The Kinders resumed their touring schedule just in time to help get students of the Poplar Bluff Early Childhood and Kindergarten centers hyped up for Halloween.
The group performed their holiday-themed set last week in the Kindergarten gymnasium with songs that included “Scary Movie Marathon,” “Eyeball Soup” and “Scarecrow,” along with crowd favorites such as “Crazy Hair” and “Farmer Fred,” and of course their trademark: “I Like Being A Kid.”
ECH Principal Amanda Summers, who booked the returning guests, had been following lead singer Brian Kinder’s journey over Facebook since he went public with his cancer diagnosis in May. “They’re such a big part of our programming here,” Summers exclaimed.
Brian shared in an interview in between sets that he learned on Easter he had unfortunately developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He and his wife Terri, the other half of the duo, took late May to September off in order for Brian to undergo treatment, and then they slowly got back into their programming.
“I’m good! I feel great,” Brian declared. And with that optimistic attitude, he had his sixth and final chemotherapy session lined up for the day after the Poplar Bluff shows. Then, according to Terri, he will enter a maintenance mode.
“You can’t get rid of it, but the cancer’s not doing anything,” Brian explained. “The doctors said, ‘We know this cancer, and we know how to knock it back’ basically to dormant.”
So far The Kinders are booked across the region through Christmas, including another stop locally in early December at the Kay Porter Theater. “It’s one of our favorite places to come,” Terri noted about playing in Poplar Bluff for over a decade.
The Kinders began performing full-time in 2008, after Brian took an early retirement from serving for more than two decades as a music and art teacher for the public school system in Little Rock. “It’s the best job I ever had,” he said.
Meanwhile Terri, a former X-ray technician, took the leap with Brian due to the increasing demand for him to put on children’s concerts. “You never know what life throws at you,” she said.
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Cutline: A staple of the Poplar Bluff school system, Terri and Brian Kinder perform their whimsical songs for Early Childhood and Kindergarten students.