The Eugene Public Library’s annual Teddy Bear Picnic is this Saturday at Amazon Park in Eugene. The event is celebrating its 30th year.
Mike and Carleen McCornack & The Garden Variety Band have been part of the picnic every year. KLCC’s Rachael McDonald spoke with the pair. Mike McCornack says they started celebrating the Teddy Bear Picnic in 1995.
Mike McCornack: At first we thought it was gonna be a one off, but the first one was so much fun that we all decided, ‘What the heck! Let's just do it again next year!’, and next year has kept coming for, now a total of 30 Teddy Bear picnics this year.
Carleen McCornack: July 29 of 1995 was the first one, and we've not missed one since.
Rachael McDonald: The Teddy Bear Picnic is a song. Right?
C. McCornack: It is a song from the 1950s. And it has been turned into a beloved, not only a song, but a book for kids and, we love playing it. It talks about going out into the woods and finding a surprise of teddy bears having a picnic. And, so, we latched on to that as Mike said, and so did Kara Hawkinson and Jeff Defy from the library back then. So, just so happy to be doing it.
McDonald: And what is it, what is it about this event, do you think that has made it so long standing?
C. McCornack: Well, it brings families of all kinds together. It is part of the summer reading program, of course. And it's promoting reading for kids all throughout the summer. And this is a culmination of that. But, multi generations come to this event– little kids with their stuffies, grandparents, parents, of course, adults. And it is something that brings those generations together and it's so fun to watch.
M. McCornack: And a really cool outcome of the fact that's gone so long is we now have people coming, bringing their children who came as children back in the late 90s. So we have, original teddy bear kid attendees who are now teddy bear parent attendees.
Mcdonald: That's so sweet. Now your band, the Garden Variety Band, is that right? Is this kind of in keeping with your other music. Would you describe what you do?
M. McCornack: The band is a group of musicians that we work with, whether we're doing children's music or adult music.
Kevin McCornack who is a second cousin as a matter of fact,, who plays harmonica and bassoon and concertina and then Dale Bradley, who is a fabulous cellist and bassist who also works with Eugene Symphony and Oregon Mozart players. They do play with us throughout the year on other events that aren't for children. But, they've been with us pretty much from the beginning, at the Teddy Bears Picnic and are glad to join us every year.
McDonald: But you do other music. Or is it mostly children's music?
C. McCornack: We started playing together in 1971, during the folk music scare, as some people say. But we mostly play songs for adults. We're singer-songwriters and write our own things.
M. McCornack: But the music for children was something that almost came about accidentally when, when our kids arrived and we ended up having to listen to a lot of music for our kids because as you know, kids will listen over and over and over there was some, we found that was wonderful. But I would have to say the majority of what we found was stuff we couldn't stand to listen to over and over.
So we produced our first kids' recording (with) the whole concept being we would produce it in exactly the same way we would do our adult music—just make it accessible to kids. And it turned out to be quite successful. We ended up, that first one won a Parents Choice Gold Award and Sesame Street Best Music to Travel with Award and a couple other things, We went on to do two other children's albums. But those are three of 10 recordings we've put out over the last 53 years.
The Teddy Bears Picnic is Saturday, July 20 at 11:00 am at Amazon Park in Eugene.
