Local Musicians for the Kids

In those early days of new parenting, days filled with a mixture of uncontainable joy and wrenching loneliness, it was music that carried me through. It filled the silence of days home alone with a newborn, and later fueled many hours of silliness dancing through the kitchen as my children grew.

But finding children’s music that the kids love but parents don’t find annoying as hell is a tricky process of trial and error. In my last Mom’s Eye View, I shared some of my favorite children’s music from artists around the world. This week, I turned my focus to children’s musicians closer to home, and was pleasantly surprised by the talent I found. From the offerings of Chip Richter, Vicki McCrone, Robin Pease and Hal Walker I uncovered many more songs that will make my family’s list of favorites.

Allow me to introduce you...

Chip Richter

Think of Chip Richter as the family-friendly Jimmy Buffet. Best known for presiding over the family vacation mecca of Lakeside, Ohio, where’s he’s been an artist-in-residence since 1996, Richter delivers on his promise of fun, positive music for parents and kids. Close your eyes while listening to Richter’s “Live at Lakeside” tracks and you can almost imagine your vacationing self clapping and singing along to his energetic performances amid a crowd of adoring kiddos.

But Columbiana-based Richter insists he never planned to be a kids’ musician. Fifteen years ago, he says was doing “folksy stuff, playing in coffeehouses” until the Lakeside folks heard his music and asked him to come out for the summer to do seven shows a week for 10 weeks for vacationing families.

“I told them, ‘I don’t do music for kids,’ and they said ‘yeah, but we think you’d be good at it,’” says Richter, a married father of three kids, all now teenagers and older. “I was really desperate to work, so I said yes. I jumped in with two feet and realized I really loved it.”

When he’s not entertaining summering families in Lakeside, Richter can be found performing throughout Ohio and beyond in libraries, schools, churches and family concerts. He’s released five CDs – his latest is Chip’s Bits & Pieces – and he also produces jingles and other local artists in his own recording studio. Richter has attracted such a following by uncovering the right formula that appeals to kids and grown-ups.

“I think the key is just to make good music, not necessarily write it for kids but just make music kids will enjoy,” Richter says. “Just because it’s for kids doesn’t mean it has to be silly or ridiculous or mindless. It can have some depth and they will appreciate it.”

Adults will recognize some of the songs that Richter’s put a kid-oriented spin on, like “Jammy Day” to the tune of Bob Marley’s “Jamming”, about staying home in your pajamas on a snow day. Other songs on his CDs are originals – like his “Ice Cream”, which closes each of his Lakeside performances to the delight of screaming children – and some are covers, like James Taylor’s “Shower the People” and Paul McCartney’s “Put It There.” Three of his CDs are Christian-themed family albums.

To find an upcoming performance of Chip Richter and his band “The Munks” visit http://www.chiprichter.com, where you can also order any of his CDs. Digital downloads are also available at http://www.cdbaby.com.

Vicki McCrone

For 15 years, Vicki McCrone was a musical artist in a corporate software sales executive’s body. She’s a native of Cleveland’s east side who was living in San Francisco, playing music on the side for grown-ups, until a move back home to Cleveland to be closer to family also brought her closer to making music her full-time gig.

While working with Cleveland’s Positive Education Program doing pet therapy for autistic children with her yellow lab, she wrote a song for her students called “My Little Dog.” They loved it, so she wrote more songs, and eventually began traveling around to schools with a participatory program she calls “Little Songs” that gets kids singing and playing along. Her music is now available in two CD/DVD sets for families and teachers titled “Little Songs: Animals” and “Little Songs: Earth.”

Moms and dads who enjoy indie female vocalists will love McCrone’s contemporary style; she’s been compared to Shawn Colvin and Paula Cole, but she says she models her music after Carole King. It’s the type of music you’ll listen to in the car without a hint of embarrassment even when your kids aren’t around.

Most of McCrone’s performances are in schools and after-school settings through organizations like Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio, the Ohio Arts Council and Neighborhood Players, a non-profit McCrone co-founded that works with urban youth to record and perform rap music with positive messages.

McCrone’s music is available at Holcomb’s, or for digital download at iTunes or http://www.cdbaby.com. Her busy schedule in the schools prevents her from playing out much these days, she says, but interested parties can reach her at stella444@mac.com.

