Frank Migliorelli and The Dirt Nappers found inspiration for their new project in bright colors, and fantastical worlds…all captured in the pages of well-worn library favorites. The project combines original songs and videos that celebrate much-loved children’s stories, a few of which are almost 100 years old. Migliorelli had thought about producing children’s music and videos, which everyone in the family could enjoy, since contributing to storytimes and creating tunes on the fly regarding children’s books for his own kids in the past. Migliorelli decided to officially honor some of the classics via tribute tunes and that the collection would make for an engaging release.
So he got the band back together and delivered We’re Not Kidding Around, the Dirt Nappers newest offering with songs written specifically to celebrate books by Maurice Sendak, Virginia Lee Burton, P. D. Eastman, and more.
Enhancing the album with an accompanying website, www.musickideos.com, Migliorelli, and crew custom-made videos corresponding to each song/book. Migliorelli and the Dirt Nappers, along with some friends (including artists who play with Bruce Springsteen, Hall and Oates, The Avett Brothers and more) have crafted every parents dream, winning entertainment for the kids that won’t drive caregivers crazy.
Glide’s Shawn Donohue sat down with Migliorelli to discuss We’re Not Kidding Around, www.musickideos.com, the process behind the project and much more during this in-depth conversation.
You have been playing music for years, how did this new, kid’s oriented project, come about?
Basically, a passion project of mine that I’ve kept on the back burner for years that I think would have legs if it’s done right. Originally this was going to be more of a music video series to promote reading and new children’s books that I pitched to Nickelodeon, HBO and others years ago- but nobody got it- So during the lockdown, I was thinking, what if we just recorded the songs as a rock and roll album- Like, what if the Heartbreakers, the Rolling Stones, or The Band recorded a kids album??? Kid’s music that doesn’t make parents scream.
I am sure most parents would love that.
I had a great gig in the ‘90s designing educational games for a media company- turned out that they didn’t have anyone on staff to think about music and songs for kids, and I just started writing kids music- but I never wanted to do sing-songy drivel- my production partner and I always approached everything like we were producing kick-butt records…..We did stuff for Scholastic, the BBC, Universal– where ever we could find a gig. It was a good time to have a home production studio…..
The idea for the book-oriented stuff actually came from going into my kid’s classroom and doing storytime- I would pick out a book and read to the kids, and then pull out a drum machine and guitar and would do a song about the book we just read. The kids loved it, so I started thinking, “this would be a good way to promote new kid’s books- just like MTV was promoting new music…..”
Why did you feel now was the right time for an album like this? Was the pandemic/lockdowns a reason?
Definitely- Covid was a good instigator…..We were out promoting our last record, doing live shows, and starting to put together some tours to get it out there when lockdown hit…..and everything came to a grinding halt. The Dirt Nappers are all touring/working musicians, and it was pretty brutal when you weren’t able to find a gig…..It just seemed like the right time to do it, so we started bouncing ideas around, and jumping on Zoom calls. We kicked around ideas for arrangements, and started bouncing tracks- everyone had their own recording set up, so we basically started with a scratch guitar vocal guide track and went from there. It was a bit tricky because we had Pro Tools, Logic, and Digital Performer files all juggling around, but we figured all that out. We were really careful to try and capture as much “live” feel as possible- there are no sequenced tracks on the record, and we re-amped a bunch of the recordings in a live room to give them some live ambiance. I know I’m geeking out a bit on the recording process, but we were all pretty happy with how it all turned out…..I definitely never want to record like this again, but I think we pulled it off….
The pandemic certainly forced a lot of recording changes. In regards to the books you selected for this project, you wrote songs for some older very well-known children’s books like Where The Wild Things Are and Five Chinese Brothers along with some lesser-known tales like Monkey Lost and Own and Mzee. What attracted you to write songs for these particular stories?
The kid’s publishing business is hard to break into- there are about twenty-five classic titles that are always “kid’s bestsellers” – and that hasn’t changed in years- so the original idea was to provide an avenue for exposure for new books. Naturally, it doesn’t hurt to play the nostalgia card a bit, so tapping into characters and stories like Mike Mulligan, Harry the Dirty Dog, and Flat Stanley definitely tug at the hearts of parents and grandparents.
