December 30, 2020 – A local children’s music band will be headlining the Children Museum of Illinois’ Happy Noon Year Event tomorrow from 11:30 am to noon. The Awesome Squad is composed of Zach Garrett and Michael Scherer, who were business partners for around seven years before starting their band, but the change began when they had kids of their own.
The Awesome Squad hit the ground running in July of 2016 when they released their “Perfect Day EP”, and have been writing and performing children’s music ever since. The group began performing at the Children’s Museum of Illinois once a week and the ideas started to flow.
“We started off doing nursery rhyme sessions and that sparked us to start writing on our own. We used the museum kids to test our songs on and once we started realizing the parents would come back to us each week and ask if we had songs recorded, that’s when we knew there was an opportunity for us.” said member Michael Scherer. “Originally we were making our sound like a folk band. It was very acoustic in the instrumentation and the songs we wrote. At one point I looked to see the top charts on iTunes and it was all Kidz Bop and Disney, so we switched up our whole instrumentation style to go for a very pop-dance driven with hip-hop elements in there and it’s really helped us to further our audience. Everything we do is very beat-driven, so it gets kids moving whether they know the actions to our songs or not.” he continued.
But the band doesn’t just focus on the music for the children. They want the parents at their shows to enjoy their songs as well. “We didn’t want the parents to throw the CD out of the window driving down the road.” said member Zach Garrett. They found that parents didn’t like the music their kids listen to, so they focused on writing music to make everyone happy. A big focus on their shows is interaction and under current circumstances, they can’t see their audience. “It’s been a good way to get parents involved in the show with their kids because they have to respond to be involved and participate in what is going on,” Garrett said.
The pandemic has slowed their shows, but the group is very active on Facebook. They have done interactive shows for the Children’s Museum and Decatur Public Schools. “It’s a tough time to be a kid. There’s not a lot of stability out there for them to look at…and that can be hard. The fact that we get the opportunity to speak positivity and show them some love and play them some music, that’s a very special thing that I know we’re both pretty privileged to be able to do.” said Garrett.
The free Livestream of Happy Noon Year will begin at 11:30 am on the Children Museum of Illinois’ Facebook page.
If you’re looking for more on The Awesome Squad, check out their Facebook here.
