Going Platinum: Skinnamarink and The Elephant Show | Sharon, Lois and Bram... and Randi

Weirding, weird media. Eighties, So Pretty through the City, kid World. Welcome to eighties TV Ladies with your happy hosts Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert had him. Hey everyone, I'm Sharon. And I'm Susan.

Now, Sharon, we have not spent a lot of time on this podcast covering retro kid shows. That's very true. We have not covered any retro kid show none. But we got to start somewhere. And as I've said before, I really wasn't interested in watching kid shows even as a kid.

You know, and I was as a kid, I think, but we weren't little kids in the nineteen eighties, so I think our kids shows, at least my kid shows are actually from the seventies, Like I love the Muppet Show, Electric Company, Zoom. Did you watch any of those? Well, my kid shows actually would have been more from the sixties, but yes, I did watch the Muppet Show. I was aware of Electric Company and Zoom and some of the other kids shows reading Rainbow, but never watched any of them because by then I was I had no reason to. However, in the sixties, my younger sister was about four or five years old, and my mother wanted someone to sit with her to watch Sesame Street in case she had any questions, so I volunteered.

So I watched a lot of Sesame Street, which I thoroughly enjoy. Sesame Street was fine. It's a great show. Yeah, I love SeMet. Yeah, and I haven't watched it a long time, but I'm sure it still is.

It's really a great It was really a great show. It was a beautifully crafted show. That was what was. It was really a smart show for kids, and I would say Mister Rodgers Neighborhood a little more kid kid. But I learned to read and do the alphabet with Sesame Street, and because I learned early to read, and so I was watching it with my sister who was older, right, So it was I don't know.

It was a big part of my schooling, as was Schoolhouse Rock. It really wasn't for me because we were overseas when I went to kindergarten in first grade. My dad was stationed in Taiwan at the time, so there wasn't any I don't think we watched any TV, if there even was any TV available, But I'm aware of miss because I was aware of all of TV. Frankly, I'm certainly aware of mister Rogers and somehow must have watched some of it, maybe with my sister, I don't know, just you know, case she had questions because when they started doing parodies of it on Saturday Night Live, I'm like, yes, of course I know that show. You know, it wasn't a surprise to me.

Well, here's the thing about mister Rodgers. I liked mister Rogers actually a lot. He reminded me a little bit of my grandfather, because my grandfather had a really calm. Sense, at least to me. But I didn't like when he would walk over and talk to the Castle puppets.

Do you remember the Castle? Yes, oh, yes, the King and the Queen. I didn't like them for some reason, the same feeling as the puffins stuff h h puff and stuff and the little flute in the pocket. There was something about that that just like me out. I mean, And don't get me wrong, I also watched a lot of Saturday Morning cartoons in the late sixties, but then we also then moved to Japan in the early seventies, and so there was a whole swath of TV that I didn't see.

Yeah, but you got Ultraman before. We did I did, Yeah, I didn't, But Sesame Street I did love because I loved Count Count who counted the count you count? And Oscar Oscar the Grouch the Big Bird. I liked Big Bird because he was very large, but he had he was sort of very bashful. Yeah, he was very shy, and and they had excellent guests.

I mean excellent guests. Just to realize why we're so cool as people because we watched Sesame Street, just like Google, Stevie Wonder Sesame Street. Yes, that's all you have to do, and you're like, Oh, that's why we're so groovy. I think Burton Ernie were my favorites, along with Cookie Monster. Cookie Cookie Monster was great because Cookie gave you lots of room to want to be greedy about cookies.

Yes, gave you permission. Probably you know, yeah, absolutely, he was all about the cookies. And I'm like, what's wrong with that? How can that's abolutely. Not a fan of the snuffle off Goose.

That was later That was later came later with when I. Was babysitting, I ended up watching that and it bugged me a lot that Big that he would show up to talk to Big bird, but disappear when other people came. It was really like it was like they were like gaslighting Big Bird. Though it was really tough. I didn't like that.

I was older. It wasn't really for me, so maybe it was speaking to it, but I'm like, stop gastling Big Bird, man, He's just stay there for one second, Come on, man. Nope. Every time Big Bird tried to introduce nuhous to someone else, no, he would hide, he would wander off, wander off quote unquote mean we are okay, but anyway. And then then the other thing I loved was Schoolhouse Rock.

Yes, oh yeah, yeah, I mean in my day, school House Rock is still. I mean, I think all kids should be forced to watch, if nothing else, Schoolhouse Rock. And sadly these days that's kids don't even get that much understanding in school about how our government works. Absolutely, school House Rock is a great basis. Well, Ken subscribe to school House Rock TV on YouTube.

Are there new ones or all the old ones? I think it's all the old ones. An English conjunction junction? What's your function. Hooking up words and phrases and closes?

Oh yeah, come on man, I think I used that in the SAT conjunction. Let me think, Yeah, okay for my g mets hooking up words and school. Yeah, all right, now. Of the of the eighty shows, now, Kevin, should we bring you into this? You don't even have a microphone.

Was there a show that you watched? Cyberchase? Is Kevin saying Cyberchase and Reading Rainbow the big bumpy couch, big comfy pumpy couch. That one's hard to say in a podcast. Yeah, but reading Rainbow is universal.

I mean as an adult, I was watching it with you. Butterfy in this guy, I can go twice as high. Just take a look. It's in a book, a reading Rainbow, Reading Rainbow. All right, Well, maybe we're going to have to cover some more kids shows.

Some of the live action KITS shows that I caught occasionally would have been Pee Wee's Playhouse, of course, Punky Brewster, Fragle Rock. I didn't get into, but I think I would have if I had time to pay attention. See it's interesting I didn't think of Fraggle Rock as a kid show. I remember watching it. I want to say it was on HBO for some reason early on.

