You’d be just as likely to spot GRAMMY® Award-winning musicians Joe Mailander and Justin Lansing hiking a backwoods trail through the Rockies as you would be to catch them playing a sold-out concert. The Okee Dokee Brothers' (3/20) passion for nature inspires their lively yet gentle original folk music for kids and their families. “When we spend a long period of time outdoors, our thinking starts shifting,” they say. “We slow down enough to notice the details in nature that can teach us little lessons about how to live life with more wonder. Maybe it’s how a stream sounds, or imagining how the trees are talking to one another, or what the birds are worried about. These details have full stories inside them, maybe a verse, or a chorus. Nature is also incredibly humbling with all its grandeur and power. So, it’s a nice setting for writing little tunes that try to shower it with some glory.”
Many of The Okee Dokee Brothers’ albums are based around a specific outdoor experience they’ve had. The “Adventure Album Series” includes Saddle Up!, with music inspired by their month-long horsepacking trip along the continental divide; Through The Woods, inspired by camping along the Appalachian Trail; and Can You Canoe?, based on their float trip down the great Mississippi River. What’s the next adventure this duo is planning? “Our next album is about a community of critters in the woods and how they try to stay connected while the forest around them is changing. But don’t tell anyone that! It’s a secret that only the people who come to our show at the Hylton Performing Arts Center in Manassas, Virginia get to know about!”
The Okee Dokee Brothers will perform two shows at the Hylton Center in Merchant Hall on the first day of spring (3/20), and we hope your family can join in the fun.
“These experiences can break families out of a rut so they can open up, be more vulnerable, and remember why it’s so great to be part of a family. We can all forget that from time to time,” Justin and Joe say. After the show, the duo hopes families leave feeling “a little more connected to one another.” That “maybe kids will have heard their parents singing along or seen them dropping their inhibitions to dance a bit. Maybe parents will see their kids' eyes light up at a joke they get.”
And things might get silly, too – “one time a butterfly landed on Joe’s guitar right in the middle of a song about… guess what…oh, a bullfrog. I bet you thought I was gonna say butterfly, didn’t you? And another time Justin tripped over a chord on stage and fell on his banjo. Don’t worry, the banjo was fine.”
Tickets for The Okee Dokee Brothers’ March 20 performance are on sale now.