Educating Kids Through Music: The Banana Slug String Band - PART 1

In our journey to explore the different methods of educating kids about their food and the environment, we bring you a new way we haven't explored yet on this program: Educating kids through music!  Join us as we talk to members of the Banana Slug String Band, a band that's celebrating their 40th Anniversary at the time of this posting and their journey through the years.

This is part one of a two-part episode.  Part two will be available later this month. 

Transcript

Educating Kids through Music: the Banana Slug String Band Part 1

00:00:12 Rick

Michelle, what is going on?

00:00:14 Michelle

I don't know.  This is such a departure from our regular tunes. What's happening?

00:00:19 Rick

Well, these tunes are brought to us with full permission of the banana slug string band.

00:00:25 Michelle

I love that name.

00:00:26 Rick

Well, we get into it. We talked to them about that name. But this is a group that's been around as long as 40 years, 40 years, 40 years in January.  Is their anniversary - We're putting this out in January 2025 and it is their 40th anniversary.  Almost as long as The Rolling Stones, I mean. And they've been together for members for the entire time. All the original members, we talked about bands and stuff, but these guys like you know this is a farm to school podcast. And we talk about things that like, what is the next step of farm to school creates, and what can you teach kids about, where their food comes from and these guys teach through song, that's all they do.

00:01:15 Michelle

Well, it's the culture of agriculture, right?

00:01:19 Rick

Like, can you market that? Can you copyright that?

00:01:21 Michelle

Trademark!  It is now.

00:01:24 Rick

Trademark.

00:01:24 Michelle

It actually was pretty good, right?

00:01:26 Rick

It totally is.

00:01:28 Michelle

But it's true. Culture means a lot of different things and I'm really excited we do. We do, activists, we do scholars and we are doing musicians. Love this.

00:01:39 Rick

Oh, and these guys I interviewed them way back in July and it was…  As we're speaking now, we have a freezing fog alert. That's a thing where we live, folks. Fog freezes to the ground, to your car when you're driving through. But so it's very cold in the middle of winter, but we when I interviewed them it was 104 degrees! And I was out in a farm and they were in town for. It's something called “the country faire” here in Oregon. And they've been coming, I guess for 30 years to this this thing singing and it's amazing. If you Google it, you'll see lots of pictures of them. Really interesting journey and I talked to Larry and Doug. Two of the members, two of the four. But yeah, I'll get into that and introduce him.

00:02:30 Michelle

Can't wait for everyone to hear about their story and dance along? Warm up to some music.

00:02:34 Rick 

Yeah. So anyway. That will start here in a SEC. I just wanted to tell you too, if you guys like what we're doing to. I just found out like on every single platform that we're doing, there's a button that says contact us on every single platform, like if it's iHeartRadio or Spotify or Stitcher, they all have that button there, and please send us send that we want to hear from you guys. What you think about what we're doing and if you have any ideas for shows or anything like that, we would love to hear from you. Please do that.

00:03:14 Michelle

Great. Thanks everyone. Enjoy the show.

00:03:17 Rick

Here I'm in the outskirts..  Where are we, Venita?. Elmira, Elmira. It was a very wind-y and beautiful, beautiful Rd. beautiful country outside of Eugene OR.

00:03:30

Doug Greenfield

Yeah.

00:03:32

Rick

And there's an event here. They have every year called the Oregon Country Faire and you guys come down here quite a bit for this, right?

00:03:40 Larry Graf

Come up here.

00:03:40 Rick

Did I say down? It was down for me because I'm up north. Yeah, OK. You come up from Santa Cruz?

00:03:46 Doug Greenfield

Yeah. Santa Cruz, CA.

00:03:47 Rick

OK and you guys are the Banana Slug String Band.

00:03:49 Doug Greenfield

Yeah, yeah.

00:03:54 Rick

So my first thing is why banana slugs?

00:04:01 Doug Greenfield

So we're just going to take a bit and introduce ourself. I’m Doug dirt.

00:04:03 Rick

Mr. Dirt, yes.

