Kid Kazooey & The BallRoom Roustabouts

Inspired by the likes of They Might Be Giants, Randy Newman, Hoagy Carmichael, Klezmer, Ragtime, and Rock-n-Roll, Kid Kazooey & The BallRoom Roustabouts are a crowd pleasing, genre hopping, upbeat, low volume band for families with children.
Kid Kazooey is Kevin MacDowell. With degrees in library science and youth ministry, Macdowell, 43, took his experience and joy in working with youth, and a lifetime passion of making fun music (and making music fun!), and created work for himself as Kid Kazooey, the Singin’ & Swingin’ Librarian. Churches were too serious, and libraries were too quiet, so now MacDowell writes, records, performs, and teaches music to the young and young at heart at theatres, libraries, schools, birthday parties, pizza joints, and festival stages. Whether it is as a solo act, or with his band, Kid Kazooey & The BallRoom Roustabouts, children and families love their interactive concert experience with this energetic, multi-talented children’s performer.
Kid Kazooey & The Ballroom Roustabouts are; Kid Kazooey/Kevin MacDowell, the musical director and benevolent dictator on guitars, tenor banjo, ukulele,all types of keyboard instruments, jaw’s harp, and of course the kazoo; Gantzy Dander (Mrs. Kazooey)/Lara Lynn Weaver on drums, flute, accordion, lead vocals, and the carbide tipped contraption; Tugboat/Oliver Wittman on bass; Joe Bonobo/Joe Lee as our Master of Ceremonies (and horn honker and bongo slapper); Bartholomew Cubbins/Chris Barth on acoustic guitar; and the great Arbutus Cunningham/Hester Hemmerling on recorder and melodica.
“Playing music for children is great” says Kazooey, “ because they haven’t yet formed musical prejudices, or even preferences. I can genre hop from one song to the next. In a concert for adults, I couldn’t get away with playing klezmer music, sea chanteys, Motown tunes, and original music, (not to mention Itsy Bitsy Spider and The Muffin Man!) all in one show. But with children, they love and accept it all as just plain fun music, and I get to explore all the differences I love in modern music!”
Kid Kazooey refers to his original material as Storysinging Dance Music. It’s music you can dance to that tells a story!