Posts Tagged ‘Bobs & LoLo’

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Bobs & LoLo Go Western For 2010 Stampede

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Vancouver based children’s entertainers take their award-winning music on the road for a run of 32 shows at one of Canada’s largest outdoor events!
 
Bobs & LoLo hit the stage daily at this year’s world-renowned Calgary Stampede. With a well- established fan base in their home province of BC and growing national adoration, Robyn Hardy (Bobs) and Lorraine Pond (LoLo) are looking forward to sharing their live programming with families in Alberta next month. Their extensive touring to date and regular spots on the national children’s network, Treehouse TV, is sure to have preschoolers, with parents in tow, lining up to see the live show.

What do the performers have to say?

Bobs: “We’re super excited to perform at the Calgary Stampede! We’ve had such a great year already with our recent JUNO nomination and the whole Treehouse thing…getting such a large contract for the second year in a row with the Stampede really validates how far we’ve come in the last few years.”
 
LoLo: “Yeehaw! I can’t wait to unleash my inner cowgirl! We’re looking forward to all of the fun that goes along with sharing in a big event like this, although I think the main focus for Bobs and I will be staying healthy and rested so that we can survive performing 3+ shows per day for 10 days straight!”

Bobs & LoLo Go Western!
 
Bobs & LoLo will be performing on the Buckaroos Stage at the Calgary Stampede from July 9 – 18 with shows daily at 1:30pm, 4pm & 6pm. Additional shows are scheduled for the Kids’ Days, July 11 & 14 at 11am. All Bobs & Lolo shows are FREE with general admission to Stampede Park.  

About Bobs & LoLo
Bobs & LoLo use music, movement and make-believe to share stories and experiences that both entertain and educate, while ultimately teaching children to care about themselves, their neighbours and the planet. Their programming places an emphasis on celebrating the values of healthy-living and aims to inspire young audiences with an awareness and appreciation for the world around them. Catch Bobs & LoLo live this summer or watch for their regular appearances on the national children’s television network, Treehouse TV.

For interviews with Bobs & LoLo please contact:
Christy Allan
christy@expandgroup.ca

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Posted in Bobs & Lolo, News Flash | 8 Comments »

Musical Madness

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

The last couple months have been uber crazy, so our apologies for falling off the bloggity-blog bandwagon! We can’t even count how many times we’ve bunked down in our hotel rooms with the full intention of writing new blog posts. Unfortunately, the process also seems to trigger our super napping talents – not very productive!

Regardless of our long silence, we have had some fabulous musical adventures these last couple months with performances in Newfoundland, BC, Alberta and Manitoba. Highlights include the Juno Awards (woot!) as well as shows at children’s festivals in Vancouver, Canmore, St. Albert and Winnipeg. Winnipeg happens to be our current temporary abode and our last stop for the 2010 children’s fest season!

We were also excited to have an opportunity to return for a special evening of fun at the Vancouver Aquarium for the 8th annual Dreamnight in May. This amazing event hosts children, families and caregivers from BC Children’s Hospital, Canuck Place, Sunny Hill Health Centre and many other wonderful organizations. We have shared in 7 of the 8 Dreamnights at the Vancouver Aquarium and actually had our very first performance at the first annual event…back then we only had 5 songs that we sang over and over! :)

Below is a little peek at some of our more recent adventures! Please pardon the amateur photo montage – it’s nearly midnight in Manitoba, and we’ve had over 18 shows in the last week and a half!?

 

We wrap up our Manitoba trip with two final performances at The Forks in Winnipeg tomorrow and then it’s back to BC for a couple weeks. We’ll be heading to Vancouver Island for a handful of shows in Nanaimo, Comox and Victoria before packing up the van and hitting the road for 5 weeks in Alberta. Please visit our events calendar for all the details!

Be sure to connect with us on Facebook and Twitter if you’re interested in regular updates from the road. Also, if you’ve joined us at recent events and took pics or video, we’d love to see them! Please share your media skills on our FB Page…

Hope to see you soon!

