Diane: What is your life like when you are not riding? How do you keep grounded into reality?

 Let’s Chat With…Jack Forman

of Recess Monkey..

Recess Monkey is a great musical group made up of three elementary school teachers that know how to bring the kids to their feet with their fun and interactive rocking music! Recently, I had the chance to catch up with Recess Monkey at Symphony Space NYC.
RecessMonkeytown.com 

Interview: Diane Sullivan with Jack Forman

Diane: Three teachers? I need to know more about this! Tell me about the

 inspiration behind Recess Monkey! It’s especially interesting to me, since
 hubby and I are both teachers!

Jack: The band really came together organically. All three of us taught in the same elementary school for a number of years and got to know each other, first and foremost, as colleagues. Over time, we discovered that we were listening to a lot of the same albums and, wouldn’t you know it, all played rock instruments. The writing was on the wall- we needed to be a band! The school is a small independent elementary in Seattle called UCDS where teachers are encouraged to bring their creative pastimes to the classroom. We started playing indie rock in local clubs here in Seattle, unaware how much enjoyment would come later once we blended our classroom lives with our musical endeavors. It only took a few dozen mid-week rock shows that got us home at 3 in the morning to realize that either our musical or professional lives had to give! Luckily, we realized that if we made music with our students in mind, we could have the best of both worlds. And it truly is the best: family audiences are the most giving and exciting audiences that we’ve ever played for!

Jack: Drew and Daron still teach, but this year I’ve taken on more band responsibilities as I stay home with my young son. Since our schools are pretty progressive, all of the faculty go by their first names and spend most of their time working individually with kids, so we haven’t had as much of a culture shock as what would happen if a “traditional” suit-and-tie teacher put on an indie rock uniform and played on stage. The difference between our stage selves and our teacher selves is a lot more subtle, and kids aren’t too weirded out by it. In the classroom, we spend a lot more time listening to kids on the figurative stage than the contrary- we strive to make our shows similarly interactive.

Jack: We started by accident- Drew wrote several songs based on the pre-K program for a professional development class he was taking. We recorded them in a classroom at school, trying to decipher what makes a kids’ song different than for-adult music… And we discovered that there doesn’t really have to be any difference. It took an album or two for us to build a voice and understand our audience a little better, but we constantly benefit from being surrounded by kids. Our classrooms and playgroups are like focus groups for what’s going on in kids’ minds at different stages of development. I’m really excited for my son to start talking, because I think there will be a lot of great material coming!

Jack: It’s funny- Daron and Drew got the joke right away, but it took me literally 2 years to get the pun. I felt so stupid! I’m IN the band!!! I won’t ruin it for your readers 🙂

Diane: Favorite moment ever?
Jack: We’ve played over 500 shows, and there are tons of really special moments from them. I remember a couple of summers ago we were driving up the hill to play a show at the beautiful Getty Center in Los Angeles, and suddenly a live show that we had recorded on SiriusXM started playing in our rental car… How crazy is that? We were listening to ourselves play a live show on our way to go play a live show! I remember the feeling of looking out at a big crowd of 800 kids and parents, many of whom knew the words to our songs, and realizing that we were the luckiest band in the world.