How a Garbage Truck Rekindled
One Santa Barbara Father’s
Rock-and-Roll Dream
Meet the Shoe Biters,
Who Turn ‘Power Words’ into Musical Anthems
By Izadora Hamm | August 13, 2026
Read more from our 2026 Indy Parenting cover story here.
Doors started opening in the voice-over world when Rick Robles sold his guitar.
After years of trying to break into Los Angeles’s music scene to no avail, the 27-year-old packed away the dream he had chased since high school, selling nearly every instrument, amplifier, and effects pedal he owned.
Robles kept just one acoustic and electric guitar before turning to voice acting, and while taking an eight-week class, he approached the new career with the same intensity he had brought to music.
He spent his evenings valet parking cars and eight to 10 hours a day working on his voice-over, studying commercial copies and compiling hundreds of notes along the way.
That work evidently paid off, and as his voice-over career took off, Robles ― now a Santa Barbara father of two ― became the promotional voice for television shows including Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, and more.
For more than two decades, music gradually slipped into the background, and Robles rarely picked up a guitar, reserving it for the moments that felt important enough to require one.
“My best lyricism has always come from things that tug on your heartstrings,” he said. “I’d only pull out a guitar when something big happened — a tragedy, a death, a wedding.”
That was until about three years ago, when something much smaller tugged on those same heartstrings and prompted Robles to make music again — this time in the form of a fictional children’s rock band called the Shoe Biters.
What began as songs written for his two young sons has since grown into an album, school assembly performances, and a larger animated TV-world.
But the project didn’t begin with the goal of pioneering a new way of helping children understand and communicate their feelings. It began with a garbage truck.
Every Wednesday morning, like clockwork, Robles’s sons Grayden and Roan would wait for the neighborhood garbage truck to arrive. At first, they were fascinated by its mechanics and the familiar beeping that announced its arrival. But before long, their attention shifted from the truck itself to Pepe Clemente, the man behind the wheel.
Clemente would wave to the boys, stop to chat, and let them honk the horn. What started as a weekly interaction gradually became a friendship between Clemente and the family.
Robles’s wife, Megan, called those weekly interactions “Christmas morning” for their boys. For roughly two and a half years, Clemente and another driver, Arturo Rosas, were familiar faces in the kids’ lives, showing up for a few minutes but leaving a lasting impression.
Watching how much his sons loved them, Robles reached for the guitar he had largely left behind and wrote Clemente a song.
“This time, I had a real reason to write a song,” he said. “I wanted my kids to love it and I wanted [Clemente] to love it.”
The boys couldn’t get enough — Megan even remembers hearing Graydon singing the song from his crib one night.
The gesture was meant to be a thank-you, but writing it seemed to unlock something Robles hadn’t realized he was missing. And so the songs kept coming, and he would catch himself getting distracted during voice-over work, repeating lyrics and changing syllables in his head.
He started writing about the other people his children encountered in their everyday lives, including UPS driver Jesse Avina and mail carrier Mike Albino. Their seemingly ordinary jobs had become part of his sons’ little world, and Robles began feeling that same musical passion he thought he’d lost.
Robles eventually brought the songs to his longtime friend and musician Jesse Siebenberg, who’d performed with Brian Wilson, Neil Young, Kesha, and Miranda Lambert. Siebenberg, the son of Supertramp drummer Bob Siebenberg, co-owns Brotheryn Studios in Ojai.
They recorded everything in studio, full-band style, and Siebenberg was immediately on board.
“When I asked him what was owed for the day, he simply asked me to keep writing more because his kids loved it,” Robles said. “I probably brought a new song down every week,”
Soon, friends with children were asking for the music too, and Robles began sending around MP3s but eventually realized there had to be a better way.
He decided to put the songs on Spotify but didn’t want to become “Mr. Rick,” the dad who suddenly made children’s music under his own name. Instead, he looked to the animated band Gorillaz for inspiration and decided to create a fictional children’s rock band of his own.
That’s when the Shoe Biters — a name play on Foo Fighters — was born.
The characters are kid-friendly versions of the ’90s rock archetypes Robles grew up loving. Growl, the band’s front man, is a nod to Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl. Ruffy, the lead guitarist, is modeled after Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, while drummer Barker draws inspiration from Blink-182’s Travis Barker.
