Celebrating 10 Years of fleaBITE
“fleaBITE is the perfect mix of entertainment, originality and intelligence for young kiwis.”
CEO Recorded Music NZ
fleaBITE was born in 2011 with the release of the album IN YOUR EAR.
For the years preceding I had been the producer of ‘the outlaws of New Zealand children’s music’, FATCAT & FISHFACE.
Now I was going it alone. Well, not strictly alone. Wellington is a small hilly city crammed with creative friendly people. So once I’d recorded demos for IN YOUR EAR I asked a few of my favourites to come and play. This crew have been supportive throughout the whole fleaBITE story: film composers Plan 9 (who work with Peter Jackson), Jeff Henderson (sax maniac), Shannon Williams (spoken vocal expert), Stephen Templer (illustrator), Ruth Templer (animator) Ross Payne (animator) and Geni McCallum (creative tech geek). I detonated the new release and stood back…nary a ripple. This was in the days where there were no awards for NZ children’s music or even a community of like-minded artists. But this release was important just to show I could write and produce material on my own.
And I began a tradition of releasing one new animated music clip per album. Given that fleaBITE is not a live performance outfit, this seemed the best way to get my material out into the world. Plus I enjoyed working on animations with up and coming talent (who were also friends). I have a good sense of theatricality, but no knowledge of animation. So once the director and I had worked out a story and I’d signed off the animatic (a series of sketches that sync with the music) I gave them free reign. I’ve learnt that if you can’t pay people proper rates for their skill and talent, you can at least offer them the freedom to explore their vision and a longer timeline than originally anticipated. Some of the clips debuted at film festivals, before the advent of Youtube. Our credits were always notably shorter than everyone else’s and only featured one animator, one illustrator (who were sometimes the same person) and me as creative producer.
Buoyed by the experience, the following year I again sat in a small dark room perched high above Wellington harbour, working on CIRCUS OF FLEAS (2012). Audio engineer Gil Eva Craig introduced me to a bald-headed man with a long beard. This was the amazing multi-instrumentalist, Adam Page, from Adelaide. At first, Adam agreed to work on one song, but after sitting down with me to listen to the demos, he ended up contributing to almost every song on the album. CIRCUS OF FLEAS was announced Best NZ Children’s Album at the 2013 Children’s Music Awards, newly restored after a 10-year hiatus. It featured the enduringly popular Don’t Sit Under the Poo Tree, which won Children’s Video of the Year (thanks to illustrator Stephen Templer and animator Ross Payne). The character of workaholic ‘Granny’ was based on the mother of a friend of mine. In her eighties, this formidable and fearless woman lashed herself to the chimney with a length of rope and painted the roof as the wind howled about her ears.
“Another prime batch of sharp, funny, adult-friendly kids' songs with a rich seam of surrealism.”
About this time I moved back to South Auckland and returned to the old farmhouse where I had spent my childhood. I set up a small studio and started working on THE JUNGLE IS JUMPING. I enlisted talented friends Conrad Wedde (guitar) and Chris O’Connor (drums) from The Phoenix Foundation, and Jeff Henderson to take my demos to the next level. Once again the stars aligned and THE JUNGLE IS JUMPING won the 2015 Best NZ Children’s Album. We animated the rollicking sea shanty No Toast (still an audience favourite), and Do The Woopsie appears on Suzy Cato’s Totally Awesome Kiwi Kids compilation. The occasional oddball appreciates the nighttime duel Little Miss Mosquito.
“A finely crafted collection of kids’ songs that also showcases a fantastic range of musical styles. Another excellent record for young ones”
In 2018 I returned to the studio to work on album number four with my old friends Janet Roddick, David Donaldson and Stephen Roche at Plan 9. We had played a lot together back in the day: in a restaurant band (The Cutlery Set), and they had worked with me on various radio comedy shows (Don’t Touch That Dial for Radio NZ National) and other short films. Now they were famous film scorers with a long list of film credits (including several films with Peter Jackson), documentaries and international TV series. I flew down to Wellington to work with them, and remember playing a lot of table tennis between songs, and eating copious amounts of morning tea. BITE ME (2018) spawned the legendary Halloween song The Skellingtons of Wellington, translated into a video by Spanish illustrator Catty Flores and animator Ruth Templer.
“It’s a testament to her wry lyrics and wide-ranging arrangements that I still listen to this stuff, voluntarily and alone, years after my daughter exchanged such fare for Beyonce and Taylor Swift.”
By the time I started work on SNAKES ALIVE, it was apparent that the music industry was now focused on producing and promoting singles. Albums were the dinosaurs of yesteryear. I have never considered myself a ‘singles’ kind of gal. My natural inclination is to see a group of songs as a record (in both senses of the word) of the specific time in my life that I am writing. Plus I enjoy playing with and exposing kids to, many different musical genres. So for SNAKES ALIVE I released songs as consecutive singles over a year and wrapped them up as an album at the end. One of the strongest songs in this bunch is Chihuahua, a catchy ditty that went on to be a finalist in NZ kids’ single of the year, and also a finalist in the International Songwriting Competition. To tell the truth I had no idea people found it so catchy and initially thought it was one of the weaker songs. It’s very hard to see the wood (not the trees) when you are immersed in a project of your own making. This album took forever to mix because Auckland was thrust in and out of lockdown for most of 2020 so we couldn’t get into the Big Pop mixing studio. It ended up giving me valuable experience in mixing from afar as we sent files back and forth over several months, and helped me learn to clarify and communicate my intentions.
SNAKES ALIVE squeaked through to win 2021 Best NZ Children’s Album. By now the competition was heating up as NZ arts’ funding bodies started to recognise the importance and calibre of children’s artists in these far-flung isles.
Lockdown 2020 also proved a fruitful time for working on the podcast series EVERYBODY WANTS TO JOIN THE FLEABITE BAND with Shannon Williams. Stuck at home with nowhere to go, we wrote and produced 13 episodes, as drummer flea character fleaBITE travelled New Zealand in search of insect musicians to join his new band. EVERYBODY WANTS TO JOIN THE FLEABITE BAND was a finalist at the 2021 NZ Radio Awards: https://www.fleabite.co.nz/podcast.
There’s lots more fleaBITE to look forward to in the years ahead…more fabulous and fun songs, collaborations and music clips that encourage kids to veer off the straight and narrow explore and experiment, and throw their imaginations around the room.
Thanks to all my wonderful and talented friends, Creative NZ, NZ on AIR, and you crazy people out there,
Love Robin
FATCAT & FISHFACE: https://www.fatcatfishface.com
Plan 9: https://www.plan9.co.nz/
Stephen Templer: https://stephentempler.co.nz/
Ruth Templer: https://www.templer.co.nz
Adam Page: http://www.adampage.com.au/
Catty Flores: http://www.cattyflores.com/cf/index.html
Geni McCallum: https://www.genimccallum.com/
Ross Payne: https://vimeo.com/140307473