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A Laurie Berkner Christmas |
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If you are looking for some fun music for the wee folks in your life
this Christmas then look no further than
A Laurie Berkner Christmas.
Although Laurie Berkner says her music may appeal to children from
infants all the way to seven or eight years old, the sweet spot age wise
is four years old.
“I still get a lot of tweens and teenagers who write to me and say I
grew up on your music and I still think that it is wonderful. I still
listen,” she says.
“Candy Cane Jane,” is a fun song that even this writer found himself
singing along to and the companion video although it does not have a big
wow factor is cute and it will easily entertain the younger set.
Berkner talks about the song, “That was a first foray into trying to do
animation. I really wanted to write that song. I had written it before I
had the Christmas album. It was on a previous album called
Rocketship Run. I always had
it in my head, wouldn’t it be fun to write a Christmas song that had
some characters in it that you could imagine in a wintery scene. Out of
that came Candy Cane Jane and Gum Drop Joe (both characters
in the video). I really enjoyed playing that one and that
is what a lot of kids can relate to and that they like. I get a lot of
requests for that song.”
Jeffrey Lesser engineered the Christmas album and Berkner says that he
was more like a partner than an engineer.
“He recorded the album and his touch made it sound really good. It is
the only album that I have done with him. He was really important in
making it sound as good as it does. Susie Lampert was on keyboards and
Bob Golden was on drums and then I had a bass player named Adam
Bernstein. He has since left the band and interestingly I had a guest
artist on that album named Brady Rymer and he ended up becoming my new
bass player. I also had a wonderful cameo from Elizabeth Mitchell. She
and I sang “Silent Night,” together and she has a beautiful voice. I had
a bunch of kids on there and I hadn’t done that much with kids on my
albums before. I tend not to have a lot of kids on my albums, because I
found that if you are going to listen to something over and over and
over again, sometimes it can be harder to do that with kids’ voices than
it is with adults. I wanted to make sure that both adults and kids loved
it. There was something about bringing children’s voices into this that
made it feel more Christmassy to me, because that was my memory of when
I was a kid, hearing kids sing Christmas carols and being a kid singing
Christmas carols. I had my daughter and a few of her friends come in and
record for this album. That was a lot of fun,” recalls Berkner.
“Suzie is my longtime partner in crime. I played my first kids show
probably in 1997 by myself and after I played that show I called her,
because we had been in this all female cover band called Lois Lane. I
said can you please just come and play some of these songs with me live.
I made that first recording for the kids that I was the music teacher
for. When I started doing some benefits at other schools and I started
playing around I just realized that it was much more fun to play with
other people. Right after that she started playing with me and she has
been playing with me ever since. We have been playing together for about
twenty years. She is just a (very) important person in my life.
She is my daughter’s godmother and she is a very special human
being.
I feel like I could go on about the other musicians and all of the
people in the other part of my career, which is my record label and on
the business side of things and the people who have helped me there.
There are all the people who over the years said I really like
what you do and I want to help you. It has been unbelievable with how
much of that I have gotten. I feel pretty lucky and grateful for all of
that help and it would be hard to talk about all of it even in an entire
evening,” she says.
Most Christmas albums are not recorded in the winter and they are not in
any way recorded close to Christmastime. A Laurie Berkner Christmas was
not an exception. She explains, “It was (recorded) in the summer, in July. One thing that I didn’t have any control over and that was very helpful was the air conditioning in that studio was on full blast all of the time. It was shared with the rest of the building where they didn’t get enough air conditioning. I was freezing the whole time that we recorded this album. That helped and it certainly didn’t feel like it was hot and summer while I was singing and playing the guitar or mixing. Just singing the songs made me feel pretty Christmassy and I was pretty cold anyway (she laughs), so it didn’t feel that strange. I always brought a sweater and an extra jacket.”
As for the song, “Santa’s Coming to My House Tonight,” she says, “That
song was really fun to write. It was about staying up and not being able
to fall asleep on Christmas Eve and being excited about knowing that
Santa Claus was coming. I really wrote it out of my own experience. I
remember having the hardest time trying to fall asleep.
Then
I would wake up at 4:30 in the morning. I wasn’t allowed to wake my
parents up (she laughs), but I was allowed to go out and to look in my
stocking. That is the only thing that I was allowed to do.
My brother and I would do that and we would spend three hours
slowly eating our candy and opening little stocking gifts. Then my
parents got up and we could open the rest of the presents. I think that
is a universal feeling, not just for kids, but for adults too. Sometimes
when there is something very exciting happening the next day it is very
hard to fall asleep.
