You all know how much I love Canada. Here is one more reason to love Canada, Bobs and Lolo. They are a fantastic two woman team that creates brilliant children’s music.
To hear Bobs and Lolo’s melodious and meaningful music, click here
I had the opportunity to ask Bobs and Lolo about themselves and their music. Here’s what they had to say:
1. What are your real names?
Our real names are Robyn Hardy (Bobs) and Lorraine Pond (Lolo).
2. What made you adopt “Bobs” and “Lolo”?
Bobs & Lolo were actually our nicknames in high school. Our friends and family called us ‘Bobs & Lolo’ long before the kidlets did! When we started writing and performing children’s music, our nicknames seemed more “kid-friendly” and a lot more fun than our given names. Now it feels weird to be called ‘Robyn’ and ‘Lorraine’ – even business associates (who don’t have kids!) refer to us as B&L!
3. How did you meet?
We first connected at a Girl Guide camp on Vancouver Island in British Columbia (Canada) when we were both around 8 years old. After a fun-filled weekend of campfire sing-alongs, silliness and laughter, our friendship was sealed! While we attended different elementary schools, we ended up filtering into the same high school (Dover Bay Secondary) in grade 9. Our friendship continued to grow from there and we began to singing together in the school choir as well as studying piano with the same music teacher. We also hit the courts together as power forward (Bobs) and shooting guard (Lolo) on the Dover Bay girls’ basketball team. Go Dolphins Go!
4. What inspired you to make music, and (more specifically) children’s music?
The Bobs & Lolo project really grew out of our friendship and a mutual passion for music and working with kids. Before we started our musical adventures, Robyn (Bobs) was teaching grades 4 and 5. Prior to teaching, Robyn completed a degree in linguistics at the University of Victoria and a Bachelor of Education at University of British Columbia (UBC). Lorraine (Lolo) previously worked in the fields of environmental education and non-profit fund development. Her academic background includes a Bachelor of Human Kinetics (Exercise Science) from UBC. As kids, we had both been involved in music and the arts, and it was something that we both value greatly in education. In fact, our first try at songwriting came out of a casual chat we shared about the value of using music as a teaching tool. We started brainstorming about what sort of themes and topics were important for today’s kids and “building connections to the natural world” was at the top of our list. We both had an interest in the environment and conservation and set a goal to figure out a way to inspire kids to care about the world around them through music, movement and make-believe. We haven’t looked back since!
5. How much do you love Canada?
We absolutely adore our home country of Canada – and it’s not just because of all the Olympic hype in our home city right now! We feel fortunate that our musical adventures have given us the opportunity to explore so much of our country…which happens to be a rather big piece of land! We’ve traveled through small towns on the west coast of BC – Bella Coola, Atlin and the Queen Charlotte Islands to name a few – to large cities like Toronto and all the way across to the province of Prince Edward Island on the east coast. We’ve also gone north into the Yukon Territories along with numerous stops in between, around and under. In the last year, the music videos featured on our On Your Feet DVD began airing on Treehouse TV, Canada’s only national television network completely dedicated to preschoolers. While the partnership with Treehouse is still relatively new, the TV exposure has already opened up new performance opportunities for us, and we’ve been able to slowly build our CD and DVD distribution beyond Western Canada. We’re hoping this is just the start, and we’ll be able to keep things go, go, growing in the upcoming years. We would love to perform in the US too. We’ve done a few shows in the Seattle area, but our travel south of the border has been quite limited to date. Fingers crossed that this will change as more opportunities come up down the road!
In the meantime, the great thing about the digital era is that we’re connecting with new families all around the world every day! Our music is available on Itunes and through various online retail partners and we’ve even posted some of our videos on YouTube. We’re also very active on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, and we regularly blog about our travel adventures and noteworthy news items or fun finds. We definitely invite kids and parents to connect with us online through one (or more!) of these social media sites – we love the personal connection and it’s an extra treat when families send photos or share stories on how they are connecting with our music.
For information on how to reach Bobs and Lolo, their live show schedule, music and more, please visit www.bobsandlolo.com
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