Robin Pease

Robin Pease’s instrument of choice is her powerful voice, which she uses to bring to life dozens of characters, create sound effects and take children away to another world through her stories and music. As artistic director for Kulture Kids, a non-profit organization that encourages cultural awareness for kids through the arts, Pease combines music and storytelling to bring to life folk tales from Native American, Latin American, African and other cultures that communicate important life lessons like sharing, listening and being humble. In 2005, she used her popular storytelling-and-music program for schoolchildren to create a CD that families can enjoy called “The Talkative Turtle and Other Tales.”

By training, Pease is an actor and teaching artist, with degrees in fine arts from the Boston Conservatory and Case Western Reserve University. But her current programming initiated with a request from her own son’s teacher when he was in elementary school.

“The teacher knew I was Native American” – Pease is descended from the Mohawk Nation – “and she asked my son to bring something in,” says Pease, who lives in Cleveland Heights with husband Tom Kerr and their two kids. “So I wrote a program with singing, games, dancing and storytelling and she really liked it. Then she came back asking for something for Cinco de Mayo.”

Pretty soon, she was offering her programs to a variety of teachers, who would come back to her asking for programs to fit with various lesson plans on world cultures or for assemblies. Through connections with Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio, the Beck Center for the Arts and Playhouse Square, Pease has become one of the area’s most popular performers for kids.

“The Talkative Turtle” features six stories performed by Pease with traditional music interspersed. She creates an amazing number of characters with her mesmerizing voice, and the subtle sound effects make the stories come alive. To order “The Talkative Turtle and Other Tales”, visit http://www.kulturekids.org or http://www.cdbaby.com.

Hal Walker

Hal Walker is one of those slippery musical artists who shrugs off any label you try to cloak him in. He calls himself a “one-of-a-kind one-man-band” who performs “original music using different instruments from around the world in an improvised way.” Walker’s not exactly a children’s artist, but he’s been a popular musician on the Ohio schools circuit for nearly a dozen years. He’s musical director for the Summit Children’s Choir and the Kent Bicentennial Children’s Choir, has worked with the Groundworks Dance Theater, and can be found each Sunday morning at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent as music director.

“I make music for myself, and I’m kind of like a big kid I guess,” Walker says. “I like to write songs that are singable. I don’t think of them as children’s songs, but they’re good for all ages.”

Music’s been a part of Walker’s life since he was a kid growing up in Kent, when he walked along the banks of the Cuyahoga River to piano lessons, playing a harmonica along the way. He bought his first guitar with the money he made working at Geauga Lake as a teenager. But it was 20 years ago, while studying history at Northwestern University in Chicago, that Walker says he “discovered a whole new world of music” and began writing and performing his own songs.

It was through working in the schools that Walker found a way to make a full-time living as a musician, and there, he says, “I found that I had a rapport with children.” One of his most popular kids’ programs, which he calls “Music That Fits in Your Pocket,” provides each child with a harmonica that he encourages them to use to create their own tunes.

His music is simple and complex all at once, with catchy, hummable melodies and lyrics with surprising depth. His stirring anthem “My Home in Ohio” is enough to make you want to go hug a buckeye tree and kiss a cardinal. Under Walker’s guidance, the 200 members of the Summit Children’s Choir performed the song for the governor during the state’s Bicentennial celebration. The recording I heard of “Underneath the Surface” – performed with his angelic-voiced 10-year-old daughter Hallie – encourages us to listen to the story waiting to be told in each of us.

To see Hal Walker in person, “keep your eyes open” for future performances, Walker advises; he does not yet have a website and he typically sells his CD only at gigs or by request to Halwalker3@aol.com.

And Many More...

Want more local opportunities to enjoy music with your family? Turn to any of the many Northeast Ohio arts organizations offering family-friendly performances and classes. To get started, look for kid-focused performances and programming sponsored by the Cleveland Music School Settlement (http://www.thecmss.org), the Cleveland Institute of Music (http://www.cim.edu), Playhouse Square Pals (http://www.playhousesquare.com), The Cleveland Orchestra (http://www.clevelandorchestra.com), The Beck Center for the Arts (http://beckcenter.org) and more.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Jennifer Keirn jenniferkATwowway.com
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