Category Archives: Interviews

Meet Bridgit Mendler

bridgit-hello-my-name-isI recently had the absolute pleasure to join in on a HuffPost Live Chat with singer/songwriter and actress, Bridgit Mendler. She’s a total sweetheart. Bridgit stars on the hit Disney series, Good Luck Charlie. However, like many of the young actors and actresses appearing on Disney sitcoms these days, Bridgit is first and foremost a musician. She sings and plays guitar and she’s really good at both talents.

My kids are both right at the age where they watch the same tv programs. We actually watch Good Luck Charlie as a family.

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It reminds me of my younger days when I would watch Growing Pains or The Cosby Show together with my family. I often make the comment that I think Good Luck Charlie should be on network television but I won’t complain too much that it’s a hit Disney channel sitcom. It’s nice to not have to cringe when those Viagra commercials come on network channels. Not really interested in having that conversation with my daughters…yet.

But I digress. Bridgit is a doll. She comes across as a very wholesome, educated young lady and that’s really the kind of person I want my young daughters to consider as a role model. During the HuffPost Live Chat, I had the opportunity to ask Bridgit a bit about her musical talents. You can watch/listen in on our conversation around 20:12, although, feel free to watch the entire segment (you should):

So, if you haven’t given Good Luck Charlie a chance yet, I recommend that you do. The series is well-written and the actors have great chemistry.

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I’m always howling with laughter. Bridgit’s debut album, Hello My Name is, is available for purchase. It’s a fun, pop rock album that the family can enjoy together.

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Q & A with Justin Roberts

Can you make a lullaby record that is not boring? The answer is “Yes” because Justin Roberts just did. Lullaby is a gorgeous, engaging and beautiful record. The perfect album for a pre-bedtime ritual. The string arrangements, the vocals – it’s Justin Roberts in top form. Again.

I first heard this album 4 hours after my second child was born. It was a magical moment, holding my newborn daughter watching her eyes slowly close as we listened to these gorgeous lullabies.

*Normally I get a chance to talk to artists over the phone and really engage in a conversation and can follow up based on what they say. Unfortunately, my new job limits my abilities to do that, so I just sent over some questions for Mr. Roberts and here are his answers*

Is a lullaby record a present to the parents who think your music gets their kids too riled up?

No, not really. I’ve thought about doing a lullaby record for some time. Initially, some folks had suggested that I just compile all my lullaby-like songs on one record. I didn’t really want to re-release the same material so I thought about orchestrating old songs, and then decided to just write all new songs for the record.

You mentioned in the past that song writing can be a difficult process. Was it is easier when making a lullaby only record? Did it allow you to focus on writing a certain type of song?

It wasn’t easier necessarily. But it was certainly different. The biggest problem was figuring out a way to keep the record interesting even though all the songs were slow. I abandoned the project for that reason and then took it up again when I thought of writing songs in different slower genres (70’s soft rock, bossa nova, r & b, etc.)

How were you able to get the Chicago Symphony Orchestra involved on the record?

Liam and I were trying to figure out who to get to play the orchestral parts and I realized that my longtime photographer, Todd Rosenberg, was also the photographer for the CSO. So he was supremely helpful with putting me in touch with everyone and they were all fabulous and fun to work with.

Your quieter songs on previous records were always tracks that stood out to me. Like ‘Song for You’ or ‘Sandcastle’ stood out because they were next to more uptempo songs on the album. Do you think some of those special moments are missed by putting all the softer songs on one record?

If I thought the songs were being compromised by the setting, I would not have released the record.

Were these songs sitting around for awhile or were they all new and written specifically for this album.

Just like any other record I’ve made, I wrote brand new songs from scratch and went through older fragments searching for ideas. All of these songs were completed in the last year or so, though some were melodic or lyrical fragments from awhile back.

Will you be doing lullaby only concerts?

I might do a few lullaby-only in-store visits this winter.

How fleshed out are the songs before you start collaborating with Liam?

The recording is a pretty faithful recreation of my demos. I arranged the songs on Logic using a MIDI keyboard and wrote most of the songs that way. Very little guitar was used in the writing process. But, getting to hear the parts played by professional English horn players and harpists was incredible.Gerald (Dowd, the Not Ready for Naptime Players drummer) is a lot better at pretending he is a 70’s soft rock drummer than I am.  In production, Liam went for a very 1970’s analog sounding mix, which works really well for the disparate styles. The one that we changed quite a bit was “Easier to Do,” which originally was more of a slow jam with analog drum machine. We decided to use Gerald and a jazz pianist and make it a little more organic sounding.

Lots of children’s artists play songs for their kids to test them out. Since you don’t have any children, does that make Liam Davis your son?