Bobs & LoLo

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Newfoundland or New-FUN-land?

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

After a lengthy red-eye flight across the country, we arrived for our first visit to scenic St. John’s, NL!

First impressions:

1. Cold – snow flurries & biting wind all day!
2. Beautiful – love the historic architecture, colourful row houses and coastal views!
3. Tasty – fresh seafood and yummy local eats have been a hit with our entire group!
4. Friendly – the people are AMAZING!

We started the ‘work’ side of our trip with a special performance at Larkhall Academy. Nearly 350 elementary students and staff celebrated a $10,000 MusiCounts instrument grant for the school’s music program, and we were thrilled to be invited to share a few songs as part of the festivities.

MusiCounts - Larkhall

MusiCounts, Canada’s music education charity associated with The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) is helping to keep music alive in schools across Canada. Since 1997, over $3 and a half million has been donated impacting 214 post-secondary music program graduates and over 250,000 individual students, their schools and communities, from coast to coast. It was a treat to meet Larkhall music teacher, Susan Lee and some of her students at the event!

Photo op at Larkhall Academy

Fans at Larkhall

Tomorrow we will be taking in a little sightseeing (weather permitting – did we mention it’s snowing here?!) and heading to our first official JUNO reception at The Rooms. We’re also really looking forward to meeting some of the other Children’s Album of the Year nominees on Saturday morning at the Kids’ Jam for Janeway concert. We’ll be sure to continue sharing stories throughout the rest of our trip. Please feel free to also follow us on Twitter or Facebook for regular daily updates!

Please send warm, sunshine-y comments only…:)

Bobs & LoLo

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Bobs and LoLo at the Junos

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

Celebrations beginning in Newfoundland this week will mark the 39th anniversary of the JUNO Awards and a new career milestone for independent children’s entertainers and educators, Bobs & LoLo.

Bobs & LoLo are honoured to be nominated for 2010 Children’s Album of the Year. The award for this category will be presented at a gala dinner event in St. John’s, NL on Saturday, April 17th.

Bobs & LoLo will be travelling across the country from Vancouver, BC to attend the gala and share in a number of the JUNO Award festivities including an opportunity to walk the red carpet prior to the April 18th CTV broadcast event!

Bobs & LoLo will personally be posting stories and photos from their 2010 JUNO adventures on their blog throughout the week. You can also follow them on Facebook and Twitter for daily updates.

In addition, Bobs & LoLo are looking forward to sharing some of their music and programming during JUNO Week at two special events created specifically for children and families.

April 15, 2010 – MusiCounts Presentation

Over 350 elementary students from Larkhall Academy will celebrate a $10,000 MusiCounts instrument grant for the school’s music program with a performance by 2010 JUNO Award nominated children’s performers, Bobs & LoLo.
 
MusiCounts, Canada’s music education charity associated with The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS), is helping to keep music alive in schools across Canada. MusiCounts includes Band Aid musical instrument grants, the MusiCounts Teacher of the Year Award, Scholarships and other initiatives. Since 1997, over $3 and a half million has been donated impacting 214 post-secondary music program graduates and over 250,000 individual students, their schools and communities, from coast to coast.
 
Bobs & LoLo are thrilled to kick-off their visit to St. John’s with a special performance for students who will directly benefit from these funds.

April 17, 2010 – Kids’ Jam for Janeway
 
Bobs & LoLo, Charlie Hope, The Bee’s Knees and The Kerplunks, all 2010 JUNO Award nominees for Children’s Album of the Year, will perform at Kids’ Jam for Janeway, a free concert to benefit the Janeway Children’s Health and Rehabilitation Centre. The concert is sponsored by Kids Music Connection, an initiative to support music and the arts in the lives of children.

The Janeway Children’s Health and Rehabilitation Centre is Newfoundland and Labrador’s only hospital specializing in pediatric health care and serves thousands of children and families each year.

