Peter Alsop‘s SONGS TO CHEW

    Today's 'Song To Chew' is JUICE, from my “Stayin Over" album.  It's an uncomplicated song, about the complicated concepts of 'love' and 'energy'.  When we feel we’re not loved, we feel empty, and we search for any kind of 'juice' to fill us up, like booze, sex, drugs, money, food or approval from others.  But when we’re actually filled up with 'love', we don't have to go on that search.  We ca...

    Today we'll 'Chew' on the title song from my STAYIN' OVER album.  Do you remember the first night you went to 'stay over' at a friend's house?  Maybe it was a camping trip with other families.  These adventures are loaded with memories and lessons we learned from our social interactions with others.  It's a big step in independence for most kids.  When we do it, we face separation from our own...

    Today's 'Song To Chew' is WIGGLE.  It's a song about freedom!  We all “wiggle” when someone won’t let us do what we want to do.  'Being alive!" means that in one form or another, we just need to "wiggle"!  Some of us wiggle emotionally because we don't want to be 'pinned down'.  Some wiggle physically because we'll jump out of our skin if we can't get down and run around and chase the kitty ca...

Today's 'Song To Chew' is THE PRIZE from my “Did You Walk?" album.  It's song lyrics without any music, so actually, it's a poem.  We're constantly being taught that it's important to 'come in first', to 'win the game', to 'win the race!'  Some of us do it to get approval from others.  Some think we have to do it so we can become financially independent and better able to care for ourselves and ou...

    Today's 'Song To Chew', SANDWICHES, was written by Bob King.  One of the subjects that kids love to sing about is food!!  We'll 'chew on' ideas about kids and food and the interconnectedness of all the human things we do in our lives.  There's 'enjoyment' and 'sharing'.  There's 'mooching', which is trying to get something that someone else has, but not wanting to 'share' what we have.  'Mooch...

    Today's 'Song To Chew' is NEEDLE-EE NOODLE-EE.  I wrote it with Penny Pefley, one of the two pediatric nurses who initiated our "In The Hospital" album!  "Pokes" or "shots" are probably the number one fear children have about being in the hospital. Few children escape this experience, whether as an injection, an IV start, or a blood test.  It may be impossible for a child to understand why the...

    Our Song To Chew today is MY DAD'S A JUNGLE GYM from my “Uh-Oh!" album.  I used to carry my daughters around on my shoulders, or under my arms when they were little.  Sometimes they'd get tired on a walk, and I'd carry them on my back.  Eventually they'd wiggle free, hop down and run around again.  Dads are generally less 'risk-adverse' than Moms, which means that we let our kids take more ris...

   Today's 'Song To Chew' is MY BODY RUNS, from my “Did You Walk?" album.  I wrote this song at the request of two women who were marketing their Digi-Walker Pedometer, a small device for one's belt or pocket that counts the steps we take to be sure we get enough exercise every day.  Kids have lots of questions about their own bodies and how they seem to work sort of automatically.  "My body runs,...

   Today's 'Song To Chew', WHA'D'YA WANNA DO?, is about 'wanting to have fun with a buddy'.  As I listen to the lyrics more than 40 years after I wrote them, they're about being joyous.  That's mostly what kids wanna do, 'find support as we go through our lives joyously'.  Support makes it less scary to take risks, so when we take a risk, even if it doesn't work out, we learn that we can overcome...

    This week's 'Song To Chew' is THAT'S MY THANG! We get a "fire in our belly" about something that involves all our attention, often to the exclusion of everything else around us.  Our 'thang' is something we want to achieve, or simply a task we want to complete.  Our 'thang' isn't really 'work' because we enjoy doing it.  Many of us love the work we do.  Artists often work for little or no mone...

    Today we'll "chew on" the song, COVERS ON OUR HEARTS from our musical play "Pie In The Sky".  It takes place in a small town with a big nuclear reactor.  The kids in town want to get rid of it because there are so many health problems, but the grown-ups are slow to respond.  It's based on the Pied Piper fable, about a magical piper who's hired to rid the town of rats.  He leads them all out of...

    Our 'Song To Chew' today is WHILE I'M SLEEPING, written with Diane Gates.  She and Penny Pefley are pediatric nurses from Seattle Children's Hospital who encouraged me to write and record our 'In The Hospital' album.  I got my buddy Bill Harley to join us, and we won Parent's Choice 'Best Album'!  This song addresses difficulties we face with going to sleep, particularly when we're in a hospit...

