As front man for the rock group Bad Examples, Ralph Covert has a long history of entertaining raucous crowds in noisy Chicago bars. These days as a solo artist, Covert’s fans remain loud and rowdy as ever –though in an unguarded moment, you might catch one sucking a thumb or nuzzling close to Mommy for some TLC.
“Good morning! Good morning!” Covert crooned as he kicked off a recent kids class at the Old Town School of Folk Music’s Lincoln Park campus. With a dozen tots and their moms seated in a circle, Covert strummed his guitar, greeted each student in song (“Hi Connor! Hi Patrick!”) and beamed a Cheshire-cat grin as he watched his young charges scamper around him.
Covert, 38, has plenty of reasons to smile big these days. Himself the father of a 6-year-old girl, he has just finished his first children’s disc, “Ralph’s World.” It’s the debut release on Mini Fresh Records, a subsidiary of Minty Fresh (the label that introduced American audiences to Veruca Salt and the smart Swedish pop of The Cardigans).
“It had to be a record that I could stand behind, that parents could put on and hear as being cool,” Covert said. “For me, the whole fun of music is interaction, sharing the experience of the song. That’s what I tried to do with the Bad Examples. So whether it’s [the Examples’ hit] `Not Dead Yet’ or `Freddy Bear the Teddy Bear,’ I want it to be a celebration.”
Indeed, “Ralph’s World” succeeds in avoiding the dreaded Raffi trap; Covert doesn’t sing down to kids as if their small heads held small minds. Even when he covers the ABC song, he gives it a twist by singing the alphabet backward (if you think that’s kid stuff, stop now and try it yourself).
As a parent, Covert knows that if a youngster embraces a song, a parent might have to suffer through it a zillion times — so why not make it something adults can enjoy too?
“Just being a rock ‘n’ roll animal, I wasn’t going to survive hours and hours of `Wheels on the Bus’ and `Itsy Bitsy Spider,'” Covert said. “And it struck me that other parents were in the same boat I was in.”
One such sympathetic parent is Debbie Teske, Connor’s mom. She snagged an advance copy of “Ralph’s World” (Covert has been selling them in his Old Town classes). Mention a certain purple dinosaur in Teske’s presence, and she gets ornery. But Covert’s album elicits an opposite reaction.
“The songs are great; they’re really upbeat in a good way,” Teske said. “And they’re new. I mean, how many times can you hear the Barney songs? My 4-year-old daughter likes it; my husband likes it. It’s spanning all the ages in our house.”
That was Covert’s aim when he started writing kid ditties roughly five years ago, after taking on children’s classes at Old Town, where he also leads a songwriting workshop. Just a few years back, one of his toddler pupils turned out to be the son of Minty Fresh founder Jim Powers. Covert and Powers (the dad) got to talking; he not only signed Covert, but co-produced “Ralph’s World.”
“We wanted to do [an album] with an acoustic approach,” Covert said. “One of the things that was true at the end of the Bad Examples, and is true with what I’m pursuing now, is that I’ve been interested in more acoustic things.”
Yet “Ralph’s World” is far from a soft-shell excursion into faux folk for kids. Adults will get the sly retro references; “Take A Little Nap” reworks the KC and the Sunshine Band hits “Get Down Tonight” and “Shake Your Booty.”
At times, there’s even a slight alternative-country bent to the album. Covert’s original “Choo-Choo Train” quotes the refrain from Elvis Presley’s “Mystery Train,” while “Animal Friends” (also a Covert tune) has quirky, minor-key verses sung against a mandolin, dobro and banjo backdrop.
Covert also gets a helping hand from some notable musical luminaries, including Corky Segal on harmonica and Kurt Elling, who adds cartoonish voices to the rollicking “Tickle A Tiger.” Then there’s Covert’s own daughter, Fiona, who joins the children’s chorus on many of the album’s 18 songs.
“She was the ringleader with that group of kids,” Covert said. “She loves making up songs. She sees me doing that with my cassette player, so she just assumes that’s what people do.”
Covert plans a Feb. 25 release party for “Ralph’s World” (4 p.m. at Old Town’s Lincoln Park location at 909 W. Armitage Ave.). In the meantime, he refuses to slow down; his play “Streeterville” opens Feb. 15 for a one-month run at the TimeLine Theatre. He’s planning a solo album for the fall, and a recording of the last year’s Bad Examples farewell performance should be released in the spring — accompanied, Covert hopes, by a band reunion show.
“It’s silly to say that this is the [musical] direction I’m going to pursue,” Covert said of his kids’ music venture. “I’m not going to have 5-year-old backup singers. But this is closer to the direction in that it’s song-based.”
Plus, as Covert the bar band vet knows, there’s nothing like winning over a tough-to-please audience.
“It’s just like any other show,” he said. “You want to sprinkle in elements of familiar with new, active with quiet. You’re facing the crowd and giving them what they want.”