For more information about the event and free advance ticket reservations, please visit www.kidsjam.ca.
 
Kids' Jam Poster

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March Madness

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

The month of March blew by in a whirlwind of exciting news (Junos!), memorable shows (yay!) and LOTS of travel prep. We recently returned home from an amazing week-long tour on northern Vancouver Island filled with ferry rides, vocal warm-ups in the van and not nearly as much sleep as needed to remain sane. We started the week with six shows in 72 hours throughout the communities of Sointula, Alert Bay, Port Hardy, Port Alice and Port McNeill. 

Port Alice
 
Check out a student blog post from Mrs. Watson’s class at A.J. Elliot Elementary in Sointula for a peek at some of our musical adventures! http://mrswatson123.edublogs.org/2010/03/22/bobs-and-lolo/ 

Highlights of our trip:
1. A nice visit and home-cooked meal with Lolo’s sister, Katie!
2. Riding on the bridge of the BC Ferry from Alert Bay to Port McNeill. Special thanks to the crew for the warm welcome and kind hospitality! Thanks for buying a few CDs too…we treated ourselves to dinner out that night!
3. Signing autographs at Robert Scott Elementary in Port Hardy – Lolo actually attended Kindergarten and Grade 1 here!
4. The long, winding road out to Port Alice. A beautiful drive!
5. Randomly discovering the world’s largest burl in Port McNeill!

Bobs & the burl!
 
We ended our short road trip with a couple of shows at the Errington Memorial Hall. Big hugs to the Errington Co-op Preschool for inviting us to share our music and programming with the community. We enjoyed meeting families from all over the island and even some out of province visitors too!

Now it’s back to reality with a few days of admin catch-up before we dive into more musical adventures over the long weekend.

Fun fun!
 
We hope you are enjoying the beginning of Spring and that you have an eggs-ellent long weekend!  Next stops for us:

Science World (Vancouver, BC) – April 4 & 5
Autism Speaks Fundraiser (Abbotsford, BC) – April 10
Coldstream Elementary (Vernon, BC) – April 12
Lavington Elementary (Vernon, BC) – April 12
Kids’ Jam (St. John’s, NL) – April 17 JUNO AWARDS!

Full details available on our events calendar: http://bobsandlolo.com/blog/the-big-calendar/

See you soon!

Bobs & Lolo        

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Our Juno Trip Takes Flight

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

It seems crazy that only one week has passed since we received news of our 2010 Juno nomination. Thank you for all of the congratulatory emails, tweets, blog comments and Facebook messages. Your encouragement and support means a lot to us!

In our last post, we mentioned our excitement about travelling across the country to share in the Juno festivities. Against our rather conservative fiscal judgment, we booked the trip to St. John’s and splurged on guest tickets to the award events for our hubbies. As we started to swallow the price tag of our new Juno nominee status, we also received an email inquiry from a representative with MusiCounts – a non-profit organization dedicated to keeping music alive in schools across Canada - asking if we would consider flying to St. John’s early to do a show for a school-aged audience prior to the Juno weekend. Were we interested? Of course!

Then reality set in. As we started looking at flight change fees plus two more nights of accommodation, the total costs of the trip seemed to be getting more and more out of reach. Could we really afford this? Could we afford not to? Friends kept telling us “it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity”…although no one was offering to pick up our VISA bill. ;)

Rather than sit and dwell on it, we went out on a limb and sent a tweet to WestJet.

It read: Just changed flights to arrive at the Junos early to do a kids’ charity event and the travel costs are CRAZY! @westjet we need your help!

