The legendary trio, composed of Sharon Hampson, Lois Lilienstein and Bram Morrison, are so iconic as to be known to the world simply as “Sharon, Lois and Bram”. A childhood musical staple for generations, their 40-year career has yielded gold and platinum-selling albums, sold-out concerts, and two award-winning television shows.
Their broad appeal is rooted in exceptional music delivered with earworm arrangements and melodic harmonies that transcend genres and generations. They are musicians who respect their young listeners, who adore them right back.
So a new album – their first in 21 years – is huge news.
Sharon Lois and Bram: Best of the Best Live features 22 favourites, delivered with infectious medleys, audience participation and the trio’s entertaining banter. The songs were all recorded live: in venues such as New York’s City Center, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, and the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.
According to Sharon, “finding the music” – cassette recordings of over 20 concerts kept by the band’s keyboardist Grant Slater – was the windfall that led to the album. “I love the way Bram says it comes from pirated recordings. But we were the pirates,” she chuckles. On the phone, she is warm, friendly and forthcoming, with a quick wit and a ready laugh. “Grant picked 20 concerts over a six-year period between 1989 and 1995, and we started listening to those 20 concerts that we had digitized purely for nostalgia purposes… for fun.”
And as they and some longtime fans listened, Sharon thought, “wow, these are really good. I wonder if we can do something with them?” Two of those fans did more than wonder: they curated the best 25 songs for the album with Randi Hampson, Sharon’s daughter and the group’s manager, who then co-produced the album.
Sharon is effusive in recalling her and Bram’s reactions: “I have to say, we were pretty proud of what we were hearing. Boy, we had a lot of energy. We were bopping around on the stage and still singing in tune. And the band is fantastic! It just brings back all the pleasure of hearing these folks play wonderfully: really good arrangements, really exciting music. And it’s sort of percolated from there to this amazing opportunity to transform the best of them into an album.” She adds that, although Lois has been gone for the last six years, “here she is still very much included in this album…very present. Very prominent. So that was an extra bonus!”
Indeed, the album is a sonic time capsule that captures Sharon, Lois and Bram’s longtime connection, dynamism, and shared history with their audiences. It opens with the exuberant “Rig A Jig Jig”, inviting young and old on a listening thrill ride, which includes favourites like “Summertime Fly Medley”, “Hey Dum Diddleley Dum”, the unexpected mash-ups of “Dirty Old Bill” + “Miss Lucy” and “the rollicking “Hucklebuck” featuring the trio’s signature three-part harmonies, and a charming version of Tom Paxton’s “Going to the Zoo”.
And no Sharon, Lois and Bram concert would be complete without the touching “One Elephant”, and, of course, “Skinnamarink, the song about love and friendship which is perhaps the most singable of all singalong songs, and has closed every one of the group’s concerts.
In fact . . . Skinnamarink is so much a signature piece that in 2019, it became a best-selling picture book of the same name, illustrated by Toronto-based artist Qin Leng and published by Penguin Random House. Like the new album and the myriad virtual concerts that she co-produces and often co-hosts, Randi was instrumental in the creation of Sharon, Lois and Bram’s Skinnamarink. Asked how she became such an integral part of the group’s business and creative team, she offers simply that “it happened gradually over time”. When the group had a 35th anniversary party, she offered to help them plan the party, then ended up hosting it because “I was around for everything. I hung around a lot. I was in the recording studio. I would join them on the road. I would visit them when they were traveling to interesting places. I knew everybody who was important in their life because I just was always around.”
In Randi’s view, the group was not getting the recognition and the accolades that they were warranted after a 40-year career. “And I wanted them to. I wanted them to know how much they were valued and appreciated by their audience,” she offers. “So I just sort of stepped in more to see what I could do to make that happen.” So when Sharon and Bram told her that they were going to turn “Skinnamarink” into a book, her immediate thought was, “I would like to try and expand on it. I don’t think it’s long enough to make a book”. This “happy, happy collaboration” became a runaway success that has led to two more upcoming picture book adaptations: One Elephant Went Out to Play will be out this August, and a new version of Peanut Butter is due out in the fall of 2022. A baby board book version of Skinnamarink is also forthcoming.
“Again, Randi has taken what we would call a pamphlet and turned it into a book,” Sharon beams. “She’s done it with One Elephant and Peanut Butter, made them into a much more extended story. And we have the same illustrator, Qin Leng, who did such a wonderful job on Skinnamarink.”
Since Lois’s death in 2015, the group has continued as “Sharon and Bram”, releasing music and performing live concerts before their final farewell tour in 2019. In recent months, they have connected with audiences through regular virtual concerts. The interactions Sharon and Randi provide online are more important than ever during this time of social restrictions, when people are hungry for collective experiences. Happily, this Saturday, January 22, at 2:00 pm EST, fans can attend “A Sharon, Lois & Bram Singalong – Best of the Best Live” fan appreciation concert over Zoom, that will feature Sharon, Randi and friends, with special guest Bram. Nashville-based artist Jacy Dawn Valeras will c0-host the show NYC-based Kris Stengele, one of the album’s curators. The event will include a post-show meet-and greet with the artists and a preview of artwork from the One Elephant Went Out to Play picture book.
“We’d much rather be going out and reaching smaller groups of kids,” Sharon admits wistfully, “but that’s not happening until everybody in the world is vaccinated.” But until live concerts – and live, loud singalongs – are once more possible, we’ve got Sharon Lois and Bram: Best of the Best Live.
We can belt out “peanut, peanut butter…jelly” . . . “hey dum diddleley dum” . . . and “skinnamarinky dinky dink, skinnamarinky do” – with abandon. And with every play, crack open the time capsule of childhood joy that is Sharon, Lois and Bram.
© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2022
