Bill Harley life and biography

Family entertainer Bill Harley has won acclaim across the United States for his blend of song and story that entertains adults and children alike. Described as the Mark Twain of contemporary children's music, Harley has performed as a soloist or with his band the Troublemakers at schools, coffee houses, festivals, and on the theater stage since 1980, logging over two hundred shows per year. To quote Child Magazine, "There are a lot of performing artists out there singing, stomping, and storytelling their way into kids' audio cassette players. But few do it with as much spirit and success as Bill Harley."

Born William Harley, the entertainer is the middle of three sons of Max Harley, a lawyer, and Ruth Harley, a children's literature writer. During his childhood, Bill took piano lessons and wrote stories. After moving to the East Coast during his high school years, Harley became interested in folk music and began playing the guitar and banjo. He later attended Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he majored in religious studies. Following his graduation, Harley worked as a waiter, directed programs in inner city and rural schools to help children, parents, and teachers to deal effectively with conflict and violence in their lives, and played in coffee houses and small clubs.

In 1980 Harley and his wife, Deborah Block, moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where Block had a job at Brown University. Harley and a friend started the Learning Connection, a community-based learning program that grew to include hundreds of courses. About that time, Harley also founded a storytelling group called the Spellbinders. Within a short time Harley--a man of medium height, bushy mustache, thinning hair, and large eyes--found himself performing more and more at elementary schools.

He incorporated a wide variety of musical forms and traditions (reggae, doo-wop, jazz) into his programs, made up of songs and stories embellished with silly voices, tone inflections, body language, sound effects, and gestures. Harley makes up his own stories and draws on folk literature, Indian legend, books, and the works of other storytellers. He engages the youngsters in sing-alongs, fill-in-the-blanks, and question-and-answers, thus making his entertainment into a two-way event. Before adding stories to his repertoire, Harley often tries them out on his sons Noah and Dylan.

In 1984 Harley and Block took out a second mortgage on their house in Seekonk, Massachusetts, to found Round River Records and cut Harley's first album-- Monsters in the Bathroom . The album's success encouraged him to try evening family concerts, which proved popular because Harley's music speaks to both children and adults. Harley told Contemporary Musicians: "I perform to remind everyone, including myself, that regardless of where we come from or how old we are or what we think, we have a great deal in common--and the things we don't have in common, the things that make each one of us unique, are things worth celebrating. I like family audiences, and I've found that material that works, really works, for kids, also works for adults--for the obvious reasons: we're all people and adults remember growing up. And if they don't remember, I remind them."

Many of Harley's nine albums, which are geared to children of grade school age, have been award-winners because he strives to understand children's points of view. Harley borrows Fred Roger's (celebrated host of TV's Mr. Roger's Neighborhood ) term "emotional archaeology" when referring to what he attempts to do in getting in touch with his own childhood experiences. "A lot of my writing is trying to go back and touch the kid within me, always hoping that the kid is still there," Harley told Danny McCue of the Long Island Parenting News.

The title song from Fifty Ways to Fool Your Mother lists in rap fashion fifty excuses to get out of going to school. In You're in Trouble 's "Dad Threw the TV Out the Window" Harley tells kids that they can live without the television; in "No School Today" he sings the praises of a snow day; and in the title song he recounts what happens when a young boy comes home from school to find a plate of cookies with the note "Don't touch! These are for dessert."

Harley described his songwriting approach to Howard Scott in the Providence Sunday Journal Magazine: "Sometimes I come up with an emotion, and hunt for a way to express the feeling. Other times, I have an idea or image in mind. Often, I'll carry the thought in my head for a while. Then I'll sit down and begin writing. I don't always get it the first time. The ending to 'Dad Threw the TV Out the Window,' where the kid joyously throws his father's television out the window took me a year to come up with."

Harley has expressed his creativity in a number of different ways. He recorded a collection of folk songs for adults ( Coyote ), and with songwriter/storyteller Peter Alsop he created a collection of songs about serious illness and hospitals ( Peter and Bill in the Hospital ). In 1991, in conjunction with WGBH-Radio in Boston, he produced I'm Gonna Let It Shine: A Gathering of Voices for Freedom, a collection of freedom songs featuring original voices of the Civil Rights Movement and nationally recognized singer/activists, among others. Harley has also written and narrated a series of filmstrips for Learning Tree Films and has written a theater piece.

Harley has also published six books. These include: Sitting Down To Eat which was selected as an American Booksellers Association Pick of the list; Sarah's Story a Storytelling World Award Winner; and The Amazing Flight of Darius Frobisher his first novel for elementary students. He is currently working on another novel and has another picture book slated for publication. His second novel for children, Night of the Spadefoot Toads, was released in October 2008.

On August 12, 2008, Harley released Yes to Running! Bill Harley Live on CD and DVD. It features ten songs recorded before an all-ages live audience at the University of Montana.

Famous Works

On Round River Records:
-Monsters in the Bathroom 1984.
-Fifty Ways to Fool Your Mother 1986.
-Dinosaurs Never Say Please and Other Stories 1987.
-Cool in School: Tales from 6th Grade 1987.
-Coyote 1988.
-Peter and Bill in the Hospital (with Peter Alsop), 1988.
-You're in Trouble 1988.
-Grownups Are Strange 1990.
-Come on Out and Play 1990.

Awards:
2001 National Storytelling Network's Circle of Excellence Award
2006 Parents' Choice Gold Storytelling World Award; Joey, Chloe and the Swamp Monsters
2007 Grammy Award Best Spoken Word Album For Children - Blah Blah Blah: Stories About Clams, Swamp Monsters, Pirates & Dogs
2009 Grammy Award Best Spoken Word Album For Children - Yes to Running!
2009 Green Earth Book Award Children's Fiction - Night of the Spadefoot Toads
2010 Rhode Island Humanities Council Lifetime Achievement Award

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