In 2006 the musical team of Rob “Dr. Rock” Martin and Chris “Boom” Wiser began a transformation from a rock/funk-influenced band that performed mostly at night in adult-oriented bars and venues, to a ‘day-dwelling’ duo focused on entertaining entire families.
“Many of our songs were already kind of skewed to the goofy side,” said Wiser. “So, we had always talked and joked about, ‘Hey, one of these days we're gonna do a kid's album.’”
A tour of the Metropolitan Library System gave the Sugar Free Allstars the incentive to do just that.
Following the release of the band’s self-titled and first family-oriented album, Sugar Free Allstars, a librarian and children’s music blogger asked if the band would submit their music for review on his site.
“So, I sent him one,” said Wiser. “This was back when, everybody had their blogs, or their pages… and then over in the bottom right, they would have links to recommended blogs. Basically, I went to his blog, and I was like, ‘I'll just send to all these other people, too.”
It proved to be a fortuitous effort, eventually garnering the band regular airplay and exposure on satellite radio.
“We didn't even know it until a friend of ours was like, ‘Hey, congratulations on being on the top charts on Kids Place Live on (Sirius)XM Radio,’” said Wiser. “And we're like, "I don't even know what you're talking about."
Another fateful decision came when the pair teamed up with kid-hop artist Secret Agent 23 Skidoo to record a single titled “Cooperate,” which made its way to an anti-bullying compilation album titled All About Bullies… Big and Small– the 2012 Grammy-winning release in the Best Children’s Album category.
“There's so many things that have happened since our stumbling into the family music world that we would have never, ever, EVER imagined,” said Wiser. “We would have never imagined being on a Grammy-winning album. We would have never imagined getting generous satellite radio play - because 'Monster Truck' still gets played at least three or four times a week, along with several other songs. And, we would have never imagined playing a show with an orchestra.”
That reference to an “orchestra” is a timely one as the Sugar Free Allstars prepare for the group’s scheduled third appearance with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic set for 2 p.m. Sunday, January 14th at the Civic Center Music Hall.
“The amount of time that it took to put the show together from scratch, you know - coordinating between us and the philharmonic and Nathan (Siler), who's doing the orchestration - it's months and months,” said Wiser. “And you know, like… part of our deal with doing these orchestra shows is we want kids and families to experience a fun rock show, but we also want to expose them to the orchestra.”
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