All About the Okee Dokee Brothers: Folk and bluegrass music for kids is nothing new — sometimes quite literally, with the same hoary covers taking up space on countless records from Burl Ives to the present day. Joe Mailander and Justin Lansing, a.k.a. the Okee Dokee Brothers, offer an exception to the rule: traditional instrumentation and tight harmonies blend artfully with sharp original arrangements and lyrics that swing gently from tender to funny and back again.

What They Sound Like Put together a guitar, a banjo, and some brotherly harmony, and you’ve got the idea — although the Okee Dokees understand the value of a little production, too (more on that in a minute).

Album Highlights Folk artists have had to walk a tricky line in the recording age, trying to balance between presenting an honest account of their performing gifts while making room for enough audio sweetening to keep listeners interested at home, and the Okee Dokee Brothers are no different; on previous albums, they’ve struggled to deliver recordings that sounded raw while still boasting full-bodied arrangements. They hit the target square on the bullseye with Can You Canoe?, which offers the best of all worlds — the production (by the inestimable Dean Jones) is actually pretty involved, but it leaves plenty of room for the songs to breathe, creating the illusion of a campfire performance that somehow includes a cast of dozens (and a tuba, and an upright bass, and a few fiddles, and a couple of accordions, and…)

All of which would be little more than pleasant if it weren’t for the songs themselves — which are, to a number, outstanding. Unlike a lot of trad-focused performers, the Okee Dokees have always been songwriters first, and one of the pleasures of their discography is listening to them hone their craft — and I don’t think it’s overstating the case at all to say that with Can You Canoe?, Lansing and Mailander make a persuasive case for themselves as two of kindie’s best songwriters.

There just aren’t any bad songs here — and what’s more, the Okee Dokees manage to seamlessly weave and interpolate their original ideas with elements of traditional songs, all of which hold up solidly against covers of unimpeachable standards like “Haul Away Joe” (featuring Garth Hudson) and “King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O.” It’s an aspect of the album that I think a lot of people probably won’t hear, but it might be the most important one; it reflects Lansing and Mailander’s respect for their musical roots as well as their confidence in their own maturing gifts.

Suggestions for Improvement Beats me. No clue. Best of luck trying to top this one, guys.

Target Age Group Everyone

Final Verdict Can You Canoe? had a lot to live up to. As we discussed with the Okee Dokees in last year’s interview, the album came out of a monthlong canoe trip down the Mississippi River that took Lansing and Mailander from Minnesota to St. Louis — a beautiful idea with amazing potential, but one that might have seemed like sort of a waste for the audience if it hadn’t produced an album that holds up to repeat listens. Well, it doesn’t: It demands them. Just ask anyone who lives in my house — I’ve had it in heavy rotation right alongside the kids.

Like the Mississippi, Can You Canoe? has a generally calm surface — including some of the loveliest ballads you’re likely to hear all year — but it also holds a lot of depth. This is a record about kindness, patience, friendship, brotherhood, travel, respect for the natural world, and a whole lot more — all big concepts for a little 38-minute collection of songs, but ones that move gracefully below the surface, lending calm, cool resonance to what was already a beautiful journey.

And speaking of the journey, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that Can You Canoe? also comes with a DVD that outlines the Okee Dokees’ trip, including a number of funny looks at life on the river, some music videos, and at least one can’t-miss segment featuring a few words to live by from Kenny Salwey, the self-proclaimed Last River Rat. It’s all decidedly homespun, but digital recording has come an awfully long way, and the film benefits greatly from the Okee Dokees’ decision to turn that part of the trip over to director Alex Johnson, who (along with editor Jed Anderson and assistant director Bryan Sieh) captures a lot of natural beauty with a canoe-ready rig.

It all adds up to the album to beat for the best kindie release of the year — a set of songs that should provoke family singalongs and discussions in equal measure. I can’t wait to hear where their journey takes them next.

