Remy's Place

Origin Story

Michael had been writing and producing music for kids’ hit TV shows for decades, living in New York, and feeding his imagination by, among other things, going out to hear live music in the clubs of NYC. “I particularly love going to hear live music in a small room. It’s such a great thing about New York, that you can go to these venues barely the size of a garage and hear amazing musicians making killer music just an arms length away from you, with nothing between you and the music. You hear and experience what the musician is hearing and experiencing. Put a kid in front of music in this context, and you can look in their eyes and see the idea forming in their heads - "I want to do that!"  It's tragic that for so many people today, live music means paying hundreds of dollars a couple times a year to sit in an arena so they can watch their favorite acts on a giant tv screen. Or that more and more frequently, people's main experience hearing music is what comes out of the tiny speaker on their smartphone. These sadly more typical modes of hearing music are far less likely to inspire kids, because it may never occur to them that the music is being made by people just like themselves.”

A while back, he heard a scene was developing at a new place in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn called Bar LunAtico, so one January night he went to check it out. It was love at first listen. The room glowed warmly; libations lit up the senses. Just before the band came on, a little boy with long blonde hair padded up to the bandstand in his jammies and rain boots and had his way with the drums for a few minutes before his dad took him by the hand and led him back to his home upstairs. The dad was Richard Julian, the singer-songwriter behind Slow New York and co-frontman of The Little Willies with Norah Jones. The little boy was his son Floyd, who had recently turned three.

Richard and Floyd’s mom, singer Rosita Kess, opened Bar LunAtico with a third partner, bassist Arthur Kell, in 2015 to create the “perfect hang” for musicians and people who love music alike. The venue regularly features some of the best players from around the world, sharing their passion projects at a café run and staffed by musicians. Young Floyd is a frequent observer and participant on the scene, in a way that reminded Michael of the days when his music studio was in a space adjacent to his home. Back then, his preschool sons would regularly pop over for a visit to see who was recording and whether they might get a chance to play the drums or blow on a horn.

Michael loved how Richard and Rosie would allow Floyd his turn at the bandstand, and was struck by the way Richard might step off the stage after a killer set and then seamlessly bus a table or serve up some charcuterie. Clearly, here was a kindred spirit who had made himself a life where the lines between home and community, music and work, work and play, family and friends, were all blurred.  

A year went by, with Mike and his wife Tamara (who co-wrote the show) hanging at Lunatico once or twice a week, listening to amazing music in a broad range of styles and eating more than their share of meatballs al romesco and matcha panna cotta. (The owner's of LunAtico are as passionate about food and drink as they are about the music.) When Mike learned Panoply wanted to develop children’s podcasts for their new kids platform Pinna, he instantly thought how fun it would be to create an imaginary world based on the LunAtico scene through the eyes of young child. Richard loved the idea and the two began the collaboration that resulted in Remy’s Place.