Los Angeles Times

"WITH THE KIDS"

By Michael Berick

"Life with them is one big circus The whimsical Sippy Cups get toddlers (and parents) rockin' with carnival-like shows."

Special to The Times

KIDS' music bands normally don't trace their existence to the late, eccentric Pink Floyd singer Syd Barrett, but the theatrical-minded Bay Area outfit the Sippy Cups isn't your typical kids' music group.

The band's origins trace back to 2004, when musician and kids' music teacher Paul Godwin watched his then-2 1/2 -year-old son, Bodhi, ride his tricycle around the living room. Godwin started playing the old Pink Floyd tune "Bike" and something clicked. "A really Syd Barrett psychedelic moment," he describes it.

A short time later, Godwin played some Pink Floyd and Velvet Underground tunes at a benefit for a local park with two friends, guitarist Mark Verlander and juggler Doug Nolan. After their performance, he spontaneously dubbed their band the Sippy Cups.

Since then, the Sippy Cups have become quite the sensation in the Bay Area family-entertainment scene with their exuberant music making and carnival-like shows. The group has solidified into a spirited six-piece outfit, with Godwin, Verlander and Nolan joined by keyboardist Alison Faith Levy, drummer Josef Becker and, most recently, bassist Rudy Trubitt, who intrigued the band members by telling them that he owned a cow suit.

They're appearing Saturday at the House of Blues Sunset Strip. Performing in nightclubs isn't unusual for them: They have turned San Francisco clubs such as Café du Nord and the Great American Music Hall into kids' wonderlands.

The Sippy Cups separate themselves from the Raffis and Laurie Berkners of the children's-music world through their sense of spectacle. "A lot of kids' music came out of Burl Ives, Ella Jenkins, Pete Seeger, a guy with a guitar," Godwin explains. "For us, it was more rock show with streamer cannons and giant balloons."

Verlander and his wife, Susan, both graphic artists, are responsible for the band's imaginative design work, from the Technicolor stage props to the cartoony CD covers. "You could say we are children of the '60s just now getting to live out our own psychedelic dreams," Verlander says.

Although Nolan doesn't play an instrument, his role is just as important as the musicians'. Besides juggling, riding a unicycle and generally clowning around during the shows, Nolan (an American Conservatory Theater graduate who teaches environmental education) also assumes the guise of several characters, such as the sensitive superhero Super Guy and the malaprop-ish Major Minor, while interacting with the crowd.

The Sippy Cups' original concept was to serve up great '60s and early-'70s songs to the youth audience. Classic tunes such as Velvet Underground's "Who Loves the Sun," the Beatles' "Baby You're a Rich Man" and the Rolling Stones' "She's a Rainbow" populate the group's first CD, "Give Peas a Chance." But some of the band's choices - such as Love's "My Little Red Book" - didn't go over with the children. The band discovered that it needed songs like War's "Low Rider," that had a hook either tempo-wise or performance-wise.