00:04:04 Doug Greenfield

..Greenfield and Larry Graph with two of the founding members.. there are four of us. We’re still members and still performing in our 39th year.  Yeah, 39 years ago. We were teaching 40 years ago. We were teaching in this outdoor school, in the Redwoods, and those who know about the Redwood ecology know that after a moist, good, rainy kind of day. The bananas slugs come out. They come out, they come out from under their Duff and they come out from..  abating within protecting themselves.

00:04:41 Rick

Now a lot of people in the country don't know what a slug is or banana slug.

00:04:46 Doug Greenfield

Although that's very true, they think it's like some kind of cartoon character. But no, they're real. Are very real. Bananas are yellow down in our town.

00:04:55 Rick

Yeah, yellow, green.

00:04:56 Doug Greenfield

They get more green up here in Oregon and even more in Washington, Green and Black.

00:04:58 Rick

Yeah. Then black. Black. Yeah.

00:05:00 Doug Greenfield

But they're.

00:05:01 Doug Greenfield

Big time yellow area and they come out and then we teach about the middle…

00:05:08 Rick

Sticky! Oh, if you step on them.

00:05:08 Doug Greenfield

A lot of things about. Oh yeah, they're… Like kids are going to look at them, and then there's this whole ecology about them. And we were teaching about that in this outdoor school. And we were writing songs about it, and we're doing theater about it, Peppa. Pig. It just flowed. It was like one of those moments where, like, OK. This much maligned malice gets malice and it has no like a lot of people don't really give it a lot of love 'cause. It's gross and sticky and whatever. And then we hope to bring around the truth.

00:05:34 Rick

Yeah, yeah.

00:05:46 Doug Greenfield

Which is that that the primary decomposer of the Redwood Forest, they eat up the dust, the leaves and animals, and they create new soil for the tallest living thing ever to live on the planet. The redwoods.

00:06:00 Rick

OK. Well, if you listen to this podcast, you will learn something new every day. That's something I did not know that I just knew. Very disgusting. When you stepped on and barefooted as a kid. See, people asked us like what kind of dangerous creatures do you have? Spiders and like? Well, we do have spiders like black widows, but they're in the eastern part of the state. You know, we just we have slugs here. And they're not dangerous. 

00:06:25 Larry Graf

Maybe for gardens?

00:06:28 Doug Greenfield

Very eco. They really don't go venturing in the gardens like snails do.

00:06:31 Rick

It has, yeah, yeah, right.

00:06:33 Doug Greenfield

Snails can be an issue, but slugs are very… They kind of hang…. I mean, you'll see… Of course you'll see them once in a while, but that's not the primary thing that going through your garden or not.

00:06:43 Rick

And we have the little itty bitty slugs on over here. But I remember I grew up in Washington state up north of Seattle and we had the big giant banana slugs.

00:06:52 Rick

We're spending a lot of time slugs and I really appreciate it. But you did talk about you have. OK, so this is your official handles Airry Larry. And Doug Dirt and you have two other Members that aren't present here.  Back home, and who are they?

00:07:07 Larry Graf

Yes. of course.  Representing the ocean.

00:07:14 Doug Greenfield

Marine Mark and his last name is Nolan. Just so we have that officially on there.

00:07:19 Rick

OK. Why? Why are why are you doing that? Why do you have these monikers? 

00:07:27 Larry Graf

Air and water, and well, with sun soil, water.

So the four elements we're just trying to make a holistic approach to education. And also make it person so kids can learn even from their names. Yeah, everybody is an intentional idea of how to educate kids.

00:07:48 Rick

So yeah, and so you like you said, this is your 39th year doing this. You were teaching in the redwoods at the same time. That’s how you started to do this, OK.

00:08:01 Doug Greenfield

Yeah. Yeah, we were outdoor science teachers. And many of us had different backgrounds of music or theater or curriculum based stuff. And so Steve Van Zandt, not to be confused with the Steve Van Zandt of The Sopranos or the Stevens and of the E Street Band.

00:08:20 Rick 

Yeah, yeah. E St. Band correct, yeah.

