Caspar Babypants and his sidekick keyboardist, Ronald Babyshoes, rock the house to a standing room-only crowd of boisterous fans at the King County Library’s Bellevue branch on Nov. 14.
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Where You'll Find It
More Please! hit store shelves Nov. 17. The CD costs $10. You'll find it at these local merchants:
Presidents of the United States of America frontman Chris Balew releases his second album of kids music
By Elizabeth M. Gillespie
Full disclosure: Caspar Babypants' first album charmed me so much, he would've had to screw up pretty royally for me not to like his second record. Yep, I'm a fan, and I appear to have lots of company.
This past Saturday morning, my daughter and I were among the lucky 200 or so moms, dads and kids who made it into a show he performed at King County Library's Bellevue branch. There looked to be about two dozen people behind us when a library staffer had to shut the doors because any more bodies would have been a fire code violation.
Back in the spring, when I first interviewed Chris Ballew (lead singer of the Presidents of the United States of America) about his foray into kids music, he was already recording songs for his follow-up to Here I Am! I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago, when I heard he was already gearing up to release a second album.
He e-mailed a few “sneakoo peekoo” tracks of More Please! to groupies like me who are signed up for updates on what's going on in Caspar Babypants-land. I knew I'd love one of them before I even played it – he'd sung it to me back when I interviewed him in April.
The folksy tune of “Itsy Bitsy Spider” is a slight departure from the classic version we all know and has a gentle, bouncy rhythm. Much like the three blind mice who did the twist and the boogaloo and stayed up until half past two on Here I Am! , this little spider makes friends with a bird that says sorry after accidentally ripping a hole in his web.
In a similar vein, the bluesy sing-along “Mary and Her Friends” starts off with Mary and her little lamb whose fleece was white as snow then ventures off with her friend, Jerry, and his porcupine, whose quills could prick your toe, then Larry, Terry, Harry, Barry, Sherry, Perry and Kerry and all of their creature pals (a baby cow, an elephant, a polar bear, a chickadee, a pony brown, a platypus and a centipede, respectively).
It's that kind of playfulness that makes Caspar Babypants' music as fun for parents to listen to as it is for kids. He takes a cute, little idea, twists it into one silly variation after another, and before you know it you're all singing it together on the drive to preschool.
He's big on bugs and birds and dirt and grass – the kind of stuff that reminds you of those stinky summer afternoons when you made one too many mud pies. I'm starting to really dig “Rocks and Flowers” – a funky chant that's basically a minute-and-a-half daydream about watching a bunch of bugs scurry around.
“Dust Mite” is growing on me, too. Picture a kid parading his pet dust mite on the beach, and if it doesn't make you giggle – or at least smile – I'm not sure what could.
Another one I'm liking more with every listen is “Looking Up.” It's 13 lines about what a carefree kid might see while lying on the ground looking up: “a dragonfly zipping by … a hummingbird so fast it blurred … a cloud that did look like a squid … outer space all over the place.”
My favorite track is “$9.99,” a happily-ever-after story about a sad, old teddy bear who once lived in a fancy, high-rise apartment before getting all worn-out and grimy. Long before his lucky day, when a sweet kid took pity on him and bought him for $9.99, the song goes:
“I was put out with the trash with the fireplace ash torn dirty and clean out of luck but the garbage men were kind and they sewed up my behind and put me on the grill of their truck.”
It's hard not to fall for lyrics like those.
The chorus of “$9.99” is the catchiest tune of the whole album – a melody that rises and falls with a fun-loving forcefulness that makes you wonder why you don't listen to more country music.
The whole album has a down-home, warm-and-fuzzy sound to it – one that already has me looking forward to Caspar Babypants' next release.
Yes, yes … more, please!
Elizabeth M. Gillespie is a Seattle writer and mother of an infant and an almost 3-year-old.
