Meet the Viral Musician Taking part in Nursery Rhymes within the Type of Your Favourite Band

Okay.S. Rhoads is taking part in a baby’s birthday celebration. With three studio data to his credit score and music showing in advertisements for Zillow, Apple and Coke, Rhoads has by no means wanted to play a child’s birthday celebration. He doesn’t even write youngsters’ music. And he’s by no means been flown to New York to play a birthday celebration, to carry out youngsters’ songs that aren’t his, in a mode not his personal, and for a dad who says he’s not going to punch him within the face (however could, in truth, take a swing).

So, why is Rhoads, age 46, taking part in this specific birthday celebration?

“It was extra, like, it was only a joke,” he says. “That’s what I informed Ben [Lovett, of Mumford & Sons]: ‘I don’t play birthdays, however I’ve to play this birthday as a result of the story’s too good.’”

“Folks love covers, you recognize?” Rhoads says, sitting in Nashville’s W Resort a number of weeks later. This conclusion is current, borne out of bewilderment and bemusement at his first viral success after 23 years within the music business. His year-long, 14-song social media sequence “Youngsters’ Favourite Jams by Their Dads’ Favourite Bands,” during which he parodies a few of his favourite bands in the event that they had been to cowl a few of the hottest youngsters songs, was impressed by exhaustion and posted to make a number of mates chuckle. However tens of millions of performs, numerous superstar followers and main label curiosity for a full-length document has made this, if not critical, at the very least no laughing matter.

Effectively, to some extent: “As lengthy I don’t ever take it severely. That’s the principle factor,” he says. “The second I do, it’s time to cease.”

Rhoads wears an unbuttoned inexperienced shirt and a slouch beanie, two weeks’ value of white-ish beard complementing gentle blue eyes and a robust jawline. Regardless of the gray, he’s youthful, good-looking and completely becoming in that “cool dad” class. Initially from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, he moved to Nashville in his early 20s in the course of the metropolis’s renaissance, and over greater than a two-decade profession, he has change into certainly one of its quite a few, usually nameless, success tales. Revered as an artist, he’s additionally in demand as a sync musician, a sub-genre within the business the place his music is licensed by TV reveals and firms. (Gray’s Anatomy, The Blacklist and The Good Physician are just some of his 100 to 200 “cuts.”) However it was the delivery of his first little one, Ziggy Evergreen, in 2020 that may result in his most widespread success.

“Each single factor modifications,” Rhoads says of the delivery of his daughter. Whereas as soon as he’d really feel the muse strike between 10 p.m. and a couple of a.m., staying up engaged on songs in his downstairs house studio, now, with a toddler, he and spouse Erin are not often awake previous 9:30. And when his daughter goes to sleep, so does the studio.

Ziggy didn’t sleep nicely throughout these first few months, and Rhoads remembers breaking down within the bathe sooner or later, tears mixing with the faucet water, the sleepless nights lastly cracking his reserves. However that second impressed him to put in writing his first tune for her. So he dried off and headed all the way down to his studio, wrote the music, recorded the devices, and paired it with footage across the delivery and her early days of their house. “[It] was her ‘Whats up, world, that is our daughter’ tune,” he says. He posted it to Instagram, as a result of social media is the house for informal artwork.

Quick ahead to 2022. Ziggy is 2 and obsessive about Pinkfong’s “Child Shark.” Its lyrics: “Child shark / doo-doo, doo-doo,” advert infinitum. “That tune is one minute lengthy, so that you hear it time and again,” Rhoads says. As soon as once more exhausted, he was singing it, dirge-like, to himself when it occurred to him: this sounds rather a lot like Radiohead. And so, as earlier than, he headed to the studio — nicely, he requested his spouse to observe his daughter, after which he went to the studio — and ripped out a canopy of “Child Shark” is that if it had been a deep reduce on Child A. However it wasn’t simply the vocals; it was the instrumentation, the association, the tones. “I needed to stick it in a bizarre time signature and have all this noise,” he says. Briefly, he turned a practiced ear, honed after many years within the business, to finish a parody of a youngsters’s tune as a result of it was humorous and he was sick of listening to it on repeat.

After two hours, it was completed. Rhoads DIYed the video himself — virtually an afterthought when in comparison with the music itself. I imply, there’s zero stress, proper? It’s only for Instagram, the place for thirst traps, trip pictures and his daughter’s unique tune. “I simply thought a handful of individuals would chuckle,” he says. “However it grew and grew. The extra we did, the extra individuals liked them.”

The identical day he recorded his cowl of Radiohead’s cowl of “Child Shark,” he additionally recorded a canopy of Bon Iver-era Bon Iver overlaying Verna Hills’ people normal “The Wheels on the Bus.” However the third, a Dave Matthews Band cowl interpretation of “Sesame Avenue Theme,” marked a departure. Whereas the primary two songs had been primarily reliant on the musicianship of Rhoads for the joke, with the video being no matter he himself might throw collectively, “Sesame Avenue” added costumes — Rhoads donning his father-in-law’s previous toupee — in addition to auxiliary cinematography due to buddy, songwriter and fellow Nashville success story Tyler James.

James, whom Rhoads describes as a “renaissance man,” actually and figuratively took the digital camera out of Rhoads’ fingers, permitting him to lean into the humor of the costumes and appearing. It’s this kind of volunteerism within the Volunteer State that’s emblematic of how Nashville’s songwriter group has popped out and in of Rhoads’ movies to broaden and lengthen the joke. Peter Barbee, who performs beneath the title Amongst Savages, mans the puppets in “Sesame Avenue,” whereas the Counting Crows imagining of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” options artist Emma Fitzpatrick, who simply occurred to be within the neighborhood, because the titular character. “Each video, there was this glorious accident that occurred,” Rhoads says.

