Bobs and lolo hope to topple mighty penner
Vancouver’s Bobs and LoLo up for another Juno, but their category’s no gimme, writes Stuart Derdeyn.
Unless you happen to have kids in the under-10 demographic, you may not be aware of just how huge Canadian children’s music artists are around the world. Fred Penner, Raffi and even the Barenaked Ladies are household names for parents all over North America and beyond. And the Children’s Album of the Year Juno is one of the most hotly contested.
Vancouver-based Bobs (Robyn Hardy) and LoLo (Lorraine Pond) can attest to that. Since forming in 2003, the dynamic duo has been nominated five times. This year, the group was nominated in the category again for its new album, Blue Skies.
“Darn it, we keep getting in the category with Fred Penner,” said LoLo. “We love the guy, but please take a year off, he’s just too good. But we’ve always gone and enjoyed all of the red-carpet fun and parties every year we’ve been nominated.”
She’s excited that this year’s awards are in her hometown. These days, Bobs and LoLo count enough of their own children in their entourage to make up a choir that sings on their latest release. The grandmas are coming to town for the weekend.
Children’s music performers put in as much, or more, time on the road as pop-music acts. Their appearances are in high demand for the top-tier artists, and, typically, this means playing gigs everywhere you drive as the staging production doesn’t usually include arena pyrotechnics or other whatnot. The performance hours are a good deal more sensible. LoLo says with a laugh that they never need to worry about a show starting later than 7 p.m. But, after 15 years in the trenches, it still takes it out of you.
“To be honest, in the last three years, we’ve really cut back with the amount of inter-provincial touring because our country is just so massive,” she said. “So, really, we have been kind of rolling along doing things in Western Canada, so it’s easier with family. Being on stage is the most fun thing we do and it’s what’s kept us going all this time.”
LoLo can’t imagine doing anything else as rewarding and enjoyable while raising a family. Children’s musicians have the bonus of not being beholden to staying contemporary or trying to win a popularity contest to stay in the charts. Your audience grows out of your thing and right behind is another new audience coming up the ranks.
“We’ve just hit this stage in our careers where we’ll walk into a coffee shop and the barista will be going, ‘Oh my God, it’s Bobs and LoLo,’ because they actually grew up to our music or our content on Treehouse,” she said. “We’re kind of counting down the years as to when our second-generation fans start bringing their own children to shows, and it won’t be long. There is real longevity here.”
For Bobs and LoLo, the joy of spreading their strong message of environmental responsibility and stewardship continues a legacy of growing up with the positive social messages of their predecessors. Even a cursory overview of children’s performers points to an overall progressive sensibility. A Ted Nugent-equivalent kids musician hasn’t surfaced to date.
“I grew up on the big Canadian names like Fred Penner, Raffi, Sharon, Lois and Bram, and Anne Murray, role models whose message we carry on bringing to kids, today,” LoLo said. “The global trend in children’s entertainment is towards animation with heavy emphasis on cross-promotion and marketing, and we want to offer an alternative. I get it, it’s a huge merchandising opportunity, but we see more value in having kids interact with a real person and establish a connection with them in a digital world.”
This is a driving force for Bobs and Lolo’s continued dedication to their work. LoLo says that telling the story of how her and her partner came to meet in rhymes is a favourite among fans.
“Robyn and I met at Girl Guide camp, did music at school, grew up together and developed this out of a passion for music and using it to share messaging that we felt very strongly about,” she said. “There is something real and organic about that and which our great group of colleagues in Canada are also doing, which distances us from that mainstream, commercial children’s entertainment.”
Whether they can topple Penner’s Hear the Music as the likely Children’s Album of the Year winner becomes far less important than being part of a community of artists who have devoted their lives to giving young people real, live entertainment and art. Bobs and LoLo prefer their commitment to the values they have integrated into their brand over seven albums and 15 years.
LoLo stresses that the Music B.C. fund must be lauded for providing the seed capital that made producing Blue Skies possible. Like all artists it’s often a hand-to-mouth existence and you need to diversify.
“Children’s music just doesn’t get the same levels of streaming on platforms like Spotify yet, so we’ve had to do other things,” she said. “Besides the album, we authored and published a book and put out an interactive salmon life-cycle storybook app geared towards elementary-school ages to accompany our song Run Salmon Run. Right now, we are working on taking that to schools.”
Perhaps the duo can add “Juno Award-winning ” to its pitches to school boards after this weekend.