Mommy Duo 'Humdiddle' Defies Exhaustion To Release Indie Singalong Album

OLD IRVING PARK — Chrissy Rockrohr remembers the day she chased her boys around the house, scooping up their scattered toys while singing a sweet tune that carried a serious warning — Get out of momma’s way if you know what’s good for you.

The lyrics, inspired by a boy-sized mess, came easy like a rhythm.

“I’m a truck on the road. I’m a truck on the road, better get outta my way. I’m working hard today,” Rockrohr sang that day.

Five years of fits and starts later, Rockrohr’s “Trucks on the Road” is one of the catchy tunes on “A Day In the Park,” an indie children’s album she recorded with Amanda Sevak as the harmonizing mommy duo called “Humdiddle.”

“It was a project made out of love for our kids,” said Rockrohr, a sixth-grade teacher at Falconer Elementary. “Songs we sang with them and made up with them ended up on the album.”

Rockrohr and Sevak, who met about a decade ago while volunteering for AmeriCorps at a West Side elementary school, will tell you that recording an album wasn’t easy while wrangling two toddlers each.

Especially since Rockrohr’s musical resume was limited to playing flute in the junior high band until she took guitar lessons in her 20s.

Sevak had more formal musical training. She sang in an a cappella group at Northwestern University, but her dream of becoming a jazz singer, well, never came true.

They started writing songs together, and stuck to it, for a couple important reasons: It was fun, and the kids were asleep.

“Amanda has twin girls, and I have Sam and Jonah. It’s hard to carve out time for yourself and to be creative when you’re a mom. But we squeezed it in after the kids went to bed on Sundays. That’s a school night, 'ya know,” Rockrohr said.

“She lived in one of those high-rises across from the Museum Campus. We’d go to this cool party room overlooking Lake Michigan and write songs on a weekly basis for about a year. It started out as 'Let's get together and write some songs' and turned into, ‘We should do an album.' ”

They came up with tunes inspired by time spent with their kids. “Monsters Under My Bed,” for instance, started as a silly song that Sevak came up with while putting her daughters to bed.

For Sevak, the songwriting sessions with Rockrohr were something of a saving grace.

“I learned that music is part of me I can’t ignore,” she said. “Making music gave me more of an identity than just being Monisha and Sonali’s tired mom.”

That said, there’s no attempt to hide the trials of an exhausted parent on the mommy-rock singalong album, which includes a song fittingly titled, “Momma’s So Tired.”

In some ways, “Momma’s So Tired” subtly underscores an important lesson Sevak took away from her collaboration with Rockrohr, a former south suburban journalist turned social studies teacher who now lives in Old Irving Park.

“Even when you have a goal, you can get sidetracked by parenting responsibilities or other obstacles. But if you have someone working with you, it’ll help you accomplish it. We’re really lucky we met.”

And if she’s being completely honest, Sevak also was lucky that Rockrohr has a certain quality, a inherently blunt honesty that not-so-gently helps keeps projects — and people — on the right track.  

For instance, after they decided to definitely record the Humdiddle record, the project suffered what Sevak jokingly called a “minor hiccup.”

Her husband scored a job in Dallas, a family move that could have put the album on permanent hold.

“But Chrissy is very in your face in the best sort of way. She says what she thinks, and that kept things moving forward,” Sevak said. “She kicked me in the butt a little … and we laughed so much that it stayed fun.”

Sevak flew back to Chicago to record the album, which includes singing cameos by her twin girls and the Rockrohr boys on four songs.

Looking back, the five years it took to finish the album, now available on CDbaby.com and iTunes, just flew by.

“It’s funny how it doesn’t feel like such a long time when you're so busy squeezing in a full-time job, raising two kids and dealing with everything else going on in your life,” Rockrohr said.

“We’d drop things for six months and pick it up again, but we kept it fun. It was great to sing and play guitar and use our creativity … to get away from our crazy life as moms for a bit and do something we enjoy. I don’t think people do that enough,” said Rockrohr.

The moms of Humdiddle said they're planning a CD release singalong concert in Chicago, and maybe one in Dallas, too, if life doesn’t get in the way.

“Whatever happens, I’m really proud of us,” Sevak said.

“This was kind of a bucket list item, even though we didn’t know we wanted to do it until we were already doing it. Now we’re hoping people with kids who are looking for something fun and catchy give it a listen and like it.”

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