Brady Rymer and the Little Band That Could – Here comes… (Bumblin’ Bee Records)
Children’s music is usually pretty delightful, lot of fun choruses, great word play, all sorts of smile inducing wonder for the little listeners. And hey, as a little kid that sorta stuff is all kinds of awesome. At a certain age though something more is necessary and I never knew what that something was until I heard Brady Rymer – it’s music.
On his fifth release aimed at the younguns after a tenure in ‘roots’ band From Good Homes Rymer continues to refuse to take himself too seriously lyrically but refuses to not take the music seriously. What’s funny about this album is that if you were to hear it and not be told that Rymer was aiming for a younger audience you would likely never know it. Catchy, friendly, poppy, wacky, and musically enticing – it just sounds like good music. A four year old or a 45 year old couple would have a hard time hearing “Your Smile” and not get the urge to dance. And maybe Rymer doesn’t sound like the country singers you hear on the radio but “The Relatives Came” is country as country gets with a fiddle and memories of family reunions.
Brady told me that creating music for children all started after his first son was born and he just found himself writing songs for him. I may not have any children but I have a mom, dad, brother, and grandmother whom I love dearly and I know that I am going to get them a copy of this album just so I can play them “One True You” (let alone the rest of it). Brady Rymer is reinventing children’s music – making music that not only children can love, music that can bring families together.
Interview with Brady Rymer
Does your family tour with you?
When they can. We try to turn it into a little journey and an adventure. When we heard we were going to go out to Stagecoach we wanted to bring them out. It was kinda a cool thing. [They are] not necessarily country fans, they watch American Idol though so they’re Carrie Underwood fans. It’s great to see the other type of music they haven’t seen before, and the backstage stuff - riding around in golf carts. We stayed up late every night and they were right there.
What led to the change from your rock band to performing music for children?
At the same time that we had [first son] Gus and were starting a family the band was kind of dissolving and we were coming to our end. We had been dropped from RCA and were back at square one. We were starting to play some of the smaller clubs we played when we were coming up. For that band to stay alive we would have to hit the road really hard and put out a record and it just didn’t seem like I could do that anymore. The tradeoff of what I was leaving behind wasn’t worth it at that point.
When Gus was born I wrote a batch of songs about the experience of being a new dad and having a kid and I didn’t even know there was a market for children’s music. I recorded it in my apartment with my buddies as a gift to Gus and my family.
Living in NYC you meet people fast and I met another children’s musician. Gus got another year older and they didn’t have a music program at his school and I volunteered to bring in my guitar and now I had one foot into this world of children’s music. I brought my CD to the local bookstore and saw Dan Zanes first CD. At that point it the songs just kept coming and I knew I wasn’t going to go out on the road and tour with the band anymore.
Then you start to take all these wacky gigs, a day care gig that was three hours long, thinking “oh my god, get me back out on the road - this is crazy” and great gigs with kids where you write songs after school. I made sure I kept on taking every possible gig I could and see what this whole thing was about. I could stay at home and just travel through NY - but still stay home with the kids.
If you go and play in front of kids you get the energy from them and see what works with them and you see if there was a song about dancing really fast it would work great for these kids. Just being around them they say a lot of things and do a lot of things and those immediately become ideas for songs. Working with them and trying to write songs, you get a view into their world. The other thing that hit me is that you could start to write songs from their point of view. This could be really fun or really great. A lot of the stuff I was writing with the rock band was from my eyes and from my point of view. When my own kids were 2 or 3 all these new things were happening in their lives. There are a lot of different situations if you are playing live, you can get a feeling from the kids about what would work and what doesn’t. After shows you come home and I get ideas then.
Do the children (or wife) help write lyrics at all or do they “road test your songs” before they get ok’ed for albums?
A little bit, not a lot. It’s a little bit separate right now, when [the children] were younger we would. Songwriting was an activity we did around the house. Sometimes we’d gather before dinner and Bridget [my wife] would be cooking and I’d get the guitar and we’d start to make up songs. Now they are older - it’s a little different. They both play instruments. You take up a school instrument here and they both just started their first bands.
You have received all sorts of positive press for your musicianship; do you ever get the feeling that it’s wasted on littler children? (As they don’t need always need the most amazing music if the songs are catchy enough and the lyrics are good).
I’m no Sam Bush, I’m no crazy virtuoso musician that way. I’ve been playing the acoustic guitar since 5th grade and I’ve gotten pretty good but what I consciously try to do with the band is bring in really great musicians with fine players and singers. Mandolin, accordion, bass, drums, keyboards. I think that for an audience - especially an audience of mixed ages, moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, everyone tunes into it and feels it a little differently. I feel comfortable if there is a 12 year old out there even if a song is about a younger kid, I feel the music will work with that kid because the music comes from real stuff, things that transcend age. I don’t think it’s wasted, when it’s played good like that, they might not know that it’s doing something to them, intellectually now we think wow, that persons really good at that thing. The better the musician the better they are gonna feel. The last three shows I played to 5-6th graders and the house is just rockin’ the kids are just loving it. All good musicians become strengths and give confidence, a soul and a swing. It’s the key of making what I’m doing successful. The soundman said ‘If you took the lyrics away that’s just regular music.’ When you see the moms and dads enjoying the concert on their own, there’s a room full of people here and we’re playing to everybody. On the records you have the time to make that stuff happen.
Which do you prefer, the rock band or the children’s music? What do you want your musical legacy to be?
They’re good in different ways. I truly do love the band I worked with and those guys, they were my high school buddies. One of the guys brought over his electric ukulele and that was the first time I ever played rock n roll. Now it’s very special because it’s reflective of my family and my kids and the songs are coming all from me. It’d be nice for both, in 20 years I’ll probably be playing to kids still. Honestly I do miss playing the bass in a band but it is a really special thing to see those kids and the families responding and having a great time. The funny thing about our rock band was that we were never that hard, hardly ever angry, we were just kinda a jamming feel good band. A lot of our old fans show up with their kids now.