Learn about Family Friendly Festivals

Daddy Brad: Hey! I am Daddy Brad at the 2009 Austin City Limits Music fest. As you can see the folks behind me are having a great time. We're going go inside the Austin Kiddie Limits section and find out what's going on in family music today. Daddy Brad: Hi, we're here with Tor Hyams who's as producer with the ACL that’s Austin City Limits Music Festival and I want to ask him a couple of questions specifically the Austin Kiddie Limits festivals. Now Tor you are big into legitimizing family music. What do you mean by that? Tor Hyams: Really until recently there wasn’t really that was family music and people would say to me, oh, what kid’s music do you like? And I would say, I don’t like any of it, because it's made for kids. So I thought family music, not that’s the right genre, because then it's something that the whole family can listen to, it's not annoying Purple Dinosaurs or squeaky Teletubbies. To me that’s nonsense. To me that The Beatles are a great family band for example. Like, they sing about love. What better message for a family than love? Daddy Brad: Who are the favorites that you have here that they are going to be playing that we should check out? Tor Hyams: Well, I will be biased, but I actually produced the Last Milkshake record. So I think you should see that, I mean they are fantastic. The record is great too. Then there is a of course Secret Agent 22 Skidoo. I think he is the best thing happening right now for families and hip hop music. Daddy Brad: Right. Tor Hyams: That’s a great example too of a great family artist. He didn’t scarified cool for hip hop Daddy Brad: And your kids want to listen to hip hop. And you can feel good about them listening. Tor Hyams: That’s the point. And there is not much hip hop out there. This year we are going to have a special guest hip hop artist in the main stage, K’naan is going to play with us and that’s what happens here every year; we get special guest in the main stage who are family sympathetic and they come over. We also have Paul Green School of Rock ALL-STARS and they are teenagers. They actually don’t do family music, but they do in a way, because they play classic rock. Remember we said family, so the parent got to kind of like it. We also have some of Austin’s own. We have the Telephone Company; they are the weirdest band ever. They wear hardhats and jump suits and they sing about mustaches. Daddy Brad: How about this kid Quinn Sullivan? Tor Hyams: He is ten years old. He apparently had this great talent. I think they noticed him at eight and he can play a blues guitar like BBK, and I am not exaggerating. He is really that good. He is a prodigy. Daddy Brad: When they saw him, they went, hey, that kid is only four years older than me. He can't do that. Tor Hyams: Right. What all good family music does and what I hope to do in this area is inspire children to have music in their lives. If you love music, they will love music. So it's really an interactive family music experience. Daddy Brad: And that’s so important, because we always looking for good things to do with our families that we both enjoy. Tor Hyams: Yeah, we have a lot of activities in the area, because we didn’t want this be a place where you just sit and watch music. We want kids to interact with music. So in that regard we have the hip hop workshop with the Q Brothers. They do this magical thing every year. They basically enable kids to learn how to scratch and beatbox and rhyme. So what they do is they enable kids to learn how to do this. Then kids lay down their rhyme and they get to take home a CD. By the way, just so they are not cramping their style, we have a complete hair and tattoo facility where they get hair spied. They get temporary touches sprayed on. Daddy Brad: And it's kind of cool, because it's kind of oasis essentially in a big festival that I can bring my kids too and I can go, expose them to a couple of bands that I like and then we can go take a little break and hopefully we get through the day. Tor Hyams: Yeah! Daddy Brad: Well, Tor thank you so much. Tor Hyams: My pleasure. Daddy Brad: And I am so happy that there are lots and lots of artists that they are making good music that I can listen to and enjoy with them. So it's really cool. I appreciate what they are doing, I kind of bring it to -- because it's one thing they listen to it on the radio and on CDs, but it's another thing to come to a place a festival and really groove to it with them right here.