Joanie Leeds, on Harmonizing with Daughter Joya and Mining ‘Ageless’ Wisdom

Family music artist Joanie Leeds, who won a Grammy for her record All the Ladies, is continually inspired by remarkable women. And with her latest album, Ageless: 100 Years Young, it’s the littlest and most elderly ladies in her life fueling her creativity: Her 10-year-old songbird daughter Joya, and her 100-year-old grandmother Sylvia (Bubby).

The full-length album, released in August, is cozy and uplifting, filled with sweet mother-daughter harmonies and lyrics drawn from “Bubbyisms” (kernels of grandmotherly wisdom, which Leeds took care to remember and document over the years).

While Leeds is known for her progressive songwriting style, this record feels a bit more personal than her 2023 release, Freadom: Songs Inspired by Banned Children’s Books. Yet the themes within the songs are universally relatable.

Some of my favorites include “Genealogy,” a spoken word-esque ode to Bubby’s to family tree research, and “Curious,” a punchy piano tune. Joya takes the lead-vocal role on “Ageless,” espousing wisdom from her adolescent perspective, and “A, You’re Adorable,” a slower tune cushioned by jazzy, arpeggiated guitars, where Joya shares the heartwarming tale of Sylvie and her late husband Sammy. Lush choral harmonies boost the mood in the festive closer “The Days,” while the bluegrass vibes and call-and-response style of “Born to Lead” makes the song joyful and memorable.

We recently caught up with the musician mom to learn more.

The edited transcript is an excerpt of the full video interview between Joanie Leeds and Rockmommy editor and founder Marisa Torrieri Bloom, available here:

Rockmommy: Hi Joanie! For those who are not familiar with you and who may not have heard your extensive catalog of amazing children’s albums, what can you tell people about your art, your stuff, and how you got into children’s music?

Joanie Leeds: Well, I was doing the singer-songwriter thing for adults first. A lot of children’s musicians get into writing music for kids because they have a child and then they’re writing for their child. I started way before I had my daughter! So I think my first album came out in 2007 and … most of the songs are about living in the city. But I think I really got into children’s music because I was working at Gymboree Play & Music. I was managing the center and doing these parenting classes. And then I took that job because I wanted to be singing during the day.

Before that … I sometimes two or three jobs at a time. It wasn’t until I started working at Gymboree that I was like, I’ think I like writing for families and for children.’ And the kids would inspire me. So that’s how I got into it. And so now I just put out my 12th children’s album, so it’s been a long time. I mean, there was a time where I was putting out an album almost every year … and then I got a little tired when I had my daughter.

Rockmommy: So how did things change? You discovered, decided you wanted to go into children’s music, family music, before you became a parent.

Joanie Leeds: Well, it was many, many years later. So, I was actually writing music for children back in 2006, 2007. While I was working in Gymboree, I was also starting to work in some nursery schools. And I still work in nursery schools. So oftentimes in these parent-participatory programs where parents are in the room, sometimes they would say, ‘oh, you know, my child, they can’t get dressed for the winter.’ You know, ‘we live in New York City and, you know, I can’t get them to get their coat on. Can you write a song about that?’

And then all of sudden, I come in the next day with a song called ‘Let’s Go,’ and it’s about getting your coat on and your mittens and your scarf and your hat.

This path that I was on, and in the songs that I was writing, was really steered by the audiences. So in the beginning, songs were more kind of like ‘clap your hands, stomp your feet’ type songs.

And then it really turned into what’s going on in the world. How can I help children as they’re growing? In the beginning, the kids that I was performing for were two years old, three years old. So now I want to write songs that will be suitable for a 5-year-old, 7-year-old, 12-year-old.

All the Ladies was my female empowerment and gender-equality album. I wrote that during a divorce and a custody trial. A lot of the songs that are happening and that were stirring around my mind during that time were really about like being a single parent and being there for my daughter amid all of this craziness. She was only two years old at the time.

Rockmommy: I want to talk about All the Ladies, because that was a really big milestone moment for you. Like, you got a Grammy. Tell us about that!

Joanie Leeds: That particular album, I had 20 women from all across the country come and contribute some beautiful vocals and they did all the instruments. Everything from the beginning to the end, photography, the engineering, the producing, everything was female fronted. So it was a really incredible project to be a part of, but then it was also like…just a group effort really when it came down to it. It was just a really beautiful moment. And then [with] the end result being an award given to me by my peers was just a  really special, special moment.

Rockmommy: While there are a lot of women fronted acts, but there’s a lot less attention paid to the women behind the scenes. You were like, ‘you know what? I know women who can produce this, who are instrumentalists … I’m going to bring in some new players who have maybe been sidelined a bit because of their gender.’

Joanie Leeds: Yeah, and I think at the time when I started my band, I just didn’t know any female musicians that could be in my band. I had an all-male backing band and my drummer was my ex-husband and he put the band together.