I'm probably wrong, but that's what I remember. No, it might have been that, and I love. Oh we Fed. We need to visit Fraggle Rock. But one of the other ones that I don't didn't remember and don't love was Kids Incorporated.

Because many years ago, when I was a caption editor and whoever owned that show is getting ready to put it out on video, we had to caption all of those shows, and I'd captured a whole bunch of those shows, and I didn't care for it. It was annoying at best. It was not what I would call great or even good kids TV. But apparently it was very popular. Apparently it was very popular with that and you can't do that on television.

But I didn't really watch them, and unfortunately, I mean, I know, I'm once again in the corner room by myself. It's not a pee Wee's Playhouse fan. Here's the thing. I don't know that I was a pee I was not a pee Wee's Playhouse fan at the time. I was a pee Wee's Big Adventure fan the movie, the first one and then later went back to Pee Wee Playhouse.

It was one of the things we looked at when we were starting to tie the Pike guy and I came to appreciate it a little bit more for what it was doing, because I wouldn't have liked that kind of show if it wasn't subversive. But it was subversive, but I wasn't really picking up on the subversive until later. But the guest stars on that show are crazy. It starts well, Cowboy Curtis, It's uh, Laurence Fishburne. Yes, But I mean it's got everybody.

The cast is amazing, and the guest stars are amazing. We watched Saturday Morning cartoons. That was just because it was the thing to do. It wasn't like a lot of those spoke to me. Yeah, exactly.

It was just it was. It was on TV. It was in the morning on Saturdays, and sat down and you watched Saturday morning cartoons. But once I got beyond school, grade school, whatever Saturday Morning cartoons, I really didn't watch TV animation anymore. If I watched animation of I would go to the theater and see whatever latest Disney movie was out.

And then there's all the eighties animated shows. An explosion of ones based on toys or sold toys. The g I, Joe, Smurfs, s Ducktails, Inspector Gadget, he Man and the Masters of the Universe, Oh, Kevin's. Yeah, that was huge. Were my nephew, he Man and the Masters of the Universe.

That held a place in people's hearts. Yeah, and Jen and the Holograms. I remember watching a little bit of that a lot of kids TV, a lot of kids TV. So when we first started talking about our guest today, Sharon, you had no idea of them or this show. Had never heard of them.

They were a complete It was completely news to me. I had no idea it even existed. Never heard of the Elephant Show, yep, or the song, well. Not the elephant song no skin him a rink I was familiar with because it is an old song, but I certainly wasn't of it in the context of the Elephant Show. The reason you know the song, now, did you go to summer camp?

No? No, because you were in Japan. You were in summer camp at military basis. It was like summer camp all the time. Something like that.

Yeah, Now, I must have known it from I watched a lot of old movies on TV. You know. I'm thinking I must have heard the song somewhere somewhere, some out there. Yeah, but I was not aware of it that it had been become a staple and become the song that our guest today is most known for. Well, it's the song that's been in my head for the last month since we've been talking about this show.

Skinnem a rink A dinky dink, skinnem a rink could do I Love You? That's the song. That's it, And now I've put it in your head, dear listeners, You're welcome, all right. I did remember the show, and certainly some of the songs, particularly skin them Rank and you know, I'm going to ask them to sing it. Do you think they'll sing it?

I sure hope. So, I mean they're Canadian, so they have to do the nice thing. One can only hope. But do you think they're sick of the song by now? I can't imagine that they are.

I mean they're still they must still be doing it. I would think in their shows it's got it because it's so closely associated with them and it's such a great song and the kids, I sure just love it. It is a sweet song. So our guest today is Sharon Hampson. She is a Canadian musician who, along with Lois Lillian Stein and Bram Morrison created the joyful pop folk trio Sharon Lois and Bram, which toured Canada, North America and had two television shows and several specials in the nineteen eighties and into the nineties.

Sharon still makes appearances today with their daughter Randy, who will also be joining us for this show. Sharon Lois and Bram's first album was One Elephant, Deuce Elephants. Am I saying that right? Melissa Levon dose Elevon? Oh, I gotta say it like a French person.

No, one elephant dos elephant exactly. Just think while you're saying it. One Elephant, Dose Elephants. It was released in nineteen seventy eight and became the fastest selling Canadian children's album ever for the time. Ultimately has become triple platinum.

It was part of the wave that changed children's music, becoming a little smarter, little poppier, but also not talking down to kids. Their recordings and live performances were so successful it launched two critically acclaimed popular television shows in the eighties and nineties. The Elephant Show, which ran from nineteen eighty four to nineteen eighty nine on Nickelodeon and the and CBC in Canada, and then Skinnemernk TV, which ran from nineteen ninety seven to nineteen ninety nine on the Learning Channel in the US and CBC in Canada. They have produced over twenty full length albums, received countless awards, appeared at the Kennedy Center, the White House, Carnegie Hall, and were inducted into the Order of Canada, their country's highest honor.

Singer pianist Lois Lillianstein died of cancer in twenty fifteen. Sharon and Brad continued to tour, often joined by Sharon's daughter, Randy Hampson. Brad retired but still makes appearances. They have almost two hundred thousand followers on TikTok with thirty million views, and they have just released a new album which includes previously unreleased tracks. For over forty years, Sharon Hampson has been creating music for kids and parents.

She is joining us today with her daughter Randy. We're so excited to welcome a true eighties TV lady and her daughter to our podcast. Welcome Sharon and Randy. Thank you, happy to be with you. Thank you so much for joining us today.

We're really looking forward to this. She's an eighties TV lady in her eighties. That's the best kind. Why don't you first tell us about the new album release, Elephant Showstoppers that's available on vinyl and for streaming. The music on the album the vinyl.

I'm thrilled about the album. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful product. It's a beautiful package. It's full of surprises and delights and lots of wonderful music, all of which comes from the Elephant Show.