Lucky Diaz just finished one heck of a week. Not only did he release a new album, A Potluck, with his Family Jam Band, but he also married bandmate Alisha Gaddis. Despite all those things on his plate, he took time out to chat with me about getting married, releasing the new record, his daughter Ella and why he is willing to give away his albums to teachers.

Did you plan on getting married & releasing a record in the same week on purpose?

(Laughs) No. The rule that Alisha laid out was, finish the record before we got married. The record has been finished for about two months now. So I took care of that part. We always release albums in the spring and we just happened to be getting married in the spring. In hindsight, maybe not. I’m excited to be doing both, but it’s been fun.

According to Facebook, last week your then-fiancé Alisha made apple pie for the first time. After tasting it, any regrets on this whole marriage thing?

I have a thing about pie. Pie is my favorite food. However, I’m diabetic so it’s not very often I get to eat pie. She had this idea for making a pie and she’d be the first to tell you that she’s not very domestic. She doesn’t cook very often. So she has this ambition to become a great cook. As for the pie? It was delicious. But regardless of the pie, I was going to marry her. I’m the winner here.

How did the two of you meet and become bandmates?

Here’s how it really got started. I have a daughter, Ella, who is eight, and I started playing songs for her at bathtime. I really wanted to her to get acquainted with the music I grew up on like the Beatles, Buddy Holly, and the Beach Boys. At some point I started just making up songs for her and she really liked them. Then I played songs for her friends and they really liked them. Alisha and I were dating at the time and she said “You should record these.” I was already doing sessions for other people, so I decided to go ahead and record it. I just really loved the idea of having a family jam band. Alisha is such a good entertainer. It made sense to do it together. We’re the real traveling family band. Ella travels with us and it’s a really fun experience to do as a family. It wasn’t intentional, but I can’t do it without her now.

What were you doing prior to children’s music?

I was just writing all the time, sometimes for different musicians, et cetera. But there’s something special about children’s music. I think there’s something unique about parents and children listening to music together, and I feel nowadays that just doesn’t happen. Growing up for me it was listening to the Beatles, America, the Doobie Brothers or the Who. My musical education really started with AM radio and to me, that was family music. Today, I’m not sure that it is.

Back then it, music was universal. Everything is so targeted now. Lady Gaga is intended for a certain audience. Kanye West. I’m a huge Kanye West fan, but I’m not going to play it for Ella. Top 40 back in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s was great for everyone. I don’t think that is really happening today in music.  I think a lot of parents play Top 40 music for their kids and they’re growing up way too fast. I don’t think it’s cool that way. I mean I’m a pretty progressive parent in a lot of ways, but pop music has changed in a way that I’m not 100% comfortable with.  It’s not same thing as in 1965 hearing the Rolling Stones sing a love song.

Right, it was the same way for me growing up — my parents would play Simon & Garfunkel all the time.

Right! How could anyone not like Simon & Garfunkel? It was beautiful stuff, everyone could listen to it.

For A Potluck, you recorded an ode to your childhood, “Tres Rotanes.” How did picking that song come about?

I’m a Mexican-American and my parents are Mexican. I did grow up listening to a lot of Mexican music and it is a part of my heritage. I’ve always wanted to write Spanish music, but I had just never gotten around to doing it. We were touring in Texas this past year and my parents are outside Austin. We were there hanging out, and I just got in touch with my roots. We were there with Ella, and when you’re with family, you start to reminisce about the old days. I just started to talk to my mom about the songs from my childhood. I thought it would be cool to adapt one of those songs on the new album. There was an artist from Latin America called Cri Cri who was popular back in the ’30s. His songs and poems were kind of weird. I just wanted to write this Old 97’s alt-country type song for the new record with Spanish lyrics. It’s fun. Ella really likes it. It’s a great connection for me.

You seem to write a lot of songs for Ella. How much longer until she no longer wants you testing songs out on her? Will it change the way you write?

