Laurie Berkner is on tour, and it’s a show that’s fun for the whole family. I discovered Berkner’s music last year when we were searching for Dinosaur tunes on YouTube for my son Judah. We never thought we’d get to see her live. She tours all over the country, and out of it, so this is truly a joy that we get to see her in Rutland, VT at the Paramount Theatre on March 28th. My friend Dara Englert took her son Ethan to a NJ show back in 2009. She’s been a fan ever since, and will be attending with us. Granted, Berkner is a children’s artist, but her music is fun for all ages. She’ll be performing solo, on guitar, and bringing her dancer Michelle Esch with her.
The song we discovered, “We Are The Dinosaurs” was the first song she ever recorded. It’s on her 1997 debut cassette ‘Whaddaya Think of That’. Berkner hails from Princeton. New Jersey but was a preschool music teacher in Manhattan, where she currently resides. She was trying to connect with the kids, but they didn’t want to hear “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” for the 100th time. Berkner said, “I asked them what they wanted to sing about, and they said “Dinosaurs”. She basically created the song on the spot. She added, “I said let’s all be dinosaurs, march with me. I started playing a marching beat, and the kids all followed me around the room.” She was proud of herself for finding something to keep the kids engaged. Previously she wrote songs for adults, in her all female cover band ‘Lois Lane’ which in the late 90’s had a regular gig at Killington Resort. Berkner said, “I remember playing there on the weekends to very drunk skiers. I don’t know how this happened but one time, one guy shouted ‘Play we are the dinosaurs”. We were supposed to be playing songs from the 60’s – 90’s, but we played that and guys were banging their mugs of beer on the tables. I thought this was more fun than playing at a bar at 11 p.m. Eventually I moved away from that and fully into kid’s music.” She made the right decision since to this day she has more than 1.7 billion total streams, an average of more than 22 million monthly streams, more than 595 million YouTube channel views, and millions of CDs and DVDs sold, Berkner’s songs have become beloved classics for children worldwide. She has 17 albums out now, Laurie’s 18th album, ‘Walking With The Penguins’, will be released in June 2026. ‘Cinco Canciones En Español’, an EP of Spanish language versions of some of Laurie’s best-loved songs, will be released in March 2026.
We both learned new things in our interview. I was doing double duty that day, both as an interviewer and Daddy Daycare, as I call it when I take care of my son Judah. I told Laurie that Judah was watching “Steve and Maggie, a show we recently discovered, that she didn’t know about. I learned a lot of new things but more importantly she told me she has a dance remixes album that as a DJ, I’m intrigued and excited about. I also let Berkner know last summer I had a video up on my Facebook page of Judah and I dancing to “Victor Vito” , another one of her popular older songs. She said, “That’s great. Makes me really happy.”
‘Whaddaya Think of That’ sold so fast, Berkner’s friend told her she needed her own record label. She didn’t know what that entailed but shortly thereafter Two Tomatoes record label was formed. Even though “We are the Dinosaurs” was created on the spot, Berkner said, “All of these songs have been tweaked and crafted to see what worked and what didn’t. I have no idea what I exactly sang that first day but what I remember was I sang it with that one class, and three days later they asked for the “Dinosaur” song again. I thought oh my God, I have to remember how it goes. Over time it became that song. I thought I could do this a lot, just ask them what they’re interested in.” The slight problem was she would go to work and not have any new songs to play but had a long commute, and would write songs while on the bus, and try it when she got to school.
“We are the dinosaurs” is her first hit but her biggest songs on YouTube with 70 million views are “Waiting for the Elevator” and “The Goldfish”. The latter of which she asked if I knew. Not only do I know it, but I was singing it in my head as I spoke to her. It’s a really fun song. Berkner talked about the making of “The Goldfish” and said, “I have them swimming, running around, and then going to sleep on the bottom of the ocean. It was fine, I thought this song was OK, but I had not put in the part about “wait a minute”. I did say they did some silly things like when they woke up, they poured some cereal out. I would make up whatever I wanted that day. I had this 2 year old named Ildiko. When I got to the part “When they woke up, they would ride bicycles”. She said, “wait a minute, we’re fish, we don’t ride bicycles.” I thought oh my God that is so brilliant. I totally stole it from her.”