Songs that were on The Elephant Show but were never released on any kind of CD or cassette or anything like that. Now you can tell them the best. Other than watching it on television, you wouldn't have had the opportunity to hear these songs. So the idea of vinyl is because the Elephant Show is so nice, nostalgic. We figured the parents who grew up on the Elephant Show might have record players and might have appreciation for having a physical item in their hands with large pictures.

There's never before seen. Images on it. There are song lyrics and memories behind the songs, and what we were hoping was when a fan would hear a specific song, that it would conjure up a memory of the activity that was going on on. The show at that time. But the songs are so good that you can just listen to them without having ever experienced the Elephant Show.

And that's what we're hoping will happen, is the parents get the nostalgia and the kids get to enjoy fun songs and share that experience with their parents. And Lois is very present in this album. Lois who's been gone for how many almost ten years, but she is very much part of the album. And she and I sing a song together which I particularly love. It's called Love Grows under the Wild Oak Tree, and it's very sweet.

It's beautiful harmony. It's a lovely arrangement. And when I think about the video, it makes me laugh because there was a wind machine and it was blowing us back and forth and back and forth, and it's so contrary to what we're listening to. It's, you know, it's it's a delight. So hopefully people will have those kind of memories.

We had another really really cool thing happened this weekend. Toronto has a downtown area which is very much like Times Square, and there are all sorts of electronic huge electronic billboards all over the square and the Elephant showst Offer's cover picture was on the Amazon billboard this weekend, so Lois's son flew in from California and my mom and Bram and Elephant all went down to check out the billboard and take a look, and we told fans we were going to be there, and fans showed up to say thank you and take pictures and sing Skin a Marine and it was just a really cool afternoon. And when they show up, we always hear very touching stories. Often we hear you were my first concert. Always lovely memories like that, which really touched my heart.

That's amazing. You know, we know so much more about childhood development now and how vital it is to share music and reading and engagement with your kid at an early age, which we knew right and we did anyway. Kids television and in concerts, and I think that speaks highly to our success because people would come to a concert or watch the TV show and they would do it together. If we say, okay, everybody, stand up, we're going to sing about peanut butter, everyone stood up. And kids learn from their parents.

Sometimes now they don't the parents don't all always stand up. I think if you want your kid to participate, you better show them that participation is a good thing. In the early days, everybody did everything and we love that. We love that. And it wasn't like this thought out psychological decision.

It was just let's all make music together. It was, you know, so regulars, the right thing to do, the ordinary thing to do, and it worked. The thing is also, I know that music was part of my mother's childhood. It was part of Lois's childhood. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a music degree.

From a very young age, Bram also was playing guitar, So the importance of music in their lives growing up extended into their adulthood and the tragedy now as we know the benefits. I mean, when Sharon Wils and Bram started out, they just loved sharing the music with children and families. And it's so desperately needed now and kids are just plopped in front of screens and left and the joy of doing it together is absent. I think it's really hard in an increasingly digital world to get kids, I think, to engage in the real world. And you know, there's a huge advantage in the digital world.

It certainly you know, I have a seventeen year old and so during COVID, the way that he got to hang out with his friends was through video games, and I would hear them and they were talking and laughing and engaging, and it was super beneficial, Thank good and thank goodness. But then it also took time to sort of once you know, we started to be able to come back. I'm so thrilled my son went to a concert the other night, like an actual concert with his friends, something I did at seventeen, and You're like, this is so amazing. I'm so thrilled he gets to have that experience. You know, I do a lot of theater, so he has been dragged his whole life to musical theater and regular plays.

And you know, yay, you perform in musical theater. I produce in, write and direct. I don't perform. Oh cool. Yeah, So we love musical theater.

We love any kind of theater, but we love musical theater. And by the way, when Randy and I and our little band do performances, children are just the same. They get up, they do it, they sing, they dance, they do everything that we ask them to do. Sometimes the parents are a little more reticent, but the kids, they're one hundred percent ready to do it. I think that's incredibly powerful and so incredibly important.

Music is just I'm a huge music fan. I mean I've produced albums and I'm not even a musician, like I just love music. So how did you get started in music? You know, as Randy said, I grew up in an environment where there was music all the time. It was folks music.

I grew up on Pete Seeger. I don't know if you know who Pete Seger is, but you know he was the definitive song leader and everybody sing a long leader. And I grew up with his music in an environment where everybody sang. So singing together was sort of a natural thing in my life. And when I was in high school, I had a friend who taught me how to play guitar, and I played cello in high school and I took piano less and so music was a way of life.

But I was introduced at a folk music club at a coffeehouse. You know, Sharon's going to come up and sing now at a hoot Nanny, and I was I was very shy and very nervous, but they called on me. So up I went, and I sang, and I guess I really liked it. So I quit school a few months later. Ooh, much to.

My parents' horror. And I was in the final year of high school, which in our case at that time was grade thirteen. And I turned to my friend in a math class and said, should I quit school? And she said, and you might as well. You haven't been doing your homework.

Oh my god, don't tell my kids that. Years later she said to me, why did I say that to you? You never did your home, but you didn't need to do your home anyway. I quit school, and it was a heartbreak for my parents. And I got involved in the folk music community.

And I always had an affinity to working with children, so I seem to have that connection from the time that I was young. You know, I was in grade six and the kindergarten teacher would ask if I could come and help with the children on a break or something like that. So I liked little kids. I still do. They're good company.

And then along the way, well, I knew brand because there was folk music in Toronto. The coffeehouse scene was thriving, and so we knew each other from that sort of at a bit of a distance from that environment, and I was involved in a program called Mariposa in the Schools, which I helped organize, which put musicians like us into the schools on a freelance basis to do little workshops with individual classrooms. Eventually we did concerts and you'd go in for a day and do four or five workshops and as Brahm said, nose to nose on the floor with the kids. And we all really learned in that environment. And Leis and I were introduced by a mutual friend.

