Music Minute - Mel & Friends: Swingset Serenade

 Hot club swing meets big band bounce on Swingset Serenade, a new album spanning decades of musical heritage with jazzy, playful songs for all ages from the ensemble Mel and Friends. Fronted by vocalist/songwriter Melanie Dill, Swingset Serenade is now available digitally and is set for release on vinyl and CD on May 3, 2024. 

 

“This album is probably not what comes to mind when most people think of children’s music,” says Melanie Dill. “Our musicians, many of whom are regulars on the Kansas City jazz scene, come from vastly different backgrounds and are recognized masters of a variety of genres and styles. Swingset Serenade is as much a jazz and swing album for everyone as it is a children’s album.”

 

“When Melanie and I were kids, the quantity of music produced expressly for children was relatively small, but the quality of much of the music and production was incredibly high. Those records were truly musical events, with a scale and a purpose all their own,” adds Swingset Serenade songwriter/producer Tom Johnson. “We wanted to bring that feeling back, and we also wanted to incorporate the styles of music our parents and grandparents listened to when we were growing up.”

 

Among the inspirations for Swingset Serenade were early Sesame Street songs, Muppet Show tunes, and Vince Guaraldi’s music for the Peanuts animated TV specials, along with French gypsy jazz, early swing, mid-century big band, salsa music, and bossa nova, or, as Tom says, “basically a warm smash of musical heritage spanning the decades from the 1920s through the 1960s. It’s vintage music reimagined for modern audiences, and it’s bilingual, to boot!”

 

The record has a wonderfully nostalgic vibe, and, like much classic childhood nostalgia, it feels cozy and familiar sometimes, crazy and buoyant at certain moments, and even, at points, a bit melancholy. Swingset Serenade brings grownups the delightful feeling of having just found something they had forgotten they’d lost. Musically, the album is immersive, approachable, clever, and fun – there are dozens of musical jokes and motifs hidden throughout.

 

An album highlight is “Jugo de Naranja,” a standout for its Latin style, punchy horns, and many different percussion instruments. The wistful “Come Back Balloon” tells the story of a child and her lost balloon, which has floated away and is drifting over the neighborhood, an allegory for loss and acceptance. When Melanie Dill came up with the basic idea for “Bunk Bed” (“up on the top of the bunk, be careful not to bump your head”), she shared it with Tom Johnson, and a few days later, he came back with the elaborate, epic composition and arrangement heard on the album. In “The Speed of Light,” kids discuss heady scientific concepts such as Lorentz contraction and other aspects of relativity. The complex scientific discussion juxtaposed with Tom’s sophisticated, fresh big band arrangement make this song a keeper. 

 

“We spent years developing this album and recording it, and it’s as complete and joyous as we could make it,” explains Tom Johnson. “Swingset Serenade is designed to age well, just like many of the classic albums, comics, books, and games from our childhood.”

ABOUT MELANIE DILL AND TOM JOHNSON:

Melanie Dill, born in Indiana, raised in the Philippines and Kansas, and currently living in Lawrence, Kansas, has been writing children’s songs and performing publicly since the birth of her daughter more than 25 years ago. Her first children’s album, Alphabet Parade, was released in 1999, and her second, Rainbow Lemonade, came out in 2002. For the next two decades, Melanie worked intermittently on Swingset Serenade, while raising her daughter, earning a master’s degree in education, and teaching middle school and high school Spanish. Melanie says, “Swingset Serenade continues the creative arc I started with Alphabet Parade, and I hope there will be more albums to come!”

Tom Johnson has been writing playful and engaging music for the past 25 years. As a young musician, his love for ragtime, blues, and jazz grew into an exploration of other 20^th century roots music throughout the hemisphere, including salsa, ska, rocksteady, reggae, samba, bossa nova, and Tropicália. After a formal music education at the University of Kansas School of Music, he began a career as a touring musician, moving into composing, arranging, and studio production when artists began asking him to arrange songs for their records. Tom has had the joy of working on more than 100 albums and projects, from children’s albums to nationally recognized jazz ensembles. When he’s not making music, he’s working on house projects of any kind and every size with his wife Corey and their cats, Julia and Martha.

 

Swingset Serenade is available digitally on all major platforms, including Amazon, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, Pandora, and Tidal and will be available on vinyl and CD on May 3, 2024.