I rarely if ever test market my songs with children and don’t think I would change that if I had kids. The song has to be meaningful to me and other folks who I care about and respect their musical taste. I’m writing for everyone when I write family songs.

Nobody makes kids music to be rich and famous, but have you reached a comfort level or managed expectations in your career? Tour on the weekends, release a new album every 2-3 years, sell “x” number of albums, make “x” amount of dollars?

I don’t think anyone who is a self-employed artist reaches a level where they stop worrying about what the future holds but I’ve been lucky so far. With the way the music business is changing as more and more people listen to music on streaming sites and don’t purchase recordings, I’m a little concerned about how I can keep making “big budget” records with truly professional musicians but I’m going on faith that it will some how get figured out and so far it has worked out.

I saw you this summer in concert. At one point, Liam (as NYC street-talking, Willy The Whale) made a slight dig at your songs, saying that they all have the “ba, ba, ba” at some point. Are you subconsciously trying to keep yourself from writing that way?

No, the more “Ba Ba Ba” the better. “What the Stork Sent” has tons of “ba bas.”

At that same concert, you also did a new, non-lullaby song at the show. Do you have plans to release a new record in 2013?

Yes, we are planning on releasing a record called Recess in 2013. About half of it was recorded while we were working on “Lullaby.”

Artists such as Dan Zanes, Caspar Babypants and others have released books tied with their music. Have you thought about trying to do that as well?

I’m releasing a book with Putnam’s in 2014 called “The Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade,” which is adapted from the song “Billy the Bully” http://www.justinroberts.org/music_naptime.php

Home concerts on the on rise and yet, you’re tackling something a little different. You’re working on home plays. Can you share some details on how that came about and who’s involved?

My college friend Eric Ziegenhagen and I were discussing house concerts and wondered why no one was doing house theater. I’m a big fan of the theater. I find it to be one of the most transformative forms of art. So, we decided to try doing the same thing that folks were doing with music with theater. I suggested a play by Craig Wright (who happens to be my friend and the person that wrote two songs from the “Why Not Sea Monsters?” CDs) for the first one. He currently has a play on Broadway called “Grace.” Eric found some amazing actors, John Roberts (who also went to college with us), Tracy Kaplan (from Theatre 7) and Brad Smith (who is also a very accomplished musician – Sad Brad Smith) and we started putting it on all over Chicago. It was a blast. We’re hoping to do more this year and next.

For more, read this article from the Chicago Tribune.

What was the moment where you realized you had something special going on with children’s music?

Probably in 1992, when I played “Giraffe/Nightingale” (a song from my college band – Pimentos for Gus) for the preschoolers I was working with. but I never entertained the idea of being a kids’ musician at that point.

You’re on Twitter and Facebook, but you’re not sharing every possible detail about your life. By not sharing are helping keep the mystique of an artist?

I don’t think most of what I’m thinking or doing is that interesting to share. But, if it’s creating a mystique, I’ll keep it up.

You have also done some adult shows with Robbie Fulks. Are you writing adult songs? How close are you to releasing a record for non-kids?

I’ve written a handful of adult songs. Some of them I put on this lullaby record. Some of them I put on previous family records. I don’t know that I will make another record that is just for adults since I already feel like I’m writing for adults anyway (in addition to kids), so it would seem redundant.

What were the songs you grew up listening to that inspired you to pick up the guitar.

I loved 80’s indie rock R.E.M., Husker Du, Meat Puppets, Replacements and 70’s folk: James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Van Morrison, Paul Simon.

Albums can be formed based on what the musician has been listening to at the time or recording, so what are you listening too?

I’ve been listening to new records from Fiona Apple, Father John Misty, Mountain Goats, and Bill Fay.

Lullaby will be released on November 20th. You can pre-order your copy soon from Justin’s website.

A Conversation with Randy Kaplan

Randy Kaplan is new school with tip of the hat to the old school. Actually, he’s fully immersed in old school blues. Randy’s gift lies in sharing the blues, yet telling a story the kids can connect to. He doesn’t take shortcuts or cut corners. His latest album, Mr. Diddie Wah Diddie is 24(!) tracks long and comes with a 20(!) page CD insert. Considering the attention span of most children, it’s daring to release an album of that length.

Randy and his team have just also launched, The Ice Cream game a fun computer game that you can play with your children.

Mr. Kaplan was kind enough to take time out of his schedule to talk about the business side of the kids music scene.

How did your relationship with the My Kazoo TV people to release this album compared to how you were with your three previous records?

