Keller Williams doesn’t sit still for long. The undisputed king of the one-man-show is no one-trick artist. So it came as no surprise when he issued a children’s album, Kids, earlier this year. His current tour includes several matinees for kids which highlight songs from that album.
As most seven year olds do, my daughter, Maggie, loves to listen to music. Unfortunately, a lot of music she loves has been heavily influenced by kids groups that are produced and marketed by people interested in making my life as miserable as possible. So whenever we get a chance to expose her and her brother to something the whole family can get into we jump at the chance. We had been listening to the Kids CD, as well as some singles from it on satellite radio, for a couple of months and already had our favorites in mind that we were hoping to hear played live. So it was with marked anticipation that we travelled into the big city that afternoon for Keller’s matinee.
When we arrived about 30 minutes before the show started, the atmosphere inside the National was festive and alive with families sitting on the floor around the stage. Keller has found a great way to get the crowd warmed up with a pre-show drum circle (drums provided!) that gets the kids mingling with each other and thinking about music instead of soccer or gymnastics or whatever other activity today’s busy kids are involved in. Parents welcomed this warm-up and even joined in with their kids.
Keller took the stage promptly at 3:30 and kicked off the show with an explosive version of “Mama Tooted”, a tune from Kids and a definite favorite among the youngest members of the audience (if not their mothers). Complete with confetti-launching bazookas timed at just the right moments,” Mama Tooted” gets the show off to a raucous start. After that, Keller then pretty much goes through seven or eight tracks from Kids, highlighting the music with projections of drawings, lyrics, and pictures on the video screen behind him. At the beginning of the John Denver song, “Grandma’s Feather Bed”, Keller takes time to explain his looping technique and some of his instruments to the audience. Looking around me, I notice that his tutorial is largely ignored by the younger kids in attendance, while us kids in the 30-40 year age group were taking it all in.
A high point of the show occurred a little more than halfway through when Keller played “Celebrate Your Youth”, a song from his album Dream. The song served as both a reminder to us parents to look at our lives and re-visit some of the fun, simple things it means to be a kid, while at the same time telling the kids to, well, be kids. This tune also marked the point where Keller began to stretch his songs away from the album versions. After all, the parents in the audience were not just there to chauffeur their kids. We were also there to get a nibble of Keller’s jams, which had been few and far between up to this point in the show. Keller seemed to know this, and the rest of the show saw the adults up on their feet and grooving.
After a couple more tunes from Kids, Keller was joined on stage by Mark D. and Jay Starling, who play drums and keyboards, respectively, on Keller’s latest album, Bass. Collectively known as Kdubalicious, this trio rocked both young and old with “Lucy Lawcy” (from Kids), and Keller’s signature “Freaker by the Speaker”, both of which were stretched out nicely and provided us with a glimpse of his jammier side. The show closed with “Hula Hoop to Da Loop”, the catchiest song on the Kids album. (One advantage of Keller using the live sampling technique is that he can loop the elements to the song and let them roll while he takes a minute to show off his hula-hooping skills!). It was an appropriate way to end the show because it confirmed what we knew all along—Keller Williams was always about one hula hoop away from being a kid anyway. His musicianship is extraordinary and his show was produced with both young and old in mind.
As he led the crowd out of the theater playing “When the Saints Come Marching In” on the trombone, I got the feeling that Keller was glad to be done with the kids show and was looking forward to that night’s adult “R-Rated” show at the same venue with the Pimps of Joytown. He wasn’t the only one. After faithfully making his way through his Kids album, Keller didn’t really get a chance to let his hair down until the final few tunes of the show. My feelings were confirmed after the show. When asked about the biggest difference between playing for adults and kids, Keller stressed that the interaction between artist and audience is somewhat lacking during the kids show. “I have to provide my own energy for the kids shows”, he said. Keller need not worry—as long as he continues to reach out to both kids and their parents, there are plenty of us who need to share good music with our families.
