Lyrics

This is a song I almost gave up on. I’m sure glad I decided to finish writing it because it ended up being the title song and one of the most very helpful songs of all.

Who can’t relate to the helpless feeling of losing your cool? We all learn how to cope with frustrations. I hope this song helps children to get there a little faster.

The whole album starts here, really.

When Zoe, my eldest was just past two, she had a summer habit of stripping off her jammies overnight and by morning she’d wake up in her crib in only a diaper. By late autumn, with the cold mornings of winter approaching, this habit was becoming an urgent problem with no solution in sight.

Auntie Karolyn had a wonderful idea to make a song about keeping your warm jammies on until morning. I wrote this song, showed it to my little Zoe, and from that moment on she never woke up shivering again.

Following the success of the Jammies Song, I kept writing helpful songs and soon I had enough of them to make an album.

Special thanks to Karolyn Burger for a very helpful idea indeed.

Zoe wrote the words and melody to the first line. I took it from there.

My abiding love of the piano is what fuels this song. I grew up in a house filled with piano music and my personal memories of home will forever involve the embracing sound of a piano.

Music is such a powerful force. It brings together so many of our human strengths, triggering memories, inspiring us with hope, giving us the confidence that we are somehow on the right path and that we are never that far from home. To the child in all of us, a song can be a source of comfort in a changing world, a true port in a storm.

I’ve always responded emotionally to the uniquely American music of Stephen Foster and it seemed right to draw on the native folk music of my homeland in writing a song about the importance of knowing where to find one’s home.

There’s ultimately nothing more comforting to a child than lying alone in bed, hearing the familiar sounds, noticing those familiar smells and knowing that she’s safe at home. It’s a feeling to build a happy, strong, independent life upon.

Zoe’s favorite song on the record -- she wrote the first line, words and melody, and I ran with it.

“Into every life a little rain must fall” is the half-hidden message of the song, which is a very helpful bit of advice, I think.

I really enjoyed including the piccolo trumpet in this window view into a splashy world of color, there beneath the blue suburban sky.

Kids, please chew bubblegum responsibly.

This song started innocently. I had the music to this song for years as an instrumental and, in keeping with the album’s theme of wild stylistic variety, I got the idea to try to rap a children’s song over this benign little Hip Hop track.

The first line (“I was justified when I was five”) came very naturally, having been raised on a steady diet of Elton John throughout the 1970s. I guess I had a lot of pent up rapping in my system because this lyric came to me about as fast as I could write it down. The hook (“Every day, I feel a little stronger”) came later, after my good friend J-Hi made the obvious suggestion.... It’s great, but where’s the HOOK? Thanks, John.

While humor abounds in this song, it also probably contains the most serious message in the entire album. We’re all headed for a platinum fate if only we can pull together and solve our problems as a planet.

Special awe-filled thanks to my 3 songwriter heroes, who could easily sue me for copyright infringement but wouldn’t. Right?

The naked, open mind is really what upsets a lot of people -- I was channeling Pete Seeger when I wrote this one. That felt really good.

Thanks, Grandpa Ken, for the gift of the banjo. KC contributed the words to the very first line. Thanks, love.

Dedicated to my friend and mentor, Bruce Roberts, who taught me so much about songwriting just by opening his heart. Thanks forever, Bruce.

This song aspires to great heights and almost topples over a couple of times. An ode to misfits, friendship, and the grace we sometimes find in the most unexpected places.

Jiminy Cricket returns. I wrote this song while staring into the face of my infant daughter, Margo. I think I completed the song in less than an hour. Sometimes songs come right to your door, gift-wrapped.

The message is only slightly subversive. Be a thinker, kids.

A lullaby for both child and parent. This song took me six struggling years to write. I think that’s a record.

I only recently noticed that To Love You is a California song. Winter here means rain, not snow. I guess I’m a true Angeleno now and that’s just fine with me.

Dedicated to Zoe and Margo, with love.

Lyrics, etc.