Lawrence.com

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, available for free download below.

No-fi highlights from the podcast

lawrence.com: How do you find the time to work on your music?

Pryor: Scheduling. We're kind of ahead of the game-we've already started writing sketches of what will probably go on the next album. You can figure that we get done with something six months to a year before anybody else hears it, so we're always kind of looking to the next thing. It seems impressive but it's not. We just finished a [Terrible] Twos album, but that's just kind of setting up gear and coming up with ideas.

Is it easier to write children's music?

Pryor: I guess the music's a little easier but it's almost harder to write the lyrics. You have to think age-appropriate.

What's some of the new material?

Pryor: "Great Big Poop"-that's a hit. "McAlester" is a song about a kid who doesn't take a bath and his parents have to hose him down. There's a song about hide and seek, there's a song about consonants and how they don't get the respect that vowels get.

How often do you get a chance to play for kids?

Pryor: We've only done it a handful of times, not for a lack of trying. It really has to be on a Saturday or Sunday. The last tour we did we tried to fill in kids' shows. It's was a lot of: drive all night, stop at a gas station to brush your teeth so you don't stink that bad for the kids, play the kids show, go to a hotel and sleep and then go to the adult show.

Album Mp3s

Live on lawrence.com

• "Idaho"
• "Ex's and Oh's" (live)
• "My Old Man Had a Pistol" (live)
• "Revenge" (live)
• "Without a Sound"

More on New Amsterdams

Bill Belzer: Those are always consistently the most fun shows.

Pryor: Having the worst tour, just being pissed and wanting to go home, and then you go play at the children's museum in Portland, Oregon-then it's 'This is awesome!'

Eric McCann: You don't always know how it's going to go, like the one in Berkley... but it really doesn't matter. Always fun.

How do the kids react?

Pryor: You have to engage them. You can't just say, like at a night show, 'How's it going?' You gotta be like, 'What sound does a lion make?' Engage them, play up-tempo stuff and get them to dance.

Nate Hofer: Do the kids know the songs?

Album Mp3s

Something Cool for the Kids

• "We Can All Get Along With Dinosaurs (demo)"
• "When I Get To Eleven (demo)"
• "Pizza and Chocolate Milk (demo)"

More on New Amsterdams

Pryor: They're starting to. But they're always so shy and reserved. Except for "Bug."

Hofer: The tour a couple weeks ago-Elliott went.

Pryor: That actually went really well. He played the maracas onstage with us every night, which he's done at the kids' show before but never before with the New Ams. He came to practice with those plastic hunting earphones on. Because they don't make earplugs that fit little kids, but they do make hunting gear.

Belzer: That's ironic.

Pryor: He did pretty well.

Album Mp3s

Killed or Cured online EP

• "Wears So Thin"
• "Watch the World Cave In"
• "Heaven Sent"
• "Drinking in the Afternoon"
• "Strangled by the Thought"

More on New Amsterdams

Belzer: He smoked [laughter]. He tried to smoke in the van.

Pryor: Always picking up chicks.

Belzer: He was very task-oriented. He knew where his maracas were, helped set up the drums.

Hofer: He knows all the instruments and who they belong to. What three-year-old knows what a pedal steel is?

Pryor: Now Jersey's starting to get into Elliott's instruments. They're gonna be the next Nelson.

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