I think she’s already getting too old. She’s getting jaded. She used to be “I really like that” and now she’s more like, “Yeah, it’s OK, I kind of like.” She’s getting older and her tastes are changing. I don’t think it will change how I write. It comes from an honest place. Good music just feels good. I think the message is we want to communicate with children. I love writing in this format. It’s not going to change how I write. I mean, we plan to have more children. So it’ll be a beautiful perpetual cycle — every new kid will provide eight years’ worth of material!

The area where you live, L.A.’s Silverlake neighborhood, helps a lot with your creativity.

Yeah, it’s a really artistic neighborhood. Elliot Smith came out of the neighborhood. The Silversun Pickups are from here. The great producer Daniel Lanois lives here. You’re at a coffee shop and Aimee Mann is sitting at a table across from you. It really inspires us. It’s our own ecosystem. I would compare it to being in the Village back in the ’60s. It has so much diversity and it’s a beautiful thing. I love seeing how Ella is being inspired by the neighborhood. It’s funny — we have a squirrel in our backyard that is literally crazy, so of course we wrote a song about it. There’s inspiration in our neighborhood on a daily basis.

You guys are willing to give your music away to teachers. Talk about that decision.

It’s really important. We have a very open door policy. We will give our music to any teacher who wants to use it in their classroom. The truth about it is that education is already being shortchanged, and music programs are being cut. Teachers work really hard and take money out of their own pocket to educate our children, so the least we can do is provide our music to them. Alisha’s mom is a teacher. My mom is a teacher. You want your kids to be enriched at school. You never know — there could be a kid in Milwaukee who hears our music and is inspired to play an instrument. That changes lives in such a great way, I can’t stress how important music in schools is to us. Our educators deserve it.

What is your impression of the kids’ music scene?

I’m still learning about this kindie scene. We just released this EP and figured we’d give it to our friends and hoped they’d like it. Then all of the sudden the phone was ringing and people saying “We love your song ‘Blue Bear.’” Then Sirius Kids Place started playing this song  and it kind of blew up. We’re still learning and finding out new things every day.

It’s hard to make money making music. How do you make it worth the time and effort?

We’ve been very lucky. We’ve been able to book some good-sized shows. We’ll try and book one anchor show that will allow us to pay for our travel and then we can play other shows where we might not make as much. That’s how we’ve been able to make it work. We can go from one day playing LEGO Land and the next day playing our garage for a birthday party. We’ll play anywhere and try to make ends meet.

Take a magic wand to the kindie music scene.

I would love to start a record label and just put out some really good records. I would love to put together a West Coast collaborative of kids’ artists. Maybe even a West Coast KindieFest — Hello? Stefan? — I think working more together with other artists would be great.

For more information on Lucky Diaz & The Family Jam Band, visit their website.

After five solid years of recording and touring with the Sippy Cups, Alison Faith Levy needed a break, so she took a musical detour and created McCabe & Mrs. Miller, an Americana band. But she couldn’t fully kick the kids’ music habit — she started playing shows at a local bookstore, and the rest is history.

*lame joke alert* After seeing Toby Keith have success with “Red Solo Cup,” Alison figured she would have success on her own being a solo, sippy cup. *lame joke alert over*

Briefly intruding on her busy schedule, we talked to Alison about her new solo album, World of Wonder.

Walk us through how you got to this point in your career. The Sippy Cups, then adult Americana music, and now back to kids’ music as a solo Sippy Cup.

The Sippy Cups kind of casually disbanded and parted ways. We were taking a break. We were touring a lot, it was very intense and we just need a break. Then I started this Americana band that I put out a record with. Then I started playing music for kids in the local bookstore, just very casually. I just started writing songs. I would wake up at 6 AM on the days I’d go to the bookstore and bam, I’d have a new song in my head that I’d want to write.