Richard Ellis and I had been meeting on and off for a few years. The beginnings are murky.  I don’t remember where he first saw me.  He must have seen me perform in New York somewhere, because that’s where we kept meeting.  And he kept telling me about his MyKazooTV and MyKazooMusic when it was in its incipient stages.  And he said they were working on a deal with a major label and he definitely wanted me to work with them.  And you know it was something we…it was just on the back burner.  I just kept releasing albums independently and then he finally…we met and he said look, I got a deal with Universal and we want to sign you.  So, that’s how it came about.  Then we got serious about figuring out a way to work together and…and so far, so good.

Was there a sense of relief having the label support behind it rather than having you having to do a majority of the legwork on your own?

Yeah, it’s interesting because overall I’m very excited to be with Kazoo who, you know it’s also Universal Music, but it’s definitely a mixed bag in the sense that I…I never was happy with self promotion or doing all the business end of stuff, but being forced into for my three kid’s records, I think have eight or nine adult records out and I’ve had to do all that stuff totally independently.  Grass roots, do it yourself, all that stuff.  And I….I never liked it, but I always was the one who was in control, and I kind of got used to that.  So now, you know with other people that have serious input, it’s…it takes a lot, you know whether it’s ego wise or just creative wise to be like OK, I have to consider these other things, but ultimately it’s definitely a relief that I…that I have this team behind me.  You know that is in constant email contact me and you know has concerns with the artwork, and the songs and everything.  And so, ultimately, it’s good, but there is like that part of me that’s…you know it’s hard to…it’s hard not to be the one that does everything.

Right. You go from being in control of absolutely everything to not being in control of absolutely everything.

Right.  Which is kind of what I always wanted.  I wanted help in the business end, especially.  And the good thing about this is that this first project we worked on was like definitely not like how you’d….how you’d put on…you know you wouldn’t design this project in advance to be the one to work on because it’s like a total concept album with…it’s really long, and there’s tons of licensing clearance issues.  And I’m sure they were like what the heck do we have to…this is Randy’s first thing he’s giving us.  But I got everything I wanted on the record, the audio, and the artwork and everything is exactly how I wanted it. I couldn’t be happier with that.

Now, do you think you were able to, knowing that the business was going to be taken care of, did it allow you to focus in on the music 100%?

Yeah, now what I said is, we wouldn’t have chosen this project.  The project was already in midstream when I signed on with MyKazoo.  So, I had already done the bulk of the recoding and it was almost…and the artwork was kind of just starting to be made.  So it was…most of the creative work was done when I signed.  Then of course…except for the artwork took a long time, because it’s a 20 page booklet with photos, and liner notes, and everything.  So, I just had to fight a little to get the exact…you know they wanted me to cut some songs maybe, or they were concerned with the length, and you know that took a little finagling.  But I got it.  So, yes, I kept saying look, for our second record together, I’ll do a ten song record of all originals, no licensing, no covers, whatever you want you know.  So it worked out.  It’s like a bargaining chip, options for the future.

Right, because when this album came to me, I’ve only been paying attention to children’s music for about the last two years or so.  And every kid’s album I’ve seen, it’s maybe ten, eleven, a max of 12 tracks.  And you practically doubled that with this one.  Was there ever any thought to say let’s do half of one album.  Let’s do 12 tracks for one here, and then 12 tracks for a second album one year later because maybe the audiences and the kids aren’t ready or the parents aren’t capable of sitting down and listening to a 24 track record with their kids?

Right.  Well, I was very passionate that it had to be this way. And my first three albums were 17 track records, and there’s some really long songs in there like my version of ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ is ten minutes, and it’s never a problem.  Kids listen to the whole thing and sit there.  And I’m like wow, they have better attention spans than the adults sometimes.  But my argument, first, it’s like a concept record.  So, I wanted all my guitar heroes to be represented.  You know there’s a few I had to leave out, but it’s also a concept record in that I am doing dialogues throughout teaching blues history and trying to come up with the a blues man name for me.  And so you know so once that was set, you couldn’t really cut out songs.  They were like, look, especially for a kid’s record, how could it be this long?  And I said well, for a kid’s record especially, it doesn’t really matter how long it is, because in my experience the family gets in the car, puts on the CD and the kid gets fixated on maybe song three and wants to hear it over and over again.  They don’t even get to the second half of the record for three months.  You know and then they have a wealth of material at their disposal for a year’s worth of entertainment.  I really feel like how it is.  Like my other records, you hear first the praise for the first half of the record, then later oh, we just listened to this one, song number ten.  You know so it comes around like that. It’s not like you’re a teenager coming home with headphones, and sitting on your beanbag chair, and listening to the entire record and reading the liner notes.  These are, three to eight year olds in a car, mostly.  This is how I imagine them listening to it.  So, I felt the length was kind of an irrelevant issue.  It seemed like it would be like a major thing.  Like oh, kid’s records should be short. It really seemed logical when you actually examined it.

