Year in and year out, a cadre of performers sing, dance, goof off and make weird noises to entertain the youngest audiences at library programs and on the summer children’s concert circuit.
Here are three of my favorites.
Tim Noah and Guitar Will Travel
Tim Noah sits in a sunlit room with golden hardwood floors in the 100-year-old building he’d always imagined he’d find, strumming the guitar he’s had since he was a kid. He’s thinking of another performance idea … maybe classic tales re-written … and in one of them, the big bad wolf doesn’t blow the house down, he vacuums it up … and there’s a song forming about the sucking power of the vacuum cleaner. He sings it to me, even though it isn’t completely finished.
Blue eyes twinkling, mobile face reflecting every nuance, he sings about Mortimer Mouse, who lives in his guitar – much to his consternation, what with the noise and the eating popcorn and the hanging of laundry on the strings.
Noah bought that guitar with his dad in a Burien music shop when he was a kid, and it went with him to his first performance at age 12 at the Auburn Home Show ($30 for a week). It’s accompanied him to hundreds of children’s shows over the past 33 years.
He performs around the country and around the world, but his home base is now the Thumbnail Theater in a beautiful former church in historic downtown Snohomish. “When I walked into the building, I thought, ‘I’ve been here before – in my imagination,’” he says.
In the intimate theater, the former sanctuary, every child can see and participate in the interactive shows. Here Noah and his partner, Cyndi Elliott (aka “Cyndi Soup”) and a few other performer/teachers stage children’s concerts, holiday shows, open mic nights and jam sessions, and offer private music lessons and musical theater classes.
Noah, himself, is a man of many talents. In addition to his children’s concerts and songwriting, he is an adult contemporary singer and recording artist, an album producer and a creator of Emmy-winning TV shows (In Search of the Wow Wow Wibble Woggle Wazzie Woodle Woo and How ‘Bout That). Now he’s thinking it might be fun to do a nostalgic, interactive, live radio broadcast at the Thumbnail Theater.
Noah helps out on Elliott’s resident show, The Imagine Inn with the Thumbs Up Puppeteers, and performs his own resident piece, Tim Noah Out of the Box.
Out of the Box actually has him in a box sometimes – cardboard boxes he’s crafted into boats and cars – but the theme is that you can imagine anything you’d like and create anything you can imagine.
Catch Noah and Elliott’s performances at the Thumbnail Theater, 1211 4th St. in Snohomish, at various times each month, and bring your talent to the free all-ages Open Mic Night the second Saturday of the month at 6 p.m. Also look for Noah at festivals and parks around the Northwest this summer. For more information, call 360-794-8348 or visit www.timnoah.com.
‘Noise Guy’ Charlie Williams
Charlie Williams, aka “Noise Guy,” purses his lips and emits the high shriek of a mosquito. He contorts his face to do the hiss of the cockroach and the scampering feet of the Palmetto bug on a hardwood floor. He’s practicing for this summer’s library show, “Buzz, Smack, Splat – the Dangerous Lives of Bugs” in the kitchen of his Issaquah home.
From the adjoining room comes the sound of uproarious laughter.
It’s the family’s African grey parrot, Zowie – an expert noise-maker in her own right, but one who’s shy and silent in front of strangers.
Williams is neither shy nor silent.
He always loved making funny noises with his mouth, a talent that didn’t endear him to classroom teachers or librarians when he was a kid. In ninth grade, he got to do a monologue and comedy act on stage, and heard his train noises come out of the speakers. “I was hooked on amplified sound,” he says.
Ironically, he carried that love of sound into his work as a librarian, crafting stories with accompanying noises to foster a love of reading. Eleven years ago, he began making a living out of his stories, his noises and his comedy routines, traveling to libraries, schools, parties and festivals around the Puget Sound region and the country.
My son and I happened to see him last summer at the Bothell Library. Using a few hand motions and props to cue the kids in, he made the sound of a big truck going forward, beeping as it backed up, inching forward, backing up, hitting something, dumping a load – apparently onto whatever it hit. The young audience roared with laughter.
He switches with amazing rapidity from grizzly bears and elephants to planes, chain saws, falling trees and flushing toilets (his latest book is Flush: An Ode to Toilets). In between, he recites “onomatopoetry” (poems using words like “boom” or “squish” that sound like the noise they make). He may teach kids to play Hawaiian nose flute by blowing in a special way through one nostril or encourage them to make the classic noisy armpit sound. It’s all in the name of making reading fun.
Noise Guy’s business is a family affair. His wife, Melody, is the booking agent; daughter Kylie, 19, sometimes acts in the theater pieces; son C.J., 13, helps with videos and the Web site. And Zowie practices her turkey calls, machine guns, door squeaks and other sounds along with Williams.
Look for the Noise Guy at King County libraries in July, Seattle Public libraries in August, and at children’s concerts in the parks throughout the summer. For more information, call 425-427-6299 or 1-866-236-6479 or visit www.noiseguy.com.
Nancy Stewart, Children’s Troubadour
Pieces of fabric, Velcro and foam board are scattered all over the upstairs family room in Nancy Stewart’s Mercer Island home. She holds up curtains in one color, then another, asking her adult daughter, who is grading papers, which looks best. Under her hands, a bright blue house with a yellow roof takes shape for her newest production, “Hello, House!”
“It’s about energy conservation and emergency preparedness, and it’s hard to make that subject appeal to young audiences,” Stewart says. But by the time she’s finished with the endearing songs and the interactive flaps on the house and the parts that light up with the touch of a foot pedal, the under-8 set will be all ears.
My children loved her when they were little – this former nightclub show singer has been entertaining Puget Sound area children for 25 years, beginning when her son, now 27, was a toddler.
“I came home one night and he had gotten out of his crib, and the water was running and the TV was on and my husband was fast asleep, and I thought, ‘I can’t be out at night anymore,’” Stewart recalls. “A friend said to me, ‘Just sing for kids,’ and that was the start.” At first, she made up songs for her own kids, asked their opinions about her works in progress and put on shows for their friends’ birthday parties. Now her sprightly figure, huge smile, lilting voice and ever-present guitar are a fixture at summer parks and libraries in Washington state. She doesn’t like to travel far from home.
A professional musician since she was 15, Stewart writes her own songs – in the car, while walking the dog, and in reaction to anything new she sees. She began with “My Wild Little Boy” (about her son) and progressed to songs about the sea, science, world culture, the old West, pioneer days and seasonal themes. “I found out my daughter is pregnant, and I started writing a ‘grandma song.’”
“The beauty of writing for children is that everything is fair game,” she says. “You unlock the part of your brain that’s always learning.”
“I’ll go to parks, libraries, festivals – anywhere there are kids,” she says with great enthusiasm. “This is why I’m on the planet.”
Catch Stewart this summer at libraries in King and Pierce Counties, at local shopping centers and parks and at community events ranging from Auburn Kids’ Day to Day Out with Thomas at the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie. The new production, “Hello House!” will play at King County libraries beginning in September. For a complete calendar and free activities for parents to download, call 206-232-1078 or visit www.nancymusic.com.
