• Under Tables, Out Back Doors: "Inspires Creativity" -- Baltimore's Child
• Under Tables, Out Back Doors: "Kid Friendly" and "Toe Tapping" -- The Washington Post
• Under Tables, Out Back Doors: "This album is a winner!" -- Cathy Fink
• In a Closeup: "Tasteful but wisely restrained arrangements" -- The Washington Post
• Semerwater: "Spirited harmonies" -- The Washington Post

• Folk focus: nothing extraneous for Trainor -- The Montgomery Gazette
• Sue Trainor teaches songwriting to elementary school students -- The Baltimore Sun
• Sue Trainor talks about her formative years -- An interview with Sue

You've probably heard about the Mozart Effect, the study that concluded that classical music opens a child's mind and helps him or her to learn and to handle stress, while at the same time it inspires creativity and helps children feel better about themselves. . . .

Classical music isn't the only way to stimulate a child. Local entertainer Sue Trainor's new CD is testimony to that fact. Under Tables, Out Back Doors demonstrates a thoughtful and engaging approach to children's music -- mixing original and collected songs in a wide variety of styles designed to both entertain and inspire the audience.

More than just kid-friendly, Sue Trainor's new children's recording is kid-powered and kid-tested, thanks to 16 fourth-graders who attend school in University Park. In addition to bright or breezy harmonies, the children's chorus adds gaggles of giggles, sloshes of slurps and a small epidemic of sneezes to the already colorful arrangements, which embrace folk, jazz, pop and world beat.

The album's genre-jumping charm isn't unexpected, since it was produced by Marcy Marxer, who has always enjoyed mixing and matching musical forms. Nor will the level of musicianship surprise anyone familiar with the cast members, who include several well-known players and vocalists on the local music scene, such as pianist John Cocuzzi, bassist John Previti, drummer "Big" Joe Maher and singer Christina Muir. All of those musicians, for example, appear on "The Bear Missed the Train," a whimsically engaging parody of the swing era classic "Bei Mir Bist du Shon."

A good parody requires equal parts of affection and irreverence for the original subject. Sue Trainor has plenty of both for all the folk music she books into The Folkal Point coffeehouse in Howard County and plays as a member of CornuCopia. On her first solo album, In a Closeup, Trainor takes apart several of her favorite songs and puts them back together with twisted lyrics. For example, Trainor seems to genuinely admire "From a Distance," Julie Gold's anthem of universal brotherhood, for she treats the hymn-like melody with great respect. She changes the lyrics, though, and instead of waxing poetic about the beauty of the world "from a distance," she points out how flawed it all looks "in a closeup."

Although all but one of the tunes on Cornucopia's new album, Semerwater, were composed by either Peter Benson or Sue Trainor, they're traditional to the bone, steeped in romantic lore, outfitted with guitars, banjo, recorder, mandolin, bouzouki and pennywhistle, and sung, more often than not, with plenty of old-fashioned gusto.

Benson is largely responsible for the album's wit, vitality and charm. His voice has a distinctly ruddy quality -- a requisite for the sailing, roving and drinking songs he favors -- and when he takes up the pen, he mixes detailed character studies and vivid evocations of endangered lifestyles with quaint waltz-driven vignettes and some amusing wordplay. His singing is strong and expressive enough to stand alone, but the quartet's neatly woven blend of strings and things, plus some spirited harmonies, are a distinct asset as well.

The magic moments of live performance motivate Sue Trainor.

The 47-year-old Columbia, Maryland, folk singer and songwriter treasures "being part of the chemistry that happens in the room . . . the energy created by a performer and an audience that is greater than the sum of the parts."

She is eminently grateful for her role.

"It feels like I've been given a gift to have the resources to be part of making that happen."

Trainor, who grew up in Silver Spring and Bethesda, has been entertaining adults for about a decade. Three years ago, she added another segment of the population to her audience. The release of Under Tables, Out Back Doors, Trainor's first recording for children, will be celebrated with a Sunday afternoon concert at Glen Echo Town Hall. She wrote eight of the CD's 11 songs.

Trainor has fashioned a career that she says "surpasses her adolescent fantasies." Its components are a multitude of activities related to the music she prefers.

"Folk music is not mainstream. People perceive it as not stimulating enough and folk musicians as old hippies," she says.

That's why Trainor is trying to spread the word.

"My goal is to try to grow the audience. It's an education process. Folk is mostly the same as popular music, but without the drums and the electric guitar. People need to open up to it," Trainor says.

Performing, "keeping folk music out there in front of people at some level," is the best way she knows to achieve that end.

It is appropriate that exposure to folk music begin in children's audiences, Trainor says. She traces her own proclivities toward the genre to hearing her parents' recordings of the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary.

Trainor attributes her expansion into music for children primarily to Sue Ribaudo, a former preschool teacher and a fellow member of both Hot Soup, a 3-year-old trio that performs acoustic, mostly folk-style music for adults, and the duo Sue & Sue.