Exactly. We’re in the car and maybe five tracks into a record before we’re at the store and that’s all they want to hear when we get back in. Those first 5 songs. I can always tell if it’s a good album if they say “again.”

Right.  Exactly.

If they say again when the song over, that means they’re loving this, and we go back and we listen to that song five consecutive times.

Exactly.  Yeah.  And with that I mind too, I try to design my music, and I hope I succeed at it, in like having the adults be able to listen to the same song five times in a row without wanting to tear their hair out. Sometimes any song you want, if you have to listen it over and over again, you’re like oh, come on.  So, I try to put as many levels as I can in there, where the kids aren’t going to get every joke necessarily, or every word play thing where adults will. The song will hopefully hold interest for adults as well as the kids with the repeated listenings.

“Ice Cream Man Rag” by Randy Kaplan from myKaZooTV on Vimeo.

Now one of the things you’ve talked about is the liner notes.  And to me that almost seems to be a lost art nowadays. Where so many people are just downloading the album via iTunes or Amazon or CD Baby or wherever.  It’s always just the MP3.  So why did you take the time to put together such a unique, and informative package to go with the actual hard copy CD?

I’m like an old time, old style guy, too.  I lament the loss of the big LP where you could hold it in your hand, and the pictures are much bigger, and then at least with the CDs, with the CD booklet, I lament the loss of that.  With kid’s music especially, I feel like the physical CDs are bought often.  I don’t know how many people actually read the liner notes, and as extensively as I‘d want them to from my other records. The first three records have short liner notes, but they get increasingly longer, you know where by my third one I was doing a liner note for my last adult record.  Songs For Old Lovers I did…there are extensive liner notes in the style of like a Frank Sinatra record from the ‘50s or ‘60s.  So that got appreciated.  So, that was a concept record, too, my last adult record, which was I wrote songs as responsive to pop songs from the ‘40s and ‘50s, like Sinatra-eseque, Peggy Lee type songs.  So, there were liner notes in that.  So for this I wanted to do the same thing, and I’m real…I was real passionate about it and loved putting the packaging together, and my hope is that some people will read it and maybe I will post it online for the folks that like to just download stuff from MP3’s.  We’re trying to show with this record that it’s a…it’s kind of a educational in a way, because I’m not really an educational type singer where you go to the show to learn something, but you know we have this amazing heritage of music in the United States of which blues is a huge part.  So, I’ve been into the blues and ragtime music for a long time, but just putting together this record, and doing all the licensing, and researching the songs, I learned a ton of stuff. I find it fascinating.  So, I just hope that it will wear off…rub off on other people and they’ll find it fascinating too.  You know we have these mythological American characters, Robert Johnson, and those guys who we hardly know anything about. And these guys formed American music.  You know everything was influenced by them.  Just magical, magical guys in our past hundreds…hundreds of years ago.

You don’t seem to take the easy route on a lot of these things.  You kind of dig in and make this really authentic and allow both the parents and the kids to really kind of dig deep, don’t you?

Yeah. I try to do it so that it’s both entertaining, and then if you want to go to that level of saying oh, what is he really doing, you could find out.  You know I would have loved to have like a companion CD go with this where it shows all the influences, because for Mr. Diddie Wah Diddie, I took Robert Johnson’s song, for instance, ‘Kind Hearted Woman Blues’ and changed it to ‘Kind Hearted Babysitter Blues.’  So, I made a CD for my friend Scott, who is also what I built in as my creative consultant, because he just has so many amazing ideas.  It was his idea originally to put…you know get Lightning Boskins to sit there with me and talk about the song.  So, I made him a CD.  It was a double CD, it turned out to be, because I staggered the original influences with like my…my songs, how they came out.  He was like “oh, this is the best.  I wish I everyone could hear this.”  So you hear like Robert Johnson singing ‘Kind Hearted Woman Blues’, then me singing ‘Kind Hearted Babysitter Blues.’  You hear Bessy Smith singing ‘Black Mountain Blues,’ then my version.  So, that kind of stuff I always hope people you know read the liner notes and want to hear the originals too, because you know that the lyrics aren’t always appropriate for kids, which is why I wanted to change everything and put out a blues record for children.  But still that’s just amazing, these original versions.  So yeah, never the easy way out. That’s true.

I’m curious how easy is it to turn off the adult record writing and write for the kids?  Do you find it bleeding over at all or is it pretty cut and dry with how the songwriting process goes for you?