Berkner didn’t pick up the guitar until late in her senior year in high school when she was 17. Prior to that she played piano, clarinet, violin, and loved to sing but those had their limits. She said, “I couldn’t move when I played the piano, I couldn’t sing when I played the clarinet, and I had to hold the violin under my chin which was also hard to sing. I needed an instrument I could really move around with and sing at the same time. I was babysitting and picked up a kid’s guitar and thought I think I could learn this, and took it from there.”
There were a few key moments that took it from there, to being a national touring artist. Berkner said, “In the beginning I was selling through some of the toy stores in Manhattan. The people in those stores were very supportive and loyal, and they’d send them to their friends. At a certain time, in the beginning, it appeared there were some being sold in New Hampshire, Chicago, Florida, California. I used to do a lot of birthday parties, and parents would buy 20 of them and put one in each kid’s goodie bag. These kids I didn’t know, that weren’t my students, were going home with my music. One of those kid’s parents worked at ‘The Today Show’. I also had done Madonna’s daughter Lola’s birthday party that Sting’s son attended, so then I did his birthday party. There were a couple of things that allowed me to get a publicist.” The Today Show parent was a producer and she pushed for me to do a concert at the plaza, and they finally agreed. Berkner added, “Once I did ‘The Today Show’. There was kind of an explosion from that. It lasted for a little while, and kind of died out but suddenly I had to run this label so I quit teaching.”
Her big break, so to speak, was when a woman’s niece fell in love with her album, and that woman was starting ‘Noggin’, a channel on Cable that became ‘Nick Jr.” They did some music videos with Berkner, and the woman said her music was the right vibe for their channel. Berkner said, “We did a bunch and they started showing them as interstitials between the programming. Suddenly ‘The Today Show’ looked like a blip because there were 50 million people watching that channel. That was another explosion of people knowing who I was from across the country. Otherwise, it would’ve been hard to do at the time. There wasn’t even an internet when I started. I had an 800 number (laughing).”
Noggin led to “Jack’s Big Music Show” which premiered in 2005 on both Noggin and Nickelodeon. Berkner said, “That’s the show they wanted to make music for. I was only supposed to be one of 20 musicians, We just made the interstitials as an experiment. but they had such a positive response from the kids about my music, they asked us to be in every episode. That was a very lucky thing at that time. It’s what I think helped a lot of people find out about my music.”
Berkner knows how beautiful VT is because she was a music counselor at Camp Killooleet in Hancock for a few summers. She said, “There’s nothing to match the beauty of Vermont.” Berkner and I spoke for close to an hour. It was an amazing experience for me. I strongly urge you to go to her website (laurieberkner.com), to learn more that this article will tell you. From there, you will discover all her links, and be able to listen and watch her. If you’re going to the show, Berkner said, “I really encourage people to bring an animal for their head because I’ll sing “Pig On Her Head”, which is basically singing about people with animals on their head. I’ll look out into the audience and sing about the animals I see there. When a kid has an animal I actually sing about, it’s an exciting moment for them. That’s an important moment in the show.”
People magazine named her the “queen of kids’ music”. She’s been doing this for 30 years, and said, “With the performing, there’s an incredible amount of joy when I’m doing a concert. Seeing the kids so into the music, and watching the family who came with them, vicariously having that joy through watching their kids get so into it, is a really beautiful thing. It’s a mission for me to have kids continue to love music.”
TOUR DATES:
March 22 McCarter Theatre Center Princeton NJ
March 28 Paramount Theatre Rutland VT
March 29 The Egg Albany NY
April 11 the Odeum Greenwich RI
April 12 the Cabot Beverly MA
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