Berkner Survives Snafus To Succeed In Kids' Audio On Own Label

Laurie Berkner is a case study of the off-putting profusion of hoops performers have to jump through to make it in the notoriously narrow-scoped, fickle children's audio market.

It's not as if luck hasn't been on her side since she started singing for kids five years ago. Instead, as she'll be the first to admit, she's had more than her share of breaks.

Before the thought of becoming the next Raffi made a ripple in her mind, an army of well-heeled Manhattan parents pestered her enter the studio—they wanted to hear her at home along with their kids, whom she taught at various preschool programs around the city.

Once she did record an album—1997's "Whaddaya Think Of That," on her own Two Tomatoes label—they so enjoyed it that one mother led her by the arm into area independent toy stores and demanded shop owners give her a listen and stock a few albums, thus setting in motion a small but important citywide buzz on the artist, who pens her own (mostly silly) songs, plays acoustic guitar, and produces her own albums.

By fall of last year, Berkner was watching sales of "Whaddaya Think Of That," plus a second album, "Buzz Buzz," climb steadily on her Web site, twotomatoes.com. And, through spins of her records at a local hot spot for kids and nannies, she'd secured what she thought would be "this very life-changing" gig—a birthday party performance for the toddler most likely to be crowned princess of pop, Madonna's daughter Lourdes (Child's Play, Billboard, Aug. 26).

To some extent, though not to what she'd hoped—Rosie O'Donnell wasn't in attendance and thus wasn't clamoring for a TV show performance, and Madonna, though she "danced her butt off," didn't engage Berkner in a musician-to-musician sort of way—the party did change her life. It planted her on a trajectory of playing bigwigs' kids' birthday parties, including Sting's 4-year-old son Giacomo's, where parent Bruce Springsteen was an audience member. (She says she was surprised to be booked as the featured entertainer because the little boy was "something of a heckler" at his friend Lourdes' party.) On a good day, she found she could sell 80 or more CDs per party.

More important, though, the star circuit soon propelled her onto the pages of People magazine, which published a short piece on Berkner's popularity but spelled her name wrong—thwarting what Berkner speculates were hundreds of attempts to reach her through the Internet.

"I'm laughing about it now," says Berkner. "But at the time I felt so upset. This [was] my first little slice of national exposure, and people couldn't find me . . . it took me a long time to get the search engine updated" so that the misspelling would lead to her site. But once it did, any projected sales spike for the artist, then on the verge of establishing her current deal with RounderKids for distribution, had fizzled.

Still, the People mention led to yet another high-profile booking—she played for a crowd of between 30,000 and 50,000 at this year's annual Easter Egg Roll in Washington, D.C., and her two sets were broadcast live over the Internet on the White House's Web site. But even that engagement had its drawbacks. For security reasons, Berkner could not mention in her marketing materials that she was chosen for such a potentially attention-getting performance.

Now, with her fair share of fanfare and a third album behind her ("Victor Vito" was released early this year), Berkner is cautiously optimistic about her chances of being mentioned "in the same breath as Barney," when the subject of kids' music crops up. But it's not as if she's expecting fortunes to follow fame. "I used to have nightmares about all this money I owed"—money spent getting her albums made and passing them out as promos. Finally, she is starting to see money trickle in.

Meredith Tredeau, RounderKids' director of purchasing, estimates Berkner's sales at 5,000 units combined since the company started distributing her six months ago strictly in independent stores. (SoundScan currently does not register sales of her albums.) In what Berkner calls "a weird tightrope to walk," she hasn't put muscle behind the marketing it takes to generate sales for a kids' artist in chains like Barnes & Noble, because she faces a dilemma shared by lots of baby acts and indie labels: it's cost-prohibitive.

Without that sort of marketing and despite her big-name background, bona fide kids' market stardom seems far off. Still, Tredeau says Berkner's "doing very, very well for an indie artist without major-label bucks behind her, and so far—knock on wood—[her albums aren't] coming back. We wish we'd picked her up a little sooner."

Berkner doesn't seem put off at the prospect of growing grass-roots rather than securing overnight success. After putting in calls to one children's label, where she was told unsolicited demos weren't welcome, and digesting "old experiences having been in rock bands" (five years ago, she was making the rounds in New York's coffeehouse circuit), she opted for the indie way of life. She won't deny it has its share of frustrations, but she's also reaping indie-exclusive rewards. Among them is whittling her living-room inventory through sales at Amazon.com (which doesn't release sales figures) and her own Web site, which has moved about 800 units since December 1999, with the bulk of it coming since February, when she was featured on the public radio program "Infinite Mind." And, as her own agent and sales manager, she works directly with merchants when the opportunity is available.

Jennifer Bergman, co-owner of Westside Kids, a New York specialty toy retailer, calls herself one of Berkner's first fans. "We plug Laurie all the time," she says. "When she first came into the store, she asked me to listen to her music. I get [tapes] all the time, but hers was different, and I said I'd take a few. I grew to love the music, and so did my staff. It never gets grating."

With that kind of support, Berkner outsells children's music superstar Raffi 3-to-1 at Westside Kids. But Bergman went beyond the pale for her. At this year's Assn. of Specialty Toy Retailers' Convention, Bergman passed out 200 tapes, one of which landed in the hands of Doug Morris, owner of Little Hands Toy Shop in Glen Ellyn, Ill., who played it in his store. A CD bought by a Chicago Tribune writer at Little Hands resulted in a flattering profile in that newspaper, which netted a two-day tally of 150 orders through twotomatoes.com vs. the average of one or two per day. That led to a June Chicago-area tour.

There's also a contingent of Rounder sales reps "rooting for me," says Berkner. Rounder sales representative Brian McCarthy says Berkner is "one of the fresh, new artists whose expectations are panning out. We're giving her a lot of support." That's included featuring her on the RounderKids listening post, which recently landed at 80 independent toy stores. For an artist who's "pretty bad at selling myself," Berkner is becoming a shrewd businesswoman.

By all accounts, including her own, the appeal of Berkner's songs rests in their accessibility. "Some parents love the music," she reports, even though the subject matter ranges from buzzing bees, to the importance of trees, to a colony of fish that take showers.

All three albums are free of synthesizers, simply produced, and set to acoustic guitar rounded out by piano, bass, and a horn section. The songs invite movement, and in live performances a few well-placed props don't hurt, either. "I used to worry, 'Does it seem silly to people that I have stuffed animals on my head?' " says Berkner. "I've finally gotten past that."

Now, she's fixated on forcing reality to sink in, noting that "it's been a big emotional journey, but I have to kind of accept it: Wow! I'm making it doing music!"

Up next for Berkner, who's booked by the Charles Rothschild Agency in New York on a per-gig basis, is an appearance on the FX network's new "American Baby" show this fall. She'll also release "Whaddaya Think Of That" as a CD in September. In February or March of 2001 her first video will hit the shelves, to be followed by a fourth album in summer.