Although we forget it as we get older, dinosaurs are totally cool things.
Think back - way back - to when you first learned about those fascinating beasts. Weren't you totally amazed at their massive size, their sharp, pointy teeth and their hard, horny heads?
Well, thank heavens Bonnie Phipps hasn't forgotten. On her CD, Dinosaur Choir, recorded with a variety of players, Phipps proves that she knows how kids feel about things like dinosaurs, meatballs and spaghetti, lollipops, cats, popcorn, warm fuzzies, even doorknobs. The result is a musical family extravaganza the will make everyone who hears it feel like a kid again.
Phipps, who is also a member of the Denver folk ensemble known as the Mother Folkers, has learned about kids from experience. She started working with preschool-age tots at seventeen, and was subsequently hired by Head Start. When some of her charges had problems making it to school, she went so far as to get a bus driver's license so that she could haul them around herself.
She soon became a full-fledged teacher, but a divorce interrupted her career. "[I was] so distraught," she says. "I finally realized I had to stop teaching for a while."
Her savior was the autoharp. Phipps first picked up the instrument on a trip to visit a friend in California. Upon her return, she bought one and became obsessed. "It was so natural," she recalls. "I played it sometimes six hours a day, everyday. It gave me so much. I feel like I was one of the people pioneering the instrument."
Prior to winning the 1982-83 National Autoharp championship, Phipps joined the Colorado Folk Ensemble, a group known for folk music with classical overtones that toured the country for Columbia Artists' Management. That led to children's concerts. "Suddenly I was able to be with kids again, in a different way," she says. "I could [be with] kids and do music - I could have my cake and eat it, too. I keep thinking, 'I'm so lucky.' If I won the lottery, I wouldn't quit my job or anything."
Phipps' enthusiasm for her job comes through loud and clear on Dinosaur Choir. Joined by her backup group, the Elastic Band (plus hammer-dulcimer player Doug Berch, dobroist Mary Flower, pianist Hank Troy and the doo-wop stylings of the 17th Avenue All-Stars), she has produced an extremely polished, well-rounded recording that parents, if they aren't careful, may find themselves singing to in crowded elevators on the way back from lunch.
The material works, according to Phipps, because of good musicianship, tight arrangements and the language of the lyrics. "I really like language," she says. "The album is about language, with songs like 'I'm a Three-Toed, Triple-Eyed, Double-Jointed Dinosaur,' or 'I Went to the Movies Tomorrow' - the language is of primary importance.
Just as important for Phipps is the timing of Dinosaur Choir's release: on the cusp of a boom in the kids' music industry. "Raffi started it," she says, making reference to the singer-songwriter who's the biggest star in her field. "Now A&M Records, Sony and CBS are starting to look for children's performing artists; they're starting to realize the market. We're on the ground floor.
Even though Phipps is making a nice living from her music, she notes that it still isn't easy for parents to track down her CD. "Children's music can't be found in regular record stores. You have to go to bookstores and certain toy stores," she explains. She adds that "it would be nice to have a kids' radio station [in Denver]. There are about twenty in the United States. There are good children's programs, and a few are trying to do satellite. I think that would be wonderful."
For most of us, standing on stage waving our arms, making funny faces and singing in a silly dinosaur voice would be far from wonderful - but Phipps loves it. "Basically, I don't feel goofy being goofy," she says. "When I was a teacher, we had circle time - you'd have the kids around you, and you're telling a story or singing a song, and you put some of that goofiness in it. When you relate to kids, you use that enthusiasm."
"When I started working with kids," she continues, "I was so fascinated with who they were as people, and their kid energy. It's a good thing to have and not to lose. It's magic."
Just like dinosaurs.