00:08:24 Doug Greenfield

This is our Steve so don't be confused the world out there. This is the solar Steve, often called the Barry Manilow Environmental Education, music writing. He is the one that writes the songs that the whole out of environmental education works, yeah. For sure, we've written some, but he's written 95%. He’s the real deal and so, we were teachers and he had already been writing. Had already been.. He had a body of music already, and he needed elemental support. He was kind of a folk musician and he wasn't an entrepreneurial type person and he wasn't a, like, get the music out there with intention or how to do that. And Larry and I had in our DNA and background, the interest in trying to develop ways to make this get out there further.  Yeah, for many reasons. One would be good way to make a living, and we turned out that we could actually do that.

00:09:18 Rick

Yeah. This is your day job. Yeah. Yeah. OK. That's impressive.

00:09:21 Doug Greenfield

Day job for 39 years. Which got our kids through college, all of us are still with our same partners. So we are a statistical anomaly in every way.

00:09:33 Rick

Well, and I was talking to Larry about that earlier today when I was setting up that it… I mean any rock band as you. Well, they're going to be creative differences and I'm sure you guys have had them over the years, but you're still together and that's amazing. That was one of my questions to Larry is like you guys clearly have a passion for teaching kids this environmental education and there's so much that. That meshes with my farm school world about teaching kids about where their food comes from and stuff like that. It was like. Why was that such a lightning bolt for you guys so?

00:10:10 Larry Graf

Well, as Doug said, we were teachers. Are our jobs and our classes. Yeah, So they also were musicians, so there was a natural joining of the two being musicians. And it's just so fun to see kids and teachers get lit up by what we're doing.

00:10:37 Rick

I mean there is really inspiring videos on YouTube and I'll put the links in in all the stuff for that, for your website and the YouTube stuff. And we'll listen to some of your music on the show. But a lot of your YouTube videos are live and as you see the kids out up and dancing and stuff and it's pretty cool.

00:10:55 Doug Greenfield

It's part of our thing is to because we come from this background of, like, campfires and highly interactive environments. So it's always been our understanding as an educational process that when you're approaching the education with multi-modality interaction, you got physical, you got them singing, you got them dancing, you have them doing things with each other. That it becomes this full body experience just within a song. That they that the actual the message goes in deeper and it does and we know it because now 39 years later we got adults that were kids that have their kids that are telling us about how it was for them and how it is for their kids. And the parents which are not grandparents are how important. It was.. It's become multi… When it's real, it's the real thing. A real… It's a real process. That is, that is truly transformational for people to have not just be saying to, for instance, but actually become a part of the band.

00:11:59 Rick

Yeah, well, that's very clear because. I really like some of my favorite my favorite bands.There aren't the bands that come up and just sing like I don't know if you guys remember the Tubes at all.

00:12:13 Doug Greenfield

Of course.

00:12:13 Rick

Fee Waybill. He’s from the Bay Area. Kind of, you know, moved up there for art school and stuff. But it's almost like a vaudeville.  And they have a message and they sing and dance and they have acts and stuff. But when I've seen your guys and you're, you're there in costume and doing your whole thing. It's very much more entertaining to follow, especially as a kid. I'm guessing I'm not a kid anymore. I Just act like one.

00:12:42 Larry Graf

Thousands of shows have played for millions of kids with only become experts at connecting with children and learning what makes them tick and what they would enjoy to listen to and how to interact with them at a concert.

00:13:01 Rick

I bet.  Well, and speaking of that you, when Larry and I first met through e-mail an e-mail chain a few months ago, we were talking about your song. Dirt made my lunch. And so I think that's kind of a good segue into a farm to school time, like where my food comes from and all that. Can you tell how did that song come about?

00:13:23 Larry Graf

Can we listen to it?

00:13:25 Rick

Yeah, let's listen to it right now.

00:13:25 Larry Graf

Yeah.

(MUSIC PLAYS:  “DIRT MADE MY LUNCH”)

00:15:51 Rick

And so, so how did this song happen?

00:15:53 Larry Graf

This was solar Steve. This song was working at a firm educational place called Hin Villa, which is in the Bay Area, and I think he's finding ways to connect a message to a song.

00:16:07 Doug Greenfield

Yeah.

00:16:08 Larry Graf

Because he's working with kids in the garden and so he would…

00:16:10 Rick

Oh, there you go.