Imagine our shock when less than 2 hours later a representative from WestJet contacted us to ask for more information. By the end of that same day, WestJet had officialy offered to subsidize our flight change fees and waive the difference in the fares to fly out early (we got a sweet seat sale on our first booking). Here is a snippet of an email we received from the airline…

“As an organization we are very supportive of children and make flight donations to organizations that are focused on children’s health and wellness. While music isn’t directly related to children’s healthcare, it definitely affects their happiness and is an important part of their wellness. Since you are traveling to St John’s to donate your time for an event that will benefit children and music, we would be happy to reverse the change fees for your new flight.”
 
TY Westjet!

We heart WestJet. St. John’s here we come!

Bobs & Lolo

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2010 JUNO Nomination

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

We are thrilled to announce that Action Packed, our most recent album release has received a 2010 Juno nomination!

Following on the heels of a 2009 Parents’ Choice Gold Award – essentially the Grammy’s of the kids’ music world – and a 2009 Western Canadian Music Award, we are overwhelmed and absolutely thrilled with the ongoing national and international attention for our third album. Warm thanks and huge cyber hugs to all of our fans, friends and family for the ongoing support of our musical adventures! This latest accolade is truly a mega highlight!

Action Packed

Action Packed features 12 original songs such as The Right Track, Snappy Snacks and Friends. The album is geared at connecting children to behaviours that positively impact the world around them. Using kid-friendly analogies like trains, superheroes, adventure stories and more the songs address themes such as literacy, health, teamwork and friendship.

The album was produced, arranged & recorded by Mario Vaira at Five Fathom Studios, with drums recorded by Ryan Stewart at WineCellar Music Studios and the tracks mastered at Suite Sound Labs – all of whom are located in Vancouver, BC.

For a full listing of 2010 Juno nominees, please click here.

The Juno Awards weekend will be hosted in St. John’s, NL on April 16-18. We’ve decided to fly across the country with our other halves (Mario and Kavie) to fully embrace what is sure to be a memorable and fabulous celebration of Canadian music. This might even give us an opportunity to finally do a show or two on the east coast!?

If any local BC families would like to celebrate with us this weekend, please join us in Burnaby on Saturday, March 6 for a special free family performance. Full details can be found on our events calendar.
 
Woohoo!!

Bobs & Lolo

 

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A Sea of Red and White

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

The 2010 Olympics have officially opened in our home city of Vancouver, BC! With true Canadian pride we watched our city come alive this last week as a sea of red and white now appears to be moving through the streets. Canada has definitely caught the spirit of the 2010 games, and we are excited to be a part of the festivities!

Celebrate Coquitlam
Pre-show with Mayor Richard Stewart at Celebrate Coquitlam

Our thanks to Mark Efford – photographer and proud papa to 3-year-old Austin – for sending us the above photo which was captured at the City of Coquitlam’s torch relay celebrations. Extra thanks to Mark for his creative use of a little digital magic to give our jackets some extra B&L love…can anyone spot the added detailing?

With Friday’s 2010 Opening Ceremonies preceded by the tragic loss of Georgian luge athlete, Nodar Kumaritashvili, we can’t help but be reminded to appreciate all of the special moments we share with our loved ones. Our hearts go out to Nodar’s family, teammates and country.

Torch Relay
Lolo and husband, Kavie, share a squeeze before his torch run!

We hope you can join us for some family time at our shows this month. If you’re not around Vancouver or Whistler, please follow us on Twitter or find us on Facebook for ongoing updates about our musical adventures.

February 13 & 14: Experience BC @ Robson Square (Vancouver)

February 20: Whistler Olympic House

February 21: ValleyFest (North Vancouver)

February 26 – 28: Whistler Live! Town Plaza

Full event details can be found on our events calendar at http://bobsandlolo.com/blog/the-big-calendar/.

Go Canada Go!

Bobs & Lolo

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More than Just a Song And Dance

Friday, January 29th, 2010

When our friends discuss work, career goals, job satisfaction and the general mish mash of “shop talk” that comes up in circles of young professionals, we usually just smile, nod and smugly reflect on the fact that we have the best jobs ever! We are also usually quick to throw in comments about the benefits of working for ourselves – bosses we love, jobs we love even more, PJs ‘til noon, meetings at the beach – the list goes on and on!

