New CD Is On The Way For Dream Jam Band

By Nancy K. Crevier

Sandy Hook music teacher, performer and mother Francine Wheeler is living the dream – The Dream Jam Band dream, that is.

Ms Wheeler has been a member of the children’s music group since its inception five years ago, along with Barry (“Barry G.”) Gellert, Frank (“Maestro C”) Corrado, and newest member Erin (“Erin the Red”) Hill, as well as drummer Nicky Kulund, who plays with the band in live performances. Willie Nile no longer performs with the band, but continues to write for it.

The band has performed locally and across the New England region, and in 2007 issued their first CD, The Dream Jam Band that included the  XM/Sirius Radio hit “Nicky Nicky Knock Knock.”

Now children and adults who love the eclectic rock/classical/country/hip-hop sound of The Dream Jam Band can look forward to more of the smart and funny original lyrics and music the group creates when their second CD, Leave It In The Soup is released digitally on July 27, and in stores on August 10.

“The sound on this CD is a little different,” Ms Wheeler said in a recent interview. “For one thing, there are now two women’s voices, mine and Erin’s. Our producer, Rick Chertoff, says it has a more Mamas and the Papas or B-52s sound. The first CD was more like the rockin’ guys with the girl. This is a lot more harmony and a lot more switching back and forth between the guys and the gals,” she said.

She is very excited about the upcoming release.

“It’s a national release, with national distribution by EMI this time, and that’s the big to-do. We’ve had great reaction to our previous CD and have had those songs on XM/Sirius, so I hope we’ll be hearing this music on the radio, too. It’s great, because the CD will be online at iTunes and Amazon, and in Barnes & Noble, and in Borders. It will be a lot more widely seen and heard, I hope,” she said. Right now, a Dream Jam Band video featuring the new CD song “Have a Party When You Get The Blues” can be viewed at zooglobble.com, and two others, “Bad Hair Day” and “I Can’t Tie My Shoe,” will soon follow, said Ms Wheeler.

With each band member contributing songs full of rhyming, rapping, echoing, and sometimes nonsense lyrics, learning the pieces means a lot of work for the vocalists, said Ms Wheeler.

“We can work on songs that are not our own for months to learn the lyrics. We worked on these songs for a year before we recorded. We knew these songs like we know our bodies,” she laughed. “They were well-seasoned by the time we recorded; but even then, we will sometimes add things when we perform them live.”

Live performance includes coming up with moves and dances, as well, that will captivate their entire live audience.

“Kids experience music and life physically before verbally,” said Ms Wheeler. “They want to feel like they’re on stage with us.

“Adults do, too,” she confided, “but they don’t want to admit it!”

Music For Children And Adults

All of the band members are not only musicians and performers, but song writers, too. For the second CD, the bulk of the songs are written by Barry Gellert and Frank Corrado, said Ms Wheeler, as well as by the producer.

“Rick is a five time Grammy nominee, so we’re happy to be working with him. He has a great ear for what works,” she said. It was Mr Chertoff, she said, who realized that enough songs had come together “to have a new story. That’s what it takes to make a CD.”

The songs on Leave It In The Soup draw on the experiences and fantasies of children. “Dance Like a Skeleton,” “Great Day,” “I Can’t Tie My Shoes,” “Melanie the Mermaid,” and the other seven cuts all deal with common, fanciful ideas. The songs are very much influenced by their own children — Mr Gellert has twins and Ms Wheeler has two young sons — and the music students that all teach, said Ms Wheeler.

“Daily events are humongous for children, whatever is going on in their lives,” she said, and that gives the writers fodder for their music.

The challenge in producing a great music CD geared toward children is coming up with music and words that appeal to both children and adults.

“The lyrics have to be silly and funny, but smart. We like it when adults tell us after a show how much they enjoyed it, as well as their children,” Ms Wheeler said. The children are targeted in performances, though, and the musicians realize that the young audiences must be approached differently than an adult audience, whether live or recorded.

“It’s like musical theater vs rock and roll,” she said. “With rock, you don’t care so much about the consonants when singing. With kids, you want to be very clear with the lyrics, because children are listening very carefully. I find that I sing a little broader, a little more theatrically, if you will, when singing for children,” she said.

She does adapt her vocals a bit when performing for adults. That was the case, she said, when performing at the Flagpole Radio Café in May, with folk star Peter Yarrow.

“That was a moment in my life. It was a pretty awesome experience to be singing with Peter Yarrow. When he asked me to sing ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ with him, and let me sing a whole chorus myself, that was just incredible. I still get tingles inside when I think of it. It’s like you know that the better the people are around you, the better the music,” she said. And that applies solidly to The Dream Jam Band, she stressed. “One of us is a great guitarist, another plays 16 different instruments, we all play multiple instruments, and we sing — and we all complement each other. There’s talent in every person. We’re the puzzle pieces put together!” she exclaimed.

Putting the pieces together to create a CD and to prepare for live performances means rehearsing at least once a week. It requires tricky juggling of schedules and family life for the band members. One of the band members lives in Queens, she lives in Connecticut, and the rest of the group is from Westchester, so they tend to congregate in Westchester or New York City for rehearsals, said Ms Wheeler.

“It can be an hour and a half commute or more for me, in the evening, so it’s late when I get back. But that’s okay. It’s a great experience,” she said.

She is pleased with the results of what the group has worked out for Leave It In The Soup, particularly the title track

“The title song is an ensemble piece,” Ms Wheeler said. “There’s a lot of ‘shake note’ singing, which is when you have a number of melodies going on at once. In this particular song, we have four melodies and then a fifth melody is added. Then there is the ‘do re me’ scale going on, that teaches kids about pitch, melody, and harmony. So I do love that song,” she said.

“This Old Town,” with a Wild West sound to it, is another favorite on the new CD for Ms Wheeler.

“We’re making our own music, that’s what it’s about,” she said. “It’s so much fun to be in this band, and it’s great because we choose to do kids’ music.”