They Might Be Giants, Barenaked Ladies, Andre 3000, Natalie Merchant and Lisa Loeb are among the stars who recently recorded children’s music.

Kenny Loggins was making music for kids before making music for kids was cool.

“I’ve done [children’s albums] two times before … One was called ‘Return to Pooh Corner’ and another one was called ‘More Songs From Pooh Corner,’ but they were lullaby records for a little bit younger children,” he said. “The idea of a family record is it should be a record that the children will love, of course, but that the parents will love as much as the children, and that’s what I tried to do with both of those records and also with ‘All Join In.’ ”

Released last year, “All Join In” features 14 fun tracks, including covers of The Beatles’ “All Together Now” and “Two of Us.” And there’s another song about the bear with very little brain; “Underneath the Same Sky” is from the DVD “My Friends Tigger, Pooh and a Musical Too.”

“David Agnew, the president of Disney Records, said he raised his kids to the ‘Return to Pooh Corner’ record, and because of that, he wanted an up-tempo version of the same thing for Disney [Records],” Loggins said.

Kenny Loggins

In addition to singing about adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood, the Grammy Award winner has taken fans to the “Danger Zone,” issued an ultimatum with “This Is It,” encouraged everyone to cut “Footloose,” and ushered in the holidays with “Celebrate Me Home.”

Loggins will bring his band for a 7:30 p.m. show June 15 at Centennial Terrace in Sylvania. Tickets are $47.50 and $20.50.

The singer-songwriter answered some questions for Toledo Free Press last month by phone from a tour stop in Red Bank, N.J.

TFP: Have you always been a fan of Winnie the Pooh?

Loggins: That was the first book I ever read when I was a little kid, so I was a big fan of Winnie the Pooh for years. When I wrote “House at Pooh Corner,” it was sort of an underground thing, but a lot of people I knew loved Winnie the Pooh and related to it. But for me, “House at Pooh Corner” was a song about growing up; I wrote it as a senior in high school, and it was that final chapter where Christopher Robin leaves Pooh and goes off to school that was the inspiration for that song about leaving your childhood behind, and it’s funny how it’s just sort of transposed itself into being a song about childhood. I think that I was incredibly fortunate to be connected with Winnie the Pooh and have that as part of my career.

TFP: “Two of Us” with Jim Messina is the first time the two of you recorded in almost 30 years. With the reunion tour last year, any plans for a new disc together?

Loggins: We’ve kicked it around; anything is possible, but at this point, there are no plans. But we did have a lot of fun on the tour.

TFP: You’ve written so many songs for movies — from “I’m Alright” from “Caddyshack” to “Footloose” — what did you like about that?

Loggins: The movies kept me alive when disco came in and took over, and I was fortunate to be able to dodge that era by staying involved with movies. I haven’t done a movie in a long time, honestly, but I would love to do it again. It’s very inspirational. When I’m writing normally for my own record, I have to pull from my own life, my own experiences, but when you’re writing for a movie, they kind of deliver you an experience, and you have to drop into that empathetically and … you have to kind of suss out what the director is trying to get at with this scene and then enhance that with the music.

TFP: What do you want fans to take away from your music?

Loggins: I want them to remember how good the music felt to them when they first heard it and feel it again and get that it can still be a part of their lives. And as an artist, I’m still making music; I don’t want to be dismissed as an oldies act. I want audiences to remember that I’m still there, I’m still at it, and I can still write a song.

Tags: Kenny Loggins

This entry was posted on Friday, June 4th, 2010 at 12:01 am and is filed under Arts and Life, In Concert.
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