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.

In today’s installment of News That’s Funny Because It Didn’t Happen to You, an Indiana man has been arrested following his spectacularly ill-advised decision to strap his kids to the hood of his car and drive to the liquor store.

“I was only going to drive around the corner. I thought they would like it,” said the man when questioned by police, who tested his blood alcohol at more than twice the legal limit and described him as “unkempt and crying.” His explanation makes total sense — I can see getting a pretty big thrill out of being fastened to a hood with a tow strap as a four-year-old, or as a 38-year-old, really — but I’m guessing it probably won’t stand up in court.

So hey, dads, give yourselves a pat on the back the next time you catch yourself reverting to the old “I swear to God I’ll turn this car around” cliché. At least you didn’t do this.

We try to fill this site with plenty of thoughtful longform content, including an ongoing series of conversations with kindie artists that I’m awfully proud of. But judging from the stats, all you people want is posts about The Avengers, and I am not a proud man, so HERE YOU GO, AVENGERS-SEEKING WEB TYRANTS: As seen at Gizmodo, a gallery of awesome photos of full-sized Avengers props made from LEGOs, courtesy of Flickr user buriedbybricks. Pretty amazing, no?

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.

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.

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

I can’t decide how I feel about this. Billed as “a fun and easy way for kids to plan and pack lunches with their parents” and something that “empowers your kids, teaches them to make smarter food choices and helps them learn about advance planning,” LaLa Lunchbox is a $1.99 app that adds a layer of gamification to the simple — yet occasionally quite aggravating — act of planning your kids’ lunches.

If your kids are anything like mine (and judging from the fact that LaLa Lunchbox is a thing, most of them probably are), getting them to eat their lunch (or breakfast, or…I need a drink) can be a complicated process that involves bribery, treachery, and pleading. There are a million excuses for not emptying one’s lunchbox, and you’ll hear them all. However, unless you’re some kind of meal dictator, I sort of doubt that “because you didn’t ask me what I wanted” is one you’re going to hear very often.

So yeah, I’m sort of ambivalent about this. Gamification tends to be helpful when you’re trying to con yourself into completing an unpopular task or fulfilling a long-term goal, but eating generally doesn’t fall into either of those categories, especially when you’re young enough to depend on a parent to make your meals. I’m sure it’ll make choosing meals more fun for kids, but will it make kids more likely to eat them? I have my doubts. My daughter’s favorite excuse is “I didn’t have enough time.” I don’t see how personalizing a virtual lunchbox with “fun monsters and colors” will change that.

On the other hand, what the hey, it’s $1.99. If you’re desperate to stuff some lunchtime calories in your little one and you have an iGadget at home, it might be worth a splurge. Give it a shot and let me know how it goes.