‘Kids are all right’ with alumna’s new album

When Laurie Berkner attended Rutgers, she played in a band called Tender Vitals, named after some “horrible joke” relating to a brand of cat food with the same name.

Forty-five-year-old Berkner laughed while reminiscing about her Rutgers days, when she would play at coffeehouses and restaurants with fellow band mates Mike, Rob and Dave. She and the band once played for three hours straight, and in the middle of the show, they shaved off half Mike’s beard just for fun.

Berkner graduated from Rutgers in 1991 with a degree in psychology and since then has captivated audiences from the White House to Carnegie Hall and around the country with “kindie rock,” a genre of children’s music that is not “dumbed down.”

Brett Hall, the grease trucks and her off-campus home on Louis Street were some of the memories that flood Berkner when revisiting her time at Rutgers, and it was also during this period of her life that she began teaching herself guitar.

Berkner, whose target audience can tell their age with the fingers on just one or two hands, was at the forefront of the “kindie rock” movement because when she was just starting out, children’s music wasn’t exactly a “respectable niche.”

Berkner just released her ninth album, “The Ultimate Laurie Berkner Band Collection,” yesterday.

Once websites like Amazon helped musicians distribute their work, people started to see they could really produce and distribute their own product.

“Being more independent was actually really important,” Berkner said. “That was the whole indie rock scene.”

Berkner paved the way for the “kindie rock” movement, which was born out of a demand for children’s music to that was “interesting and cool.”

Berkner, who calls Upper Manhattan home, has also written music and lyrics for two off-Broadway musicals, recorded videos for Nick Jr., had her one of her songs featured on “Sex and the City” and a cover she recorded on “Weeds.”

Berkner’s newest album, which she describes as playful and comprehensive, is a compilation of some of her most beloved work, a compact experience of songs that her audience has felt connected to.

Just because her music targets a young demographic does not mean the ideas always flow easily.

“There’s something very special about writing for kids that’s harder than people think in its simplicity,” she said. 

Since before her first album release, Berkner has been writing and performing catchy hits like “Victor Vito” and “We are the Dinosaurs.”

She wrote “Victor Vito” in her head during the four-block walk between the subway station and her office one morning. The idea had been “marinating” in her head for two years.

The first thing Berkner recalled about her 1997 debut album release was the fact that it was on cassette.

“It wasn’t an earth-shattering day,” she said.

Berkner used a friend’s home studio in Hoboken to finish the entire album in one weekend. She made 500 copies of the cassette and set her sights on selling them all.

Charging $5 a piece, Berkner sold the lot in three months and went on to start her own record label, Two Tomatoes Records, LLC.

Thinking back to her earliest songs brought about some cringing and laughter as Berkner said they are a bit “rough around the edges,” though she put a lot of love in them and people seem to love them.

Mosh pits and crowd control surely are non-issues at Berkner’s concerts, whose target audience ranges from babies to eight year olds.

Berkner talked about the “arc” that she creates during concerts, building the energy up by getting the kids up and dancing and bringing it down with more soothing favorites, like “Goodnight.”

Her concerts peak about three quarters of the way through, but not before throwing beach balls into the audience and donning a pig on her head during her song, “Pig On Her Head.” Berkner especially enjoys the “meet and greet” part of her concerts, where parents have told her that they’ve gotten through their children’s hospital visits by playing her DVD.

“I get to actually meet them, and it’s very moving,” she said. “Sometimes kids just crawl up on my lap and hug me and won’t let go.”

Berkner carries a serious enthusiasm and deep passion for writing and performing “kindie rock,” but her 20-year-old self did not quite envision the path she ended up on.

Berkner graduated Rutgers convinced a career in music would not make her money, so with a psychology degree under her belt, she moved to the East Village to work part-time for a former environmental psychology professor, work at a center for autistic adults and play gigs on the side.

Though living in Manhattan was a dream of Berkner’s, the jobs she was doing were not exactly what she wanted.

“That year was the same year I said to my parents, ‘I really don’t know what I want to do in my life,’” Berkner said. “And they said, ‘You want to be a musician, don’t you?’”

So her parents put a deal on the table: They would pay for one year’s rent if Berkner could “figure out how to eat.” 

While writing music, playing at coffeehouses and still working for her professor, Berkner began babysitting for a woman who lived downstairs in her building. At the end of that year, the woman offered her a position as a music teacher at Rockefeller University in New York City.

“Picture a very large room with two dozen 4-year-olds and me,” Berkner said.

With no understanding of how to communicate with the kids, she sang “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” but to no avail. The kids regarded it as a “baby song.”

After observing a prior music teacher, Berkner began making up her own songs instead of ordering the kids around. 

Berkner spoke about the differences between writing songs to perform and writing for cast members in off-Broadway shows.

The first off-Broadway show she wrote for was “Wanda’s Monster,” and she also wrote music and lyrics for “The Amazing Adventure of Harvey and the Princess,” debuting next month.

“Just getting to hear the music come out of somebody’s mouth that it was actually meant for is just an incredibly moving experience … to hear the music be interpreted in a way I couldn’t do myself,” she said.

In the last year or two, Berkner wrote the music for an animated musical preschool series called “Sing It, Laurie!” The experience challenged her to write singing parts for a dog.

That was her first time working with a “huge network,” the NBC-owned Sprout, and she met with people who asked her to change specific words or ideas in her songs. 

Berkner once wrote a song about snacks, but she was then told to change it to be about lunch, because the word “snack” was too nasal.

No longer that fresh-out-of-college 20-something, Berkner said devoting her career to creating and performing music for children has taught her so much. As her career progresses, she wants to stay creative.

“Just paying attention to [the children] reminds me of things that I’m working on in myself. It reminds me of things that I loved as a child that I realized I want to go back to. It reminds me of the newness of that total excitement … about learning things for the first time,” she said.