That said, we are constantly evaluating, assessing and revamping the ever-growing world of B&L. As we continue to muddle our way through the business side of things, we are always developing new strategies to manage an increasing workload while planning for the introduction of new team members. I believe we may have mentioned our dream of an office administrator and roadies one, two or many times in preview posts! We also informally collect feedback from kids, parents and educators on an ongoing basis to help guide the development of our live shows and other projects.

Fun times!
Contrary to appearances, it’s not all fun & games!

So, today’s project in review – the B&L Blog!

Our blog has served a number of purposes:

1. We use it to share information about upcoming shows.
2. We use it as a diary of sorts to recount stories from the road and/or behind-the-scenes adventures.
3. We use it to relay exciting announcements and news flashes.
4. And occasionally, we use it to share fun finds that we’ve stumbled across in the course of our many musical adventures.

Clearly, our blog is multi-dimensional and our posts often ramble along a not so well-defined path. Eerily similar to our careers…!?

So, what do you think? We know we have a few regular readers out there, and we’d love your input. Are there particular blog posts that interest you the most? Are there things you would add? Change? Do you love it as is?

Huh?
What do you think?

Please feel free to leave your comments below or email us your thoughts at info@bobsandlolo.com. We’d love to hear from you!

Alternately, if you’d prefer to tell us in person, please join us tomorrow, January 30th at ArtStarts on Saturdays in Vancouver, BC. We’ll be delivering two special performances for families at 11am & 1pm. This unique and intimate performance series takes place in the ArtStarts Gallery at 808 Richards Street. Admission is FREE and no registration is required. Space is limited, so please plan to arrive a few minutes early to guarantee a spot!  www.artstarts.ca

Bobs & Lolo

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Home for the Holidays

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

We are excited to be taking our show home for the holidays with a special family concert in our childhood town of Nanaimo, BC. We’ll be hitting the stage at our high-school alma mater, Dover Bay Secondary this Saturday, December 12th at 2pm.

Dover Bay

Having performed more than 300 live shows across Canada this past year alone, we’re looking forward to returning home for this event. The festivities are a perfect way to wrap up a crazy year and celebrate all of the wonderful musical adventures we’ve shared to date. With our newest album having received a 2009 Parent’s Choice Gold and a Western Canadian Music Award plus the whole Treehouse TV thing, getting an opportunity to celebrate with fans in our hometown will be amazing! Plus, we’ll be sharing the stage with our full band and both backing musicians are previous ‘islanders’ too. Mario Vaira will be on guitar and Mark Harvey on bass…the kiddie mosh will surely be rockin’!

We first met at a Girl Guide camp in the late 1980’s and following a fun-filled weekend of campfires, sing-a-longs and outdoor fun, a life-long friendship was sealed. We were both thrilled to end up at the same highschool (Dover Bay) a few years later - Bobs & Lolo were actually our highschool nicknames! We soon started performing together through numerous choir concerts and piano recitals, and the rest, as they say, is history. :)

Bobs & Lolo - highschool
Retro Bobs & Lolo (~16 yrs old) – not much has changed!

We hope to see some of you at the event this weekend, and regardless, we’ll be sure to post some pics on our Facebook Group next week. Happy holidays!

Bobs & Lolo

Event info:

Bobs & Lolo are performing at Dover Bay Secondary on December 12th at 2pm. Tickets $8 in advance or $10 at the door. Children under one year FREE. Advance purchases recommended. Tickets are available at Kool & Child and Kiyo Salon in Nanaimo. For more info, please call 250-758-9727.

Doors open at 1:30pm. Be sure to arrive a few minutes early to enjoy the complimentary arts and craft stations. Kids will also be able to check out a fire truck with a special visit from the Nanaimo Fire Department (1:30-2pm).

Bobs & Lolo

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