My daughter is eight years old, and one of her favorite CDs is the Kid Pan Alley Nashville CD. She knows all the lyrics, all the melodies, and uses it as inspiration for her own flights of poetic fancy. Which is wonderful when you consider the mission statement of Kid Pan Alley: inspiring kids to be creators, not just consumers of popular culture.
I first heard about Kid Pan Alley while listening to an episode of NPR‘s Morning Edition on my local radio station, WUNC. Their motivation and my own seemed so aligned, at least when it came to introducing children to music in a cultural context. I loved the idea of soliciting song and story ideas from the children, and then as much as possible using the material provided by the children to create popular songs. I must admit that despite owning more than 1,000 CDs, at most a handful have that “Nashville Sound”. But I like Kid Pan Alley!
I’m looking into bringing them (back) to North Carolina and doing a CD with a creative commons license. Are you as excited as I am? Are you interested in co-sponsoring their visit? If so, send me an email and/or indicate +1 in your comment on my blog.
Manifold Recording / The Miraverse 
Hi Michael.
Saw your post as I get Google alerts when someone posts something about Kid Pan Alley. We’d love to come back to NC. My suggestion is to setup a 5-day residency in a school as a first step and then we could go from there. Please give our Executive Director, Ginny Leser, a call and she can send you some material or email info@kidpanalley.org.
Thanks so much for your kind words about the project.
Best
Paul Reisler
Artistic Director
Kid Pan Alley