Trout Fishing In America’s bittersweet Free At Noon bids Kathy O’Connell, Kids Corner farewell
Trout Fishing in America played to crowded, multi-generational room Friday as they helped send off Kids Corner and its beloved host Kathy O’Connell at Free At Noon.
Trout Fishing in America | Photo by Max Bennett
The Music Hall at World Stage hosted a true all-ages show Friday with Trout Fishing in America performing at Free At Noon to help say goodbye to the long-running Kids Corner and its irreplaceable and incomparable host Kathy O’Connell.
While the odd couple-esque Keith Grimwood and Ezra Idlet of Trout Fishing in America were the headliner of the show, O’Connell herself was a bit of a star Friday, posting up on stage in a chair flanked by balloons as she watched her longtime friends perform their most popular songs.
They opened with “Kathy Was Right” — which could be O’Connell’s all-time favorite song — and had the crowd of children, parents, grandparents (and possibly even great grandparents) singing along, a theme that ran throughout the noontime event.
“I nagged them into writing that,” O’Connell said.
They played “When I was a Dinosaur” next, with Grimwood and Idlet acting as a stegosaurus and T-Rex, respectively, while making dinosaur noises and pantomiming dinosaur moves during the jaunty tune.
The duo got a bit more sincere for the third song with “No Matter What Goes Right,” which saw Grimwood and Idlet singing in wonderful harmony about harmony.
After the touching song, Trout Fishing in America exclaimed “it’s time for a polka” and dived into “The Window” and got details of all our favorite nursery rhymes wrong. But not before Grimwood instructed the crowd to do the wave.
The twisted up “Humpty Dumpty,” “Little Miss Muffet,” “Little Bo Peep,” “The Isty Bitsy Spider,” “Jack Be Nimble,” “Little Bunny Foo Foo,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and simultaneously sang “Rub-a-dub-dub” and a bit of “Stairway to Heaven.”
“When I first met Kathy, I was very skeptical,” Grimwood said. “I’m going, ‘a kids show for radio? That will never work!’ Then we met Kathy. And that’s why it works.”
“18 Wheels on a Big Rig” was up next and had the two doing plenty of counting, including by twos, in Roman numerals, by odd numbers, then divided the number of wheels by Pi to its 10th place and “somewhere over the rainbow.”
Grimwood said 2026 marks 50 years of he and Idlet writing and performing together, noting they write and wrote about all topics, including everyday things, leading them into “My Hair Had A Party Last Night.”
Idlet then spoke about his daughter, who became a singer-songwriter then had her own daughter, Bertie. He said the first time Bertie spent the night with her grandparents, she started to cry at bedtime (ironically and coincidentally, a child in the crowd cried out at that very moment in the show). So he played the song “Lullaby,” which her mother plays for her regularly, to ease her woes. When the song was over, Bertie said through tears, “that’s momma’s song,” Idlet said.
The duo once again sang in harmony over Idlet’s deft fingerpicking work, and the touching song comforted the audience like a cozy blanket at bedtime.
For their final song, Trout Fishing in America played “What I Want is a Proper Cup of Coffee” and implored the crowd to sing along once again.
“NOT YET,” Grimwood shouted off mic, eliciting a hearty laugh from the audience. He then instructed the crowd when and what to sing, but given the prevalence of Trout Fishing songs on Kids Corner and much of the crowd being longtime fans of the show, most in attendance did not need a lesson on how to participate.
Before ending the song, Grimwood told the crowd to sing the song all by themselves, leading Idlet to increase the tempo into a big, crescendoing finish with rapturous applause.
“Congratulations Kathy,” Grimwood said.
“Thank you, thank you all,” O’Connell said.
Kids Corner Producer Robert Drake joined O’Connell on stage and shared some details on the Kids Corner banner that graced the lefthand side of the stage.
“This banner was made for us by one of our phone volunteers back in the first year of Kids Corner,” he said. “She hand sewed that banner and we used it at all of our events. Now, this banner will be taken down and will be donated as part of an exhibit that’s going into Atwater Kent Museum at Drexel University, which will celebrate the history of Philadelphia.”
That means Kids Corner will officially be recognized as a part of Philadelphia history, Drake said.
“Thanks to all the kids, the parents, the teachers, the members, the listeners, the staff and management of WXPN for a wonderful time,” O’Connell said. “And I’m glad you were all there for it.”
“The magic of Kathy O’Connell is her ability and commitment to talking to kids for 37 years as her equals with something important to say,” WXPN General Manager Roger LaMay said. “Kathy and Kids Corner may be leaving this stage, but the spirit of her connections to kids and families in the entire WXPN community is going to be with us forever.”
O’Connell promised her fans that they will be able to find her at “just about every XPN event for the rest of all our lives,” as she will always remain a WXPN ambassador.
Be sure to check out our celebration of Kids Corner that features the last eight shows, the Top 50 Kids Corner Songs of All Time, listener-submitted memories, her retirement announcement video, and more.