DAVID LEE ROTH's Sister Behind Million-Selling Rockabye Baby!

Rockabye Baby! produces kid-friendly, instrumental albums of material from artists as wide-ranging as Bob Marley and Metallica, reports Alex Heigl of People.com. While some seem like a natural fit (it’s not too difficult to reimagine “One Love” as a child’s song) others require more work (for example, the upcoming Slumber Of The Beast: Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Iron Maiden, or their version of “Under The Bridge” (a Red Hot Chili Peppers song about heroin).

Rockabye Baby! is the brainchild of Lisa Roth, vice president and creative director of L.A.’s CMH Label Group (and sister of Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth). Roth founded Rockabye Baby! in 2006 and has overseen the release of 78 albums, which have sold over 1.6 million physical units (CDs) and notched 1.5 million single downloads and 100 million-plus digital streams. The series is celebrating its 10th anniversary on Friday, October 14th, so People got Lisa on the phone to talk about the art of making heavy metal jams appropriate bedtime material. An excerpt follows:

How did the series get started?

“The first week I was working here at the label, I was going to a baby shower for a friend who loves music, and I thought, ‘It should be easy to find a gift.’ So I went looking for music, baby music, and I really didn’t see anything adult-friendly that I would be excited to give as a gift, so I went back to the label, said to my boss, ‘We should get into the baby business and create a music series that’s for the adult as well as their little ones.’ And our art director at the time, Valerie Aiello, presented the concept Lullabies of Metallica, and I thought, ‘That’s exactly what I’m thinking!’ She became the primary artistic person for the brand for the first year and a half, and I took over a little over nine years ago.”

How do you pitch these? What’s the process?

“Before we start producing we create a tracklist, which we populate with hits, deep cuts for true fans, and some of our own favorites. Then we contact the publishers and/or owners of each song and obtain a license. And then we distribute the albums to a handful of producers that we use and they start deconstructing each song and putting it back together using our Rockabye Baby palette, and myself and my listening partner, James Curtis, sit and listen to every single note of every song and send back fixes. Then they send us fixes, and this goes back and forth six, eight, 10 times before we get the perfect rendition.”

What were some of the reactions you’ve got from musicians or the people actually recording the music?

“Mostly positive things. Steven Tyler from Aerosmith wrote liner notes for us, as did Joe Elliott from Def Leppard. Elton John has talked about us numerous times in the press. As far as our producers… I don’t recall hearing anything from them when we pitched them other than a snicker or a laugh. We get almost universally positive feedback, from parents to yoga teachers to fans. It’s very pleasant work.”

To read the interview in its entirety, visit this location.