Earthtunes brings an Entertaining Educational Experience to the Westwood Public Library

Children and parents gathered in the Children's Meeting Room at the Westwood Public Library Tuesday morning for a performance titled "Earthtunes."

The performance posed as an educational and musically enriched story-telling interactive experience for children and parents alike.

The event saw a performance by Davis Bates and Roger Tincknell, who combined various musical talents including guitar, mandolin, percussion instruments, and even a wooden dog with educational and thought provoking songs about butterflies, caterpillars, and even dinosaurs.  

"We try to adapt to whatever the age range is. The younger the audience, the more movement we do, and the older the audience, the longer we explain the instruments and the stories," said Bates.

During a song about a caterpillar, the children crawled around the floor of the Westwood Children's Library Meeting Room like caterpillars, and when Bates and Tincknell sang "the birds will be chasing you," the children stopped crawling to hide from the birds.

There was another story about a wide mouth frog searching for animals to find what others feed their babies.  Throughout the story, the wide mouth frog crosses paths with a turtle, a cow, a fish, a chicken, and finally a snake.  The wide mouth frog flees from the snake, ending his search, because when asked what he fed his babies, the snake told him wide mouth frogs.

Davis Bates and Roger Tincknell have been performing for over thirty years. They perform a lot of duo work in the summertime, occasionally during the school year, along with other solo projects of their own. During the summer, the duo performs roughly fifty to sixty shows.

"The season runs from the end of June to the third week in August," said Bates.

Most of their shows are in Massachusetts, but Roger also does some solo work in Connecticut.

The two performers met at an organization called The Pioneer Valley Folklore Society, a group for musicians and story tellers.

"We did a lot of house concerts," said Tincknell. "Dave and I would go to the house parties and we met as a result of that."

Tincknell said that they noticed right away that they had similar styles, which inspired them to work together.

"Our styles were compatible," said Tincknell. "We're pretty good at adapting to the kids."

Davis and Roger's seamless meshing of talents gives them a chance to improvise.

"When performing for kids and their families you've got to really go with the flow," Tincknell said. "Each program feels different."

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