During a concert the Sues presented, Trainor recalls seeing "some kids watching like they watch TV. They had that glazed-over look, even when they were standing or clapping. I found that really scary."

She describes her work for children as "very interactive and, because of my nature, much of it tends to be funny." In both her live performances and in the cover notes on her CD, Trainor encourages youngsters "to sing, dance, and play along" and to be inspired "to make up some songs."

In conjunction with her mission, Trainor also offers songwriting workshops and assembly performances in Maryland schools as well as birthday parties for 3- to 7-year-olds. By connecting with children in small groups, she feels she is making a dent.

"Once they have been there, once the experience of creative energy in a fun, positive way has been part of their repertoire, they can go back there -- even if they go on to spend their lives with computers cell phones."

Musical memories

Singing came naturally to Trainor. Her parents say she was singing

Like many 13-year-olds during early Beatlemania, Trainor received the coveted acoustic guitar for Christmas, and she and her friends gathered to learn the chords of the Fab Four songs.

As a Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School sophomore, Trainor "discovered the trick of putting things to tunes as memory tools." That was also the year her career started. For a French project, the former Miss Cook and a friend became "Les Soeurs Suffoque," very loosely translated as "The Suffocated Sisters," an hour-long Smothers Brothers parody that included songs and jokes. Meeting with great success, the duo kept up their act for pocket money, performing several times a week for 18 months at the Roma Restaurant on Connecticut Avenue.

"I was hired to sing table to table. That's how I learned to go out into an audience," Trainor says.

And the pair's three-song entry won the 1970 Montgomery County Talent contest, which "still amazes me," she says.

Awakening

Trainor's musical career lay mostly dormant during her years as an anthropology major at Lawrence University, then through a series of administrative jobs, her 1976 marriage and the 1977 birth of her son Cameron. After her marriage broke up in 1983, she returned to music -- writing, playing and recording as part of the folk quartet Cornucopia beginning in 1988; opening and running The Folkal Point, a folk music coffeehouse (now in Columbia) in 1989; and establishing a solo career as a musical humorist.

"I do a lot of satire, parody, performance art . . . I've been known to put on a few costumes, take on characters, wandering out through audiences," she says.

In this area, Trainor says, "My aim is to explore different points of view about things we're all familiar with, to tease about things we take for granted and don't think too much about."

She sings a mix of "serious music," which she collects from "the huge pool of contemporary songwriters active today all over the continent."

What they all have in common, she says, are "a delightful sense of humor and a way with language that paints a clear and intriguing kind of picture on the subject."

The good life

Between songwriting, coordinating engagements for solo, duo, and trio concerts for adults and children, workshops, birthday parties, a little bit of consulting on publicity and promotion, as well as volunteer work for the Maryland State Arts Council and the Folk Alliance, Trainor is quite content.

"I love what I do. I got to be what I wanted to be when I grew up. It's even better than my fantasies of what I would be if life were perfect."

Trainor is seeking neither fame nor fortune, valuing her "private time and space too much." Instead, she says, "My ambition is to do more of the same and get better. I think I'm pretty good, but there's always room for growth. I want to reach a point where my name is known within the folk music circuit. It's nice to be one of the familiar names, where people know what you do."

One second-grader wanted to write a song about John Travolta, another about "my stinky little brother." Other suggestions included "rotten little sisters," Russia, outer space and, well, "everything."

The writing of the national anthem, it wasn't. But, for dozens of pupils at North Laurel's Gorman Crossing Elementary School, the music they composed yesterday was equally important.

Under the auspices of local singer and songwriter Sue Trainor, who has been serving as Gorman's artist-in-residence this week, pupils in five classrooms began writing verses for class songs -- and a school song -- that they will perform at an assembly this month.

The pupils in Stephanie Mulligan's first-grade class warmed up by singing the "Too-Many-Chores-To-Do Blues."

Using images of "alligator lakes" and "dinosaur mountains," they rewrote the lyrics of the Weavers' 1950s hit, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."

Then they got down to the business of composing their own song.

A suggestion by Kevin Zurvalec, 6, to write about love met with "ews" and "yucks" from his classmates. "Peanut butter and jelly" drew laughs. Sports was popular among the boys, one of whom thought writing about the New York Jets would be neat.

After a vote, the class decided to write about teachers.

"What do teachers do?" asked Trainor, trying to solicit ideas from the little composers.

"Give homework," offered one. "Read books so they know how to spell stuff," offered another. "Sometimes they have babies," offered a third.

"Miss Mulligan's having a baby!"

Gym teacher song

But back to the song.

Because "teachers" was too broad a topic, the pupils chose one of their favorites -- gym teacher Randy Wallenhorst -- and made up lyrics about him.

