Fear. Safety. Control.
This is the melody to every lullaby.
Every hushed and pretty song is a desperate attempt to make you obey. Every bedtime story a calculated plot to make you do as you’re told. In every place, in every time, there have been stories told beside bedsides and around campfires to keep children safe, to maintain control, to frighten into submission.
“Go to sleep, child, or the bogeyman will get you.”
As children, we thought this was just the way the world was and that those who kept us fed and who tucked us in had our best interests in mind. And maybe they did. Maybe when they were children there were actual monsters in closets and lurking in the rivers, demon figures ready to snatch them up if they got too close or disobeyed. Evidence of that was hard to find, though. So we took their word for it and grew up following the rules.
But now that we are adults and we choose our own bedtimes and build our own campfires we’ve begun to wonder, are the stories any less scary? Are the melodies any less haunting? Aren’t they still told to us every night?
Fear. Safety. Control.
Which story controls you?
If you want examine that question with us, The Lullafrights are here for you. Over Halloween weekend of 2019, we went into RF Studios in East Nashville and recorded 8 songs about 8 creatures who were created to make children obey. Spooky songs to illustrate the power stories have over us; how they formed us, how they kept us safe, how they haunted us. How they still haunt us.
Be Good, Little Children: The Lullafrights, Vol. I will be released on October 2nd, 2020 but you can pre-order the CD now along with plenty of other additional items like hand-bound books with stories, illustrations and character descriptions, and hand-stamped character block prints. We even teamed up with East Nashville potter, Bryan Currie to create 33 LullaPots, icy mint glazed, lidded pots perfect for storing spices, Halloween candy or salt to throw over your shoulder or into your soups. (As of this moment there are only 20 left.) There are limited copies of all items and all items are only available between now and All Souls Day, when we will put the Lullafrights back into their dark and scary places for another year.