She knew we were both doing music for children, and she suggested that we meet each other, and she invited us both for lunch, and that's how we met each other. And she was doing a wonderful program in the library called Music for Children for three to five year olds, and she brought me into that program. I brought her into the maripost and the schools program. We became friends and colleagues before we ever intended to make a record. Were those kind of children's programs pretty much standard, for lack of a better word, amongst in Canada and in schools or did you just happen to.

I think we created something new and different and it was very successful and a lot of. Important children's entertainers came out of that program. So Raffi cut his teeth there. You know, Sharon actually auditioned him to be part of the program. You know, I'm not sure.

And Lois also in her Music for Children program. He asked her if she would help promote his first record, and she promoted it and told her the parents about it. So we were all very helpful in that regard. Canada got really good at promoting children's artists, and you know, maybe partly because we have a national broadcaster, CBC Radio and television. You know, you could reach the whole country and that was something pretty unique to Canada and there were people who were interested.

So eventually, Lois Bram and I were on the in the Mariposa in the school's program and the organization was going to do a record and we said, oh great, got held up because it was part of an organization and there was a hierarchy and they had get permission from the board of directors and all of that stuff. So Bill Osher, who was our first producer, said well, why don't we just make a record, And it ended up being Lois and me and Bram with no intention to start a career, just to make a really good record. We believed that children deserved the best we could offer, the highest quality musicians arrangers. You know, we worked very hard on arrangements. My husband was very involved.

You could tell them about your dad. Oh, Joe, I know that. I just thought i'd had a little too. Joe wrote a number of songs for us, and he also did wonderful vocal arrangements and instrumental arrangements, but he really taught us how to sing in harmony. Ram said that he learned how to sing harmony from Joe.

Joe spent a lot of time helping him because Leis and Bram had never done that. And if you listen to the first couple of records, you hear Sharon singing harmony a lot of the time because the others were not so good at that yet. But they got a lot better at it. And the response to the record, partly because of CBC and national radio, the response to the record, much to our surprise, was incredible, so immediately people started to know us well. It's also because it was a really good record.

Yeah, there is say that. So I have two questions. One is I want to go back and hear about your dad, but also, Randy, I want to hear about you growing up in this household of music and you. Basically I read that you guys crowdsourced your album, and before there was crowdsourcing, yeah. Well, our version of crowdsourcing was to go to family and friends and say we need to raise twenty thousand dollars.

Would you kick in loan US five hundred or one thousand dollars each? And that's how we raised the twenty thousand dollars to make our record, through family and friends who certainly never believed they were going to see that money again, but they did. The record came out in September of nineteen seventy eight, and in December we made a party at a little holiday party and we put their checks in Christmas crackers. We knew how to make good. Parties, it sounds like it, and.

They all got their money back, much to their surprises. But the thing is they knew us from our various musical careers, and they believed in what we were doing and they were happy to support us, so it was a lovely community. And then Randy, well, let's talk about growing up in this household of music makers. Well, my dad's mother, she played piano and organ in the silent movie houses, and his aunt was a choir director and a music teacher. So when I was about five, she bought me a little studio upright piano, and I started taking piano lessons.

So similar to my mom, I played frenchhorn in junior high. In high school, I sang in the choir, I played in the bands. So music was very much a part of my life too. And I went to camp and I collected songs and I did music at day camps. And when I'd come across a good song, I would come home and say, hey, I learned this.

I think it might be a fun one for you guys. So you know, I'll listen to songs and I'll be like, oh, I taught them that. But I also got to when my dad was working on arrangements. Sometimes, since it was three parts, I would sit at the piano with them and we would try out the arrangements together. We would sing the three parts together.

So my whole life was surrounded by music. And then once Sharon Lewls and Bram were starting. I was very enmeshed in going to the studio, watching them record singing in the children's if it was a camp song, teaching them new songs that, you know, just in any way that I could participate. I was always interested in doing that. That's amazing, isn't that night?

Yeah, I think it's amazing too. It didn't seem extraordinary. It seemed regular because we were a family and we did that stuff together, you know, singing together was and we used to have parties here, music parties, and I loved, you know, the Mariposa in the school's community had really good parties and a number of them were here and they were all generations. Our kids were at them, and we played musical games at party games, and it was a great way of being a community. Lois's son, David, is a very good friend of mine, and Lois used to say that David was just along for the ride, like whatever they were doing, she was doing too, And that was just really a philosophy that was shared.

So we would ring in the New Year's together and we'd play charades and go to boggining and it was multi generational and that was just really a Sharon Wilson Bram motto. And it's extended now because my son Ethan is our bass player, and his roommate Zach is our drummer, and my partner's our guitar players. So just being along for the ride is just extended to the next generation now. And my sons have a sister who was seven. She we just went and did a little concert at her school and she wrote our introduction for She came up and she introduced us, so we you know, it's even extending to a fourth generation now, which is pretty cool.

And recently Randy and I did it was called Stage Door Stories. It was an evening for adults where we get to tell stories and we sang some songs and there were questions from the audience. And Ethan, with her older son, Ethan, my first bandson, was part of that because he was playing guitar for us on that occasion, and I love that he was able to participate with his version of stories things that he's heard over the years. It's wonderful actually, And Randy's partner, who normally plays guitar for us in his previous history, had no exposure to us or what we did or anything like that. And the first time he was at one of these little concerts, it was at Eva's school, and the kids were so good, they were so wonderful, and afterwards Jim said, I need to bring Kleenex to all of these concerts.

