Andy Cohen with Moira Meltzer-Cohen Small But Mighty – Songs For Growing People

CD Review 

The old timey bluesman makes a kids record like none you ever heard before. Very close in spirit to ones Pete Seeger made a million years ago, he’s road tested this material on his kids and grand kids over the years and you can be sure that tough audience told him which end was up. Treating the kids as equals, his originals fit right in with the authentic old timey stuff and your kids will never be the same once they wrap their heads around this hidden gem.

Midwest Record                                                                                                                                                                                   Volume 45 Number 7                                                                                                                                                              November 7, 2020

Album Notes

This album is a mix of folk songs and some traditional blues tunes sung and played by Andy Cohen, for children and grownups. A few tracks feature his daughter Moira on lead and harmony vocals.  Andy plays acoustic 6 and 12 string acoustic & slide guitar, banjo and accordion.

Notes From Andy

My daughter Moira, who sings on it, came up with the title and subtitle — ‘Songs for Growing People’ — for this CD. I think they capture the intent of the project, which is to talk substantively to kids without talking down to them. Now that Moira is grown, she sees the old music as I do, as a thing in itself, and coinciden­tally, the underlayment to most of what’s available today, of value for its own sake as well as for the history it contains. Some of the sillier songs on the CD are ones that I wrote, but all the ‘covers’ are ones I do when I’m playing for kids. Trust me, they get them. My humble opinion is that children gravitate to Old Time Music like it was made up with them in mind.