An Interview with Ralph’s World’s Ralph Covert
by Peter Scholtes
Ralph Covert has been making child-friendly rock and roll for so long that the baby daughter who once inspired him has now grown up to co-write songs. But for many parents, this catchy music is a fresh discovery. The lead singer of Chicago pop band the Bad Examples began recording indie rock for pre-tweens in 2000 with Ralph’s World, an offshoot group. Six cult-making albums on the Minty Fresh label later, Covert and company signed with Walt Disney Records and issued 2006’s Welcome to Ralph’s World, a best-of so thoroughly catchy that missing favorites only highlighted how good the band had become.
Disney reissued the back catalog, and Ralph’s World returned with 2008’s The Rhyming Circus, another balance of teaching moments and not-so-teaching ones: “Folsom Daycare Blues” is a parody adults can appreciate (“I pushed a toddler over just to watch him fall”). Colvert’s idea that children might need their own entertainment was the same as that of Walt Disney himself, yet Ralph’s World is never sanitized or numbed to pain. Subtle songs such as the honky-tonk “Happy Not My Birthday,” which reassures non-birthday kids, are as funny as Sesame Street and as empathetic as Mr. Rogers. Speaking over the phone from Chicago recently, Covert talked about the things music teaches without necessarily trying.
What did you listen to when you were five years old?
I loved the song [by the Royal Guardsmen] “Snoopy Versus the Red Baron.” [Begins singing] “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more/The Bloody Red Baron was rollin’ up the score.” Another favorite was Walt Kelly, who was the cartoonist for Pogo. He recorded an album called Songs for Pogo. I brought the vinyl record to kindergarten for show and tell.
How do you write songs differently for children than you do for other people?
All the things you would do writing a great pop song go into writing a great kids song. With kids, songs like “Dinosaur Rumble” and “Animal Friends” are about yearning for a pet. Well, yearning is yearning, whether it’s for a pet or for the love of your life. The beat, catchy lyrics, smart song structure, good lyrics, those are going to be the same. The emotional center of yearning is going to be the same. It’s just a subtle change of direction to be yearning for an animal to pet as opposed to a girl.
You’re also going to want to be a little bit shorter with a kid’s song. But that’s just writing a better song. If you can get it done in a minute and a half as opposed to four minutes, you’re a better songwriter.
Have you ever had a moshpit with little kids at concerts?
On Green Gorilla Monster & Me there’s a song called “I Don’t Wanna” that’s very much a punk song. It’s very in-your-face Sex Pistols-meet-the-Ramones—“I don’t wanna clean my room anymore!” I had shows where I’ve deliberately had the audience do a family moshpit, and explained to parents how to get their kids to mosh.
The punk parents and the pop parents get that good music is cool and want to share that. That’s the thing they’re more into is sharing. At the concerts, there’s a lot of dancing, a lot of laughing, a lot of genuine rock and roll energy. And I think that’s the thing they really respond to.
Do you ever talk to teenagers who have been listening to you since they were six?
Yeah. By the same token, I met a couple last weekend whose dating life consisted of going to Bad Examples concerts. They met at a Bad Examples show, my rock band. And they were laughing at how awesome it was that they were now able to take their kids to Ralph’s World. We’re here for the journey. My next project is going to be seniors’ music.
Did Mini Fresh [Minty Fresh’s kids’ imprint for Ralph’s World] exist before you joined?
No, I did the first release. Jim Powers of Minty Fresh—his son, a toddler at the time, was going to the “Wriggle Worms” class at the Old Town School of Folk Music. And he asked, “Did you ever want to make a kids’ record? You could do a kids’ record that kids like! Most kids’ records suck.”
We did it for the fun of trying to see if we could make a great rock and roll record that parents and kids can enjoy for its own sake. Hopefully we succeeded.
How did Disney approach you?
Well, I was reaching the end of my Minty Fresh contract, and Disney seemed like a good fit. They get the sound and are very supportive of creative freedom, in a way the opposite of what I’d expect from a major-label experience.
Do you ever get any complaints from parents about your songs?
No, I think they tend to get it. I got asked to be on this educational panel, and I was talking about how, at my concert, the kids are just having a blast, but the parents aren’t just vicariously having fun, they’re having fun themselves. Parents at my concerts tell me all the time that they think they’re having more fun with the music than the kids do. And the really smart education people on this [panel] jumped on that idea and started talking about it, and pointed out how really rare and unique it is to have the experience of having fun where it’s a shared experience more than a vicarious or supporting or observed experience. So the kids, I think, are put in a place where they can model genuinely having fun with something, where they get it and the parents get it, and neither party is passive.
Click here to listen to a track from Ralph’s World’s Welcome to Ralph’s World.
