Singer-songwriter-educator Keeth Apgar, founder and frontman of the Pacific Northwest-based The Harmonica Pocket, has won the prestigious ASCAP Foundation Joe Raposo Children’s Music Award for a body of work that spans nearly 30 years.
Equal parts silly and sweet, The Harmonica Pocket is a young-at-heart band bursting with thoughtful, fun-loving songs for “ages zero to Grandma” that inspire spontaneous family dance parties wherever they’re played. The band makes the case for blurring the lines between children’s and grown-up music, elevating “kids’ music” into something meaningful, moving, and joyful. Kids can handle rich, nuanced subjects!
The ASCAP Foundation Joe Raposo Children’s Music Award was established in 2010 by Joe Raposo’s family to honor his legacy. Raposo, one of the creators and longtime musical director of Sesame Street, wrote music for diverse talents such as Kermit The Frog, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Dr. Seuss, Barbra Streisand, and Cookie Monster. His songs like “Sing,” “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green,” and the “Sesame Street Theme” paved the way for him to receive five Grammys and multiple Gold and Platinum albums.
A noteworthy example of Keeth Apgar’s music is the newest Harmonica Pocket single, “Imperfection is a Gift.”
With a rootsy, acoustic, Piedmont blues-inspired style, “Imperfection is a Gift” shares a message of embracing life’s accidents and finding the beauty and power within those moments of imperfection we all experience.
“When I write a song, I don’t want to waste any words or notes, and along the way, I also want to make a discovery or two,” says Keeth Apgar. “In ‘Imperfection is a Gift,’ it might be a surprising, ‘musical joke’ minor chord, or the way some of the vowel sounds rhyme in the lyrics, like the line ‘Learning to embrace/Each mistake I make/So the time that it takes/To make them doesn’t go to waste.’”
Keeth continues, “A song is a short story set to breath and harmony. Small enough to hum, but big enough to hold the sky. A kids’ song needs to be able to do all that and still stand up on its own two feet and dance.”
Three decades into his career, Keeth Apgar is dedicated to giving back to the musical community as an educator. For the past five years, he has offered young people and adults one-of-a-kind creative songwriting workshops in a variety of settings. Taking this concept further, in January 2026 Keeth launched a brand-new online, one-on-one music education program for songwriters called Harmony Lab. A 5-week Harmony Lab “Songwriting Reboot” workshop is currently in progress, and a 16-week “Deep Dive” will open for enrollment in April. Harmony Lab’s goal is to strengthen musical foundations, building the competence and confidence songwriters need to write in any key, using rich, colorful chords, and, most importantly, to revitalize students’ excitement about their songwriting through a “folk-art” process that blends storytelling with songwriting.
Keeth Apgar explains, “Harmony Lab is built from my life experiences as a songwriter, musician, educator, and as a music student myself. It took me 35 years to get to where I am, so I’m creating the classes that I wish I could have taken at the beginning of my songwriting career.”
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ABOUT KEETH APGAR & THE HARMONICA POCKET:
Growing up on Long Island, Keeth Apgar listened to everything from Bob Marley and Van Halen to Chopin and Bach. While a student at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, he immersed himself in the history of jazz, spent six months in Queensland, Australia studying the didgeridoo, and graduated with a degree in ethnomusicology. After college he moved to Seattle, where, among other adventures, he played in a band called Mustard Catsup Relish before establishing The Harmonica Pocket in 1999.
Grounded in nature and featuring a rotating cast of talented musicians, Harmonica Pocket music is set in an acoustic landscape of guitars and ukuleles augmented by upright bass, drum kit, and, of course, harmonicas. Horn sections swell and tiny musical secrets are often woven into corners of the mix. With plenty of open sky in their songwriting, subject matter, genre, and musicianship, The Harmonica Pocket cheerfully bridges the generations, appealing to kids and adults alike.
Whether as a solo act, duo, or with the full band, The Harmonica Pocket has serenaded kids, parents, grandparents, and everyone in between at theaters, clubs, festivals, museums, parks, schools, and libraries, everywhere from small rural towns to faraway cities. The band’s acoustic shows draw audiences in with catchy, melodic, well-crafted songs. Humor, improvisation, and play are generously sprinkled on top while a suitcase of unusual “musical instruments” and unexpected props are revealed, keeping audiences engaged, laughing, and tapping their toes.
Harmonica Pocket tunes are recorded in a tiny, off-grid, solar-powered studio on a small island in the Pacific Northwest and are featured on playlists all over the planet.
The band records and releases singer-songwriter material for adults, as well as children’s music. Those who like The Harmonica Pocket's grownup albums will like the kids' stuff, and vice versa.
Harmonica Pocket albums for kids and families include Sing Your Song (2021), Sundrops (2015, Parents’ Choice Gold Award, NAPPA Bronze Medal), Apple Apple (2012, Parents’ Choice Gold Award), Ladybug One (2008, Parents’ Choice Recommended Award), and Mary Macaroni (2005). Releases for adults include Angels and Mistakes (EP, 2023), Birds Falling from the Sky (2005), Underneath YourUmbrella (2002), Lemonbomb (1997), and The Humans and the Robins (1996). Recent singles for adults include “Return to Light” (2024), “Take Your Time” (2023), and “Yours to Keep” (2023).
Harmonica Pocket Performance Highlights – March/April 2026
March 7 – Seattle, WA – Pioneer Hall – Little Beats Concert Series
April 26 – Tacoma, WA – McMenamins Spanish Ballroom – All Ages Show
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