The elderchild and her smaller sister are growing up fast, as kids are wont to do. They don't need kidfolk so much anymore - are starting to make their own choices about music and listenability, and tend to prefer playfulness and performability to nuance or lyrical narrative, a trend which I suppose will linger until they hit their teens and begin to look for ways to identify themselves as "other". They play unattended, and wander the folk festival grounds on their own; they do musicals, as their parents do, and sing the songs around the house for [...]
Originally posted, with slight modifications, in August 2009. Because it's one of my favorite sets...and because bloggers need vacations, too. We're in Truro for a short weekend, just like in 2009, in the same rented beachhouse high on the dunes above the Cape Cod sound. Wakeless trawlers and shore fishermen, beach wanderers and bathers are few and far between, mere specks on an otherwise natural landscape that fills the sense with color: green grasses, faded yellow sand, the variable [...]
We're running tight against deadline this week, thanks to an increasingly hectic fall schedule; it's ten pm and I'm still wearing a tie, if that's any indication of how my day has gone. So although the mailbox is full to the brim of delicious new folk coverage, we're pushing new content to Sunday, choosing instead to revive a first-year golden oldie featuring a favorite artist whose gentle way with song always soothes me when the world starts blurring by. There's something [...]
We're in Truro for a short week, in a rented beachhouse high on the dunes above the Cape Cod sound. Wakeless trawlers and shore fishermen, beach wanderers and bathers are few and far between, mere specks on an otherwise natural landscape that fills the sense with color: green grasses, faded yellow sand, the variable blues of sky and water. At night the lights of Provincetown shine brightly just on the edge of the vista, a line of stars marking the difference between pitch-black sea and an invisible sky. Last [...]
Ann Percival : I Don't Want To Live On The Moon [ purchase ] Once again, I would like to thank a favorite blogger for the wonderful music he has shared. This one comes from our own Boyhowdy's wonderful Covered in Kidfolk series on Cover Lay Down. And I also want get up on my soapbox for just a moment. Boyhowdy is one of three posters here, myself included, who I know have kids. And one thing we parents are constantly dealing with is trying to find music the [...]
Tomorrow is the first day of Spring, and someone forgot to tell the sky. In the morning, says the weatherman, the world will turn to slush. And if we are truly blessed, all our sins will be washed away. Outside the snow sulks in great mounds where the plows have pushed it aside. Hard ice falls on three-inch shoots and tufts of new grass. We stay up late, and sit by the window together, and wait for the rains that do not come. [...]
Much of the subject material of kids music is lyrical fluff, and that's not a bad thing: kids need all the playful silliness and sweet sleepytime nothings that hip moms and dads with heart can bring them. On the other hand, play and sleep alone aren't enough, and kids ain't gonna grow up by themselves. The bigger they get, the more we have to show and tell them the right ways to move through the world. Thankfully, song is an especially effective way to pass along [...]
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