Hey folks - my name is Key Wilde and I have a family act called “Key Wilde & Mr Clarke”. The elusive Mr Clarke is actually a real person. He is a teacher in the NYC public schools. He grew up in England and France and still holds a British passport and is still unable to properly pronounce the word “taco”. We started performing music together in the early ‘90’s. We shared an enthusiasm for punk, bluegrass, vocal harmonies and an anti-corporate DYI attitude. A couple of major labels showed some interest but were ultimately a little puzzled. We played around quite a bit in the East Village and Brooklyn. In 2000 my daughter (now 17) attended a cooperative pre-school in Jersey City. For my required parent stint I always brought along a guitar and soon became the music guy. I found that the kids responded more to my own quirky original tunes than the standard traditional songs. So I started writing songs for kids (which basically entailed doing what I was doing all along and merely eliminating the curse words). Mr Clarke was on board. Around that time Dan Zanes put out a record called “Rocketship Beach”. It was a good record. My daughter and I listened to it together and sang the songs on our own. You might call that record an inspiration – making records for families seemed like a real possibility. Our first radio airplay was on a program called “Greasy Kid Stuff” on the great WFMU. They were enthusiastic supporters of our music and (now relocated to Portland OR) are still going strong – check ‘em out. We signed to a fledging label called Little Monster Records and released a CD with a board book. We performed in the showcase at the first Kindiefest (then called “Stinkfest”) in 2009 and I have attended every Kindiefest conference since then. I am very glad that KINDIECOMM is carrying on the tradition. I really do feel a sense of community and look forward to catching up with everyone at least once a year. So we’ve played most of the NYC / Philadelphia venues and a few festivals. Kids Place Live on Sirius XM has been kind enough to spin our records and have us perform live on air a few times. We’ve released 3 full-length albums and a couple of EPs. Our two most recent albums are produced by the amazing Dean Jones and I can’t sing his praises loud enough. He is an incredible talent and a joy to work with – to me he epitomizes the heart and soul of the Kindie community. Our new album “Animal Tales” will be released on Occtober 21 and we will be performing at the World Café Live in Philadelphia Saturday October 11. OK – one more thing. My “professional” training is in the visual arts and visual elements are an extremely important component in all my kid projects. I can better understand and appreciate my characters by giving them visual form. Lately I’ve been working with animation and have been talking about collaborations with a couple other Kindie artists. Looking forward to that. I feel uncomfortable asking people to like our page on FB but I hope some of you will. Couple of videos: Animal Alphabet youtu.be/8FPG-R6m5Ss Bear Song youtu.be/K1S748kZRb0 keywildeandmrclarke keywilde --
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 18:52:51 +0000
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