BestChildrensMusic.com 2.0

Last week I received an email from Tricia Sebastian, one of Chicago’s many fine children’s music artists. Tricia’s speciality is Spanish bilingual songs for kids and families so it is no wonder that she got the call to sing one of her trademark songs, El Chocolate, for a new Quaker Oats television commerical.
The production company flew Tricia to New York City to record her voice and guitar for the Chocolate Comes To Life ad campaign for the new Life Chocolate Oat Crunch cereal.
Click here to see the new commercial, watch a short behind the scenes video about the animation and listen to and/or download Tricia’s music track.
The television commerical is airing nationally so I hope it comes to your market soon. And I hope Tricia makes lots of money from royalites for her work. Way to go, Tricia!

A little background story…
I had the pleasure of meeting Tricia two summers ago when we both were hired (along with Ella Jenkins, Joel Frankel and Nelson Gill who came on later) to perform on the children’s music stage at a Chicago neigborhood family festival. We had never met before but I was a big fan of her music.
We did get a chance to talk on the phone because earlier in 2005 we featured two of her songs (including El Chocolate) on the CD “Singin’ In The City.” This was a compilation CD which I produced for Chicago Parent Magazine to showcase the diverse and talented pool of children’s music artists from the Chicago area. We spotlighted two songs each from Tricia, Ella Jenkins, Justin Roberts, Jim Gill, Susan Salidor, Joel Frankel, Steve Rashid, Nelson Gill and me. The sad news is that after the initial run of 1,000 CDs, this wonderful recording was not remanufactured - long story, I’ll spare you the details.
Back to the performance - anyway, what looked like to be a wonderful day of musical merriment encountered one small obstacle. It was 105 degrees that sunny Sunday in Chicago! And of course the stage was in the full sun. All the performers were waiting for the phone call that the event was cancelled since all over the TV and radio they were telling everyone to “stay out of the heat, it is dangerous.” But, alas, no such call, so all the artists showed up at the festival.
The real problem was that there was virtually no audience. I mean I think maybe a dozen people walked by in the three hour slot we all had to play. But we had some fun anyway. Teddi and I started the day with “Jingle Bells” (I think one person walked by and gave us a bewildering glance). Then each artist climbed up on stage to sing to the sun. And, yes, I think Joel sang “Here Comes The Sun.”
Since there was no audience to interact with and since so much of the music we play is designed for audience interaction, I must say it was a bit strange and with the sun factor, also a bit of a challenge. The highlight (no pun intended) came when we abandoned the format and went up on stage to play along with each other. Joel came with a drummer, another guitarist and his wife, Helen, on bass. So after his set, I picked up the bass, Teddi, Helen and Tricia became background singers and we all backed up Ella on a bunch of great traditional songs.
The joy of music making was stronger than the heat that day and we all had a wonderful time, even if no one was there to enjoy it with us.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 @ 8:40 am on the category Hip Hip Hooray!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.