“Lovely, pure voice.”
—NPR, interview piece
“This is the family music that I love- soulful, mysterious, inclusive and rollicking!”
–Dan Zanes
“Elizabeth Mitchell has bridged the gap between independent rock and post-cradle kiddo-core…Gorgeously lucid.”
–Chicago Reader
A modern classic for listeners young and old, Elizabeth Mitchell’s 2006 album You Are My Little Bird went on to become one of the best-selling recordings in Smithsonian Folkways Recordings’ history. Twenty years later, the majority of the album’s songs have eclipsed the million-streams mark on Spotify, with Mitchell’s cover of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” garnering north of eleven million streams and the traditional “Peace Like a River,” surpassing fourteen million. Now, to celebrate the album’s twentieth anniversary, Smithsonian Folkways is reissuing You Are My Little Bird on vinyl for the first time ever.
HEAR/SHARE “Peace Like a River”
HEAR/SHARE “Three Little Birds”
With guest stars including the legendary John Sebastian (The Lovin’ Spoonful, Bob Dylan, Fred Neil) and Mitchell’s own daughter, who was five years old at the time, the album includes new arrangements of traditionals like “Little Liza Jane” and “Buckeye Jim,” and covers of Bob Marley, Lou Reed, Vashti Bunyan, and Woody Guthrie songs, all adapted for kids.
Mitchell has received two GRAMMY nominations, hosted the kids’ stage at the Newport Folk Festival, and opened for Patti Smith.
You Are My Little Bird has even permeated pop culture: Mitchell’s “Little Bird, Little Bird” featured in Futurama episode “Lethal Inspection” in 2010, and her take on Marley’s “Three Little Birds” appeared in the premiere episode of HBO series Watchmen in 2019.
Mitchell’s live performances often include collaborations with children, including The Children of Agape Choir from South Africa.
Mitchell is a former nursery school teacher with a rare knack for creating music that engages equally the imaginations of children and their caregivers. As a producer and arranger, she makes familiar songs sound fresh and obscure songs feel strangely familiar, as if we had known them all along.
Besides her not-so-secret life as a children’s music phenom, Mitchell is also a co-founder of the New York City indie band, Ida. The New Yorker has said of Ida, “The careful harmonies and emotionally incisive lyrics of this Brooklyn-based quartet are powerful enough to send a chill down the spine of the most jaded listener.”
You Are My Little Bird Track Listing:
1. Little Liza Jane (Trad., arr. Elizabeth Mitchell)
2. Who’s My Pretty Little Baby (Woody Guthrie)
3. Zousan [Little Elephant] (Traditional)
4. Little Bird, Little Bird (Traditional)
5. Three Little Birds (Bob Marley)
6. What Goes On (Lou Reed)
7. Pom Na Tu Ri [Springtime Outing] (Traditional)
8. Buckeye Jim (Arr. Elizabeth Mitchell)
9. Peace Like A River (Traditional)
10. Los Pollitos [The Little Chicks] (Traditional)
11. Winter’s Come And Gone (Gillian Welch-David Rawlings)
12. Little Wing (Neil Young)
13. Lily Pond (Vashti Bunyan)
14. The North Wind (Traditional)
15. If You Listen (Tommy Brown-Micky Jones)
16. Down In The Valley (Traditional)
17. Grassy Grass Grass (Woody Guthrie)
Elizabeth Mitchell & You Are My Flower Tour Dates:
August 15-16 – Los Angeles, CA – The Getty Center, Central Garden
September 6 – Berkeley, CA – Freight & Salvage
About Smithsonian Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the “National Museum of Sound,” makes available close to 60,000 tracks in physical and digital format as the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian, with a reach of 80 million people per year. A division of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the non-profit label is dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among people through the documentation, preservation, production and dissemination of sound. Its mission is the legacy of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1948 to document “people’s music” from around the world.