I fell in love with Monkey Lost standing in Books of Wonder on 18th street in NYC. I went home and wrote the tune, and sent it to Ed Heck. After he got over the shock of some complete stranger writing a song about his book, he agreed to make the video on how to draw the monkey. He’s done a bunch of kid’s books and has such a great visual style, he needs to be more well known. If “My Monkey Got Lost” turns more people on to his work, great! Plus Sherryl Marshall turned out a great performance on that tune- she owns that song now……
Own and Mzee was a book in a series of animal stories that were developed by Craig Hatkoff and his daughter. I worked on the development of the website for his books for Scholastic, and we got to be good friends. I just thought it was a nice story about friendship, and the tune just popped out. Owen and Mzee have a pretty big following with teachers in elementary schools around the world-I think the book was even featured on Oprah, so why shouldn’t it have a song?
There are some newer books that are definitely on the list for We’re Not Kidding Around Volume 2 if that ever happens…..I love some of the Pigeon books, Click, Clack, Moo is hysterical, and I have a good one for The Day The Crayons Quit…..so stay tuned….
The Dirt Nappers style is predominantly roots rock and roll, but on We’re Not Kidding Around there are more country and funky influences, did certain stories inspire you to tackle them in certain musical styles?
It’s funny- when I write for children, I feel like I can try different genres more easily. The Dirt Nappers always bounced between grooves and feels- different rock and roll feels, country, etc., but these tunes pushed it even a little further…
Kids are just more open- they aren’t jaded or they don’t worry about what is “cool” – so you can do funk, reggae, country, rockabilly, rap, whatever…..just as long as it’s good. I think the only style I haven’t written in for kid’s stuff is opera….
That would be something…
FM: My kids grew up with minimal exposure to “kid’s music”. They grew up on a steady diet of Tom Waits, the Stones, the BoDeans, and anything that wasn’t commercial….I also made a conscious effort to protect them from the Beatles…I figured they would get exposed to that enough at some point….I took my daughter to see Alanis Morrisette when she was six at Roseland….My son new all the words to Garland Jeffreys “Hail Hail Rock and Roll” when he was knee-high…..When we were recording the Satan and Adam record at our house, I learned that kids are pretty open to anything if it was genuine…..and kid’s music shouldn’t insult their intelligence….so I’ll throw anything at a kid…….
Besides the core Dirt Nappers, some more friends helped out on this record, who are they?
Yea- that was the most fun with this project truly amazing and I felt truly blessed. Back when I had an indie label in the 80s and 90s, I met Sherryl Marshall, Charlie Giordano, Soozie Tyrell through The Uptown Horns. I have had Sherryl record on the ‘Nappers records, and she was the one who suggested reaching out to Charlie and Soozie for this record since they weren’t on the road with Bruce….I hadn’t seen them in years, and it was really fun to record with all of them. Tania Elizabeth is a world-class fiddle player who lived in the Hudson Valley she’s been ripping it up with The Avett Brothers- and I met her a few years ago when I was running a songwriting series…She just had a kid last year, so she got a charge out of doing a kids record. Porter Carroll, Jr. is killer- he’s part of Hall and Oates band but was a founding member of Atlantic Starr- just an amazing vocalist and drummer- I hadn’t seen him in twenty years, but when we were kicking around “Harry the Dirty Dog” arrangements, I thought he would be perfect….And Johnny Jake was another NYC-based musician we all knew and worked with over the years- He was a natural for the rockabilly “Go, Dog. Go!” tune.
It was really great having all the extra support- I loved not having to worry about singing all the tunes- I’m not really a singer, I get by, but these people are serious…..and of course the Dirt Nappers are an amazing group the way they synthesize the basic ideas of the tunes into something great- throw a few extra killer players in the mix, and I think we came up with a great rock and roll record…..
You are launching a new website to coincide with the album release, what will be on it?
A slightly ambitious undertaking…..but the project definitely needed to be a multimedia event: http://www.musickideos.com/
Part of my goal with this was to help parents and teachers make reading more interactive and dynamic, so hopefully, we can post some ideas, activities, and resources for people to get them excited about reading with kids, and give the kids something to react to…… and course, you need music videos with everything, so we’re releasing a bunch of animated shorts for the songs- They are pretty basic – we didn’t have a budget to go out and hire Pixar to help us out, so we put them together with the best we could- Ed Heck gave us the artwork for Monkey Lost, and Tommy Diehl (drummer) adapted a copyright friendly steam shovel for the Mike Mulligan song…..We’ll probably get our ass’ sued off by some publisher somewhere, but honestly, we’re really trying to just promote the idea and importance of reading with kids……
It isn’t hard to do- there are activities you can do that just require a little imagination, there are resources like the local libraries and indie bookstores that offer programs and activities- you just have to know where they are- so we put some of that into the website…..
If this project gets one kid excited about reading, or if one parent takes their kid to the library because of this music, this will be the greatest Dirt Napper record ever.
