5-Minute Time Out: Robbert Bobbert
Frontman Robert Schneider on his first kids’ record, 16 years in the making.
by Tammy La Gorce
May 12, 2009
If you were hip in the '90s, you know Robert Schneider as the mastermind behind the super-poppy yet unfailingly cool Apples in Stereo. If you weren't hip, now's your chance to trick your kids into thinking you were. Just get Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine (Little Monster), Schenider's first kids record. The thirty-seven-year-old talked with Babble about his love of Stephen Colbert and what's possibly the longest-ever incubation period for a kids album (Schneider started concocting Bobbert when he was twenty-one) — all while racing down a Lexington, Kentucky road to pick up his eight-year-old son, Max, from school. — Tammy La Gorce
You've had a great run with The Apples in Stereo, and that hasn't let up — last year's New Magnetic Wonders was an Apple-head's dream and much acclaimed. Why did you want to make a record for kids?
I've actually been working on this kids record my entire adult life. I have three younger brothers, and when I was twenty-one my dad gave me four-track recorder. I'd make them songs for their birthdays and stuff — I was always working as a camp counselor for kids or as lifeguard. Basically, when I was young what I did was round up kids, and I was in the habit of playing guitar for them. So that same year, which was also the year I started The Apples in Stereo, I was in college [at the University of Colorado], and I got really distracted from my schoolwork because of music, and I asked my dad if I could drop out a year. My dad said okay, but only because my kids music had so much promise. I've had a dream of recording a children's album since then, but I never did. Then a few years ago I started recording even more kids' songs, for Max and his friends and for his school science fair, and that's kind of the story of how this album finally got made.
Awesome. Are you shifting your focus from The Apples in Stereo to your new alter-ago, the mad scientist/inventor Robbert Bobbert?
Not entirely. The Apples in Stereo are recording a new album we started a couple months ago. It should take about a year to come out. I also just finished an album with my other group, American Revolution. It's been a very musical time these last few months. The new Apples is really, really good. It sounds like R&B blasted from the speakers of a UFO. That's exactly what it sounds like.
Are Apples in Stereo fans at an age where they're having kids? Are these the kids you made Robbert Bobbert & the Bubble Machine for?
"Robbert Bobbert is sixty percent stand-up."
I don't know — I guess it's maybe for preschoolers up to elementary school age, maybe fourth grade. Probably some of our fans have kids that age. But there's also some songs on there, like "We Are Superheroes," that could have been on an Apples album.
Something that separates Robbert Bobbert & the Bubble Machine from the rest of the slew of kids records made by established rock folk is its concept: You've created this alter-ego for yourself and you get into character during live shows by pretending you're the brilliant inventor behind everyday stuff like cups and spoons. How do the kids react?
They're awesome. Sometimes they argue with me, but then they're distracted because I've added this huge robotic bubble machine my wife Marcy built onstage, and I also have this huge boom box with flashing lights blasting. Robbert Bobbert is sixty percent stand-up — I have to try to make them laugh. It's just fun to ham it up.
The album even includes a comic book designed by Todd Webb, who does illustrations for Nickelodeon Magazine. How did that come about?
Growing up, I always wanted to be a cartoonist, so that's always appealed to me. But about a year and half ago this guy I know who writes this blog called Optical Atlas send me a link he said I should check out. It was from this kid in a band, and this kid had had a dream that he had been talking with me and invented a way to play music on an abacus. He wrote a song about it and happened to post the song on my birthday. The kid turned out to be Todd, the cartoonist. I thought it was cool that he thought of me, and I wrote him a letter and said it was really sweet of him, and that it was just this cool coincidence that he posted it on my birthday. Then he wrote me back and said he was a comic artist. I liked the synchronicity of the whole event, that I would meet him just as I was finishing my children's album. So I went out and bought Nick Magazine at the supermarket and it was awesome. Things just gelled. Over the last six months he's been writing it I've given suggestions and we've sort of loosely tied the comic book to the subjects on the album. Now we're thinking of making short cartoons — Robbert Bobbert math-themed cartoons for kids.
About the Author
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Tammy La Gorce is a freelance entertainment writer living in New Jersey with her son and daughter. Her work regularly appears in The New York Times, GRAMMY and other magazines. |
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