I had a friend who every year would take a side job to be a Macy’s Santa
and he knew all of the other people at Macy’s who would dress up like
Santa. For a couple of years I got to send some information about my
daughter and her friend to one of the Santa Clauses in advance. The
Santa Claus would say oh hi, it’s Lucy and Emma and Joy. How is your dog
Winston and how is your teacher? The kids were getting a little older
and they weren’t sure if they believed or not yet.
When this guy did that it sealed the deal for a couple of more
years. It was really fun.”
Laurie Berkner says, because there are so many different facets of what
she does in her career that it keeps her inspired.
“My mission as a person and in my business is to keep being creative and
in that creativity make things that I am really proud of and that touch
other people and hopefully gives them chances to feel something and
helps them to connect with other people. Whenever I have an opportunity
to make something that could potentially affect other people in a
positive way I get motivated by that. I get excited about it and I want
to do it.
I don’t even know if I have to look far to find what it is that keeps me
doing it. It is more am I going to flunk out, because I get really
excited, a musical ya’ that sounds like a really fun thing to do. Let’s
put out a new album, I will just write a whole bunch of new songs. I
will make a book. Let’s take the music and do it in an entirely new way.
What is really interesting is when I think of what I want to do I don’t
necessarily think about kids in particular. I am just very inspired by
kids and I think they are wise and they have interesting and funny and
worthwhile ideas. When I write songs I think a lot about what kids say
to me, what I remember from being a kid and those things inspire me a
lot. I also love how kids respond to music and being with them at a
concert or after a concert. I think all of those things keep me wanting
to do more,” she says.
After having worked as music specialists for daycares, Laurie Berkner, a
psychology major, got her first big break when she appeared on the Today
show.
“That was pretty huge and I think of it as one of the big stepping
stones. Before that anybody who knew about me, found out about me
through word of mouth. On the Today show they had a different way to
find out about me and it wasn’t through a friend, it was through
experiencing me and watching me play.
A couple of things happened. Amazon was pretty new and that day all
three of the albums that I had put out were in the top five best sellers
of all of Amazon during the day. It was me and somebody very famous was
up there. I remember thinking this is really crazy and it was only for a
day. At the same time I got a call from a Barnes & Noble distributor,
Alliance and they said we are looking for someone named Laurie Berkner
or Two Tomatoes Records. I was in my pjs and I was thinking why are you
looking for her and they said we have people coming into our stores all
over the country asking for music from her and we don’t carry it. We are
trying to figure out how to find her. I tried to call Alliance hundreds
of times and I couldn’t get through the phone tree. It was a big
turnaround at that moment and I ended up having to hire a lot of friends
to help me send out CDs. I wasn’t really prepared for such an enormous
response. That took me to another level in my business. It let a lot of
people know about me and it led to a book deal.
The cool thing was, because it was in Manhattan and I had a pretty
strong and loyal local following among parents and kids, a lot of people
came to the show. They got there at five in the morning and they brought
signs and their kids. It really was one of those moments that I felt
like I was sort of a celebrity in a way that I hadn’t really felt
before.
The other really neat thing about that moment was I had never been on
live national television and I was pretty scared thinking I am doing a
live show and I didn’t have a band. I didn’t even have a drummer.
It was just my husband on bass and Susie on keyboards. We went
out there and they said this is the count down. A guy about 100 feet in
front of me stuck his hand up and went five four and counted down three
two one and then he pointed at me and I just had to start playing. When
he did that I was fine, because I’ve done this for years already. Even
though, I wasn’t a famous person I had been playing for a really long
time with kids, with parents and in other band stuff. I had already been
doing it long enough that it felt very natural and fun. That was a
wonderful surprise. I thought this
is really not that hard and it is really enjoyable.
It doesn’t have to be so scary. I knew there were many more
people not only right there in front of me, but that there were millions
of people across the country watching. I think that was what was a
little scary. It wasn’t just the people right in front of me, it was
probably the biggest audience that I had ever played for,” says Berkner.
Previously, Laurie Berkner collaborated on two children’s musicals that
were based on picture books. The musicals were
Wanda’s Monster and
The Amazing Adventures of Harvey
and the Princess. Berkner is now collaborating on a third musical
called Interstellar Cinderella, which she describes as being, “a
futuristic girl power version of Cinderella.”
In 2017 Laurie Berkner will be releasing two picture books, with a third
one to follow in 2018. She has already met with her publisher.
Please visit the
Laurie Berkner website.
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We
put the conversation about the Christmas album on hold for a few minutes
to talk about the aforementioned Susie Lampert.