Clay Nichols: To be a young man in America is to live life with a soundtrack
Brad Powell: Music is a key part of almost every young male American's life.
Clay Nichols: And you feel young whenever you can roll down the windows and crank the tunes.
Brad Powell: So, how in a world did you end up rolling down the highway in your mini-van with Purple Dinosaur music, jumbling out of the speakers.
Clay Nichols: Now, I am Daddy Clay.
Brad Powell: And I am Daddy Brad, we're here today to talk about kids and music.
Clay Nichols: Now a guy's soundtrack takes the first hit when you get married, because suddenly you hear Shania Twain's CDs are mixed in with your woke up. But you can manage as long as you kind of control the play list, you can handle it.
Brad Powell: But then the kids come along, and before you know it, if you are not careful, your sonic world can be turned upside down. So here at the DadLabs, we think you need to establish some musical ground rules and right away.
Clay Nichols: Now, I should probably disclose that I am not a big fan of the kiddie music. Don't really care for it, but I realize the kids have a hard time seeing along with my James McMurtry CDs. They need some music that they can relate to. My rule is this; kids' music comes out of kids' players, like this one, and daddy music comes out of the daddy players and that includes the one in the car.
Brad Powell: Now a quick note about kiddie players, they are relatively inexpensive. This one cost about 25 bucks, but they go through batteries like Pooh! What a Goose.
Clay Nichols: I have noticed that most of them have prominently Eject buttons that the kids just love to hit in the middle of your sing-along. So when we have a little concert, I like to put the player just out of the reach of little fingers.
Brad Powell: I admit. In our house, we listen to a little more kids' music than daddy play. I even enjoy some of the hip kids artists today, like Laurie Bertner and I don't know, Dan Zanes. But the thing I really dig is one of my favorite artists like Taj Mahal or Keb'Mo puts out a kid CD.
Clay Nichols: I think we finally found out a compromise between our views on music and kids here. We discovered this at the ABC Kids Expo in Las Vegas.
Brad Powell: Daddy Troy! Roll that Vegas Tape, baby.
There was a big debate going on in the DadLabs. Do you listen to kids' music with your kids and suffer through a Purple Dinosaur over and over and over again, or do you make them listen to your music? Well, the folks at Putumayo Kids Music have solved that. These are great CDs, they've got wonderful cool artist and it's music that your kids will like as well. We are here with Mona Kayhan, at Putumayo Kids Music. Mona, tell us about these DVDs or CDs.
Mona Kayhan: Well our CDs are -- they focus on introducing children and families to music from all around the world, and introducing the children and families to cultures also through, like accidentally having them really attracted to this upbeat fun world from folk music and they are compilation based, so you got a mix of artists well-known and unknown artists all in one CD, which is really great, so people can get to know a bunch of different people and artists.
Brad Powell: Yeah! This one is New Orleans Playground, it's got great people; Clifton Chenier, The Meters, Kermit Ruffins, Fats Domino and I hear that some of this goes to help the --.
Mona Kayhan: The Louisiana Children's Museum, so 1% of all our proceeds for every single children's album and Putumayo World Music album goes to a non-profit or charity of our choice and this one because the museum in New Orleans had gone through some devastation in a hurricane, we decided that it would be a great fit for this album.
Brad Powell: That's great, well thank you so much, Mona. Putumayo Kids Music, great music for you and great music for your kids.
If you would like to find out more about all the great music at Putumayo Kids, there's a link to their site on the DadLabs.com Resources page.
Clay Nichols: Now I've got an eight year-old and he's already got an iPod shuffle that's full of music from a genre that I am not crazy about but I would never say anything.
Brad Powell: Yeah, that's seal of the deal.
Clay Nichols: Yeah, I remember, I used to hate the Willie Nelson that my dad played all the time, but now, I've got a kind of a soft part for the old red-headed stranger.
Brad Powell: So, it's really important for you to give kids music that easily accessible to them, stuff that they feel comfortable with, but it's most important for you to fill you house with music that you and your wife love.
Clay Nichols: Maybe they will come back to it some day, the soundtrack of their childhood.
Brad Powell: Next time you find yourself cruising down the highway in your mini-van, crank up the tunes, baby!
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