Growing up in
Princeton, New Jersey, Berkner attended
Princeton High School and was involved in choirs, bands and
musical theater. As a student at
Rutgers University, she toured Europe as a choir soloist and an orchestral guitar player. After working as a summer-camp music counselor, she spent several years as a children's music specialist for day care centers and preschools in the New York area. In 1992, she began to perform as a professional rock musician, first playing in a rock band called Red Onion (Berkner, Brian Mueller, Adam Bernstein and Alan Lerner), performing her original music. Later on she joined an all-female cover band called Lois Lane. She found songwriting to be a struggle—a problem that disappeared when she started writing children's music. "Writing music for kids has not been a struggle at all," Berkner has said. "The more I started working on material for children, the more I realized that it opened up creativity in me that I never knew I had." Some of her first performances as a children's musician were birthday party gigs at $125 a show. "Those days were intense," she told
The New York Times. "I used to arrive early and memorize every child's name, so I could feel like I knew them." In 1997, working with Susie Lampert, Mueller and guest bassist Adam Bernstein, she put out her first album,
Whaddaya Think of That? as a cassette-only release. She had been encouraged to record by the parents of the children she worked with. "The children were really responding to the music we created together," she said. The album contained original songs like "We Are the Dinosaurs" and "I Know a Chicken", along with covers of classics like "
The Cat Came Back" and "
Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)". In 1998, Berkner formed her own independent record company, Two Tomatoes Records, to release her second album,
Buzz Buzz, which includes such Berkner standards as "Pig on Her Head" and "Monster Boogie". With 1999's
Victor Vito, Berkner achieved national fame, appearing on the
FX network's
American Baby Show and winning a Parent's Guide to Children's Media Award. Her album
Rocketship Run came out in August 2008. A greatest hits compilation,
The Best of The Laurie Berkner Band followed two years later, and
A Laurie Berkner Christmas was released in 2012. Berkner's audience increased dramatically when she appeared on
The Today Show in 2001. Since then, she has played in high-profile venues such as
Carnegie Hall and
Lincoln Center; she has also played at the
White House Easter Egg Roll. Berkner also played a free concert in
Central Park to celebrate
Earth Day, which was attended by fifteen thousand people. Mueller, who is married to Berkner, left the band in 2006 "to keep the couple's personal and professional lives separate", and was replaced by Adam Bernstein. == Other media ==