He was so touched by the response of the children. That was an interesting classroom that the music teacher in that school. She was teaching the kids in the school how to be an audience. Oh audience, how you listen, You don't talk to each other, you participate, you applaud I thought every school should have that instruction. Absolutely.

I hadn't really thought of that, but that is absolutely something that everybody has to learn at some point. When you go to any sort of live performance, there are rules, if you will, for the audience in terms of behavior. But I had a question as you were talking about the talks and quasi performances that you gave for the adults, did you get them to sing along with you as well? Oh? Yes, oh, oh, that's fantastic.

We've done teacher workshops and keynote speeches and in some respect when people are genuinely there because they've chosen to be there, like they're not going because their kids want to see or you know what, there's just something in their energy which is so fun and enthusiastic. We were doing a keynote for a group of early educators and they were in a banquet hall, so there were huge round tables and people were far away and there were empty spaces at the front. Sharon said, would some of you please come and sit closer? And this woman at the back said, Sharon, I'm going, and she's running up to the front and it was just like she couldn't get there fast enough. So we meet a.

Lot of adult fans, people who grew up on us and our music and the TV show. They're so devoted. Often, you know, I'll meet someone and we'll get a little teary and I and they're embarrassed, and I say, don't be embarrassed. You're having tears because you're having happy childhood memories. That's a good thing, absolutely.

To hear you over that. So we meet a lot of people like that. And also Randy and our team do a lot of post a lot of stuff on TikTok. I know nothing about any of us except Brandy and the team tell me and brand to turn up and this is what they want us to do, and we love it. We have so much fun doing it.

But people write and they use an expression that until this I had never heard before, memory unlocked. They hear a song and it reminds them of their childhood and they and they respond with their version of the song. It's lovely and they're remembering. And I love that people are remembering us with some level of pleasure. Oh gosh, that's amazing.

That is fantastic. So how did the show actually happen? So we have to take a break, but we'll be right back to talk more with Sharon and Randy and to hear what it is like to tour with your kid and your parent and their favorite songs and memories from the show. Skin Am ring Think you think skin Am Rink God And we're back. So you put out an album and it was hugely successful in nineteen seventy eight exactly, And then how did how did that turn into a show for CBC?

Well? I didn't right away. I mean, we put out that album never intending to do anything more. We even went back to our individual performing careers briefly. Then it was clear that we should make another album and our producer, Bill Usher, really he was a producer and he wanted us to make more records and there was every reason to do that, so ended up putting up four records for like nineteen seventy eight, seventy nine, eighty eighty one.

They did a couple of little TV specials in their specials as well on two of the major networks, CTV and CBC. And exactly what was that like. The first time that you found yourself doing a show for TV. Well, it was the first time for the Trio. Yes, it was the first time for the Trio.

I had done right, Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I'd been on TV if something for teenagers. It was called the After four Club. Gordon Lightfoot and I were on the same show together, which is kind of cool.

So I had had some TV experience, but where I was a guest, not where I was a feature. And over the course of our career, people would come to us and say would you like to do some TV, people who were involved in TV, and we'd say yeah, after we'd done these few specials and we'd say oh, yeah, yeah for sure, and they'd say, you know, have you got money? No, and they'd go away. Happened quite a lot until these two guys, neither of whom was a parent. They had nieces and nephews, which is why they knew about us.

They were just graduates of film school and they came to us and said, would you like to do a TV show? And we said yes, and. They said they asked if Sharyl Wilson Brahm had money, and Shara Wilson Bram said no, do you and they said yes, which was a lot even though they didn't happen. They just figured we asked, we're going to find a way to make it happen. And we only learned because we have this new vinyl album.

We had a little party to celebrate the launch of it, and we had it at a wonderful children's bookstore here and we invited people who were somehow connected and one of those producers. They both wanted to come up. They had commitments, but one of them came and he told us to lifeful story. He said yes. We went away and we didn't have any money, but my brother is a doctor, and I went to my brother and he said okay.

He went to all of his pals and asked the meat to kick in two thousand dollars. Wow, so that's the second crowd funding story exactly. That is so great, isn't that sweet? Yeah, So they came back with money and the first thing we did with them was a little special called Sharon Laws and Bram at Young People's Theater SLB ATYPT. Young People's Theater was a wonderful theater, the first place we ever did a concert, actually, So they came back with a plan to do this special and we did a charming special.

It was short. I can't remember it's twenty minutes, twenty two minutes because there's commercials. Yeah, it was a half hour. So we did that with them, and by then they had found a broadcaster to show it, and then maybe they came in with some money we could proceed with the Elephant Show. And that's how they are.

Elephant Show was born. It was very unexpected and every year we did thirteen segments of the Elephant Show. We never knew if CBC Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was going to renew it. So it was hugely popular and so every year at the end of the season, we'd wonder, is it going to be renewed? Are we going back to plan the next thirteen programs and for five years it was renewed and then we stopped.

But the reason you're probably even talking to her at all is because the Elephant Show got picked up by Nickelodeon in the States and then they completely exploded, so really changed our career, really changed, and we went from occasionally coming to the States to play at little venues to playing at state fairs and those big, beautiful outdoor venues. I mean, we played incredible places over the years and had a huge audience. So it was all done when it started airing on Nickelodeon. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah.

The thing is that Nickelodeon did something that we did not love. They put the show on at I think it was eleven o'clock in the morning, so it changed the audience. It had been a show that when children first started going to share loaves some Bram concerts, it was zero to eleven, probably ten or eleven, and they would do school concerts up to grade six. And when they started showing it at eleven o'clock in the morning. We lost that audience in school came for three and under and they had a huge audience.

Obviously, the show was very successful, but it changed our audience and the kind of shows that we we could do. But the other thing. That's happened, of course, with children's music is they don't get to be kids for. Very long anymore. You know.