00:16:11 Larry Graf

He’s brilliant at thinking of ideas of how to make a click for children, how to learn better, and he came up with this idea during your lunch.

00:16:21 Rick

How long ago does this happen?

00:16:22 Doug Greenfield

That was before the slugs, he wrote it.

00:16:23 Rick

Yeah, I was going to say.

00:16:24 Doug Greenfield

Before us, he wrote that before.

00:16:27 Larry Graf

That's like 1979 was written.

00:16:30 Doug Greenfield

Yeah, he wrote it before us.

00:16:32 Rick

I mean, I was a sophomore in high school.

00:16:36 Doug Greenfield

I want to say one thing about the idea of staying together, holidays with rock'n'roll and whatever. So we all have had a lot of background in being around kids with like being program directors and Wranglers at summer camps, and we have a lot of lot of kid related background and we have a huge passion for the environment and we have a huge passion for being right kids. And educators and parents, and so that we had all in common. But we also were like very four strong personalities, with clearly ideas about how we protect, we would like you to go down, you know, and we had this wonderful person at the very beginning of our onset of becoming full-fledged 85 a band. It was clear that we needed to have some coalescing, some way to keep us focused, you know, because, you know, it's just so easy to go “I'm really interested in whatever outer space” or whatever. So. So this guy had us for a weekend and we basically formulated over the weekend, a mission statement where the band had a full mission statement that was going to direct us when we lost our way and the other thing that we came up with that weekend, which was interesting and sometimes challenging over the years, is we're going to be under consensus format. All for one, one for all. You can also agree to not agree, but let it go forward, which we've done that before. But you know we've had some Tet to Tats, man where it's like recording process. You know where it's just like it's big you know like…

00:18:10 Rick

You know, getting on a podcast.

00:18:13 Larry Graf

I think that we've agreed on 90% of everything, but you know that 10% can break bands up. So. But you know we have agreed on most things.

00:18:24 Rick

That's amazing, man. Yeah. Well, I think that's really, really… I imagine most bands are just like “this is great.. so let's do it.” And they just go into it and then they don't realize that my core values doesn't agree with yours.  So like we always say in the school garden world, don't start a school garden unless you have a plan, it's the same thing. Like, what's going to happen if you have to get a new job and then..  We have a couple episodes on this, actually, that we've had some of the most, the biggest “beautiful-est” school gardens in the world that are just…  They're just all they'll be here forever, and then the person leads and it just vanishes within a year, and it's happened before and but a lot of places that do what you're just what you were talking about like..  well, let's like, have a mission statement.  Let's have a club that we can keep us in check or what? What? Whatever.So I think that's really neat.  That's really cool. I'm glad.

00:19:33 Doug Greenfield

It certainly served us because there's times where we have not gotten along and you know on a personality level or our partners have not gotten along and all kinds of things come up.  Family. It's just like a…  It's just like a family. So and so.

00:19:46 Rick

Oh yeah.

00:19:49 Doug Greenfield

It's always been clear. That no matter what's going on in her personally, we know what our mission is and we'll keep at it.

00:19:56 Rick

Yeah, well, you've stood the test of time, as it were.

00:20:01 Doug Greenfield

When we have done that, haven't we?

00:20:02 Rick

So, I mean, you're doing something right in this day and.

00:20:05 Rick

I mean, back in the day used to put out albums and stuff and now you just put out music to whatever. Do you have so many albums that you put out or anything or..?

00:20:14 Larry Graf

Our last record came out in 2019. It's called pollinator Nation, so it really fits this topic all songs about gardens and insects and pollinators and,  well, it's really great.  Yeah, for this podcast, and hopefully you'll play a couple of those tunes. OK, but yeah.

00:20:35 Rick

I sure could.

00:20:38 Larry Graf

We have recorded 12 records over the 40 years. Yeah. And, you know, I don't know if we'll record another one or not because the record business has definitely changed and it's hard to sell CDs. Hard to manage music though, if you feel creative musicians tend to want to record their creativity. So there's no saying we won't make another record. It's just that the economics is really changed.

00:21:10 Rick

I still listen to C DS.

