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Bring Your String

from The Wondarium: Songs For Kids by Jeni Hankins

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    The Wondarium started with a dream. I dreamed I was combing the beach for shells with my friend Alfred then a message came through the air from his wife Sarah. She said, "The Hippopotamus says bring her back some treasures."

    The next morning, I told my dream to Alfred over the telephone who later sent a chorus to me about Hippo. But before I'd heard his chorus, I'd written two verses about her as well. Once I listened to his chorus, I realized that my verses fit in with the rhythm of what he'd already written.

    Alfred and I call this ESP (extrasensory perception) songwriting. We write a lot of songs this way. Once we realized that both of us enjoyed making up songs that would suit children, we wrote another and another and another. We didn't think about them in a methodical way; they just dropped into our minds over the course of about a year.

    What makes these songs particularly for kids? Well there's something free about them, something nonsensical, and something playful. These are things which I always loved in songs I heard on Sesame Street or on Pete Seeger records.

    Not all adults are open to a song about the virtues of string, whereas kids seem to understand. But I was pleased to meet an adult after the first public performance of these songs who said, "I know you wrote that string song for kids, but I like it too." Perfect.

    Songs for kids, songs for free thinkers, songs for nonsense-lovers, songs for socks, songs for bears, boats, beans, and hippos.

    Come one, come all. Take your chances in The Wondarium.

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    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of String Unraveller Demo May 2021, The American Dream (Harlis and Freda), Voice Memo Demo, I'm Letting Go of You – Kitchen Single, The Wondarium: Songs For Kids, A Body is a Delicate House, I Fell Into the Fire, The Loneliest Snowman, I Fell Into The Fire – Limited Edition Handprinted, and 18 more. , and , .

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about

Ode to a useful thing – STRING!

lyrics

Bring Your String (And You’ll Never Go Wrong)

I invite you to think of the string
though it seems quite the humblest thing –
Some cotton or wool in a hank or a spool.
Hard to know where it begins.

Wind that string up into a rope,
it can pull your old sail boat.
You can rig up the sails and a string never fails
to keep it all safely afloat.

String! String!
What a wonderful thing.
Knit it up, tie it up – it’s ever so strong.
It’s the answer to a question
when you don’t know how long.
You can plait it, you can weave it, but you better believe it.
Bring your string and you’ll never go wrong.

You can tie yourself up as a gift.
Mail yourself to darkest Peru.
They’ll untie your string and dye it with beans –
weave it into a carpet for you.

Then you can fly on your magic rug,
visit Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome.
Then unravel your mat on your doorstep and that’s
how string always leads you back home.

When you’re twisting and you’re turning –
tied yourself up in knots.
Let’s be tethered together – all stringing along.

With a ball of string and a hook
you can crochet a brand new look;
a hat and some socks that might seem rather odd
though some string would be all that it took.

I’ll end my song on a note of advice:
Wind your string in a ball real tight
or you may have to wrangle some string in a tangle
and lasso yourself once or twice.

credits

from The Wondarium: Songs For Kids, released December 13, 2022
Music and Lyrics by Jeni Hankins, Lulu Wall Music, BMI,
and Alfred John Hickling, Sweet Pea Music.

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Jeni Hankins London, UK

Jeni Hankins grew up in the coalfields of Appalachian in Southwest Virginia among a family of miners, moonshiners, and journalists. Her writing pulls the grit, gumption, and keen sense of observation out of that heritage like drawing water from her grandmother’s well.

In every song, Jeni’s “true sense of place shines through – old as the hills, but brand new at the same time.” ... more

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