Children’s music with a fine tooth Combe

As a self-confessed anglophile children’s songwriter and entertainer Peter Combe enjoys returning to Tasmania for its physical similarities to England as well as its natural wildlife. He was most recently here for the Ten Days on the Island festival and returns as part of his national ‘Live It Up & Belly Flop In A Pizza’ tour. The only drawback about visiting Tasmania, he says, is that he doesn’t get here often enough.

Peter tells me when we chat that for someone who invests so much of his time in creating high quality music for children that it saddens him that children’s music is not highly regarded by critics and is rarely reviewed in comparison to the credibility given to children’s literature.
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To write children’s music says Peter, you need to appreciate children’s sense of humour. Songs for children have the same discipline of writing as that employed for writing for adults and cannot just be ‘whipped up’ on a whim but, like Peter says, deserve great attention to detail.

Peter is well qualified to write for children having worked as a primary school teacher for ten years in the early 70’s. In the pre-wiggle world Peter was creating music in the UK at the BBC, where he jokes like many people, he was wanting to be Paul Simon! Peter was producing a music program which came to the attention of the ABC and was snapped up to write songs for ‘Play School’. After completing his first album, it took off by word of mouth and Peter was an established children’s song writer and entertainer.

It seems Peter’s song writing talent is in the genes,with daughter Janey operating a performance school, ‘Theatre Bugs’. In fact Peter will be joined on tour not only by lucky local youngsters from the Campbell St Primary School but also by some of his grandchildren.

You can see Peter Combe perform on July 2nd at Wrest Point Casino. Peter’s new album ‘Live it up’ is out now.

Paula Xiberras