Songdrops

songdrops (Bryant Oden) is a famous song writer responsible for singing the duck songs, and Honey Bear.

Young Life
Singer-songwriter Bryant Oden started writing songs when he was a kid growing up in Oklahoma and spending his summers in the Colorado Mountains. Some songs were funny, and others were straight from his heart. “''None of them were very good. But that process of being in a creative mood and writing a funny song, and also of walking in the woods and having a real heart song come to me, that has never really gone away''.”

Bryant graduated from Oklahoma City University and soon after moved to the Denver area, to be closer to the mountains. Over the years, he has had a variety of livelihoods, ranging from spending four years as a child care counselor and supervisor at a treatment center for children, to teaching English as a Second Language at the college level, to being a self employed internet entrepreneur. He also earned a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology, with an emphasis on teaching English as a Second Language.

The rest of his life
His focus on recording and sharing his children’s songs is a recent development. “''Once in a while I would sing songs at family or social gatherings, and I had a few concerts here and there, but that was about it. I have always loved writing and sharing songs, but it never seemed like a realistic way to pay the bills, so it was always in the background''.”

Over the years, people would sometimes suggest he make a CD of his children’s songs, and in the fall of 2008, he finally started the process. “''After hearing someone say again I should record my kid songs, I just decided to go for it. I thought I would record maybe eight or nine songs. 6 months later I had recorded over 30, most of them newer songs that came to me once I started recording. So this has become a much bigger project than I had expected!”''

YouTube
Bryant started putting his songs on Youtube in January, 2009. His YouTube channel now has over 60 million video views. In March of 2009, a popular 14 year old Youtube filmmaker made an animated video of The Duck Song, which now has over 125 million views. “''It’s been fun to kind of have an internet hit lately,  fun to hear about kids singing the song down the hallways at school, and to see all the fan videos of it. But it’s the nature of the internet that popular things tend to fade away about as fast as they rise, so I’m more focused on the longer term''.”

And what does that longer term look like? “''Well, I hope to keep writing and recording more songs. I really enjoy creating and sharing both kinds of songs: the fun and funny songs, and the ones that come from a deeper place. And it’s been a nice surprise to me that based on the comments on YouTube and on my site, some of the songs I think of as just light fun are sometimes really change someone’s mood or even get them through a really difficult time. That kind of thing has been a really nice surprise, and definitely makes Songdrops more rewarding for me. So, in terms of future plans, hopefully I’ll be fortunate enough to keep on creating and recording and sharing songs.''