About

The first song Justin Roberts ever played for four-year-olds had no chorus, no repetition, and a plot involving a giraffe and a nightingale. He’d written it for his indie-folk band, for adults, with no real reason to think a room of preschoolers would sit still for it, let alone come back asking for more. They did. By the open house, they knew every word.

What Roberts discovered in that room was that kids were capable of far more than he’d been led to believe. He kept writing songs at the preschool, then on a whim sent a demo tape to college friends, twenty-somethings with no kids of their own. His friend and future producer Liam Davis heard something in them and pushed to record them properly. The result was Great Big Sun (1997), a gentle, folky record about pajamas and pancakes that Billboard called “a sheer delight” and Sesame Street Parent Magazine named the Best Gift of ’98. Roberts was still enrolled in Divinity School at the University of Chicago when it came out. By the second album, Yellow Bus, the choice had made itself. He dropped out of school.

Onstage, kids dance hard enough that mosh pits break out. With his band, the Not Ready for Naptime Players, Roberts plays the songs loud and talks to the crowd the way he’d talk to anyone. Same dry humor, same respect. He’s played his show at Lollapalooza and the Kennedy Center, and the Today Show. USA Today’s take: “Hands down the best songwriter in the genre.”

The sound has opened up over the years into melodic indie pop with a kid’s-eye view. His inspirations are Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, and Fountains of Wayne. The songs sound like a songwriter who happens to be writing for kids. “I write stuff that I would want to listen to as an adult,” Roberts says. “Kids are able to take in a lot more than we give them credit for.” The songs are hooky, and honest in a way that sneaks up on parents. NPR has called them “masterpieces in miniature, equivalent to A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.” “Three Little Pigs” quietly makes heroes of the two pigs everyone wrote off, the ones who chose music and poetry over brick houses. “Henrietta’s Hair” takes a girl’s refusal to brush her hair and turns it into an unexpected act of welcome.