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When She Plays, Little Ears Listen

SKG Publicity

Writing songs for children turned out to be Laurie Berkner's key to musical success.

By CURTIS ROSS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 19, 2009

Laurie Berkner's journey to rock stardom had a major roadblock. She found writing songs to be a major struggle.

"I was trying to pour my whole soul into every song and be totally original, which is impossible," Berkner says by telephone from her New York offices. "I'd write these extremely long songs because I didn't know how to edit."

However, the songs she wrote for her day job - teaching music to preschoolers - came much more easily.

"I would use one or two strong ideas that were relevant and fun," she says. "The songs could be 30 seconds long or three minutes."

The songs went over so well with her young audiences, she recorded a batch of them for a self-released cassette, "Whaddaya Think of That?" in 1997.

Two more albums followed, 1998's "Buzz Buzz" and 1999's "Victor Vito," and Berkner was being praised not only by parenting magazines but by Us magazine and the Los Angeles Times.

It helped that parents liked Berkner's music as well.

"I have to say in the beginning I didn't know that would happen," Berkner says. "I was surprised that would happen when parents would say 'I love that dinosaur song': "We Are the Dinosaurs."

Berkner's music may be aimed at children but it's never cloying. She and her nimble band - keyboardist Susie Lampert and bassist Adam Bernstein - can play confidently in a number of styles, and Berkner's songs have the strong hooks and melodies of good pop aimed at any age group.

Berkner even popped up singing "Little Boxes," the opening theme to Showtime's "Weeds," joining a list of performers, including Jenny Lewis, The Shins, The Decemberists and Randy Newman, who recorded versions of Melvina Reynolds' 1960s folk song for the show.

"It's a fun song I would sing to Lucy," Berkner says.

Lucy is Berkner's 4-year-old daughter. Being a mom has given Berkner a new perspective on her songs.

Working with preschoolers, "I would see a couple hundred kids a week. I learned what worked and what didn't being around lots of kids," she says.

Now, though, "I care about other things that I didn't know I would care about. I would listen to my CDs for the emotional and musical content but I wouldn't think about what it's like to listen to this with one child."

Lucy also influenced Berkner's latest album, last year's "Rocketship Ride." The album centers around a treasure hunt, a method Berkner employs with Lucy when something is lost around the house.

"It grew from a song I made up with Lucy when we would lose things," Berkner says. Losing things "would annoy me but I wouldn't be upset if we were singing. And nine times out of 10 I'd find what we'd lost."