Soon enough, I had enough songs for an album and then I started to get bookings for shows at libraries and festivals. Then people were asking me to put out a CD so they could buy the songs. It just naturally evolved in to a full-fledged project. So I just called up my friend Allen (producer/Orange Peel Allen Clapp) to come in to the studio — let’s make a real record and have fun with it. Then of course, I went bananas on it and just went for it. It just wound up being such much more than I originally planned it to be — and I’m so happy with how it turned out.

Lots of kids’ music has a very simplistic feel to it. Yet on your record, it has very full, Phil Spector vibe to it.

The Sippy Cups were always about that big, full sound. We always wanted to write songs that kids could relate to, but make a record we wanted to hear. I think I did that on this record too. I don’t want to hold back just because it’s kids’ music. If I hear something musically that I think serves the song, I want to go for it. I’m willing to take some chances with the production. But I think kids can enjoy it; I think parents can enjoy it. It’s important for me to have the song sound the way I hear it in my head, which is a very full sound. And with Alan, I barely had a piano, vocals and guitar on the demos. He just  got it and we were able to run with it.

Was it difficult recording without other band members in the studio?

It was just the opposite — it was so easy. I love to collaborate, but I also love to see an idea through from start to finish. I do love the group discussion and being in a band is all part of that. Having six people in the room makes things move a little bit slower. The product can be amazing, but this was just a different process. It was kind of fun; there was never a debate. I could just have a good time with it.

Does the writing process between adult and kids’ music ever bleed across genres?

I’m always writing, but I tend to write on a project basis. Right now I’m completely immersed in the kids’ music. I’ve been around kids a lot lately, and they’ve inspired me. Although a couple weeks ago I did a gig with my Americana band and it was weird being up on stage as this bluesy momma. I kind of forget about that part of me.

Talk about the different joys between an adult show in a dive bar compared to a kids’ show at a library.

Don’t make me choose!  I honestly love them both so much. They’re both completely different, but I enjoy each for different things. I get such a joy from connecting with the audience. Whether I’m belting out the blues with this super loud, kick ass roadhouse band or if I’m jumping up and down with a bunch of three-year-olds, I get the same joy. Even though it’s completely different music, I get the same adrenaline rush when I’m performing. When the crowd responds, it just puts a smile on my face.

Since it’s a solo record, did you feel you had less expectations on this album?

A little bit, but I always worry that I might be pushing too far with the record. You know with the lyrics,  it’s always intended for kids, but there are some pretty sophisticated moments where I worry that I might have gone too far. Ultimately, I have to go with my heart and what I feel and how I should convey the song. You know there is a simple song like “Baby Anteater” and then there’s “Eye Of The Tornado,” which is about emotions and chaos and about finding a peaceful place amongst the chaos. I was hoping that it would give a nice message to  kids, but it’s a sophisticated idea. There would be times I would look at Allen as ask “Am I going too far?” and he would tell me “No, just do what feels right. You’re communicating.”

How do some of your Americana musical peers  perceive your kids music?

I think they don’t quite get it. They think it’s cool that I do it, but it’s every alien to them. They’re super supportive. Some have heard the record  and love it, but they don’t quite understand it. I try and get them to come to shows so they can see what it is all about.

It’s very difficult to make financial headway in the kids’ music scene. So why do it?

I’ve never made an album thinking about whether I could make a profit on it. What’s good about kids’ music is there are lots of opportunities to perform that actually pay pretty decently. That’s a nice alternative to playing adult music in a smoky bar with a tiny guarantee. With kids’ music there is at least a level of performance income that you can earn. Having a CD out also helps my profile. Obviously, I would hope to at least be able to break even on the record. Ultimately, I made it because I wanted to make a record. I hope people enjoy it — and that’s the most important thing to me.

Alison Faith Levy’s World of Wonder is out now. Buy your copy here.

All About Renee & Jeremy Apart, they’re Renee Stahl and Jeremy Toback, both veteran recording artists in their own right — Renee has released a pair of solo albums, and Jeremy was a founding member of Brad before moving on to his own solo career and his latest band project, Chop Love Carry Fire. Together, they form what might be kindie’s soothing-est duo: the mellifluous voices behind the Dadnabbit favorites It’s a Big World and C’mon.