At first, Robles wasn’t thinking about an album or an audience beyond his own children. But the characters soon stepped out of the imaginary world he had created for them.
Robles eventually gathered some of his musician friends in Los Angeles, asking them to dress as the Shoe Biters characters for a live performance at Whisky a Go Go.
Decades earlier, he had been the young musician trying to make his way into the same Los Angeles music scene, but this time he wasn’t the 27-year-old musician knocking on doors for a gig. He was Growl, performing songs he had written for a purpose.
For Megan, the night carried its own significance. She had never seen her husband perform before. Robles had barely talked about his music career when they first met, and he had kept that part of himself largely tucked away.
Now she was watching him onstage again — not chasing the music career he had once wanted, but bringing a children’s rock band he had created for their family to life.
Record producer John Alagia co-produced two tracks, but the project continued to grow when television producer Jon Zager became involved, seeing the potential to turn Shoe Biters into something bigger.
Zager and Robles, along with Siebenberg, Adam McAllister, Jason Ubaldi, Ben Stelle and Tom Adams, formed Happy Rocks — an animation studio that creates music videos and character adventures for the band, working with artists who previously worked on Bluey.
Together, they began developing music videos and shorts for YouTube rather than immediately trying to sell the concept as a television show.
The Happy Rocks team also developed Harmony Town, a world where a metronome keeps the town “in harmony.” When it falls out of sync, the town does, too. A villain was added to add complex plot to the story, and a pitch deck was created for a potential children’s show to air on any of the networks or streamers such as Netflix or Disney Plus.
The songs embedded remained playful but Robles began pairing each one with a word and an idea that children could carry with them. “POWER WORDS!” such as courage, perseverance, resilience, and empathy became part of the framework.
Now distributed through Warner Music Group’s ADA division. Power Words Volume One, Robles’ debut children’s rock album, is scheduled for release Aug. 22
Megan, who works at Peabody Charter School as a behavioral therapist, quickly recognized another possibility for the songs. Their son Graydon attends the school, and conversations about emotions, communication and coping skills have long been part of their household.
“This wouldn’t be possible without Megan. I didn’t realize what a gift it was going to be to marry a behavioral therapist,” Robles said. “It’s made me a better father because it’s helped me develop as a person, a husband, a man, and sharpened tools that I probably never would have even used.”
The songs teach children to communicate and express their emotions while developing a growth mindset and healthier coping skills, Megan explained. And Robles’s decision to pair each song with a “power word” has made those lessons especially interesting to local schools.
About two months ago, one of Graydon’s teachers asked Robles to come into the classroom and perform some of the songs. By the end of the day, teachers from the school’s other kindergarten classes and first-grade classes were asking about it, and Megan created a spreadsheet for teachers to sign up.
Robles’ first school assembly, “Growl’s Rockin’ Growth Mindset,” came May 29 at Washington Elementary. Since then, he’s taken it to four more schools, including Monte Vista and Hope, and has already received requests from about a dozen more schools for next year.
The idea, however, is already reaching beyond Santa Barbara. A national academic entertainment assembly agency recently approached Robles, signed him and began booking paid performances nationally — an unexpected development that has him rethinking just how far Growl might go.
However, Robles sees the assemblies as his way of giving back to the community, and isn’t charging Santa Barbara schools.
Now, the Shoe Biters are headed back to the stage to debut their album. On August 22, Robles will perform as Growl at Soho House, bringing the characters that began as sketches and songs for his sons into another live setting. The performance will coincide with the release of Power Words Volume One and will be completely free.
Nearly two decades after selling most of his guitars to pursue another career, Robles has found himself making music again — not for a record deal or the Los Angeles stage he once dreamed of, but for something much more important to him.
“It was originally just a two-boy audience I was trying to make smile,” he said.
Whatever happens next, Robles said, the process has already been a huge success because of what it has meant to him and his family. A second album is already set to be released on March 2, which coincdies social-emotional learning (SEL) day.
“It was a dream that was totally extinguished, but I guess there must have been some sort of spark somewhere,” he said. “Now songwriting is more of a wildfire than it ever was in my twenties, and I love it even more.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.