on a particular day” sort of way), not having, well, the BEST time of my life and I accepted a friend’s invitation to a parent participation class. I’d tried them before, but they all seemed to be filled with women whose children would sit nicely and play with a single puzzle piece. My kids, um, didn’t play that way.

PB: Um hmmm. Um hmmmm.

G: I arrived really needing encouragement and some glimmer of hope that my boys were merely, well, “active” and I got it. It was a huge relief. I’d found a landing place.

PB: I’m so interested in you, but what does this have to do with your music?

G: I play the guitar, so I offered to do the music time for our class. I was desperate for a way to offer something in thanks for the realness of the class.

PB: Desperate?

G: I really was.

PB: Hmmmmm.

G: Before I showed up the first day, a song came to me, so I shared it. The kids loved it. The next week I wrote another. And so on, and so on.

PB: So, you say that music, essentially APPEARED to you like a beckoning apparition?

G: Yes, Barbra, but less ghost-like than your metaphor would imply. I’d been studying and writing poetry [you could click here for a link to my writing group’s website, but they don’t have one] for many years and so lyric-writing was a natural extension of that experience.

PB: Before I forget to ask, what is your favorite movie?

G: Yentl.

PB: Good. Good. Now, why children’s music, and not, say, Broadway-style-soul-revealing-cabaret-without-the-deep-lightness -of-self-that-requires sort of music?

G: It was really a matter of available audience (a group of my sons’ friends) mixed with the desire to be goofy.

PB: I don’t really know what you mean, but I’m so interested. How would you describe your music?

G: I think you could say that my music sounds like a less-talented Etta James meets Johnny Cash when he’s in a good mood meets the Artist Formerly Known as Marie Osmond meets Stanley if he were a girl and his fish were a dog who played the guitar.

PB: Mmmmmmmmmmm.

G: Barbra, could I offer you a copy of my CD before you are whisked off to your next heartfelt experience?

PB: No, Ginger, please don’t. I already have a copy of my own, and you should know that I’m considering singing “Rocking My Cat to Sleep” in my next show—a “thrio,” possibly, with Dan Zanes and Gillian Welch.

G: Thank you, Barbra, thank you. That would be a dream come true.