There are some hard and fast truths for most children’s music performers, especially when they face an unending procession of Zoom concerts. Paramount is the simple, declarative statement: They will never be Laurie Berkner. Sound harsh? Maybe, but consider the three decades of street cred that Laurie brings to the culture of kids’ music. It’s been 25 years since the release of Whaddaya Think Of That? In the intervening time, kindie has become a “thing.” The Berkner Band has soldiered on, past piles of discarded download cards, broken CDs, and scratched vinyl singles left in the wake of hundreds of acts that followed.
I’m not comparing Laurie Berkner to Furiosa, the character played by Charlize Theron in the “Mad Max” remake. Laurie’s journey included many detours that benevolently opened entry ramps for other artists, such as adapting her songs into children’s books and starring in a short-form TV series for Sprout! (now Universal Kids). She even took a six-year break from recording new music to start a family with husband/former bassist Brian Mueller.
During the early days of the pandemic, Laurie held daily (then thrice-weekly) “Berkner Break” concerts for quarantined children. Those concerts helped spawn many of the songs for her 14th release, Let’s Go! The 16 songs span appreciation for nature (“I Saw A Butterfly”), accomplishment (“Tied My Shoes”), and self-awareness, personal pride, and identity (“Beautiful Light”):
I’ll make my beautiful way in this world
The way I dance, the way I sing, the way I bounce, the way I twirl
The way I think, the way I see, the things I’ll do and who I’ll be
I’ll make my beautiful way in this world
The contradiction of the pandemic era is that isolation has made recording music easier for many bands. The refrain “when can we get together” has been solved by shared Google docs and cloud-based sound files. The song credits on Let’s Go! read like a jigsaw puzzle, with a round-robin of musicians and singers. Yet the tunes come together seamlessly, delivering Laurie’s beloved, patented song style to her perpetually renewed fanbase. When the world is ready to reopen, the Laurie Berkner Band is excited to meet old fan and new alike. At the very least, Let’s Go! is an understatement.
The Laurie Berkner Band will be doing a pair of virtual concerts for Easter and Passover on Sunday, March 28 at noon and 5:00 PM ET. Tickets for both shows are available here.
Here is new video for “When It’s Cold,” featuring Brady Rymer:
