KIDS + FAMILIES

Verizon Wireless Theater presents Imagination Movers "In A Big Warehouse" Tour.

Emmy Award-winning Imagination Movers will kick off their "In a Big Warehouse" concert tour on February 4, 2011 in their home state of Louisiana. The wildly popular New Orleans-based rock band for kids of all ages will travel coast to coast playing their most popular songs and bringing the magic of the Imagination Movers television series' Idea Warehouse to life performing in a series of 100 shows across the nation. Concertgoers can expect special appearances from Nina, Warehouse Mouse and other characters from the TV series.

It’s a summer day in New Orleans, deep in the recesses of a cavernous building on the outskirts of town. Rooms are awash in bright blues, reds and yellows. Gears spin on the walls. A large, round, orange monster with bushy eyebrows hits his mark. Cameras roll. The cherry-top siren flashes: it’s an idea emergency! That’s the cue for the country’s hottest new kid-pop band: the Imagination Movers.

Now filming the second season of their hit Playhouse Disney series, the Imagination Movers are fully realizing a dream they first brainstormed in 2003, when four friends began assembling in a back room after their kids’ bedtimes to write songs and develop ideas for a television series. Now, six years later, fresh from playing for the annual White House Easter egg roll and delivering a blistering main-stage set at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Movers are in the middle of filming 25 new shows, planning a 40-city fall tour, and celebrating the release of their second CD for Walt Disney Records, For Those About to Hop.

Perpetual motion is how the Movers like to move, and they aren’t showing any signs of slowing down. Building on the success of the band’s 2008 Walt Disney Records debut, Juice Box Heroes, For Those About to Hop features a generous kids’ menu of 22 songs, all original Mover compositions, most of which are new tunes written for the show. (Special Target and iTunes editions also offer side helpings of bonus tracks.) With production help by Jason Rhein and including some of New Orleans’ favorite horn players — Derek Huston, Mark Mullins, and the Bucktown Allstars’ horn section — For Those About to Hop delivers more of the sound that has made the Imagination Movers the family band of choice for everything from long van drives to living room dance parties. Each track brims with smart, high-energy pop that, as recently described in a New York Times profile, is “prized by many parents for noncondescending lyrics and music that evokes the Beastie Boys or Red Hot Chili Peppers ....”

Those musical references are no accident, nor is the new CD title’s sly wink to AC/DC. From the start, the Movers’ Rich, Scott, Dave and Smitty — full names: Rich Collins, Scott Durbin, Dave Poche and Scott “Smitty” Smith — set out to make music that they and their friends enjoy just as much as their kids. “We were all teenagers in the 1980s,” Smith says. “Old funk, new wave, cool grooves, a little bit of punky stuff, Big Country. You listen to our music and you can pull a lot of that out.”

On the Movers set, while the orange monster works out his scene, the four Movers take a rare break and settle into a collection of sofas at the side of the action. Smitty plucks a five string banjo while Kevin Carlson — the man behind the show’s puppet character, Warehouse Mouse — picks up a banjo uke and starts to jam. Rich fires up a laptop and calls up some old Jerry Lewis film clips. Clearly, the Imagination Movers’ taste for the classics doesn’t stop at music. “We all love the classic comedy,” Scott says. “Lots of people talk about the Monkees, which are an obvious reference for us. But really it’s Jerry Lewis, the Marx Brothers, Carol Burnett. Old-school fun.”

Juice Box Heroes was, in effect, a look back for the Movers. The album showcased re-imagined versions of the songs that the Movers had been nurturing throughout their career. For Those About to Hop is a look forward, featuring songs written with a double purpose: to complement the show narratives and to stand on their own as finely crafted pop songs that will get their crowd hopping, bouncing, and doing the occasional pogo. The grooves cut even deeper, and more than on the band’s previous recordings, these new songs might extend into funk party jams, from the horn-drenched swing of “Jungle Room” to the alt-country pickin’ party of “Rollin’” to the tropical rhythms of “The Boom Boom Song.”

From the start, the Movers also took great care with their message, recognizing the impact they’d have on kids. As Scott, a former schoolteacher, points out, the four friends sought out parenting centers and psychologists for advice on lyrics. Indications that they were on the right track have included a “Parenting Pick” from Parenting Magazine, which enthused about the Mover sound: “A dash of rebellion spices up these catchy rock songs and astute lyrics. Fresh and treacle-free.”

Along the way, the band has experienced a few idea emergencies of its own. Hurricane Katrina threatened to scuttle the band’s plans — along with the bandmates’ houses. Smitty, working as a firefighter, served as a first responder during the storm and aftermath. Helping to rebuild the city is one of the reasons why the band decided to film its series in New Orleans. Even in dire times, the Movers kept following the band motto to “Reach high, think big, work hard, have fun!”

That core philosophy hasn’t changed, even though much else in their lives has. “Before, we had a computer in a back room in Rich’s house, and we’d sneak away and record a few things,” Dave says. “Now, we schedule a ‘music day.’”

“Still, it feels like being back in the house,” Rich adds. “Only now there are 90 people working around us.” He looks around and laughs. “It’s either day camp or boot camp, I’m not sure which.”

A typical pie chart of a Mover brain, Rich says, would include equal parts songwriting, rehearsing, learning dance moves, tour-planning …

“… and being a husband, father, school volunteer,” finishes Dave.

These last duties were in full display this week on the Mover set, when the Movers’ collected crowd of elementary school-aged kids appeared as trick-or-treaters for an upcoming Halloween episode. Later today, they’re coming back to the set, but not to act. The band just decided that today should be “Milkshake Day.”

Clearly, the Movers haven’t forgotten that their mantra ends with “Have fun!”

The biggest satisfaction? “We get emails all the time from people who say our music puts them in a good mood,” says Rich with a smile.

That good mood is infectious wherever the Movers appear, whether on stage or on set. The musicians rouse themselves to shoot their next scene with the orange monster, and Scott adds a parting comment: this band is making sure that working hard and having fun continue to go hand in hand. “As long as it’s a collaborative situation, it’ll never get old,” Scott says. “When you have four voices, it always keeps it fresh.”