Jersey Arts Podcast · ArtPride New Jersey

'Queen of Kids' Music' Laurie Berkner is Back on Home Turf for McCarter Concert

·27 min·1 clip

A preschool class yelled “dinosaurs,” and Berkner built “We Are the Dinosaurs” from that moment.

1. Jersey Arts Podcast spotlights Laurie Berkner's return to McCarter Theater in Princeton, along with her route from preschool classrooms to concert stages. 2. Maddie Orton hosts the interview, and Berkner joins as the Rutgers graduate and Princeton-raised children's musician behind 1.7 billion streams. 3. The episode asks what Berkner is trying to accomplish when she writes songs for kids and adults at the same time. 4. Berkner says she needs to be willing to sing a song “thousands of times” before she releases it. 5. She describes trying songs in daycare settings, watching children move when she says “move your hands,” and revising after hearing those reactions. 6. Berkner says the studio can change a song again when her band adds rhythmic or melodic parts she did not expect. 7. She gives “chipmunk at the gas pump” as an example of a song that started with a Sirius XM interview prompt and a child request for a chipmunk song. 8. Berkner explains that she originally wrote more descriptive verses, then worried that preschoolers would not understand them. 9. She says “We Are the Dinosaurs” grew out of a preschool class where one child yelled “dinosaurs,” and the whole room responded immediately. 10. Berkner details the song’s structure: marching, stopping to eat, resting in the nest, and saving the roar for the end. 11. She says the classroom stopped getting attention from spoken instructions until Ruth Alperson told her to “put it in the music.” 12. Berkner describes observing Alperson teach a circle of three-year-olds from behind a piano, with the children following every cue. 13. She says the first recordings were made because parents wanted the songs their children were singing home from class. 14. Berkner recalls borrowing money through the Westside Y, using a basement studio in Hoboken, and making 500 cassettes for about $2,000. 15. She says those cassettes sold in about two months, which pushed her to start Tomatoes Records. 16. Berkner calls the career lucky while also saying she would be content with what she has already done if health forced her to stop. 17. The interview style is warm and anecdotal, with Orton sharing a family story about ballet class and “the goldfish” before Berkner answers. 18. The tone stays conversational and practical, with specific examples from classrooms, studios, and live shows rather than abstract theory. 19. Fans of children's music, arts coverage, and Princeton concert news would get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting celebrity gossip or a fast news recap may skip it.

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