    Our 'Song To Chew' today is UNDER THE RAINBOW.  Some might call it a 'woke' song, because it's full of hope.  There are some very mystifying things in this world.  I haven't got a clue about how they happen, so I don't rule out prayer, magic, supernatural religions, being "woke" or anything else that might help us all survive together!  I know that 'when someone holds a belief, we can't get th...

Today's 'Song To Chew' is NEVER SPEAK WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL!  It seems like a 'fun little song', but it opens doors to deeper topics like, 'Where do our rules come from?' and 'How do they become laws?'  Kids deal with 'grown-up rules' all the time.  We teach children rules, so they'll learn to be socially responsible adults; people who care about other people.  Adults who sing this song with their...

    Our 'Song To Chew' today is I'M A LITTLE COOKIE, written by Larry Penn. It reframes the concept of 'having a disability' for kids and grown-ups.  When a traumatic event happens, and something in us changes or 'breaks', we can feel like we're 'un-whole'!  It's true that as we change and grow and learn, difficult things do happen to us, but we're still fully human no matter what!  We may be 'dif...

Our SONG TO CHEW this week is PEACEFUL FEET, from my 'Grow It At Home' album.  I wrote it as part of a challenge sent out from Rounder Kids Records asking some of the best artists in children's and family music to create a one-minute song for an album called "HEAR AND GONE IN 60 SECONDS" It included my friends Bill Harley, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Justin Roberts, Kim and Reggie Harris, Tom Paxto...

    This week's 'Song To Chew' is GNARLY DUDE.  'Gnarly' means 'twisted and knobby', but it's also slang for 'something unpleasant or unattractive', or for the opposite, 'something excellent or very good'.  To be a 'gnarly dude', we have to figure out how to be tough and cool at the same time! Sounds challenging! One of the unwritten lessons we learn in school is that we need to study the subject...

   This week's Song To Chew, 'HOME WHERE THE HEART IS', opens the musical stage play I wrote with Ellen Geer, “Pie In The Sky", which  ran as part of our 1987 theater season at the Theatricum Botanicum. It takes place in a small American town that has its own nuclear reactor. The kids of the town want to get rid of it because it's creating health problems, but the grown-ups are slow to respond.  I...

My SAMIT AND THE DRAGON song comes from our “In The Hospital" album, recorded with my buddy Bill Harley and the two pediatric nurses from Seattle Children's Hospital who instigated the whole project, Diane Gates and Penny Pefley.  We won the Best Children's Album of the Year Award from the National Assn of Independent Record Distributors in 1983!  Doctors and nurses in pediatric hospitals still us...

    Our SONG TO CHEW this week, is STRANGERS, from my 1992 child abuse prevention concert with KidPower and actor John Ritter.  Before people turn 18, one out of four of us will have been sexually abused.  Our feelings are like an early warning system.  If we feel uncomfortable about a situation, we need to listen to that little voice and get to safety!  Adult social interactions can be very confu...

    Our 'Song To Chew' this week is 'NO, NO, NO!'  Little kids like to say 'No!'.  We learn that from the adults around us!  "Can I have a puppy?" No!  "Can my friend come here to play?" No!  It's impossible to be a perfect parent.  I was spanked as a kid, but I never hit my kids, and they turned our pretty great.  With the world situation being what it is these days, I don't want to teach childre...

Today's 'Song To Chew', "IF YOU LOVE A HIPPOPOTAMUS" was written by Connie Kaldor, a wonderful Canadian singer-songwriter.  It brings up the delicate subject of our size and our behavior and our appearance. If we don't look or behave the way other people think we should, we can get excluded, and become overly-critical of ourselves.  We beat ourselves up for eating too much or exercising too little...

WHERE WILL I GO WHEN I'M DEAD AND GONE? is one of my more controversial songs.  Why write a song for kids about death and dying?  Because it's a subject no one wants to talk about!  Curiosity about death is completely human and understandable.  Kids need safe people to talk with about it; to ask questions and process some of the huge feelings that come up when we lose someone or something importan...

    This week's SONG TO CHEW is ASK AWAY from my “Grow It At Home" album!  The concept is simple!  'Ask others for help', but that can be difficult for some of us.  We don't want to impose or look weak or confused.  Some think it's gender-linked to men, as many men would rather drive around lost for hours instead of asking for directions, but we know this affects everyone.  When we ask for clear i...

Our SONG TO CHEW this week is US KIDS BRUSH OUR TEETH from my 'Stayin' Over' album.  A four-year-old doesn't brush their teeth just to get them clean!  That's what adults do!  Kids have a completely different agenda!  If we get upset with our kids for "not acting like adults", we miss the delight and playfulness of how our children brush their teeth.  It's called "appreciating diversity!"  They'll...