Bunch Family

How you and your kid can enjoy some of the awesome music at Coachella 2012

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As you can tell from this young fan’s enthusiastic jiving, this year’s festival has a seriously bangin’ line up. If you couldn’t make it to the sunny California coast, here are some ways you and your family can still enjoy what’s happening on stage.

How can we not love the lady who croons how cool it is to love your family? Leslie Feist is consistently kick ass, especially her “1 2 3 4″ cover on Sesame Street. Watch her dance down the street counting penguin puppets, roosters in bonnets, and Elmo and his pals. For some more of Feist’s soothing sound, check out Broken Social Scene’s Jason Collette’s picks for a March break playlist, including his favourite Feist song.  Read more...

Make your own music!

Musical petting zoos are appearing in more and more kids’ areas at music festivals. No, elephants and jaguars haven’t learned how to sing a cappella while toddlers pat them, but children can pick up and play with all sorts of instruments, from the didgeridoo to the dulcimer. If your kids are getting bored of just listening to CDs or “borrowing” your iPod, try setting up your very own musical petting zoo, and who knows? They might be asking for djembe lessons for their next birthday.

But your backyard MPZ doesn’t have to feature the exotic collection found at faraway festivals. Has your teenage niece been taking piano lessons for years? She can be in charge of the keyboard station, teaching her younger cousins and their friends the C-scale or letting them “compose” their own songs. Your neighbour the flautist can play a few songs for the little ones, while everyone can take turns thumping out rhythms on that old drum you picked up at Goodwill.  Read more...

Bringing that festival feeling home…

There are so many awesome music festivals for families in the summer, but sometimes you just can’t drive for hours to hear cool music and dance with strangers who become friends. Still, it’s easy to bring that festival feeling to your own backyard! Just round up your family, friends, favourite food and of course, music. That might sound like a regular backyard barbeque, and maybe it kinda is, but you can still inject the zest of the fest into the smallest of summer get-togethers. Here’s how:

1. Host a potluck on the grass instead of an indoor dinner party or a sit-down barbeque. As well as giving you less work to do, not knowing what’s for dins gives you some of the unpredictability that you find at festivals.  Read more...

Bunchfest wants to help you find ways to help you create that festival feeling right in your own backyard.

You’ve attracted crowds with your fab gig posters, wowed them with your songs and now everyone’s clamoring for a memento. The answer? T-shirts. Everyone likes ‘em, everyone wears ‘em, and when you put ‘em on, way more people know about your band (or your festival). All you need is to make them.

You’ll need:

• White paper
• Markers or Fabric Crayons
• Iron-On transfer paper
• Scanner/Printer
• Iron
• T-shirts (light colours work best)

Steps:

1. Make some decisions! Are the T-shirts for your family band or for your festival? What’s the band/fest’s name? What design do you want to have?  Read more...

What’s the best fest for you?

From St. Louis and Seattle to Ottawa and Australia, festivals are taking over the world this summer. “Osheaga,” “Glastonbury” and “Lollapalooza” might conjure up images of the tipsy and tattooed rocking out all night, but lots of festivals have something – or a lot of things – for families. You might not want to keep the kids dancing ’til dawn, but introducing them to your favourite fests can be an awesome midsummer activity. Some of the bigger festivals have kid-centric sites with activities and performances for the under-12 set, while at the quieter ones, older kids would have no problem jamming with the adults.  Read more...

Bunch’s Creative Director Rebecca Brown and her family hit up Guelph’s Hillside Festival this weekend. In addition to being the powerhouse behind Bunch, Rebecca is a stealth photographer extraordinaire, and snapped these pictures of family fun happening around Hillside.

Music’s not the only thing that can turn your world upside down!

Baby’s snoozin’, Mama’s groovin’, and they’re both happy!

“They are the best band of all time!”

Maybe Baby wants sunglasses to fit in with his fam…

Music + summer + ice cream… Does it get any better?

Dad’s reliving his youth!

You don’t have to be a grown-up to rock some pretty sweet tats!

We must, we must protect our ears!

And finally, give it up for all the Hillside musicians who make the weekend amazing for the entire family!  Read more...

Bunchfest wants to help you find ways to help you create that festival feeling right in your own backyard.

The posters that hang in record shops and music venues serve two purposes: they let you know when awesome shows are happening in your city while providing a pop of colour in an interesting font. Gig posters have become so cool, that fans collect them not only because they’re Arcade Fire superfans, but also because the artwork is stellar. We at Bunch HQ love pretty much anything that comes from Burlesque of North America; they’ve really nailed the gig-poster-as-frame-worthy-art thing. Here’s their booth at Pitchfork Music Festival this year:

If you’re kids are at all rock show or art-inclined, a gig poster is a great activity to kickstart your at-home festival. Bunch families made some really excellent gig posters at the They Might Be Giants show at Luminato this year. We started with four basic patterns: lopsided ovals, squares, starbursts and curvy stripes, and supplied markers and pencil crayons.To make your own…  Read more...

Welcome to Bunchfest

For music lovers, summer = festival season. If music and sunshine are both things that feed the soul, it makes sense to put them together, right?

One of Bunchland’s goals for this summer is to find ways to help you create that festival feeling right in your own backyard.

We’re thinking:

• How to make your own festival merch
• Eating nothing but the finest in festival food (i.e. stuff that you would find -on-a-stick or -in-a-cone)
• Creating various play and relax zones in your backyard and neighbourhood
• How to pack for an all-day picnic
• The best tunes for your outdoor dance party
• How to put on a concert for your pals

What would you like to see from BunchFest this summer?

Photo, Dave Bidini and kids from Hillside 2009, by Flare via Flickr  Read more...