Mr. Wallenhorst is a Jungle Man
He does the turkey trot
He goes gobble, gobble, gobble
    (walk like turkey for effect)
He teaches gymnastics
He goes ah-ah-ah-ah
    (imitate Tarzan by pounding
    on chest)
He teaches basketball
He pretends he's a bear
He says Rrrr!
    (claw air or scrunch up face)
And he dances funny
Mr. Wallenhorst is a Jungle Man.

Singer's goals

Trainor has participated in similar artist-in-residence programs at Running Brook and Longfellow elementary schools in Columbia, [Maryland], and may visit other Howard County schools as well. About two years ago, she worked with emotionally and behaviorally challenged pupils at Baltimore's Sharp-Leadenhall.

"I worry that the creative part of kids' lives is becoming focused on technology -- computers, television, video -- and there's an energy in interpersonal performance I want to make sure they feel," said Trainor, who co-founded Howard County's Folkal Point concert series and has a children's compact disc coming out this month.

"It's just too easy to get stuck behind that computer."

Three R's

Yesterday, Trainor came armed with a small African drum, a six-string guitar and a bagful of homemade instruments, including a window shutter played with a vegetable brush and a rain stick made out of a mailing tube filled with rice, beans and macaroni.

She taught the pupils about rhyme, rhythm and repetition -- in short, the anatomy of a song.

The second-graders in Jacque Higgins' class passed up writing about teachers and John Travolta, and decided to write about friends.

To the beat of a drum

To the beat of Trainor's drum, they sang:

What's up, dude?
How ya doin' there?
Come out and play
I have a bear to share
Here kitty, kitty
Come on and play
I have yarn for you
We'll go to the bay.

But not all of them.

Owen Brown resident Sue Trainor is one of the busiest musicians in Columbia [Maryland]. Not only has she recorded two albums as part of the folk quartet CornuCopia, but she just released her first solo album, In a Closeup. When she's not performing herself, she's running Howard County's premier coffeehouse, The Folkal Point, or the monthly open-mike night at the E.C. Does It Cafe in Ellicott City [Maryland] or the folk nights at the free Lakefront Concert summer series.

Working out of her house as a freelance publicist for various folk-music venues and performers, the 41-year-old Trainor is able to spend most of her waking hours involved with music one way or another. It's the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

"I was just 13 when the Beatles first came over," she recalls, "and I got my first guitar at the same time. Like every other teenager with a guitar back then, I sat down and learned how to play the Beatles' songs. My friends liked the Beatles for a lot of different reasons, but I had already been singing in choir, so it was their harmonies that hooked me. With Simon & Garfunkel, it was the same thing . . . I liked what Paul Simon did with words, and the music was easy to play as a hobbyist guitarist."

Though her tastes have since turned away from rock 'n' roll toward contemporary, acoustic folk music, her early instincts have remained the same: She likes harmony, good lyrics and accessibility. And humor. The first song she ever performed in public was a Smothers Brothers number, and the examples of Arlo Guthrie and Tom Paxton have led her down the path of comedy songs. Highlights on her new solo album are parodies of numbers by such heroes as Paxton, Bill Staines and Julie Gold.

"The comedy is an outlet for me," she says. "I just feel a lot healthier and clearheaded when I've had the chance to laugh. My philosophy is, if you don't get foolish when the opportunity presents itself, you're more likely to do something foolish when you shouldn't."

Trainor moved to Columbia [Maryland] in 1976 and served as the Town Center village manager in 1979-80. Her big break came in 1988 when the female singer in one of her favorite local groups, CornuCopia, moved to Massachusetts and Trainor was invited to fill the empty slot. She has sung with the group ever since as well as with such short-lived acts as PotPourri and Nip & Tuck.

So we presented Trainor with this challenge: If she were sent away to a desert island for the rest of her life and could only take a stereo and 10 albums with her, which 10 would she take? Her list isn't dominated by the kind of acoustic singer-songwriters she books into The Folkal Point but by the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, the Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills & Nash, who influenced [her] during her formative years.

"These are albums that I've listened to over and over and have never gotten tired of," she explains, "and that's an important consideration if you're spending 20 years under a palm tree in the South Pacific with just 10 albums. It's hard to draw up a list, because I think much more in terms of songs than albums. In true folk fashion, I have learned most of the songs I know from other performers, not from albums.

Sue Trainor's Desert Island Discs:

• The Beatles: Abbey Road (Apple)
• Crosby, Stills & Nash: Crosby, Stills & Nash (Atlantic)
• Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer: Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer (Sugar Hill)
• Steve Gillette & Cindy Mangsen: Steve Gillette & Cindy Mangsen Live in Concert (Compass Rose)
• The Grateful Dead: Workingman's Dead (Warner Bros.)
• Hot Tuna: Hot Tuna (RCA)
• Mountain Laurel: Swingin' (Rasputin)
• Pete Seeger & Arlo Guthrie: Precious Friends (Warner Bros.)
• Paul Simon: One Trick Pony (Warner Bros.)
• Simon & Garfunkel: Concert in Central Park (Warner Bros.)