Even my niece became a Spice Girl fan, you know when she was little, and partly kids listened to whatever their parents are listening to. And one one of the nice things about Sharon Wilson Bran music was that you didn't run screaming from the room. They had good quality arrangements and interesting musical genres. That was the goal. I mean, our first record said a children's record for the whole family, and that was always the goal, that they should be able to share the music and enjoy it together.

But the other side of it was that once they were on Nickelodeon, they went from playing in high school gyms to playing in stadiums. And I actually just took a picture. Of a marquee which they were sharing that had massive. Celebrities on it. So like you know, it was the Beach Boys, James Taylor, Doc Severnson, Randy Travis, Sharon Lowson Brown, That's awesome.

Yeah, So it was. The Allentown Pennsylvania, Great fair or whatever they grew up. You were Fairground. That's huge. Well really, oh, yes, were you there, Melissa?

I think I was. Okay, I think so too. Yeah, well, I remember trying to teach Grants that Billy the Billy Joel song alan Town so that he could play a little bit of it for his solo in Alanown. Oh that's really randy. So, Melissa, I wonder if I saw you that.

That we crossed path. I love that everything happened. It's the center of the universe, so. That I'm kidding, but you know, kids will come up to my mom and Bramman say do you recognize me? I love that.

The thing about the vinyl that I loved is that kids would hold on to that album cover because there was our picture and they could connect with those people. They felt like they knew us. Hard did you do on a cassette? And so it tickles me that we have this final with our pictures on it and kids like to make that connection. And you know, a mom could say, oh, this is Sharon, and Sharon and Lois are singing that song together, so the kids can connect with the people.

Yeah, I mean, and I think that's one of the reasons, you know, physical media at least has a little I don't know, vinyl is a little bit better. Right, it's a little renaissance because there is something again, really wonderful about having something tactile and you know that thing. It's so funny when our oldest child got a record player in college, our oldest child, who's twenty eight. But that was cool. Oh that's nice.

They're like, oh, I need do you have any albums? I'm like, our albums are long gone or warped, like the albums I kept. I kept a lot of my albums, but they got warped because I was moving. So I was in LA and I was moving, and I was like, I just never really had good stories. Albums are gone, the CDs are gone, but I still have the vinyl sitting in a box, thinking that someday I'm going to get myself player.

And you got to be careful because I kept some stuff. And then I pulled one out because I'm like, I got to get of course, Owen got one that you could then digitize stuff from the album, which was great, and I was like, I need you to do this album. And it was an album from a theater show called Jacques brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris that they had done in Cleveland, Ohio in nineteen seventy seven to nineteen eighty and I had seen a performance of it. My dad took us and when I was nine, and of course I really connected with the Belgian middle aged facing death songs and killing the bulls on Sunday was. I kept that album my entire life, and then like four years ago, I was like, oh, and you've got us transfer it and that it was warped.

But I did find a CD, which was unusual. It had been transferred later. And as it's down test of time, it totally does. Are you kidding? And my sister also had the same response.

She was two years older. She just did a performance of Jacques Brell as a live while living in Paris, North Carolina. She does theater too. You should probably be telling us about your parents, because it's interesting that you're both so immersed in that. Yeah, my mom was a microbiologist at CDC for forty two years.

Is very disappointed in her artistic daughters. Did she do musical theater in part time as a hobby. No, but she did take us to a lot of concerts, and she did take us to theater and expose us to a lot of art. So art was very important to her, and she loves music, but she is a scientist through and through, and she was so sad. Our father was a news he was he started as a newsman, but then went into theater and he took us to a lot of theater too.

That was wildly inappropriate for us parents divorced. Well, I was going to say, my parents were very disappointed when I decided not to follow in their musical footsteps and became a family lawyer. But you know, very handy. I bet very handy, because we're like, we're both artists and now we're like, we need some lawyer, doctor, something useful, a plumber or someone a handy person. I need.

That's what I need. I'm like want our children to because. It's not a bad suggestion. Oh my gosh, we have. This is so fun.

Okay, so let's let's go back to the music for a second, because I'm I'm very curious about three songs in particular. A lot of your songs are very memorable to me. I do remember the songs and I was a little bit older for the show. You know, by the time it was on Nickelodeon, I was not a child. I was probably still a kid, but not a child and.

A younger siblings to watch with. Yeah, then you would have gotten away with it. But there is this spot in terms of the age. For sure. I did go to summer camp and I was a camp counselor.

So a lot of these songs were very familiar to me, and some of which I know from you guys, because they were just sort of in the ether, I think your version of them. So we have to, of course talk about skinnemer Rink and what that means to you both when you guys did it and found it and now and it's become what it became, what it has become for you. I love Skinna Rink. We only sung it a gazillion time. Once we started singing it.

We said, whatever we do, will always sing with skin and rink. What a wonderful song. I mean, it's it's a love song. And people sing it to each other, They kids sing it to the grandparents, They singing it weddings when they're clinking the glasses, I mean, And it came to us in a most unexpected way. Lois had gone to Chicago to ask for family for money for the first record, and while she was there, she was visiting with her cousin Lisa, and she said, Lisa, do you know any good songs?

And Lisa sang skin and writ for her, and Lois came back and said, this is a really nice song. I think we should include it. And we said, oh yeah, we love it, so we put it on the first record. It's not the last song, and Brad doesn't sing on it. Lois sings the nice sing harmony with her, and there's even an instrumental break in the middle where there's a woman who does tap dancing.

We put a piece of wood on the floor in the studio and she tap danced and her name. Her name was Shirley Temple. Temple Jared gets that mister Temple's wife. That's adorable. We recorded the song and we loved it, and Brad played a really neat little guitar part that sounds like a ukulele.

And then when we were doing our very first constant, we said, it's such a great song, let's send the show with it. And that changed everything. I love the way people love that song and we now have a book, the Skin and Rink Book. We tease, we say that the book would have been a pamphlet if Randy hadn't extended the story in the book. So the book has more verses and it's it's delightful and it's beautifully illustrated.