You know, in the music industry, it’s very common for male musicians to choose their buddies, you know, to choose other male musicians. And then I think that just keeps happening and keeps happening and it happens in the studio, it happens on the stage.

When I was at the Grammys in 2000, I think it was 17 or 18 … I was sitting at Madison Square Garden and only one female won and I was like, ‘what is going on here?’ And so that’s really what the spark was to create that particular album.

Rockmommy: I do want to talk about the follow-up to all the ladies, 2023’s Freadom: Songs Inspired by Children’s Books, because that came at a very tense moment in time with the Moms of Liberty, who starting to critique the literature we’re choosing for our children. Was that scary for you?

Joanie Leeds: I think progressive politics have always been a part of my world. I think it’s really important to me to stand up for what I believe in and I will always do that: I feel like it would give my audience a disservice to not be truthful. As far as the banning of books, I’m from Miami, Florida. This was an issue that was very near and dear to my heart. It still is. It’s still an issue. It’s still a problem. They are banning books in libraries and in schools that had any sort of marginalized community — that is the black community, the queer community, the Jewish community, all different minorities, all different marginalized communities, their voices were being silenced … and not just the contents of the book but also the authors that wrote the book.

It was a  really big problem and I felt like it needed to be addressed and I thought at the time it would be a really good idea to pick different books from all of these different communities that have been silenced and write musical songs and lift the idea of the book and then turn it into a song. I kind of took the idea and then ran with it. And so that was freedom, F-R-E-A-D-O-M.

Rockmommy: We need the sequel to that album like right now. But I know you have a new album out with your daughter Joya, who sings with you.

Joanie Leeds: My daughter has always loved to sing and she’s got a really great voice and she just started taking voice lessons this year … it’s fun. When her voice teacher heard her for the first time, she’s like, give me a year, I’ll have her on The Voice. And my daughter was like, ‘what’s The Voice?’ For the album I just put out, Ageless: 100 Years Young, she’s like, ‘I really want to be on more of the songs. I want to sing a solo. I want to do it.’

Rockmommy: Tell us about the album!

Joanie Leeds: Ageless, 100 Years Young was inspired by my grandmother … Sylvia (Bubby) … [on the cover] she’s holding a picture of her younger self. She’s 100 years old. She’s an amazing woman. She is full of life, positivity, optimism. She’s brilliant.

Rockmommy: Wow. That’s such a blessing. That’s amazing.

Joanie Leeds: She has an incredible vocabulary. She found all of our family members through genealogy research, genealogical research. She taught other people how to do it, wrote a workbook that’s at the Library of Congress. she’s like an incredible person. And a couple of years ago, actually while I was releasing F.R.E.A.D.O.M., I was down there for her 97th birthday and I started interviewing her. And I did video interviews because I just wanted to document her life and her stories.

So I knew someday, somehow, I was going to turn it into an album that I wasn’t exactly sure how. I just kept on calling it‘Bubbyisms’ or ‘The Bubby Album’ or I didn’t know what it was going to be. And then it was when my daughter said, ‘I want to sing with you,’ something in my mind clicked like, ‘maybe I could make it something where it’s about my grandmother with my daughter and have it be intergenerational.’ And so that’s how the idea for the album started.

And then, now that I knew I was going to be writing a solo for her or duets, I started writing in two parts instead of just me as the singer, which is a little bit different for me because usually it’s just me. So that was a fun challenge. And yeah, and that’s kind of that’s how it all started.

We’ve been practicing harmonies for about a year. She really enjoys doing that. I think it’s like a fun game for her. The first song that I wrote from the album is “Grateful” and I wrote it for Thanksgiving. It was kind of perfect because it has all of these nature elements … my Bubby is like an ocean woman. She grew up at the shore and she loves sitting in the ocean and watching the beach and the waves.

Rockmommy: And it almost feels like the most personal project you’ve done. I hope other people see this and do something similar.

Joanie Leeds: Yeah, I agree. I think it is. I’ve been trying to say there are so many different ways that you can get to know your family and make sure that these stories aren’t lost. And obviously writing an album is not for everybody, but for me, it was the video recording and just the interviews.

Rockmommy: My gosh, I wish I, if you had more time, I wish you would like hold like a songwriting workshop. I feel like so many people would gain from that.

Joanie Leeds: Anytime, anytime. Yeah, that would be really fun to have people write their stories in a song like their ancestry. That’s a great idea you’re giving me.

But I should also mention that the album is filled with her bubby-isms, her quotes. She’s always famous for it. Yeah, at one of her birthdays, I don’t have it in front of me, but there’s a book that they made of all of her different sayings. So a lot of those sayings are in all of my songs … Like, “what’s on your lung is on your tongue.” That’s another one that she always says. So that’s in a song … and ‘Don’t worry, worry till worry worries you.’ You never know what’s going to happen. You just have to kind of go with the flow.