As Aaron Jones carefully clipped a set of wires onto his houseplant, whom he calls Phil, a throng of 9-, 10- and 11-year-olds stared up at him in awe.
Slowly, an oozing synth note came through Jones’ sound system, and he improvised a gentle, strumming rhythm on his acoustic guitar. He explained how the plant’s inner electrical charges were being picked up by sensors in the clips. As the charges fluctuated, he explained, Phil sang.
Jones, known around Concord as Mr. Aaron, had his audience dancing, beatboxing, singing and even chanting “Chug! Chug! Chug!” during his half-hour set. (The performance was at the New Hampshire State Drinking Water Festival, and the crowd of students was all for hydration.)
Jones’ career in music has spanned everything from opera to punk to mommy-and-me classes, but he’s celebrating 10 years of Mr. Aaron in New Hampshire this summer. In his decade in the capital region, Mr. Aaron has become a mainstay of youth entertainment.
To Jones, children’s music does more than people give it credit for. It’s more than just music for kids.
“This is really a way that a wide range of people can all come together and, for an hour, be creative, appreciate the playful, silly absurdity of young children sing and dance together,” he said.
Jones got his start with a niche undergraduate degree, creative music technology, from a small school in Georgia. He moved to New York City to study graduate musical theater writing, and landed work writing for theater and opera.
But he was still looking for further steady creative work. He found a listing for mommy-and-me music classes at a preschool in the West Village.
He was apprehensive, at first.
“You know — it was a paycheck,” he said. But he realized over time how naturally it came to him. He could teach classes during the day, and do gigs and shows at night. When he put ego aside, he said, he had fun. “It clicked for me: This is a way that I can write music that’s theatrical and tells a story.”
Jones and his wife, Anna, met in grad school. She’s a lyricist. They wrote a musical together. Got married. Settled in Brooklyn with their first child.
When the Joneses welcomed a second daughter, they realized they wanted to be closer to family, who could help form their “village.” So they moved to Hopkinton.
The move from the music scene in New York to New Hampshire was an adjustment for Jones, but also a fresh start.
“I had gotten kind of burned out,” he said. “At that point, I was like, I don’t know, maybe making a living doing music is not for me.”
Jones had always had a passion for aviation, and had a private helicopter pilot’s license. He started training on the seacoast for a commercial license.
“But the music had never really went away,” he said.
The Concord Community Art Center had an available space, and Jones opened a recording studio in 2016, called Rattlebox. He started teaching youth classes again, and things took off.
Mr. Aaron built up a regular rotation of shows at libraries and other community events with Anna as a co-songwriter, costumer and business partner. He began recording his own children’s albums — and now has six in his discography.
When COVID descended a few years later, he had to pivot. Mr. Aaron began livestreaming shows five days a week and closed his studio. It became a season of saying “yes” to everything: Zoom shows, masked classes, socially distanced concerts on baseball fields.
“Everybody needed something to do, and their kids needed something to do,” he said.
In the years since, Mr. Aaron has solidified his presence in the region more as a performer than a teacher.
Shows feature mostly his own music: “The La La La Song” opens every one. Themes, add-ons, movement and audience participation are the main ingredients.
“This morning I did this song called ‘Gravity Can’t Hold Me Down,'” Jones said, describing the tune as a musical journey to the moon; it was featured on his space-themed album, “Intergalactic Music Spectacular.” “It’s basically different ways of jumping around. It gets kids up and bouncing, and we blast off at the end.”
Jones’ shows feature a cornucopia of instruments and soundmakers: everything from his guitar and harmonica to a loop-machine and, lately, plants.
The magic of a Mr. Aaron show, to Jones, is in the creative mind of the audience.
“There’s a willingness of young audiences to participate, in a way that more mature audiences are not always willing,” he said.
At a springtime show, he’d asked kids to freestyle phrases about spring into the microphone. He’d use the looper to make a rap track out of it. But with one silly “Happy Halloween,” the song ended up as an ode to fall spookiness.
‘Those are the best moments for me, I’m finding,” Jones said. “More than, ‘Let me sing to you my perfectly crafted song,’ I’m like, ‘How can I make these musical moments where unexpected things can happen, and we can all go on this zany journey together?'”
Entering his second decade in New Hampshire, Jones is still experimenting. With DJ-ing events and parties (where kids now in their teens say, “wait, aren’t you Mr. Aaron?”), with new instruments and sounds, with house plants in a project called Bosey Joe.
“Mr. Aaron is definitely a side of me,” Jones said. “But it feels like I’m just getting started.”
