A Conversation with Alison Faith Levy

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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.

Maurice Sendak

He Saw It, He Loved It, He Ate It: Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012

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Maurice Sendak

PBS

“There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.” —Maurice Sendak

We spend an awful lot of time and money trying to keep them entertained, but we can be dismayingly clueless about the range and depth of our children’s emotions, not to mention their capacity for absorbing and understanding difficult subject matter. There’s an ongoing battle to sanitize children’s entertainment, and the sanitizers are winning — I think most new parents have experienced the shock of reading a classic book or watching an old movie with their kids, only to realize that family entertainment used to be a lot more open about things like cruelty, violence, and death.

It’s easy to understand the impulse to protect our children from these things, but they’re part of life, and as much as I struggle with exposing my own kids to the darkness, I try to balance those protective impulses against the knowledge that by the time I think they’re ready, they’ll probably already have been exposed to whatever I’m worried about — and probably without my knowledge or input.

Award-winning author, illustrator, and noted curmudgeon Maurice Sendak, who passed away today at the age of 83, understood the value of darkness better than most, and to his immense credit, he fought the growing frenzy for “safe” kids’ media throughout his brilliant career. (Right up ’til the end, in fact: his last book, 2011’s Bumble-Ardy, elicited delicious gasps of horror from overly sensitive parents’ groups and critics.)

Time and again, Sendak’s books sent would-be censors into a tizzy, from the uproar over his classic Where the Wild Things Are (repeated years later, when Spike Jonze’s film adaptation was deemed inappropriate for children) to periodic rows with prudish adults like the librarian who used white-out to cover Mickey’s exposed penis in The Night Garden.

Sendak’s retort to that particular indignity was a letter that contained the priceless quote “It is only adults who ever feel threatened,” which is a pretty outstanding manifesto for his career. He became the world’s preeminent children’s author not because he had tremendous insight or singular artistic talent, although both of those things are true. He built his reputation on honesty. In a medium that prizes sentiment over emotion and platitudes over truth, he refused to ignore the reality of childhood — that as much as we might wish it weren’t, it’s often a very difficult time.

With books like Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak gave power to children by acknowledging the roiling, unpredictable frustrations of youth. What some saw as inappropriate was really just the truth — he was kind of like a kidlit gangsta rapper, in a way. And despite his reputation for being something of a crank, he understood his role and took it seriously. I love this quote from his interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, who asked him to share some his favorite reader’s comments:

I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a postcard and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim, I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

I think all the best children’s art reaches for that level of simple, irascible truth, and even though examples of it seem to be increasingly crowded out by brightly colored, bubble-wrapped product, Sendak’s enduring legacy (and the countless tributes written in his honor) serve as a reminder of how much we, and our kids, need artists who are willing to expend the effort. Morals, hearts, and rainbows can make us feel good, but I think it takes a pricklier type of tale to teach us something about ourselves — or to help us accept ourselves. Maurice Sendak excelled at that, and that, as much as anything else, is why we’ll miss him so much — and it’s what I’ll try to remember the next time I’m tempted to lunge for the remote or skip over a potentially troublesome passage in a book.

Mallory Kievman

13-Year-Old Girl Discovers Cure for Hiccups

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Mallory Kievman

Holy crap. You see that smiling teenager up there? She just cured the freaking hiccups.

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No, seriously, she really did — and she did it with lollipops. Okay, they’re vinegar-flavored lollipops, but still, this is all very impressive to me, especially when I think about the way I spent my time when I was her age.

It all started two years ago, when Mallory Kievman — then all of 11 years old — came down with an annoying case of the hiccups that wouldn’t go away.

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She eventually took over her family’s kitchen, trying more than 100 folk remedies before coming to the conclusion that vinegar “triggers a set of nerves in your throat and mouth that are responsible for the hiccup reflex arc.”

So: vinegar lollipops. Voila. And like any good American, Kievman is turning her knowledge into a business model: She’s now the CEO of Hiccupops, a startup that boasts the involvement of multiple MBAs as well as a grant from the Startup America Partnership. She rang the bell at the NYSE back in January.

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She is, in a word, amazing.

For the capper, read this interview Mallory did with Tech Cocktail, where she shares some of the lessons she’s learned as she brings Hiccupops to market. Her sagest advice — for teen girls as well as tired old entertainment writers — comes at the end: “If you know you want to do it, you know there’s a specific goal in mind, don’t take no for an answer.”