I do a lot of very cool things in life, however, composing songs with kids is a big motivator. Knowing that before the morning is over there will fun new songs in the world, makes me get up at six in the morning and have a smile, as I carefully rush down the highway to schools in Central Ohio.
My first recording collaboration with youngsters occurred in 1997, Arnet Howed’s Cruel Funk Band, Kidding Around. My second was with students in Grandview Heights, Ohio, I’m a Walkin’, Takin’ Pair of Pants, in 2003.
The lastest collection of rhythms, rhymes, melodies and body noises, Kidding Around II, comes from projects that began in 2006 with the Lancaster Teens C D Project and Schultz School Jazz. The main 2007 event was the Mark Twain Elementary Rock and Roll Summer Camp and 2008 has found me writing songs with imaginative kids at Mark Twain, Pointview and Annehurst Schools in Westerville, Ohio, as well as Pickerington Elementary, in Pickerington, OH.
I was sixteen when I made my first recordings and I hope my fellow musicians on this disc, from aged five to seventeen, can boast (like I continue to do) about how young they were when they made their first appearance in front of the microphones. Music is a love force; long may you sing your songs!
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