When our girl was just a tiny baby, a friend told us about this kid’s band she liked, The Okee Dokee Brothers. Eventually we looked up their most popular track from their Grammy winning album of the same name, Can You Canoe? Our daughter wasn’t actively listening to music yet, but we loved it. Since then, the Okee Dokee Brothers three older albums including Through the Woods, and Saddle Up, have become some of the staples for our family dance parties. If you have little girls, you know how important family dance parties are. So when I saw a press release for their concert at Symphony Space, we had to go.
Okee Dokee Brothers Live
It is unusual that I would want to take a train more than an hour from Brooklyn to 96th St to see a kid’s music show, but I made an exception to see a band that I would like even if I didn’t have a kid. Watching the faces in the crowd at the Okee Dokee Brothers show, I felt that this might be the case for many of the adults. Most of the moms where asking their kids to dance with them, and I saw dads singing the well known lyrics to themselves, some shy about it and some not. As one bearded dad told us, “this ain’t no wheels on the bus.” In fact, I definitely sang all the words to The Bullfrog Opera.
Justin and Joe were excellent showmen, skilled in soliciting audience participation without forcing it and putting smiles on the adults faces as much as the kids. Some songs came with excellent and well crafted video backdrops that served as both good fun and proof that the two friends really did experience the adventures chronicled in the songs–like snow canoeing!
Yes, these songs encourage kids to get outside and explore nature, but that is definitely not the only message I hear in the music. The message I hear most consistently across all the albums is one of human kindness: people are essentially good in all varieties, nature is beautiful, and love is found everywhere.
After the concert they signed books and CDs and talked with all their fans–many of whom were seriously enthusiastic. The spoke of other concerts they had been to and it seemed that seeing the Okee Dokee brothers could easily become a family tradition.
We also discovered that they sell a (lyrics only) songbook for Can You Canoe? which is great fun.
Winterland
As we named our daughter after snow, my husband and I are big fans of all things winter. So I may be a bit biased toward an album that tries (and succeeds!) at capturing that powerful spirit. While it is secular, no holiday tunes here, it celebrates what many holiday songs invariably fail to do, invoking that special feeling of being happy and warm with your family and not wanting to go anywhere, except maybe to play in the snow and warm up again after. I love the albums hits, Blankets of Snow and Keep Me Warm but I also love the mellow chill of Lazy Day. I also agree completely with the clear message of Snow Day, “Why do girls get a pink ballerina skirt?” and boys a blue everything…no need to enforce gender roles when we know society is going to hit them with plenty of that soon enough.
A small warning to parents, one of the songs features an old tree who dies which prompted my three-year-old to ask “what does it mean to die?” It was only a matter of time before she asked.
But the question Joe and Justin really want us to discuss, without ever preaching about it, is what can we do to save the winter from climate change? They are donating 10% of album sales to Askov Finlayson’s Keep the North Cold initiative which supports leading-edge climate solutions.
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