In search of a better ear worm

Dave Loftin finds music that your kids will love—and that won’t make you crazy

By Allison Gorman

Sure, there are some things we all give up when we have little kids. Like uninterrupted sleep. Alone time in the bathroom. The ability to push a shopping cart without “help.” But do we really have to give up good music, too?
In 2005, Dave Loftin was facing not just the birth of his first son, but the grim possibility of years of second-hand exposure to Barney CDs. For a guy who’d hosted “Punk Rock University” on Chattanooga State’s WAWL, the prospect was just too dismal—for him and for his son, as well. “At that time there was a lot out there that, at least by my taste, wasn’t very good,” he says.
So he started digging—searching the Web, touching base with musicians he knew and other music-savvy people in other cities—trying to find CDs he and his son could enjoy together. He discovered that those CDs were out there—“more and more as I dug deeper”— often created by artists already well established in other musical genres.
In 2006, Dave turned his search for quality kids’ music into a new radio show, the “Saturday Morning Cereal Bowl,” a two-hour showcase of fun, creative and surprisingly listenable tunes. And his timing couldn’t have been better. The program launched just as a new generation of talented musicians were having their own little ones—and apparently realizing that if they were going to avoid the curse of Kidz Bop, they’d have to generate the good stuff themselves.
Most music retailers limit their children’s selection to mass-market titles, so the great music Dave has discovered is typically available only online. And with Chattanooga State’s sale last year of WAWL’s radio station, the “Saturday Morning Cereal Bowl” has moved entirely to the Web as well. But it’s still on WAWL.org at the same time as always: 8 to 10 a.m. every Saturday. So make a date with your little one to listen to it streaming. In the meantime, catch Dave’s reviews in every issue of Chattanooga Parent (page 9 in this issue), and read what he has to say about the state of kids’ music:

Your son’s almost 4 years old. Do you use him as a “test market” for the music you review?

Sure. Pretty much all the stuff I use on the show or review, we listen to together.

What are some kids’ CDs that you find particularly listenable?

The latest two that I’ve been listening to a lot are Robbert Bobbert—which is the lead singer of Apples in stereo, Rob Schneider—and Chris Ballew from The Presidents of the United States of America, who’s got a CD called Caspar Babypants. He just started up. Lunch Money is one of the straight-up kids’ artists I like. And Ziggie Marley has a new kids’ CD; it has a couple of kids’ artists on there as guests, as well as Willie Nelson and Jack Johnson. There’s a lot of good stuff on there.

Do you think there’s any stigma or status involved with an artist crossing over to kids’ music?

It’s kind of a weird thing, but over the past four or five years, bands have been jumping all over this. I think it’s partly that it’s cool to do it, but also I think there are so many of these bands with guys in their late 20s and early 30s having kids, and they’re writing all sorts of music for them.

Are the artists out there now redefining established kids’ music or creating new tunes altogether?

Both. There are a lot of artists who will write a bunch of songs, but they’ll also take some of those kids’ classics and put their own spin on it. I was talking to Chris Ballew, the guy from Caspar Babypants, and he was trying to come up with a new twist on “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” If you listen to his band’s music, you know he could put a twist on anything he wanted to.

If your son made you play the same disc over and over on a long car trip, but you got to choose the disc, what would you choose?

Only because I’m a longtime fan of theirs, I would have to say any of the They Might Be Giants kids’ albums. A very clever band, a very smart couple of guys, and they both have kids. They know how to write for kids, but they also know how to write very, very good music.

What disc would make you lose your sanity?

That’s a tough one. There’s a mountain of just standard kids’ CDs out there, and it’s not so much that they’re bad, it’s just that there’s zero creativity in them.

I must know your position on Kidz Bop.

As a listener, I’m not big on hearing kids sing unless they are very good. And that’s rare. I know that’s harsh, but I’m sorry. But just as an album, I don’t get it—if you’re going to let your kids listen to those songs, at least now in the digital age, download the actual songs for them. They’ve got grownups singing most of the leads now, anyhow.

What’s the next step for you?

I really want to try to do something here in Chattanooga, whether it’s to bring in a few artists or to have an actual festival where we can try to get some acts in—like the Austin City Limits Festival, they’ve got a kids’ side. And Lollapalooza has a kids’ stage.

That would make good sense for Riverbend, as a family-friendly event.
Absolutely.

The mission continues…

Los Angeles-based Dan Gellert and Randall Green, who keep up with Dave’s reviews on our website (ChattanoogaParentMagazine.com), e-mailed to say they’ve launched a virtual “TV” station for kids, Jitterbug, featuring videos and audios by many of the musical artists Dave reviews. “We are two dads with 3-year-olds, just trying to make the kid music space better,” Dan says. Cool stuff. Check it out at Jitterbug.tv.