I don’t really think about it. I know certain songs of mine started out as adult songs that I just…that changed to kid’s songs real easily.  For instance, Loquat Rooftop, you know my second kid’s record.  That was not a kid’s song.  It was an adult song.  I didn’t change anything.  I made it a kid’s song and I just said, oh, I will change it out…instead of saying loquat, I’ll say, lo, lo, loquat in the chorus.  That’s the only change in the whole song, and it’s some people’s favorite song.  It’s like a sweet, nice song.  My friend Mike West, he’s also the producer, just illustrated a children’s book about it.  So, it’s like that’s…something like that. Or my song ‘Roaches’ from my first record, Five Cent Piece.  You know it’s about roaches.  It was just a song I used to sing when I lived in the East Village.  People like totally related to it because everyone had roaches in the East Village apartments in those days.  And then I just changed it to a kid’s song by adding the voice of the roaches during the instrumental.  And it…you know so stuff like that of course is a difference.  I…you know my adult songs that I have written in the past 20 years are all about kind of dysfunctional relationships and (laughs) for kids.  But yeah, the kid’s songs for instance, my friend had like a little salon party a few weeks ago, and she asked me to be one of the people who performed.  So I play a couple of my more funny songs. Also the kid’s songs wind up informing my adult music, where my adult shows now, which are however few and far between, are kind of fun, and funnier than they ever used to be because I…I’ve just learned from singing for kids what…what is an entertaining thing, and what is fun to play.  So, anyway, I played my two adult songs, and then Laurie, the person who did the party, said oh, you should play them one of your upcoming kid’s songs from the blues record.  And I did and that was the biggest hit of the night for me.  Like they wanted to hear more kid’s songs.  You know because there’s a level in the kid’s songs that the adults like, too.  So, it does kind of blend in a way where I’m writing with you know multi levels going on.  So, I still do write some songs, and I’m like oh, I could never sing this for kids, but for the most part nowadays, I’m writing for a children’s audience with adults in mind also.

It’s hard for artists to make money via the CD sales route.  There is revenue there but there’s always that break even point where it costs so much money to produce the records, and things along those lines, where a majority of revenue for artists come via shows, and gigs…are you able to make the kid’s aspect of your career, is it enough to where you are comfortable and you can make a living off of? I’ve only seen that you have a couple summer tour dates this year, not a whole lot of live shows.

Right.

So how do you as an artist find a way to justify the time, the effort, the energy to make it financially, not necessarily successful, you don’t have cash flowing all over the place, but to make it worth that time and effort?

Well, the majority of my income comes from royalties. I’m really lucky in that the Sirius XM radio, plays my stuff all the time.  And you get royalties from that, from ASCAP, which is my song writing and composer society that I belong to, but also from Sound Exchange, which pays royalties for both the sound recordings, sound recording owner and also to the main performer of songs.  So, now my Sound Exchange royalties are going to go down with My Kazoo, because My Kazoo and Universal now own the sound recording of this new record.  But I am still the principle recorder, recording artist, so I’ll get the Sound Exchange royalties, and of course, I’ll get the ASCAP royalties.  So, that’s actually my main source of income these days.  And live shows, I’m assuming there will be more coming up, but I try to do ones that you know pay relatively well.  You know I used to just go all over the place and play for basically nothing.  And I know everyone argues just do the show, it’s good for exposure. You know so those days are kind of luckily coming to an end, where now I can say well, yeah, I’ll go and play anywhere.  You know people write me, “when are you coming to Texas?”  I’m like I’m ready to go right now.  It’s easy to get me to come.  Even if it’s like a private thing, you pool together ten families and each chip in and then that’s enough to get me to fly anywhere and put me up in a hotel.  It’s kind of easy.  So, luckily, my New York contacts and my L.A. contacts, the two main places I lived and played, I have certain gigs that happen a couple of times a year, which actually pay pretty well.  But yeah, I fly to Denver, St. Louis and those places, do what I just said.  They say hey, we want to sponsor a concert. They just offer me and we make a deal.  Like alright, give me this amount of money for flying, and for putting me in a hotel, and then I’ll come out there and I’ll play, and so far it’s been great. I’m hoping that will increase.  And also, definitely what you mentioned, when I was single, it was easy to eek out an existence and squeak by.  Now I have a wife have a kid, and (laughter) it’s way more expensive than I thought it was.  So, yeah, we’ve got to step up things to the next level with MyKazoo and Universal, hopefully, so we can keep this viable.

For more information on Randy visit RandyKaplan.com and don’t forget to pick up a copy of his newest album Mr Diddie Wah Diddie.