January 21, 2014
Alison Levy is always game for a musical adventure.
Best known as “Sippy Alison” of the legendary kids group The Sippy Cups as well as one half of McCabe & Mrs. Miller (along with Victor Krummenacher of Camper Van Beethoven), Alison has recently released World of Wonder, a perfect mixture of kids anthems and pop song mastery.
Knowing that her most recent impulse is to branch out into the world of
musical theater, I asked her to perform something for our crowd-sourced
version of Tradition and she was more that happy to give it a try.
When she submitted her video she sent me this email along with the lyrics to the song:
“I decided to rewrite the lyrics of the song to be about raising a child to Bar Mitzvah age, as I am doing now, in a funny way.
Performing with me are my friends Josh Pollock on guitar, and Jody
Richardson on fiddle. Turns out Jody actually played the fiddler in
Fiddler on the Roof when she was a kid!
The video was shot by my 12-year-old son Henry, who is the Bar Mitzvah boy I'm singing about.
Wish I had memorized the words better, but we shot this really quickly
so I had a cheat sheet in front of me. We had a blast doing this!”
Bar Mitzvah
Lyrics by Alison Levy
when they are born you swaddle them in blankets
change their little diapers
feed them day and night
as they grow up you read them lots of books
and take them lots of places
open up their eyes
the babies, the babies
tradition
the babies, the babies
tradition
as they get older you send them off to school
and encourage all their interests
give them time to play
wipe their little noses, clip the nails on toeses
keep the bullies far away
the children, the children
tradition
the children, the children
tradition
when they are tweens it’s time for a bar mitzvah
this is time for parents to have a real breakdown
how can this little one turn into a grown up
time is moving too fast, I am melting down!
bar mitzvah, bar mitzvah
tradition
bar mitzvah, bar mitzvah
tradition!