Like kids’ music in general, the compilation Many Hands offers a wide range of sonic flavors. Album opener “We Belong,” from Emily Curtis, is a straight-ahead tune based on acoustic guitar strumming and chock full of folk positivity and choruses of happy kids. The second tune features former Valleyite Rani Arbo and her band daisy mayhem playing an upbeat, swinging kiddie rollick that ought to get the young set boogeying pretty much instantly to the tune of “Mama’s Little Baby.” The third track is traditional Haitian music, full of crazy horn sounds and a clanking tangle of percussion with Creole vocals on top. The CD offers plenty of entertaining and unexpected left turns with tunes united perhaps only in their positive energy.
Many Hands is notable for its charitable bent—proceeds benefit the Haitian People’s Support Project, a group that’s been working to fight poverty in Haiti since 1990—but it’s also notable for its impressive lineup and for its local genesis. The disc got its start with Dean Jones of the upstate New York band Dog On Fleas. Local kids’ music impresario Bill Childs, who hosts WRSI’s “Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child” show with his kids Ella and Liam and produces lots of kids’ music events, was enlisted to aid the effort.
“Dean’s a horn player, and is owed money by just about everybody in the industry—apparently that’s pretty common for horn players! He’s become a friend over the years,” Childs said in a recent interview. “He had started putting this together. He has a long association with the Haitian Support Project—he’s been doing work in Haiti for 20 years or something. He was looking for help in contacting people.”
Childs says it quickly became clear that, with his contacts in the kids’ music world, he could do a lot more than offer phone numbers: “Ultimately, that manifested itself in becoming a label.”
The Many Hands project became the first release for a new label, Spare the Rock Records. The Valley has become an important place in the world of kids’ music, largely thanks to Childs’ efforts. Founding a label is par for the course—already, Childs hosts the annual Meltdown, a gathering of “kindie” bands that drew thousands of eager listeners earlier this year. He also produces Kindiefest, which is rather like South by Southwest for kids’ musicians, featuring loads of band showcases and panels with musicians and industry professionals focusing on “family entertainment.”
Thanks to bona fides like that, Childs has already helped Many Hands get widely distributed in the wake of its Aug. 10 release.
” In September,” Childs says, “we’re going to be in every Whole Foods in the country. Turns out there are a lot of them!”
That alone has prompted a second run of discs, but what it contains ought to make it a big seller, too.
“I think it’s better than the sum of its parts,” says Childs. “There are a lot of crappy compilation CDs, where you can tell the producers got the leftovers. I don’t think that’s what happened here.”
Instead, Many Hands is chock full of previously unreleased material from players who donated or discounted their services (something that happened with replication and distribution as well). There’s something for most every taste, and plenty of homerun tunes. Jonathan Coulton’s “The Princess Who Saved Herself,” for instance, sports an elegant, distorted guitar groove (somewhere in the neighborhood of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”), and would pass for well-played “adult” music if not for its kid-focused lyrics. A comedic interlude in the middle makes it a real killer.
Other big hitters contributed, among them Pete Seeger, Dan Zanes and They Might Be Giants. TMBG offered “My Name is Kingof Socks,” a sort of helium-fueled, Motown-esque ode to a sock lover.
The biggest question, perhaps, is what happens next with Childs’ entree into the label world. “I don’t know if this will extend,” says Childs. “If the right project comes along, sure.”
So stay tuned.
Many Hands CD release show featuring Dan Zanes, Elizabeth Mitchell & Family, Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, Deedle Deedle Dees, Tony Vacca, and Grenadilla: Sept. 26, 1 p.m., Pines Theater, Look Park, Northampton. For more info, visit ManyHandsCD.com.
