Reeling In Laughs

Get ready for something different in children’s music: Trout Fishing in America, the quirky folk-rock, country-blues duo--known for its sometimes surreal, soulful and often hilariously anarchic songs and sophisticated musicianship--will perform in concert at the University of Judaism’s Gindi Auditorium on Aug. 1.

Presented by popular kids’ rock ‘n’ roll band Craig ‘n Co. as part of its Sunday Funday family concert series benefiting Jewish Big Brothers of Los Angeles, Trout Fishing in America has been heard on everything from NBC’s “Today” show and NPR’s “All Things Considered” to “Dr. Demento.”

The duo, named after the Richard Brautigan book, has a sort of benign Penn and Teller thing going, both in its off-the-wall humor and in the pair’s look: Guitarist and fisherman Ezra Idlet is 6 feet, 9 inches tall; bass player Keith Grimwood, the Brautigan fan, is a shade over 5-feet-5.

Or as Grimwood frequently puts it: “He’s the tall one. I’m the one that’s average height.”

Harmonious in all but size, Idlet and Grimwood have played together for 23 years, beginning in a Houston rock band called St. Elmo’s Fire, then branching out as a duo in 1979, playing clubs and adding kids’ concerts when club-going elementary school teachers began inviting them to perform for their students.

“We didn’t know any kid songs, so we just played our music,” Grimwood said. During the ‘80s, however, inspiration blossomed with marriage and their own children.

“As you watch them grow up,” Grimwood said, “all these memories get triggered. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether you’re writing about yourself or your own kids. Sometimes all I have to do is grab a pen, wander around behind a bunch of kids and take notes.”

Songs about bad hair days, a highway where gravity stops working, or a child’s single-minded determination not to share, with a tango beat, will tickle kids and adults. Unexpectedly beautiful ballads such as “Lullaby” (“Dragons in the sky, flying with their golden treasure/And if you catch their eye, wishes granted more than you can measure”) is “for parents,” Grimwood said.

* Trout Fishing in America, Sunday Funday Family Concert Series, Gindi Auditorium, University of Judaism, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Bel Air, Aug. 1, 2 p.m. (preshow art-making project, 1 p.m.). $10 (includes art project). (310) 476-9777, Ext. 201.

Muscle and Mirth: “They have to be really strong to do that, don’t they?” That was one small boy’s admiring observation after Occidental Children’s Theater’s strenuously physical show, “Paul Bunyan’s Perilous Pancake Breakfast.”

Simple tumbling, somersaults, backbends and feats of balance and strength are the norm for this company’s inventive annual summer shows for families.

Performed outdoors on a grassy area beside the college’s Hillside Amphitheatre, the company’s stage is a faded red carpet; its props are bamboo poles.

The trimmings aren’t fancy, but audiences aren’t shortchanged in this telling of four tall tales.

The actors, crisply directed by Jamie Angell, use their bodies separately and in athletic group formations to create trees, furniture, a boat, a road, a rice field, even the floorboards of a house.

Making deft transformations from story to story, the ensemble--Ken Zinn, Chidori Asanami, Keight Graham, Amber Skalski, Joseph Chandler and Ryan Sullivan--also play heroes, villains and animals.

In a tale from Japan, Asanami is “The Old Woman Who Lost Her Dumpling,” a cackling baker who chases an errant dumpling through her floor to a strange underworld and ends up cooking for a voracious monster (Chandler).

She escapes, and troupe members play both getaway boat and waves to rib-tickling effect.

The show ends with an original romp based on the legend of Paul Bunyan. Paul (Skalski) repays a debt to tricky Prospector Dan (Zinn) by raising funds with a pancake breakfast for the whole country--cooked up in a volcano.

With its zestful physicality, smart writing, gentle humor and youthfully assured execution, the only downside to this unpretentious summer treat is that you have to wait a year for it to return.

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* “Paul Bunyan’s Perilous Pancake Breakfast,” Occidental College, Hillside Amphitheater lawn, 1600 Campus Road, Eagle Rock, Thursdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m., through Aug. 21. For ages 5 and up. Running time: 1 hour. $8 per adult; $4 for ages 12 and under. (323) 259-2922.