Rock drummer-whisky slinger now children’s performer: ‘I want to do this for the rest of my life’

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A rowdy crowd of drunken bar patrons or a classroom full of crying junior-kindergarteners? Who’s the tougher crowd?

“The kid thing gives me a superpower,” said Mississauga-based drummer Chris Gormley. “I’ve got so much energy when I come out of there.”

If anyone should know, it’s Gormley, who’s previously played and toured as a rock-blues drummer with The Trews and Big Sugar, but is now releasing his first children’s album, Little Songs for Little Kids, on Nov. 1, with a local release show still to be confirmed in late November.

“I’m like a big kid at heart. You’ve got to have that kid spirit. You can’t take it too seriously. Like there’s kids sneezing on me, wiping their boogers on me, crying. I walked into a class on Monday and the teacher right away, she’s like, ‘I’m so sorry, the class, it smells like poo. We don’t know who it is. We’ve checked all the diapers.’ And I’m like, ‘Dear Lord,’ like what am I doing?”

Along the way Gormley, 49, also released a second batch of “unapologetically Canadian” bourbon-style whisky, Nectar of the Gods, last year. He is releasing a third batch (300 bottles) at Christmas via the Okanagan Spirits website.

“The kid thing was unintentional, completely, and I was doing the Whisky Hunter thing (his solo persona under which he reviewed whisky and wrote songs about them online during COVID) that was a great little side project, it’s still ongoing,” said Gormley, who plays a ukulele and a percussion instrument for his children’s shows.

“But I put out a Good Morning song (in 2023), and another couple of songs, and they were successful and kids were liking them and parents were liking them for their kids and I noticed it was a different thing than the whisky music obviously. So I quickly kind of separated them.”

One-off appearance led to full-time career

Then Gormley found himself asking if he could play for the junior kindergarten class that included his twins, Gracie and Patrick — now six years old — for their birthday.

“Like a one-off thing,” Gormley said. “I just went in and I played a couple of songs, the only couple that I had, really, and a couple of (children entertainer) Raffi songs that I knew like Down By The Bay, or Old MacDonald Had A Farm, and the kids freaked out. And then the head instructor of the school saw it and was like, ‘Wow.’ And then the next time I went to the school they were like, ‘Listen, can you do that for like all the classes?’”

From there a new career was born.

“I ended up heading up the music department at their school and I was teaching all the classes once a week,” said Gormley. “I’d drop my kids off and then I’d go teach all the kids. It was just a cute little hobby thing. I don’t do these things intentionally to get myself so spread thin like having so many projects on the go but it spread like wildfire.”

Has a day job in real estate

Gormley, whose day job is in real estate, said from there he thought rather than covering other people’s children songs, he should write his own.

“And the next thing you know, two years later, I’m putting out an album and I play these songs to hundreds of kids every week and honestly, it’s my favourite thing to do now,” he said. “It’s superseded the whisky business. I still play as a hired drummer. I just don’t tour extensively any more. I still do all that stuff but this is like my main passion project. I don’t know. I went to see Raffi at Massey Hall a few weeks ago and man he’s like 78 or something and I was like, ‘I want to do this for the rest of my life.”

Gormley says he’s going to submit Little Songs for Little Kids for Juno consideration for best children’s album, but has also written songs for the latest albums by The Trews and Big Sugar.

His twins, meanwhile, are featured in the video for his latest single, Bob on a Boat, having the time of their lives wearing fake moustaches and captain’s hats on either side of their dad.

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