Live Veggies!

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Feb 22, 2002

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Even without arms or legs, Larry the Cucumber and Bob the Tomato are leaping off the videotapes and onto the stage of VeggieTales Live! Larry, Bob and a bushel basket of their wacky vegetable friends are featured in a singing, dancing, theatrical version of the popular VeggieTales videos that use humor to teach children morality lessons. "It's kind of the equivalent of what if Monty Python took over your Sunday school class," co-creator Phil Vischer says of the direct-to-video series that has sold more than 25 million tapes since its debut in 1993.

Vischer says for the 28-city national tour, which recently kicked off in Minneapolis, the show's creators were trying to stage a big event for which busy families would find time to attend. And if families also learn something from the show, "That's kind of the added bonus," he says.

Taking a live show on the road was the next logical step for Vischer's Big Idea Productions, based in the Chicago area. The VeggieTales' first movie, a retelling of the biblical story of Jonah and the Whale, is scheduled to hit theaters this fall.

Vischer was a computer animator in Chicago, working on commercials for Pop-Tarts and other products, when he came up with the idea for VeggieTales. He says he noticed that children were attracted to "junk food" stories on television but bored by media that tried to convey a positive message. Vischer says he wanted to make something good for kids that they would actually like -- "to make an apple that tastes like a Twinkie."

His first cartoon character was a candy bar. "And then my wife said, `You know, moms are going to be mad if you make their kids fall in love with candy bars," Vischer says. So Vischer came up with another simple shape -- a cucumber with expressive eyes. And so Larry the Cucumber was born in 1991. He was soon followed by Bob the Tomato, whose red skin and squat appearance complemented Larry's long green shape in an Abbott-and-Costello-type act.

Vischer was joined by a friend, Mike Nawrocki. The two had met in Bible college in the Twin Cities and were on a puppet team that Vischer says had been "writing really goofy scripts and driving around northern Minnesota, scaring Baptists." From that two-person operation in Vischer's apartment grew a business that now employs more than 200 people. Last August, the 15th VeggieTales release, Lyle the Kindly Viking, was named best animated direct-to-video release at the World Animation Celebration.

Real country from another country

SAN ANTONIO (NYT) -- She doesn't have a cowboy hat and doesn't come from the mountains of Virginia or the high plains of Texas, but Kasey Chambers is more country than any act coming out of Nashville today. Chambers, 25, is from Australia. Raised in a nomadic family that spent several months a year on south-central Australia's Nullabor Plain, Chambers set the alt-country world abuzz in 2000 when her debut album, The Captain, was released in the United States. Chambers and her band, which includes her dad, Bill Chambers (guitar), B.J. Barker (drums), Jeff McCormack (bass) and Glen Hannah (guitar), are back in the United States working behind a new disc, Barricades & Brickwalls.

"I guess the easiest word to use for my music is country,"said Chambers (right) by telephone from a tour stop in Washington, D.C. "But that's so vague these days. It used to be when you said `country' people thought of Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard. Now they ask you what kind of country. Over here I'm known as alternative country. In Australia we don't have that kind of alternative country scene. I have a new kind of audience in Australia. We get the die- hard country fans but we're also getting new fans who never listened to country."

Chambers struck a chord with her wide-open, plain-spoken songs about feelings, loss and confusion. Though many of the songs on The Captain were penned when Chambers was still in her teens, they resonated among teens, adults and other singing songwriters such as Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle. And it didn't hurt that The Captain was used on the soundtrack to the TV show The Sopranos. But Chambers doesn't sound as if she's out to battle Madonna or Janet Jackson or Britney Spears for a place atop the pop-music heap.

"I'm kind of pretty happy at the place I am right now in America and in Australia. I have my cake and I can eat it, too," she said with one of many laughs. "I can sell albums, tour, travel and write songs and I don't have paparazzi following me. My passion is my job. It's hard for an artist who plays this sort of music to be a superstar anyway."

Who'll win the Dylan pool?

NEW YORK (AP) -- He may not know it, but when Bob Dylan signals his band to start a song onstage tonight in Dallas, more than 1,000 people far from the arena are keenly interested in his choice. Fans of the veteran troubadour have launched an intricate Internet pool built on their predictions of what Dylan sings in concert.

The pool reflects both the obsessive interest Dylan still draws 40 years into his career and the way this road warrior has structured his career. He generally plays more than 150 concerts a year. For the fans, it's mostly fun. Dylan is into the second decade of what is jokingly called his "Never-Ending Tour." He's typically on the road for a month or two at a time, rests for a few weeks, then starts anew.