00:21:12 Doug Greenfield

Yeah, sure. But you see, there is something different about that. Yeah. Which Larry would mention, and we'll probably in a moment is that we have been fortunate because of our educational purpose. There's been organizations that have said, OK, we'll raise money to pay you to go like our pollinators. Got paid to make that album. That is a rare, rare thing in this world now. A record label, except without we having to pay them back for the money they found. They literally paid us to make the record so and it was based on the I just want to toot this one a little bit.  With the Miami County Park district, which is a… Miami County is in Ohio.

00:21:54 Rick

Yes.

00:21:54 Doug Greenfield

It is north of Dayton. It's in like Piqua. Troy is one of the main headquarters of these parks are, and this woman was the education director some 27 years ago? She said hey I like what you're doing.   Yeah. And because of her, we've written individual songs that are used for curriculum, and she's created recordings with us where she got the funding and then she funded this massive program that we do called hug the Earth Festival.  And what she and we have done, on a family level, you want your kids to have parks. You want them to be able to place, to play, swim, fish, hunt, be in the forest to enjoy it. You want to have all these things as a matter of just having your life, and it proved out to be that was true. And so the families were passing levies, which allowed massive funding to the parks. They never got them past like till they joined with us. They wanted to name them levies after us. And so for years and years and still going on many years they have been able to have the largest environmental education staff and the biggest program, where traditional agriculture is the number one number one organics is like a teensy schmeentzy a little bit of their of a world of economy. But, they were able to put that on the album, that message got to kids. They we had messages on there like let the dandelions grow.

00:24:02 Larry Graf 

It's food for your.. for the Polinators.

00:24:04 Doug Greenfield

Let them go through their flower cycle. Simple things that were kind of big people are like no dandelions are gross, man.  I don’t want dandelions in my lawn So it was like really significant cultural changes were happening on a level that children classically, are the bearers of the future. And they were like, wait, this sounds like a good idea to me. So we went, sent out on rails for having these ideas, and in fact we've been embraced and we have very traditional funders. Troy Foundation, not such that we'll be taking photographs with the four hippies from California. And their arms are wrapped around us we love what you do.  

00:26:00 Larry Graf

It's pure heart, music. Yeah, pure lovely. There's no doubt there's no argument about the left. Take care of the planet.

00:26:10 Rick

And so somehow you got middle Ohio interested in you, but you've been you've actually physically been all over the country and other parts of the world, I'm assuming. And you threw out some stat about how many kids have listened to you? You figure? Yeah.

00:26:27 Larry Graf

A couple million. At least 2. Well, you multiply 40 years times. We'll play for about, you know, estimate 50,000 kids a year and that's 14,000,000. Yeah, yeah, it could be more.

00:26:42 Doug Greenfield

Probably is more actually.

00:26:42 Larry Graf

Yeah. So that's cool. That's cool. Yeah, we played you know, we play a lot in some places, like we played a lot in Ohio. Played a lot in Hawaii. We played a lot in Louisiana. A lot in Alaska. There's just some places that we've got to go back over and over to, because we either like it or they like us.

00:27:06 Rick

So this is a good place to break. Come back next time for the Part two of this wonderful interview. And as we talk here, you can listen to a little bit more of go organic by the Banana Slug String Band.

00:27:20 Michelle

Yeah. Thanks for listening! Farm to School was written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markesteyn, with production support from LeAnn Lockner at OSU. Thanks LeAnn! And it was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:27:33 Rick

The content and ideas of the Fartm to School podcast does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University, Oregon Department of Education, the United States Department of Agriculture, the USDA, Oregon Department of Education and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:27:52 Michelle

Do you want to learn more about Farm to School?  Check out show notes, contact information and so much more by Googling up farm to school, podcast, OSU and you'll find us.

00:28:02 Rick

Well, we'd love to hear from you. Stop by or click that button I talked about it the earlier part of the content. Yeah. And just come on and say hello and give us an idea for a future podcast.

00:28:07 Michelle

The button!

00:28:15 Rick

Also, all music provided by gracious permission of the Banana Slug String band. Thanks guys.

00:28:22

Michelle

Thanks Guys. Bye everyone.