Take Your Kids to Work Day

So today was "Take Your Child To Work Day," and one of the activities was a performance by the Peanut Butter and Jam Band. They performed last year with Rob K. as the singer, but since he moved to New Jersey, he couldn't sing with the band this year. So the band asked me and Jane to sing instead, and we agreed (seriously, why do I agree to these things?). The first practice session was yesterday night with me, iRob and Brady. iRob had some beers already, which made the practice rather unproductive. Seriously, I think we spent like 30 minutes getting through Twinkle Twinkle Little Star because Brady and I would start playing and then Rob would too, but then start wailing away on random chords. In fact, we had practiced that so much, that when we went on to Mary Had a Little Lamb, we were playing it to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Since we were having such a hard time getting through the rest of the song list, we were joking that we should just play everything to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Right before today's performance, the band got together to practice. Francis, one of the field techs showed up too and his piano playing skills were much better than Brady's that he decided to let Francis play instead. We quickly went through our song list, and then the children arrived and it was showtime!

Some of the children came up to the front to sing with us, and we would hand them the mic occasionally for them to sing. For "Where Is Thumbkin?" we showed them the hand gestures that went along with the song, and they followed along with us. We did Old McDonald and had them give us animals to use. Although I was really nervous at the start, once we got through the first couple of songs, I realized that children don't care whether you're hitting the right notes...they just want to be entertained. So I started to relax a bit more and had a lot of fun performing in front of them. I think everyone else in the band had a lot of fun, but we learned that for next time, we are soooo practicing earlier than the night before.