Music festivals can make for great Quality Time. Daddy Brad talks with Tor Hyams, producer of the Austin Kiddie Limits stage at the Austin City Limits Music Fest about some of the great family fun to be had at ACL and other festivals. From great bands to fun activities for kids, events like these can be an interactive family music experience for both parents and their children. Featured musicians include Milkshake, Telephone Company, kids hip hop artist Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, blues guitar prodigy Quinn Sullivan, and others. DadLabs Ep. 570 is brought to you by BabyBjorn.

Daddy Brad: Hey I'm Daddy Brad at the 2009 Austin City Limits Music Fest. As you can see the folks behind me are having a great time. We're gonna go inside the Austin Kiddie Limits section and find out what's going on in family music today.

Daddy Brad: Hi, we're here with Tor Hyams who's a producer with ACL, that's Austin City Limits music festival. And want to ask him a couple of questions, specifically, about the Austin Kiddie Limits festival. Now Tor, you're big into legitimizing family music. What do you mean by that?

Tor: Really, until recently, there wasn't anything that was family music. And people would say to me, "Oh what kid's music do you like?" I'd say, "I don't like any of it. Cause it's made for kids." So, I thought, family music, now that's the right genre because then it's something that the whole family can listen to. It's not annoying purple dinosaurs. Or squeaky Teletubbies, or something that, to me, that's nonsense. To me, the Beatles are a great family band, for example. Like, they sing about love. What better message for a family than love?

Daddy Brad: Who are some favorites that you have here, that are gonna be playing, that we should check out?

Tor: Well, I might be biased, but I actually produced the last Milkshake record, so I think you should see them. They're fantastic, and the record's great too. You know, and then there's Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, I think he's the best thing happening right now for families and hip hop music. That's a great example too of a great family artist. He didn't sacrifice cool for hip hop.

Daddy Brad: And your kids want to listen to hip hop. And that's something you can feel good about them listening to.

Tor: That's the point. And there's not much hip hop out there. This year, we're gonna have a special guest hip hop artist from the main stage, K'naan is gonna play with us. And that's what happens too, every year we get special guests from the main stage who are family sympathetic. And they come over. We also have Paul Green School of Rock All Stars and they're teenagers. They actually don't do family music, but they do in a way because they play classic rock. Remember, we said family right, so the parents gotta kinda like it. We also have some of Austin's own. We have the Telephone Company. They're the weirdest band ever. They wear hardhats, and jumpsuits, and they sing about mustaches.

Daddy Brad: How about this kid Quinn Sullivan?

Tor: You know, he's 10 years old. He apparently had this great talent, I think they noticed him at 8. And he can play a blues guitar like B.B. King. I'm not exaggerating. Like he's really that good. He's a prodigy.

Daddy Brad: My son will say, "Hey that kid's only 4 years older than me. I can do that."

Tor: Right. What all good family music does and what I hope to do in this area is inspire children to have music in their lives. If you love music, they'll love music. So it's really an interactive family music experience.

Daddy Brad: And that's so important, because we're always looking for good things to do with our family that we both enjoy.

Tor: Yeah, we have a lot of activities in the area because we didn't just want to be a place where you sit and watch music. We want kids to interact with music so in that regard, we have the hip hop workshop with the Q Brothers. They do this magical thing every year. They basically enable kids to learn how to scratch and beat box, and rhyme. So what they do is they enable kids to learn how to do this. Then the kids lay down their rhyme and they get to take home a CD. And by the way, just so they're not cramping your style, we have a complete hair and tattoo facility. They get their hair spiked. They get temporary tattoos sprayed on.

Daddy Brad: And it's kind of cool because it's an oasis essentially in a big festival that I can bring my kids to and I can go expose them to a couple of bands that I like. And then we can go and take a little break and be able to get through the day. Well, Tor thank you so much.

Tor: My pleasure.

Daddy Brad: And I'm so happy that there are lots and lots of artists that are making great music that I can listen to and enjoy with them. So it's really cool. And appreciate what you're doing to kind of bring it to. It's one thing to listen to it on the radio, the CD's. But it's another thing to come to a place, a festival, and really groove to it with them right here.