LOS ANGELES (AV PUBLICITY SERVICES) - "Merry Fishes to All," the 2005 Grammy Award nominated holiday CD release from Trout Fishing in America, has been named a Gold Award winner in the 2005
National Parenting Publications Awards (NAPPA) competition. Gold Award winners will be featured this holiday season in dozens of local parenting publications across the country and online at www.parenthood.com. This distinction recognizes the best musical recordings available for children today.
Now in its 15th year, NAPPA is a well-known name in industries focused on children's learning and environment. Time-starved parents and loving adults who want high-quality children's toys and products that provide 'smart fun' and good, developmentally appropriate design can just reach for this newly released list of NAPPA winners for holiday and year-round children's gift giving. When parents see the NAPPA Gold seal on the packaging of winning products, they're assured a safe, fun and educational experience for their children.
"Merry Fishes to All" has already angled other national awards and acclaim. Disney's Family Fun magazine called it 'the Year's Best Christmas CD,' saying that the songs are 'so fresh they practically wiggle.' Ben Fong-Torres wrote in Parade magazine about its 'comic sugarplums such as 'I Got a Cheese Log.'' Child and Chicago Parent magazines chose "Merry Fishes" as one of the best holiday CDs, and it also won a Parents' Choice award. This is the second Grammy nomination for Trout Fishing in America, also known as guitarist Ezra Idlet and bassist Keith Grimwood. For more than 25 years they have been playing music that delights children and astounds parents.
"Merry Fishes" to All expertly snares the charm, humor, and occasional pathos that characterize the music of Trout Fishing, one of the most engaging and musically accomplished groups around. This timeless collection presents a dozen mostly original holiday songs-each one as unique as a snowflake but paradoxically as familiar as a cheese log.
"Merry Fishes" was recorded with longtime producer and multi-instrumentalist Fred Bogert, drummer Chris Munson and saxophonist Bob Bowers near Nashville as an unseasonal snowstorm blanketed the world outside.
The duo's holiday spawn finds Keith and Ezra again casting a broad musical net. 'Chocolate Christmas' and 'Santa Brought Me Clothes' are New Orleans-flavored confections-nuttier than pralines and just as delicious. 'I Got a Cheese Log' is rolled in a jazzy accompaniment that is as sharp and pungent as an aged Gouda-and just as Gouda for you. And snowfall always sends the Trouts scurrying for cover into the Mel Torme Memorial Lounge, as 'Snow is Falling' and 'Snow Day' attest.
Lyrically, the songs on "Merry Fishes" swim proudly against the current, reaching new (and ever-deeper) thematic waters. 'My First Christmas' celebrates-in typical Trout Fishing fashion-the odd importance new parents place on their child's first Christmas and hilariously documents the pandemonium a 'zero' year old brings to the yuletide celebration-truly, a child's Christmas in wails. 'You Gotta Get Up' touchingly captures the impatient near-panic of a child desperately pleading with sleeping parents that 'you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up, it's Christmas mornin'.' Incredibly, the Trouts are even able to wring some genuine poignancy and melancholy from that most abused of holiday traditions, the 'Christmas Letter.'
