Virginia Ralph and Bobby Matthews of the mömandpöp Show children’s theater performance group are not typical “kindie rock” performers. Yes, their first mömandpöp CD was released recently at a party at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library & Learning Center in Little Rock. But this singer-songwriter duo has a lot more up their sleeves in addition to music performances designed for children under ten that in no way fits what some associate with kindie rock.
Ralph has a storied history in narrative theater, derived from literature using original language writing rather than turning it into dialogue. While at the University of Memphis, she was in an adaptation of two of Eudora Welty’s short stories, performed in France at the University of Dijon and the Sorbonne.
“The French knew a lot more about Eudora Welty than people in America,” Ralph said. “They knew every word of those short stories. It meant a lot to them keeping the language intact. We saved the original rhythms of Welty’s writing.”
During college, Ralph was also involved in a play based on the Terry Tempest Williams classic Refuge. Williams, a famous naturalist author, and her family attended the premier of the play in Memphis in 1996.
After college Ralph worked with the theatre company “Voice of the South” which performed in Wild Legacies based on the memoir Two Into The Far North by Margaret E. Murie, known as the Grandmother of the Conservation Movement. The play was created for the 50th Anniversary of the Arctic Refuge about the experiences of Murie and her scientist husband, Olaus, and performed all around Alaska.
Ralph and Matthews met in Little Rock in their junior year of high school. Matthews started out majoring in art in college, but ended up doing more and more with music.
“I got disenchanted with the prospect of being a professional artist,” Matthews said. “To finish college, I decided I liked reading and got an English degree. Meanwhile, I formed the punk rock band, Trusty, with friends of mine. It was a revelation. I realized, ‘I can do this. I can write songs.’ A lot of kids wanted something different. Virginia and I moved to Washington D.C., our bass player moved in with us, and we eventually had a group house with the entire band. We rented a place where we could play in the basement and started gigging like crazy, playing all the shows we could get. Eventually we got signed to Dischord Records out of D.C., which is still one of the most famous punk labels internationally. That was a dream come true.”
Ralph moved to pursue a theater degree at the University of Memphis, where Matthews joined her and worked as a teacher while playing in a rock band.
After 18 years in Memphis, they decided to change their lives.
“We realized if we stayed, life would look the same as it did then, only we would be older,” Ralph said. “We wanted to try living in a totally different way and didn’t know what that meant. My husband’s family had a cabin in Arkansas in Hardy. We wanted to go somewhere that made us feel like we felt at the cabin. We sold our house, put our stuff in storage and were ready to go anywhere. We lived in an Airstream trying to figure out where to go.”
They heard about Northwest Arkansas, particularly the investments being made in the arts. On the way to Bentonville, they decided to visit a mentor from college, Fr. Dennis Campbell, pastor at St. James Episcopal in Eureka Springs, who had married the couple in 1992.
“He said to come to Eureka Springs first before we went to Bentonville and Fayetteville because those places pale in comparison to Eureka,” Ralph said. “We were completely enamored with Eureka. Within a week I was back looking for a place to live. It was impulsive, but a lot of preparation went into getting ready to make a move.”
Their move to Eureka Springs in June 2015 was a leap of faith. Neither had jobs and it was hard to find a place to rent that would accommodate the couple with two daughters and two dogs. But the town embraced the talented family.
“It is working,” Ralph said. “It just keeps unfolding. We both got jobs right off at hotels. Bobby is tour guide facilitator for the Spirits of the Basin Tour, and I had a brief stint at Pine Mountain Jamboree as a country music singer. Bobby also writes music for television, so that helps. Those checks are really nice when they come. They got us through this past winter. We both teach private music lessons. I teach theater classes and am on the staff as director of children’s ministries at St. James Episcopal. We both teach music at Clear Spring School.”
They also have developed the mömandpöp Show. How does someone go from punk rock to kindie rock?
“The way the kids enjoy mömandpöp harkens back to punk rock performances,” he said. “You don’t have five-year-olds stage diving. At the same time, the way the five-year-old is experiencing music is much more like the teenagers listening to Trusty. They enjoy it. They are into it hook, line and sinker, getting up on the stage and doing silly dances. The kids are going bananas at mömandpöp. It is pure emotion very similar to the early Trusty shows. I do appreciate it.”
They are currently developing a show written for Paranormal Weekend at the Crescent Hotel in January, and developing a show specifically geared to tourists coming in on buses.
For more information, visit mömandpöpband.com.