The rise in degree of video manufacturing wasn’t the one change; for some songs, Rhoads invents how an artist may riff on a basic along with his personal values. Bob Dylan’s “Previous MacDonald” could hew near the unique in verse one, with whiny sing-song voice and cue-card lyrics a la “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” however then the character goes off script, blaming manufacturing unit farming and seed conglomerates for failing crops. “I did what Dylan would do,” Rhoads says. “I went into this complete diatribe towards Monsanto.” The Hamilton-inspired “Itsy Bitsy Spider” goes even additional: A wholly new tune, from chord construction to lyrics, it throws within the youngsters’s basic on the very finish, virtually to satisfy the challenge’s mandate. What started as a challenge slender in scope has broadened resulting from common demand. “There’s no actual format,” he says. “The inspiration hits, and also you go along with it.”

Thus far, Rhoads has completed 14 covers, together with the White Stripes on “5 Little Monkeys,” Weezer on “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” Pearl Jam on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” The Nationwide on “Bingo,” the Beastie Boys on the “ABCs,” and the Seaside Boys on “The Hokey Pokey.” He data all of the devices himself, mixes it for a smartphone (its finish vacation spot) and collaborates with James and others on the filming. He now has a wig trunk and idea notes. And he does this whereas nonetheless working as knowledgeable songwriter and remaining an engaged father or mother.

And that leads again to Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons, a birthday celebration in New York and Rhoads fearing he was about to get punched within the face.

On April 26, Rhoads posted his pitch-perfect imagining of the band overlaying “You Are My Sunshine.” Rhoads nails the percussive guitar, the banjo overlay, the vests and pastoral setting, and the trademark harmonies of the folk-rock band. It’s wonderful. It has over 6 million views on TikTok. And, as a result of Nashville is a musician’s city and everyone has one diploma of separation from each different musician, somebody despatched it to Mumford’s Lovett, who requested Rhoads whether or not he’d fly to New York for his daughter’s birthday celebration and carry out the entire “Youngsters’ Favourite Jams” sequence for his musician-parent mates. “Is that this a entice?” Rhoads requested, worrying some individuals simply can’t take a joke. “He’s like, ‘No. That’s humorous, although.’”

And so Rhoads performed his first — and probably solely — little one’s birthday celebration, parodying certainly one of its attendees to his face and surviving to inform the story. It’s yet another surprising twist. Initially, Rhoads solely accomplished 90-second variations of the songs to match the Instagram Reels format — in any case, who actually desires to hearken to a full-length rendition after the joke’s been made? However he reads the feedback: “Persons are, like, ‘Full variations, please,’” he says. “I stand corrected.” And what he initially wrote for himself and some mates now has main label curiosity to deliver the challenge to life and again it with advertising and marketing budgets that his unique data (which, it must be famous, are very, superb) by no means had. Would he do a document launch? Would he tour behind covers of covers? How intently are you able to match the mannerisms of Dave Matthews earlier than he brings authorized motion for copyright infringement? And what does it imply to an artist that his or her most well-known work won’t be an unique tune, however as an alternative another person’s?

“These are questions my spouse asks me, so it’s best to actually discuss to her,” Rhoads says, laughing. “I don’t know. I simply consider this as a enjoyable, foolish little factor.”

He is aware of most, if not all, of the songs have made it again to the parodied bands — that’s simply how Nashville works. “Each single certainly one of [‘Kids’], someone will textual content me, and be, like, ‘I despatched this to Matt [Berninger] from the Nationwide and he was cracking up,’” he says. And there are extra “Youngsters’ Favourite Jams” within the works — he’s already purchased an Ed Sheeran wig, and he’ll let you know all in regards to the “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” idea, which can embrace a Huckleberry Finn-style picket raft, a hollowed-out piano and a serious physique of water. If the preliminary challenge succeeds, perhaps he’ll do a “Mother’s Favourite Bands” version, during which he’d faucet a few of his favourite ladies within the metropolis to impersonate a few of their favourite artists singing youngsters’ songs.

Rhoads continues the sequence as a result of it’s common, positive. However it’s greater than that. “Like all artist, you secretly crave consideration, so when a bunch of individuals prefer it, nicely, I ought to do one other,” he says. “However the principle motive I saved doing them, I see so many mates, they usually’re, like, ‘These issues deliver us a lot pleasure.’ That’s why I like it.”

Rhoads remembers a current journey to Colorado. A guitar leaned towards a nook of the room, and he picked it up and began strumming. The idea for the Mumford & Sons model of “Sunshine” got here out shortly. “If it wasn’t [for that], perhaps I wouldn’t have been in New York,” he says. However that was simply the newest in a string of moments. Earlier than that, it was an exhausted father buzzing “Child Shark,” and earlier than that, it was an improvised lullaby synced to iPhone footage from a primary bathtub.

And earlier than that, it was fatherhood itself. It’s simple. It’s only a child, he thought the day earlier than Ziggy Evergreen’s delivery. Then every little thing modifications, a full permeation of life, in the absolute best method.

“I’m undecided I might have change into the higher model of myself had Ziggy not been born,” Rhoads says. “It made me wish to be higher, as a result of I would like her to be great.”