Ten Million Pounds of Sludge

Schoolhouse Rock

Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007

Some days, simply waking up can slay the most capable of adults. Some of us may only have work to manage, and that can definitely be enough—but we’re not Matt Pryor. Since forming The New Amsterdams in 2000, the band has managed to release nearly an album a year, whether under that name or under the moniker of the kid-centric version of the Ams, The Terrible Twos. Add three young children to Pryor’s family, two large dogs and commitments to the Little Red Schoolhouse—suddenly ‘busy’ becomes relative.

The New Ams have been organizing shows as fundraisers for the school that learns Pryor’s kids. The Little Red Schoolhouse, or The Lawrence Community Nursery School, or LCNS, functions as a co-op, requiring more parental involvement than your average nursery school. This includes fundraising, and rather than a traditional bake sale or a 5K, Pryor and his bandmates have taken on playing shows as their way of contributing to the school’s effort.

Along the way, the band has nurtured an interest in writing and performing music for children, eventually forming a pseudo-side project in The Terrible Twos. As the two acts are essentially the same band, they tour together. The bands’ most recent tour featured Pryor’s three-year-old, Elliot, on maracas.

The members of The New Amsterdams recently invited lawrence.com over to their practice space to talk about education, playing in front of those small fries, and to play some news songs.

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