Chris Hamilton

The Day We Tried to Shampoo Rover: Behind the Scenes

What it says inside Sticky Situations about The Day We Tried to Shampoo Rover:

"When I was a kid, we had a collie. She was a well-mannered dog, but she could not resist rolling in the smelliest stuff she could find. The smellier, the better. This song is somewhat inspired by her, but was written years later on the Skytrain (Vancouver's subway system, up in the air). The music is influenced by the lively Celtic folk style from Ireland and Scotland, one of my favourite kinds of music."

What else you may want to know:

"The Day We Tried to Shampoo Rover" is one of the first songs for kids I ever wrote. I liked it so much that I knew I was doing the right thing chasing the dream of being a children's performer. When I first started playing music with groups of kids, this is the first one of my songs that kids seemed to really enjoy singing along to, and it was the first one any kids requested the next time I came back. Some kids call it "The Rover Song" or "The Shampoo Song". One kid regularly asks for the "Red Rover" song. Whatever you call it, it was clear to me that kids were enjoying it as much as I was right away.

In spring of 2003, I recorded a version of Rover with my friend Jeremy Hughes playing accordion. There were no drums, fiddle or kids singing along. It was a fun version but I prefer this new version. That original version is available for free download at www.freekidsmusic.com

Trivia: Rover the dog makes an appearance on the front cover of Sticky Situations.

More Trivia: On the Sticky Situations version, the sound you hear when Rover shakes isn't a dog at all! It's me shaking a pair of leather gloves and a big set of keys at the same time. We didn't have time to bring in a dog to the studio, and we didn't exactly want a wet dog shaking water all over the studio anyway. So we faked it a little. It's amazing how real it sounds!

Even More Trivia: That's me yelling "On The Walls!" and "In My Eye!" at the end of the song.

Click Here to go back to the Sticky Situations Info Page

Chris Hamilton Children's Music, Music for Children, Kids Songs & Family Entertainment. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada