Baltimore – Tina and Guy Hershberger love to rave. On this Friday night, the dance floor is packed. Heavy bass pulses through the speakers. Multicolored stage lights catch flashes of neon and mesh as the crowd moves to the music. "My husband and I go to a lot of raves," Tina Hershberger says.
But this time, they've brought their 2-year-old son, Owen, who is having a meltdown over his outfit. "We got him a new shirt," Tina says over Owen's wails, he does not like it.
Owen is far from the youngest raver here. Most of the crowd is under 5, because this is a toddler rave.
It's only 5 p.m. The music pumping through the speakers are nursery rhymes like "Bingo" and "The Wheels on the Bus." The house specialty at the bar is apple juice. And, most importantly, these ravers have a hard stop: bedtime.
Australian DJ Lenny Pearce is currently on a toddler rave world tour. Baltimore is the first stop on the North American leg with sold-out shows in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. In the past, he's taken toddler raves to Bahrain, Singapore and India.
Pearce has built a large following from remixing nursery rhymes into electronic dance music, a style he calls toddler techno. "Parents and toddlers, they all share nursery rhymes," Pearce says. "No matter the culture, we connect over bangers."
Before toddler techno, Pearce was a dancer. He got his start in an all-boys dance troupe, Justice Crew, that won Australia's Got Talent. Justice Crew performed alongside artists including One Direction and Kesha then eventually transitioned to music. "During that time I learnt a lot being in recording studios. I fell in love with producing electronic music," Pearce says.
Justice Crew had a long-running No. 1 hit in Australia, but Pearce says he wasn't able to make ends meet by working in entertainment. He left the group and spent the next few years taking whatever work he could find – selling electronics at what he describes as an Australian version of Best Buy, then working at a shoe store. All the while, picking up DJ gigs.
Then in 2022, his daughter Mila was born. "She was maybe six months old. I was doing the night feeds and when you're overtired, your thinking becomes a bit crazy" he says, "I was just thinking, 'head, shoulders, knees and toes.'"
The next morning he remixed the classic and uploaded it to TikTok. The techno version took off. "So I decided to do 'Five Little Ducks,' and then all the other nursery rhymes," he says. Toddler techno was born.
Before his show in Baltimore, Pearce prepares an unusual green room. He sets up a playpen and a highchair for his two youngest – Harry and Mila – who've come with him on tour. "My priority number one is them," he says.
Next, setting up the rave. Huge inflatable ducks are blown up, along with Pearce's stage backdrop – a life-sized castle made of milk bottles. The fog machine is loaded, and the merch table is stocked with sizes ranging from 2T to adult XL. "It's like a kid's first birthday on steroids," Pearce says.
There were 1,200 tickets sold in Baltimore. When the doors open, Christiano O'Mara, 6, is the first person in line. "I'm really excited!" he shouts. He's made sure he and his mom are in the front row at the barricade. "I really like Lenny and then I never got to see him in real life, but this is my first time ever."
O'Mara is wearing a splatter-paint shirt and has neon temporary tattoos on his face. He says he had to go home to change before the rave, because he had school, of course.
Also ready to rave is 3-year-old Milana Ruhl, who's wearing a light-up Elsa dress from Frozen. She's sporting three glow bands on each leg, but apparently that's not enough. She asks her dad, Eric Ruhl, to add another. "We came prepared," Eric says.
This is Milana's second toddler rave, and they learned from their first. This time they've brought a hefty supply of glow bands. "After last year, we were like, 'we have to come with a lot more stuff,'" he says.
At 6:30 p.m. on the dot, Pearce takes the stage. The set lasts no more than an hour. "Kids, their attention is very short," he says. "The very first set I played, it was just music like I had played for adults. And then eventually I was like 'I think I need to dance more.'"
For most of his set, Pearce steps out from behind the DJ booth and interacts with the crowd. He also brings out a cast of characters, including Bubbles the Duck and Kuma the Monkey. "Something new is coming out every song," he says.
Some of the youngest ravers are wearing protective headphones, but Pearce keeps a close eye on the volume. "It's 90 decibels, no louder than that, which we check all the time," he says, "but it also has to feel like a rave. So we keep it fairly loud, but it's not damagingly loud."
Throughout his set, Pearce incorporates moments for the parents. On this night, he's mixed in popular songs like Pitbill's "Give Me Everything" and some Snoop Dogg.
"Mommy spent many, many nights at raves," Emily Miller explains to her son Oliver. For her, Pearce's show is a way to share an old hobby with her kids. Pregnant with her second son, she jokes that this will be the baby's first rave. "Everybody wants to be able to take their kid to their first show, their first rave. This is a super cool experience," she says.
Another parent, William Tomlinson, agrees. He says this rave is a unique family activity he enjoys as much as his kids. "Not to knock it, but it's not like a Disney princess kind of thing for Dad. It's a lot of fun for me," he says.
"I think parents these days, we're very lighthearted," Pearce says. "I think it's the millennial parents… We try and do more. A lot of dads are more involved."
Pearce is no exception, even on tour. "I get to go home by 8 p.m. and then put the kids to sleep, drive to the next city and then do it all again."
As his kids get older, Pearce says he wants his music to grow with them. Mila is now 3 1/2. "She might go 'Oh, no, dad, that's not cool anymore.' Then I'll go, 'Okay, then what do you find cool? Let me do that,'" he says. "All my music now fits for 1, 2 and 3. Maybe next year I'll do 4-year-olds, and then 5. And then when they have kids, I'll go back," he laughs.
By 7:30 p.m., some of the ravers have fallen asleep. While Pearce will soon pack up and continue the party on to the next tour stop, V Whiddon has no choice but to call it a night for her 9-month-old son Vraiden. "His bedtime's 7," she says.
For now, bedtime wins.
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