So it's a great song. I love it. You know, I will never tire of that song. And you're right, it is in the ether. So people if you say Geno, Sharon Lels and Brahm, they won't necessarily say yes.

But if you say Geno skin Rink, oh yeah, of course I know that. So they don't know that. They don't know that. That's why, But that is why for sure. All right, in searching the internet, scouring the internet, I came across a lot of spellings of skin Rink.

How did you guys decide how you were going to spell it? Was that the spelling? I don't know the answer, you know, just get it. I think what happened was they decided how they were going to spell it on the first album and that's been it. So it's like forty six years of spelling it that way.

Now. It was really funny though, working with the editor of the book and phonetically spelling out I love you to boot boop bee doop wah like. Age. And is it boot boom be doo or boot boom be doop? And is there two o's in boo boop?

I'm very curious which part means I love you? Is it skinnmer rank or dinky dink? Which ever works for you? Now, when you recorded that, did you have any idea? You were recording basically what has become the definitive version of the song.

Not a clue here. This is a really nice song, Let's include it. We had no idea, and then because it was the delightful song, made sense to use it at the end of the first concert. When we did that, we thought, that's a really good thing to do. Let's keep doing that.

It just kind of grew and we had no idea. But what a lovely unexpected surprise. Normally musicians tour songs and then go into the studio, and they did it in reverse. They picked a whole bunch of songs that they thought would be interesting to record, and then they you know, they wanted to make sure that each of them got their moment to shine and that you know, they balanced out features and their features and everything like that, but truly what they did was they created an album and then they picked a way to do it in front of an audience. The fifth album was called one, two, three four Live, and really they had figured out the magic of how to include the audience and you know, how to get them engaged in how to teach them a song in a way that wasn't boring and took too long.

And once that happened, once they had their hits, the audience always knows what to do. When we do a concert. We try and balance the old favorites with things that are lesser known or stuff we'd like to share. But the bulk of the songs that we choose to sing with them are the ones that they want to hear. And from the second we get on stage till the last I love YouTube boop WOOPI do they sing everything?

When did the elephant come in? And does the elephant have a name? Elephant never had a name. There. It happened that there was babar production in a theater where they were going to be performing.

And because the record was called One Elephant de se font and because they had decided to call their company Elephant Records. They thought it would be fun to have an elephant come on stage. And sometimes it was Bill Usher's wife, sometimes it was me, sometimes it was me and Lois's son, David. You know, we just rent these babar costumes. And then once they did the pilot for the Elephant show and had some money, they invested in, you know, the idea of elephant having a different appearance.

You know, so here's a really great marketing idea. Let's I mean, we never did anything like this. It was random, you know, as Randy said, there was bad elephant. Well let's you know, we have songs. The elephant could come out and dance too.

As simple and straightforward as that it was meant to be. That is amazing. Now, how many elephant suits exist right now? There's one at the National Museum in Ottawa that's in storage right now. It was part of an exhibit.

Bit but it's when Lois died. We asked if we could borrow it and they said for for a memorial for celebration for her, and they said it they were concerned about the condition of it because it was like it's forty years ago now, right, So, but we had a celebratory concert at the Winter Garden Theater which we filmed as part of a documentary about Sharon Lowson Bram and elephant has made a reappearance. So so Elephant's back. They're very happy to see eloquant Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, without really planning this, we just never assigned a gender to elephant, so we wouldn't say he is blab We would say elephant, where are you going? Or elephant is coming with We just referred to elephant as elephant.

And weren't we ahead of time? Yes, it was so. I mean oestion was that we wanted every kid to be able to identify with Elephant, this youngster that you know who was having fun adventures and moods and all that, and so it was a very smart thing. Well, and the one Elephant the Elephant, which I did badly. It's such a beautiful bilingual children's song that gets really lovely and and yet silly.

And how did that song come to be one of your significant. Really interesting Lois. I learned the song from Lois and then I was in a multicolor in a French immersion classroom of little kids and it's a wonderful game where kids, you know, hook on trunk to tail and it's you know, you start with one and then it's two, then it's it's a charming game. We did that, and then after, after we were all done and the kids were gone, the teacher said to me, you know, that would be a beautiful, fresh French song, So she kind of helped me translate it to French. And then I had a friend who a man that I knew was teaching French at the university, and he fiddled with it a little bit more to make it better, and we knew that it was.

It was perfect. And when we made the record, we loved the idea of making it, calling it when Elephants Elephant, and there were several French songs on the album, so it was it was perfect. It was perfect. There's a Spanish version of it too. Camia kiss Leam Camarada.

I think she knows it better than Camarada is a friend. Yeah. We were on tour and we were at a church dinner and there was a Japanese troop and one of them was sitting next to Brand and they were chatting and he sang a bit of one Elephant and then they saying they're Japanese version of it. We couldn't believe it. Music.

You know, things turn up that you don't know about their worldwide, which is wonderful. It's so universal. You know. We've had a bunch of videos of skin and drink that we put up on our socials and one of them is an a cappella version. It's really sweet.

It's almost it's five point eight million views something like that. All of a sudden, we had tie and Filipino and Vietnamese people tagging all their friends. So normally our videos are like fifty percent American and fifty percent Canadian, and on this video, like Vietnam was the third most watched country and we have no idea why. That's amazing. Oh my gosh, it's in the ether.

You put it in the ether. How is Bram doing how on the tiktoks? Yes? Yeah. In the summertime, we did a concert at fan Expo.

You know, had like five hundred adult fans and Cosplay come out to watch and sing with Sharon Brown and Elephant. So that was pretty cool too. That's pretty amazing. That is pretty amazing. So what's the secret to staying friends and parents for so long and children.

