Seven or so years ago I was on the fundraising committee at my kids’ nursery school and offered to ask some of my musical friends to play at the annual Scholastic Book Fair there. Mabel and Sally have long since graduated from pre-K, and I’m still booking the Book Fair. Because it’s a gas.
This year’s event, Saturday, Dec. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., is one of the most diverse, jam-packed and original line-ups ever. Without further ado:
10:00-10:30 a.m.: Jonny Rodgers (tuned drinking glasses, tape loops, guitar and vocals. Jonny is of course the guitarist from Mighty Purple, whose neo-classical solo material has taken him in fresh new directions.)
10:30-11:00 a.m.: Wayfarers (traditional folk group doing children’s songs)
11:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.: Toddler Tunes (guitar tunes for kids, played by the inimitable Robert Messore)
11:30 a.m.-noon.: Mangold-Heisers (family act featuring world folk music, homemade instruments and even clog dancing)
Noon-1 p.m.: Puppets! Betty Baisden performs a full-length Roxi Foxx show (like the ones she does regularly at the Peabody Museum and elsewhere), plus there’s an added Chinese puppetry performance.
1:00-1:30 p.m.: Bill Collins, fresh from winning a “Giant Steps” trophy from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven at its annual arts awards ceremony this week, is making his UCNS Book Fair debut with a conceptual concert of songs in many styles, all inspired by the P.D. Eastman classic Go Dog Go. Bill is best known locally for his rockabilly stylings with The Swaggerts and The Big Bad Johns, his Irish pub songs and his extraordinary contemporary union rally songs.
1:30-2 p.m.: The Acoustic Sparrows (original and classic roots duo). James Velvet and Johhny Memphis are the toast of the New Haven Cityseed farmers’ market circuit. Their musical collaborations go back decades, to the New Haven Radiators. James, of course, is the co-host of WPLR’s Local Bands Show, a great singer-songwriter and the former leader of Cafe Nine legends The Mocking Birds.
2-2:30 p.m.: Dean Falcone, Chris Arnott (pop fun with guitar and ukulele). Dean is the guitarist and co-leader of the Shellye Valauskas Experience. His local band legacy includes The Excerpts, Dean & the Dragsters and 100 Faces. Christopher Arnott is the proprietor of this website, longtime writer for the New Haven Advocate and leisuretime ukulele maniac.
See? Cool line-up?!
The event is a benefit for United Community Nursery School, a downtown institution for over four decades. So there’s a small admission fee. The Book Fair also features a Scholastic Book Fair with hundreds of books, a bake sale, kids’ activities and other stuff.
The United Communited Nursery School Book Fair is Dec. 4 from 10-2:30 p.m. at the school itself, inside the Parish House of United Church on the Green, 323 Temple Street. (The parish house is NOT the church itself—it’s a block away, at the corner of Temple and Wall streets.) There’s parking in the lot behind the building, and in the lot across the street from the front of the building, plus there are meters all along Temple Street.
Be there, and be a kid again.