Meet the bright siders

A Mind of Your Own

Created & Written by Kristin Andreassen & Kari Groff, MD

The Bright Siders is a unique musical collaboration between Nashville-based Americana songwriter Kristin Andreassen and Brooklyn-based child psychiatrist Kari Groff, MD. Together, they create music with the purpose of helping children connect to their emotions. 

Ten years in the making, their carefully crafted, star-studded debut album A Mind of Your Own arrives just when the world needs it most, and as the importance of mental health resurfaces. Releasing on January 21, 2021 via Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the album invites listeners to think deeply about empathy and  self-compassion as they navigate the beauty and complexity of their emotional lives.

Together with an inclusive cast of inspiring vocalists – including Ed Helms, The War & Treaty, Gaby Moreno, Punch Brothers, Joey Ryan (The Milk Carton Kids), Oh Pep!, Kaia Kater, and more – Andreassen, Dr. Groff and their co-producer, Chris Eldridge, offer a profoundly empowering collection of songs and skits for elementary age children and the grownups who love them. 

Kari Groff, MD is an accomplished physician running a child psychiatry practice in Brooklyn, New York.  Her side passion has always been as a fiddler and songwriter.  Through her clinical work as a child psychiatrist, Dr. Groff has seen first-hand how powerful music can be in helping children to process emotions. As a young doctor, she started writing her own material based on the issues brought to her by her patients, weaving psychiatric advice within her catchy lyrics.

Kristin Andreassen has toured world stages as a singer, clogger, square dance caller and educator, first with the Maryland-based Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, and then with oldtime stringband Uncle Earl (Abigail Washburn, Rayna Gellert, KC Groves) and “folk noir” trio Sometymes Why (Ruth Ungar, Aoife O’Donovan). As a songwriter, Andreassen’s achievements include the kids’ radio hit “Crayola Doesn’t Make a Color for Your Eyes”. 

It was a chance meeting between Andreassen and Dr. Groff that launched The Bright Siders as a shared musical endeavor. Dr. Groff was a fan of Andreassen’s music, and their worlds collided one summer while jamming together at Ashokan, an upstate New York fiddle & dance camp. 

The two new friends discovered a shared mutual appreciation for Marlo Thomas’ landmark 1972 children’s album Free To Be ... You and Me. They hatched an idea – a new album for 21st-century families that would encourage conversations about emotional intelligence, much as the Free to Be… series sparked conversations about gender equality. 

Together, Andreassen and Dr. Groff recorded a handful of songs that laid the groundwork for what would become A Mind of Your Own, creating The Bright Siders and launching them down the path to develop music that would be rich in psychological meaning yet fun.

By combining their varied experiences, Andreassen and Dr. Groff believed they could make world-class music with a medical-certified message. They found their MVP early on in Chris Eldridge (Punch Brothers, Julian Lage), whose consistent support turned into a partnership and Co-Producer as the album crossed the finish line. 

Eldridge’s guitar is the foundational rhythm for much of the album, and he sings a duet with Andreassen on “Sad is Not Forever” – a song that acknowledges the emotion of sadness while encouraging kids to think about things they can do to help themselves feel better. 

Fans of Eldridge’s band Punch Brothers (a virtuosic, progressive bluegrass ensemble) will find a deviation from their usual sound in the song “Bully This.” The quintet cuts loose as their electric punk alter ego – The Hokes – takes hold. With bassist Paul Kowert and banjoist Noam Pikelny on dueling electric guitars and fiddler Gabe Witcher on drums, Grammy Award-winning mandolinist Chris Thile sings lead, shouting “Being kind to others is the only way to go!”

Each theme on the album was carefully chosen by Dr. Groff in response to her growing years as a psychiatrist, speaking with hundreds of kids and parents and hearing the common emotional concerns and threads in their lives. 

The songs and skits, along with Dr. Groff’s “Try this at home…” suggestions contained in the liner notes, are all intended to set the stage for conversations with children about common emotional themes and experiences they’re likely to have while growing up. 

Performances and workshops (in person and online) are part of The Bright Siders’ long-term plan to reach kids in this way. In 2019, they appeared with co-producer Eldridge at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage and Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival, while experimenting in smaller venues with ways to engage audiences through guided conversations and songwriting exercises. 

Still, says Dr. Groff, “More than anything, we encourage parents, educators, and caregivers  to listen to this music with their children. Where does the real magic of this album happen? It’s in actively listening to the music with children and then talking about what they experience in response to the music.  

“Children should understand that their feelings are valid and important to the adults around them,” she continues.  “And parents can help children live rich and meaningful lives by helping them accept and understand their emotional experiences with compassion – even if they, as parents, cannot directly fix a problem that is making them anxious or sad.”  

As the pandemic hit in spring 2020, Dr. Groff gained local fame during the Brooklyn quarantine for fiddle concerts from her Park Slope stoop, practicing what she’d been preaching by letting music keep her sane with an ever increasing patient load and the challenges in homeschooling her daughter. Meanwhile, Andreassen was in the midst of a home renovation when her Nashville neighborhood was struck by a tornado and followed weeks later by the COVID-19 outbreak. She quickling refocused her energies to turn her construction site into an informal shelter for friends in need.  The themes that surface in A Mind of Your Own are timelessly relevant, both during and after such world-altering events.  As Andreassen says, “In many ways the emotional health of children will define the future of our world.”

With playful lyrics and contagious melodies, this music cuts through the monofocus of our pandemic-centered times, offering a practical guide to raising emotionally intelligent children who, one day soon, will take those skills with them as they experience the beauty in growing up and becoming themselves.

Read the Smithsonian Folkways interview with Kristin Andreassen and Dr. Kari Groff, HERE.