Step aside, Baby Shark. Hoosiers made an adult-friendly kids' album that has famous ties

When Ben and Brittany Cooper started writing a set of children's songs in 2011, they had compositional expertise, a love of poetry, no kids and little plan for how to release an album. But they did have one clear goal: to write tunes gratifying enough to be enjoyed for decades rather than tolerated for an ear-grating few months.

Thirteen years later, the couple's dream project has come to fruition. Their songs contain lyrics inspired by classic literature and music that blends fresh ideas with an homage to iconic 20th-century hits. And their album — "Hoot and the Hollers" — has been recorded by veterans who work with some of the biggest names in Nashville, Tennessee. The album was released in February on Spotify and as a card to play in a Yoto box, a screen-free, kid-friendly audio player.

"I think our desire from the beginning of it was: Just like I as a 7- or 8-year-old kid fell in love with the Beatles' music that's really rich and complex and fun — what if we created music that, yeah, we can say it's for kids, but we think parents would enjoy it, too," said Ben, who worked as a songwriter and producer before starting his own company.

After spending the early years of their marriage in Nashville, the Coopers now live in Brittany's hometown of Westfield, where they're raising four kids ages 4 to 11. Writing, recording and releasing "Hoot" has meant more than simply offering an alternative to commercialized children's music.

The album — developed in collaboration with Grammy Award-winning songwriter Gordon Kennedy, a longtime family friend and mentor to Ben — has given the couple a creative outlet unencumbered by the traditional recording industry's often-limiting parameters.

The result is a deeply personal expression that draws on the Coopers' own childhood love of music and poetry and reflects the life truths they want their children to embrace as they grow up.

'How can we be really creative and playful?'

Thanks to the soothing voice of a British narrator, the 22-track "Hoot and the Hollers" feels like a classic children's book as it unfolds across 45 minutes. This story’s backyard gang turns a rainy day into puddle-splashing fun, tries to shed training wheels and learns the alphabet to songs inspired by the likes of the Electric Light Orchestra, Beatles and The Lovin' Spoonful.

That's to be expected when the band comprises wise leader Hoot McOwlister, keyboardist Johann Sebastian Duck, bassist Tilly Terrier, guitarist Boom Boom Rockoon, drummer Brewster Rabbit and their human friend Penny Jane.

Beatles references show up in Penny’s name and Hoot's ruby red Sgt. Pepper-style hat. Tilly takes her name from the Coopers’ former dog. The rabbit nods to the album's star Nashville session drummer Steve Brewster.

And the raccoon? He's an ode to Kennedy, who plays guitar on "Hoot" and had a key role in the album's development and recording. The veteran Nashville musician is known for co-writing the lyrics to Eric Clapton's "Change the World," performing with Peter Frampton and Garth Brooks, and producing and penning songs for the likes of Bonnie Raitt and Alison Krauss.

The Coopers drew inspiration for the songs from their own upbringings, setting to music incidents like disappearing hamsters, an acorn that grew into an oak and the family celebration when Brittany's brother was potty-trained.

"It was sort of a family joke," Brittany said. "My dad's like, 'A dry bottom parade!' And we marched around singing this little ditty. And so then we took it and actually built it out into this full-on Sousa-esque march. ... My dad also loves John Philip Sousa."

The cast of critters in Penny Jane's backyard provided Ben and Brittany an outlet outside their daily jobs — as a songwriter and music journalist, respectively — without the pressure to create for mass consumption.

"You're doing a thing that you love, but it's also become your job," Brittany said. "So we were like, how can we be really creative and playful?"

How a Grammy-winning songwriter and bluegrass album inspired 'Hoot'

Growing up in Fort Wayne, Ben played piano, saved up to buy audio gear, and listened to the Beatles and Cold Play and Queen and Led Zeppelin.

Poetry captivated Brittany as a child growing up in Westfield, where her parents read poems from the Childcraft anthology at night. From there, she explored Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses," the cadence in "Winnie-the-Pooh" creator A.A. Milne's work and Indiana's own James Whitcomb Riley.