What They Sound Like Take one part acoustic instrumentation, add one part heartwarming two-part harmony, and you’ve got the basic ingredients. Simple but effective.

Album Highlights A Little Love is a covers record, so these are all songs you probably know by heart, from AM gold (the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “59th Street Bridge Song”) to classic rock (Supertramp’s “Give a Little Bit,” John Lennon’s “Love,” Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend”), a few surprising choices from the last 25 years (“Shiny Happy People,” Coldplay’s “Yellow” and the Chili Peppers’ “Give It Away”) and even a little sweet soul music (“Put a Little Love in Your Heart”).

Suggestions for Improvement Tough question, because A Little Love is effortless listening, and the track listing moves smoothly from easy picks like “Daydream Believer” to wonderfully off-the-wall choices like “Give It Away” — and Renee & Jeremy manage them all with tuneful aplomb. It’s a lot of fun. If I had to come up with a nit to pick, I suppose I’d wish for more unexpected covers on the next installment, but that’s only because it’s so much fun to see the looks on people’s faces when they hear “Give It Away.”

Target Age Group Everyone

Final Verdict A creative holding pattern, perhaps, but as placeholder projects go, A Little Love is more fun than most. A wise man once told me that you shouldn’t bother cutting a cover of someone else’s work unless you have something of yourself to bring to the song, and Renee & Jeremy observe that rule religiously here — you’ll obviously recognize everything here, but none of the covers are slavishly faithful, and all of the new arrangements make sense. Listen to the whole thing below (or just buy it here), and see if you don’t agree.

But wait, it gets better: Unlike last weekend, when the band was passing out Brooklyn-certified cassettes of the song at KindieFest, this week finds them joining the digital age and sharing “Camping” in good old-fashioned mp3 form. Enjoy it below, and keep your fingers crossed for a new full-length soon:

On the last Popdose podcast, my co-hosts and I got together to praise the life and legacy of Levon Helm, and perhaps inevitably, a large part of the discussion centered on authenticity; from Music from Big Pink to Electric Dirt, Helm always seemed to live and create on his own terms. It often got him into trouble, but he triumphed so often — over changing trends, bankruptcy, and ill health — that his death, even coming at age 71 and after years of struggling with cancer, hit us in the gut. We thought he’d beaten his demons because we wanted him to. We saw something of ourselves in him. His mortality reflects our own.

My thoughts returned to that conversation after I heard the news of Adam Yauch’s passing today. Like Helm, Yauch had battled cancer for years — and again, we wanted to believe he’d beaten the disease. For my generation, this one hits even harder, because the Beastie Boys belonged to us. They broke through with Licensed to Ill the summer I turned 13, topping the charts and going platinum by reveling in exactly the sort of sniggering, hormone-addled stupidity that my peers and I understood.

Some of us were the same kids who’d turned Thriller into a record-setting smash, but I think Ill meant more to us. Unlike Michael, the Beasties seemed to burst, fully-formed, out of nowhere, at just the right moment to help us wield our inner wiffle ball bats through the horror of adolescence. The tools they gave us were blunt, and occasionally cruel, but they were effective; we wanted girls, and we were ready to fight for our right to party. I didn’t have any particular love for hip-hop — hell, I was a Billy Joel fan — but I stole a copy of Ill from the local Wherehouse anyway. Slipped it into the pocket of my Bugle Boys.

It could have ended there for the Beastie Boys, and a lot of people really thought it would; there were real sparks of talent on the album, but a lot of them were smothered with the sort of bigoted, misogynistic, frat-boy lunacy that some people hated about the group even then, and that kind of thing just isn’t very funny for very long. (Ask Andrew “Dice” Clay’s booking agent.)

