As the Lorax says, unless someone “cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” In St. Louis, Mark Pagano cares enough to put together an entire children’s album devoted to inspiring a love of nature and its wonder in kids area wide.
On April 19, Pagano, who performs kindie music under the solo name Marko Polo and with his band Fire Dog, will debut his new album, Tree Sounds, at the Arbor Day “Tree Fest” celebration in Tower Grove Park.
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It’s a fitting location for the debut of Pagano’s latest project, as the park, where he spent so much time with his kids during the pandemic, inspired the music itself. “The park was a such a place of refuge for people at that time,” he recalls. “Also, at that time, I was working as an educator. I was doing some workshops around social-emotional learning. We talked a lot about biophilia, the health benefits of being in nature, and the disparities among communities that don’t have access to trees. So I just had this idea as a way to highlight the diversity of trees in my neighborhood park.”
Pagano describes the album as a time capsule for that period of life in the neighborhood. The album was funded by a grant from the Regional Arts Commission (RAC) and produced by Grammy winner Dean Jones, who worked with Pagano on his previous records, similarly themed around nature.
“With all of my music, I’m trying to inspire curiosity and that sense of wonder,” Pagano says. “These are things that kids have innately, but when they hear songs or music about certain topics, that raises a lot of questions that might inspire them to explore their surroundings in a playful way.”
Trees specific to Tower Grove Park are frequently referenced in the album, including catalpa, magnolia, golden ginkgo, and Osage orange trees, which Pagano notes are named after the Osage Nation, who originally cared for the area. Pagano is also working with an Arkansas-based illustrator and animator to bring to life such songs as “I Was a Tree,” inspired by the children’s book The Silver Arrow. One of Pagano’s favorite songs on the album, “Trees Talk,” explores how trees send messages and emergency alerts to each other through underground fungal networks. “While some of the songs have factual elements, there’s also a lot of open-endedness, and in the compositions and in the sound itself, there’s dreaminess that I can envision being a soundtrack to exploring a nature space,” he adds.
The project has deep roots in Pagano’s own community, with songs such as “In the Park,” which calls out a tree just east of the park’s music stand that neighborhood kids have affectionately nicknamed “The Love Tree.” Pagano even held community songwriting sessions, originally outlined in the RAC grant, which planted the seeds for the genesis of the record. The first community engagement session was at Fall Frolic in Tower Grove Park and involved kids writing ideas for songs on paper leaves, which ended up directly influencing the song on the album Leaves. The second session was held in partnership with Wilderkids Urban Forest School and consisted of a brainstorming session to write lyrics.
Tower Grove Park’s Tree Fest presents the perfect setting for the debut performance of Tree Sounds, as the entire point of the day will be focused on planting new trees in the park and highlighting localized, accessible environmental efforts. “We think about what can we do for the environment or for the future generations, and planting a tree is something that is in our agency,” Pagano says.
Also at the festival will be forestry education tables by the parks department; craft actives by Wilderkids and Artscope; music by Celia, Syna So Pro, and Fire Dog; and acclaimed Emmy-winning storyteller Bobby Norfolk with a reading of The Lorax. “It’s a classic conservation book that was actually banned in the 1980s in California by the logging industry,” Pagano says. “And what’s going on now politically, there’s definitely still an attack on conservation efforts and even simple things like planting trees. So with Tree Fest, we’re just trying to create community through music and appreciating nature.”
To catch Marko Polo or Fire Dog this season, check out their websites for upcoming local festival dates, such as Tree Fest, Earth Day, and Green Living Festival, as well as a roster of area park, library, and Missouri Botanical Garden appearances.