Brittany studied journalism and mass communication at Samford University in Alabama, and Ben pursued audio engineering at Belmont University in Nashville. They married in 2009. Ben sought any inroad into the notoriously tough music industry, shooting T-Shirts from a cannon while dressed as Alan Jackson's Muppet-like mascot, playing the famed Bluebird Cafe and, of course, writing songs.

A mentorship propelled Ben into new opportunities. He had connected with Kennedy a few months after the veteran musician had judged a 2007 Belmont songwriting contest that Ben won. In 2009, Kennedy invited his mentee to co-write songs for country and bluegrass star Ricky Skaggs.

The resulting album was the Grammy-nominated "Mosaic," which defied genre expectations by melding bluegrass, country, pop and gospel. The artistic freedom from that project helped inspire Ben and Brittany to begin writing "Hoot."

Famous guitars accompany a Brentwood recording session

Sometimes, the Coopers' incubator for compositions was the car, where they sang and wrote as they drove. Other times, Brittany, 38, penned lyrics inspired by her childhood and brought them to her husband to set to music. Often, Ben, 40, recorded himself experimenting with new ideas on the piano, and then the duo wrote phrases as Brittany told him how the passages made her feel.

The couple played their songs for Kennedy, who helped develop the works as the team leaned into their own musical influences.

"We would say, 'This is (a) "Mr. Blue Sky" kind of direction.' And then, 'This is McCartney,'" Kennedy said. "When you hear that in what you're doing and you know that you like what it is that caused you to want to do that in the first place, you feel like we're on the right track."

The Coopers, Kennedy and a slate of top Nashville musicians — including drummer Brewster and keyboardist Blair Masters — recorded most of "Hoot" in 2011 and 2012 at Kennedy's home studio in Brentwood, Tennessee. Ben sang lead on most of the songs.

For "Under the Weather," Kennedy played his famous father's 1961 Gibson ES-335, which guitarist and producer Jerry Kennedy used on Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman." On "Hoo Do I See?" and "When You Dream," the younger Kennedy pulled out the 1959 Gibson Les Paul that John Sebastian had used on "Daydream."

During recording, Ben was still working fulltime as a songwriter and producer, while Brittany continued writing and editing. But over the next several years, the couple's life changed dramatically. Ben earned an MBA in Austin, Texas, their family grew, and the Coopers started Amplify, a company that provides financial forecasting for small business owners.

"Sometimes we would just turn ("Hoot") on and just feel like we were really proud of this and we love this," Brittany said. "It's just so fun and so true to who we are creatively. But we just had never released it, and our friends would always say, 'When are you going to release "Hoot"'?"

For more than a decade, the Coopers weren't sure how to answer that question.

'People are hungry for this'

In 2018, the family moved to Brittany's childhood home — a four-acre plot in Westfield. With more financial and schedule flexibility, they're finding ways to fund their music endeavors. The Coopers are currently working on a second children's album.

"We thought we knew how (creativity) would look in our 20s, but we're really thankful for what it has meant to us now and what it means for our kids," Brittany said.

Freed from the burden of making "Hoot" profitable, the Coopers took their time to figure out how to best launch the album. They decided on the Yoto player to keep music as the focus and to nudge kids to choose what to play instead of passively consuming limitless digital content. The Coopers' children added their voices to "Dry Bottom Parade" in an updated track shortly before the album was released.

"Hoot" is a generational experience for Kennedy, too. His seven-month-old grandson listens to the album, which includes "Blue Beyond" — a song his grandfather originally co-wrote for the 2006 film "Fox and the Hound 2." Kennedy's son requested to hear it every night growing up and then again at his wedding.

"I wasn't thinking that I'm writing the song that my son and my wife would dance to at his wedding, but I just think that if you're motivated the right way, that's going to find its way into more scenarios because people are hungry for this," Kennedy said. "People want to put something good and decent in front of their children."

Perhaps that's because parents know the life scenarios that require rainy-day puddle navigation never actually come to an end.

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Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or [email protected]. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: @domenicareports.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Hoosier duo made an adult-friendly kids' album that has famous ties