Kid-Friendly Trio Adds Kooky, Spooky Halloween Album to Their Holiday Lineup
Witches and clowns and candy, oh my! Kids have one more reason to be ecstatic for the upcoming holiday season because The Happy Racers have just released a new Halloween album that will have little ones (and their parents) monster mashing, cauldron-stirring, and Ghostbusting all season long.
A Scary Very Halloween features 15 original tracks and some of the coolest monster/ghost/witch-themed covers ever to haunt the airwaves. Physical CDs (distributed by Capital Nashville/Universal) are on sale now at Barnes & Noble, where they'll be available thru November 2. In full-on promo mode to make sure every kid and parent in America gets their Hallow-groove on, The Happy Racers will debut their sizzling, skeleton-filled, "Coco-esque," video for the Latin-fired track "Dia de Los Muertos," and it will appear on screen in all Journeys Kidz shoe stores nationwide throughout October.
Gearing up for a bustling fall season, the Nashville based band - Nathan Meckel (lead vocals, guitar), Mark Niemiec (drums, vocals) and Layne Ihde (guitar, trumpet, vocals) - has a busy slate of radio and live performance gigs scheduled. Following a live performance and interview on SiriusXM's Kids Place Live September 12, The Happy Racers will play September 22 at the Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival in Franklin, TN; the event's headliners include The Foo Fighters, The Killers, Keith Urban, Lauren Daigle and Wynonna and The Big Noise.
With an eclectic stylistic mix featuring everything from acoustic rock and reggae to Latin, synth pop and jam band vibes, A Scary Very Halloween includes playful and provocative re-imaginings of classic tunes the adults among us can hum or sing by heart - "Ghostbusters," "The Addams Family," "The Munsters," "Monster Mash," and "Ding Dong The Witch is Dead." The band also penned nine potential classics-to-be around the Halloween theme which are as clever and engaging as their titles: "Puke in G Minor," "What Should I Be For Halloween," "The Pumpkin Patch," "Candy," "Knock Knock Ding Dong," "Stirring the Brew," "Clowns Just Freak Me Out," "Dracula's Dragster," "Spiders Get Lonely Too," and the aforementioned "Dia de Los Muertos."
The addition of the creepy-crawly Halloween album means that fans of The Happy Racers will be able to tune into their favorite band throughout the entire holiday season; 2018 saw Santa bringing A Merry Very Christmas, an album that saw a digital release last year and that will become available on CD on October 25, 2019.
The Happy Racers, dubbed by NPR as "a gateway drug to better children's music," has become a mainstay on SiriusXM radio's "Kids Place Live." The band has also performed at Lincoln Center in NYC and Wolf Trap in Washington, DC, placed a song in the feature film The Bandit Hound, and landed six tunes on "Kids Christmas," an Apple Music Top 25 trending playlist in America curated by Topsify. The trio's recordings include their debut album Ready Set Go (2012), their 2018 holiday record, and a variety of singles including "Snowball Fight," "The Dark" and "My New Kicks."
"We had a blast with Halloween," says Meckel. "Even though we had to choose and write songs that were specific to the holiday, there were blissfully fewer musical boundaries to limit us compared to our Christmas album. We got to be quirkier, kinda cool harmonically and do things a little weirder than usual. We tried to land somewhere between Tim Burton and The Beatles and had a great time from start to finish. That's the wonderful thing about Happy Racers - there are no rules per se, so we can focus on having fun and making sure the listeners are right there with us."
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