It's really interesting because we really were friends. I mean, I think most groups that break up break up because of relationships or problem relationships. When we came to know each other, we all had long term partners. You know, when you're in a long term relationship, you figure out how to make things, how to work things out. So we had that fundamental, basic understanding with each other as well obviously within our relationships.

So we liked each other. We shared, you know, our families. We got together for family events and occasions when you. Aren't into drugs and alcohol and the seedier side of fame and everything like that. It's I think a.

Little easier than a rock band or something like that. Our drug of choice was food. Oh that's the good one. Musicians who toured with us would come back and people would say, you know, where did you tour? They said, not where did we tour?

Where did we eat? Getting back to the Elephant Show, and I saw something about some of the guests who had been on the show, and I know since Susan mentioned Andrew Martin, but I will tell you that the name that popped out to me was the Nylons. And I don't know if you can tell us anything about the episode they were on or I'm a big fan. I'm a long time fan of theirs of that group and love their music. Talk about harmonies, I mean a cappella music is all about harmony, and it's one of the reasons I love them so much.

It was Treasure Island and Fabio. It was a fantastic episode. Their video was amazing. They had a really good time having that too. It was whim Away.

It was wim Away Tonight and they were hiding behind trees and they pop out and it was a terrific against. George Bloomfield was the director. He's a very interesting director, and that was that was a good video. It was thrilling to have really good singers. We also had a female duo from Quebec Kate Nana mcgarrigal.

Did you ever hear of Kate mcgar well, you would because Rufus Wainwright Ish is the son of one of them. Yeah, they were on the show and I was so thrilled. They sang a song called Heart Like a Wheel. Those two women sound like their voices are coming out of one person. Wow, it's so perfect.

It's so beautiful. We had Andrea Martin of course was she was a character. Do you know who Chuck MANGIONI yes. Yes, yeah, one of the albums that I have in my closet. On the ephe he was on The Elephant Show and he played Feels So Good.

But he also he played little Boy Blue So and he was playing his horn for the sheep in the three Bear episode. What Amazing Memories? What's one of your favorite from the show? Gmering TV was so completely different. We were characters at a TV station.

It was kind of stolen from SCTV, and they tried to assign characters that were close to their personality exactly. One of my favorite moments from The Elephant Show was there's a parade in Toronto called Caravana, which is celebration of all things Caribbean, and Haron Lewson Bram got to be on a float in the parade and they sang a song. That my dad wrote called talk about Peace. And that was a really cool and that's from that That's a great. Song and that's on the new release.

It is during COVID, what we did was we invited friends and musicians from across North America to self tape themselves singing the song and we edited together a video of talk about piece, which we shared during COVID as well. So that's it's on YouTube. It's on YouTube. Great. I love it.

I think it's amazing. People in their own living rooms, you know, either individually or couples or a family, did their you know a little version of it. It was just it's wonderful. Our friend Colin Mackery from whose line is it anyway? And his white dad saying and.

So it's just it was great, very special. That's so cool. All right? Where can people find you and see what's happening? Thanks for asking.

We have a website. It's Sharon lols and brand dot com or Sharon Lewis brand dot com to find it either way. And we are always releasing new content on our socials thankfully, as long as my mum is willing to say yes to things, she and I continue to do. We're doing two more Stage Door Stories concerts in Ontario. We are singing at the Mariposa Folk Festival next summer.

I just think that children's entertainment and programming doesn't get the same sort of prioritization that it used to do. In the eight funding. Yeah for funding, Yeah, for sure, for sure. It's a real shame and I think a lot of you know, I actually produced a kids show called Tie the Pie Guy. It was a web show at one Best Family Show at the Vancouver Webfest.

It was Canadian hit. It was called Tie t Y the Pie Guide. Kids would call m to tie oven phone into his kitchen and with the problem, and he would then bring them into the kitchen and they'd solve it through cooking. It was really fun, lovely. It was old.

How old was I was an adult? I was an adult, but he was with children's issue. Yeah, it was very pee wee herman, mister Rogers in that. One of the things that we did during our career was there used to be a very big, successful Santa Claus parade. It was a lovely big parade and they invited us to host it a couple of for a couple of years, which we did and that was one of those new never having done that before experiences with all kinds of challenges.

But Carol Spinney, yeah, was a co host with us, who was missed Big Bird and Oscar the Grout. We loved working with him. He was a lovely man, I. Wish there was more funding for particularly live action kids television. In the vein of what you Guys did and Sesame Strada, Yeah tough, it's tough to find for you on that.

Yes, well I'll do that. Do you want a little I was going to say, would you sing this song? Oh my gosh, would we ever. Scan him a rinky dinky dink? Skin him a rinky do I love you?

Skin him a rinky dinky dink, Skin him a rink? You do? I love you? I'm the son. I love you in the morning and in the afternoon, I love you in the evening underneath the moon.

Skin him a rinky dinky don skin him a rink? You do? Love you to boo boopy do. Thank you, Thank you so much. Yes Zoon wants to know if I'm playing music.

Thank you so much for sharing so many wonderful stories with us. This was delightful, so great to have you on the show. Thank you, Sharon and Randy. As I said before, it's lovely to have another Sharon on the show. We are just so glad that you took the time to join us.

Thank you both. Lovely. I see it for us, really lovely. Thank you, it's time for today's audiography. Find out about Sharon Lois and Bram at Sharon Leeisonbram dot com.

Also be sure to follow them at TikTok and Instagram and all those links will be in our description. Get their latest Elephantsong, Showstoppers album off their website and you can also find the children's book they talked about and all their books and albums and memorabilia at Sharonleoisbran dot com. Slash skin them a rink dash shop. Thank you all for listening. So let us know what your favorite kid shows of the seventies and eighties are.

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