I probably don’t need to go too far into what happened next. The upshot is this: the Beasties were always on to the next thing, sometimes the next next thing, never showing much regard for what people expected from them, and occasionally paying the price in sales. As big as they were, they probably could have been even bigger — for awhile, anyway — if they’d played the charts instead of always trying to grow.

MCA, Ad-Rock, and Mike D. were older than the kids in my generation, but not by much. They were kind of like cooler older brothers, perpetually away at college, periodically sending back bits and pieces of the stuff we should be listening to instead of all that baby crap on the radio. They saw it all before we did, from the music — frat rap with a Marshall stack, weed-scented samples, ’70s kitsch — to more important stuff, like growing from a horny teenager into a man with the courage to work for the causes that mean something to you.

They were authentic, in other words. And as with Levon, I think that’s what people really responded to. I bought every new Beasties record out of sheer excitement to hear what came next, even though I knew I probably wouldn’t warm up to it right away. I just wanted to know what they were going to do. For me and a lot of others, I think their continued vitality reflected the possibility of our own: Gray-haired guys who should have been past their prime, still trying to dig deeper into a musical genre that floats on young male machismo. If they could do it, maybe there was still hope for us.

Which is why Yauch’s death hits so hard, and why your Facebook and Twitter feed is probably full of social media-sized eulogies, and why I’m adding my own. I’m posting it here at Dadnabbit, instead of Popdose or somewhere else, because I think the way Yauch lived his public life offers a sort of object lesson for us as parents — his continued authenticity in the face of an industry, and a culture, really, that so often seeks to seduce it away from you. Any creative person who’s tasted any sort of success can tell you it’s a brain-scrambling experience, and it’s very easy to lose sight of who you really are when you know people are actively expecting you to be…anything.

It isn’t too much of a stretch to say that parenthood is the same way, is it? I don’t think so. And while there are plenty of Beastie Boys songs I’m not in any hurry to play for my kids (although they do giggle mighty hard at “Brass Monkey” and “Shake Your Rump” — thanks again, Readeez), once they’re older, you can bet that will change. Partly for reasons of nostalgia, of course (hey, I’m still just a child of the ’80s), but also because I think we can never have enough examples of people who are brave enough to grow, and confound expectations, and achieve success on their own terms. Yauch died far too young, but he left behind several lifetimes’ worth of art and a handful of timeless lessons. Thanks for everything, MCA.

Like the champagne room at your local gentlemen’s club, only with juice boxes and probably a little less crying, Groovy David‘s Kiddie Lounge is open for business as of today. For only $3.96, you get four — count ‘em! — tracks of groovy Davidness, including “Ice Cream Sunday,” “Grandma Sally,” “I Lost My First Tooth,” and a cover of the jump blues classic “Barnyard Boogie.” Head on over to Amazon’s MP3 store to get your copy and enjoy what G. David describes as “Equal parts Michael Bublé, Frank Sinatra, and Curious George” and an album with “a smooth swinging sound that will dazzle the kids and tickle the parent’s fancy.”

Don’t have four bucks, but swimming in social media contacts? Groovy David has a program for you. It’s called Helping Hands, and it works like this: for every 10 email contacts you add to his list, he’ll send you two signed CDs. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got like 400 Facebook friends, and as soon as I finish posting this I’m going to sell them all out in exchange for a small mountain of discs. Can you put your friends in the stereo? No, you cannot. Can you listen to them in the car? Well, yes, but you probably don’t want to. I think you’ll agree that David has come up with an elegant — nay, groovy — solution. Just make sure you take advantage before the program ends on June 5.

Also! In honor of his new songs “Ice Cream Sunday” and “Grandma Sally,” Groovy David is asking kids to send in pictures of themselves having ice cream with their grandmothers. Ha ha, gramps! No ice cream for you! Entries will be voted on at the Groovy David Facebook page, and the top three winners will win prize packages that include “CDs, t-shirts, and puppets” in July, which is, of course, National Ice Cream Month.