An Interview with Uncle Rock

photo by Laura Sandlin
Earlier this fall, I had the opportunity to talk with Robert Burke Warren (Uncle Rock), whose album Plays Well with Others is one of my favorites. My very first interview! Hurrah!! But this was actually more like a conversation between two parents who love music than an interview.

Before talking with Robert, I had worried that we would blow through my list of questions in about 10 minutes, then hit an awkward moment where we would run out of things to talk about. That didn't happen. We talked and talked, then talked some more. He answered the questions I had prepared, and he answered some questions that bubbled up during the conversation. And he even asked me a few questions. Here are some of the highlights:

You started performing music for kids when you began working at your son's pre-school….how did you progress to writing and recording children's music?

I worked there for a whole year before I brought my guitar in. I would play guitar at home, and at first my son couldn't stand it. Other musicians had told me similar things, that there was something about the music that would provoke emotions in your child that he would have a hard time with. Then he finally got used to it and came to love it. I had to find some way to engage him so we could do this together, so I started writing songs, but I still didn’t want to bring it into my job. My boss said, "Bring it in anyway." So I did.

I played Beatles songs and some Johnny Cash, and actually got in trouble for playing "Folsom Prison". I realized it just before I got to the line about shooting the guy to watch him die, so I sang, "I shot a man in Reno and I made him cry."

One of the first songs I learned for the kids was "Ghost Riders in the Sky". It was in a book of kids music – a very unusual song to find there. I knew Johnny Cash had done it. I thought "this will freak the kids out," but they were riveted. It's a strange ghost story about cows snorting fire, and ghost cowboys. It's a long song too, and really dense. But they would insist that I play the whole thing.

I think one of the first songs I wrote for the kids was the Mermaid song ["It’s a Mermaid" from his first album, Here We Go!]. I started making up a lot of songs at work….they would come pretty quickly. It was the first time in my life as a songwriter where I didn't have to write down the words – the words would just stay with me.

So the pre-schoolers were a good audience for you?

Everything in a kids' mind is firing with creative energy. The kids are going to go back to that to solve problems and creatively navigate their world. The creative aspect of kids needs to be engaged.

Some of your songs (like "Picnic in the Graveyard") are kind of dark. Did the pre-schoolers respond well to your darker material?

I'm a sucker for the shadowy elements of everything. What spurred me on was that I didn't see a lot of that in children’s music. I see it in literature and movies, and some in the older folk music. They hold onto the classic archetypes – Pixar Movies, Maurice Sendak books, Harry Potter, even Shel Silverstein. Kids really do think about a lot. The challenge is to bring that to the music and make it accessible. I have a whole list of songs I'd like to cover.

Does your son still like your music?

He's still really into it. Uncle Rock started as our father-son project. I had my students at school, but he was my first sounding board. I could tell if something was affecting him, or if it wasn't. There have been a few times where there was a song that he didn't like, but I did. He performed one of my songs at his school talent show.

I do see as he and his peers are going into third grade now, the culture is starting to change. Most of them are starting to get more affected by what they see on television and music they hear via tv and radio, they're getting more into MTV-type bands. He'll be singing a song he heard on a cartoon. Now music is getting out to kids through commercials and cartoons and tv shows. He has a pretty broad palette still. We don't fish, and we don't really camp, but Uncle Rock is something we do together.

Was there a certain artist that inspired you to try children’s music?

Dan Zanes is a big inspiration for me, and it wasn't that I thought that I could do anything better, it was that these things were coming very organically to me in my job and in my role as a parent. I didn't hear anything out there that was incorporating stuff that was interesting me. I'm a little more rock-and-roll and a little less folk, although I love folk and it informs a lot of what I do. Rock and roll and punk rock are really folk music with a little electricity. I just didn’t hear anything out there like what I was hearing in my head. Dan’s really good about inspiring people to do it themselves.

He [Zanes] is very astute about saying that we've become more of a culture of music consumers and not music makers, being fed ready-made ideas and ready-made images and stories. But with kids especially, music exists in the mind.

Where do you think kids music is headed? With so many new artists releasing kids albums in the last year, do you think the genre is getting too crowded?

I think that there's enough room for everybody. It's coming at a time when the way people consume music is changing. Everything's in flux, and the possibilities seem wide open. I know just from the checks that I've received from CDBaby over the last year that I've gotten more income (and we are NOT talking about a lot of money here) from downloads, and it's incrementally more every month. Now you've got internet radio, satellite radio, YouTube….the playing field is really leveled. I don't see it as a crowded thing.

How many guitars do you have?

I have two acoustic guitars, one electric, and one bass guitar, which I've had since I was 16 years old. If the house was on fire, and the family was safe, and the cat was safe, and I could only take one instrument, I would take the bass. But my workhorse guitar is a Martin.
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We talked more – about music and television and kids and parenting. It became more and more of a fun conversation and less of an interview, but I managed to capture a few other nuggets of brilliance in what he said.

On his vision for his own kids television show: I want it to be a cross between The Monkees, Mr Rogers Neighborhood, Zoom, and Martha Stewart.

On Pee-Wee’s Playhouse: Blue’s Clues is really a rip-off of PeeWee. Steve is the non-threatening man-child, and everything talks.

On KidzBop: The first time I heard it, I thought, "This sounds like a slumber party."

On performing: It's so satisfying to meet people who are listening to the CD and getting into it as much as their kids. That's the goal – to engage families, not just kids.

And more on writing: You write what you know, and this is my life.

Be sure to listen for Robert doing a live in-studio performance on Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child next Saturday, November 18!