Music For Moppets

On a family trip when I was very young, I knocked a bowl of Cheerios off a hotel table onto the floor. Luckily, no milk was in the bowl and no family members were harmed in the tragedy.

To deal with the deep emotional trauma caused by the incident, I wrote a song about it. And by “wrote” I mean I hummed a tune and penned the lyrics “Cheerios, fallin’ off the table / Cheerios, and I wasn’t able / To catch them.”

That immortal poetry was part of a batch of songs I wrote during that trip. Silly melodies, nonsense lyrics, no actual knowledge of how to write music.

When I grew up and became an uncle, I dusted off the Cheerios song, fleshed it out with my newly-acquired musical abilities, and recorded it. To my delight, my nephew and niece learned it by heart and sang it back to me regularly. This smashing success led to further children’s music inspiration with the seed of an idea for a song about playing sports with animals. And it really was a seed, just a single lyrical fragment: “And at wide receiver, a golden retriever…” I clearly had better things to do than expand it into a full song, so in my head it stayed for years. A tantalizing hint at what might be.

Years later I wrote a joke song for an online video that wound up getting a respectable number of views. It was catchy enough to inspire comments from people wishing I hadn’t “wasted” the song on a throwaway spoof. I was never able to shake the novelty lyrics from my head and turn it into a serious song, so I found the perfect solution to keep it alive: rewrite it as a children’s song called “Time to Grow.”

Soon after, that line about the football-playing golden retriever spontaneously (and finally) spawned a complete sing-along called “Animal Games.” I recorded an EP with these three kid-friendly jams and shared it with friends and family, but it was never released on streaming services.

So last year I revisited the sessions, replaced some instruments, made a few tweaks, fully remixed and remastered them, updated the cover art, and released them on streaming platforms for the first time in March.

Music for Moppets by Uncle E’s Jamboree features three songs perfect for playtime, mealtime, or anytime a young one is around. I wanted these tracks to be catchy and interesting enough for adults to enjoy them as well. I hope they can bring a smile to the face of someone in your family.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, or wherever you stream music.