Dan Zanes

All Music Guide:

After years of rocking in the 1980s with the Del Fuegos, singer/songwriter Dan Zanes created his own band, the Dan Zanes Trio, in 1994. The group got started when Zanes was hanging out with producer Mitchell Froom in Lower Manhattan; after adding drummer Jerry Marotta, they began playing their sparse blues and folk-rock to small crowds in clubs like the CBGB Gallery. Produced by Froom, the trio's debut LP, Cool Down Time, a raw rock effort influenced by '60s-era R&B, appeared in 1995. In 2001 Zanes resurfaced with the children's folk-tinged Rocket Ship Beach, featuring "friends" Sheryl Crow, Suzanne Vega, Donald Saaf, Rankin Don, and the Sandy Girls. Zanes continued his Dan Zanes & Friends children's series in 2002 with the release of Family Dance and Night Time. House Party followed in 2003, Sea Music and Parades and Panoramas: 25 Songs Collected by Carl Sandburg arrived in 2004, and Catch That Train! landed the following year. Zanes released Nueva York! in 2008, a collection of songs from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, followed by 76 Trombones, a collection of Broadway tunes, in 2009. In 2011 Zanes and friends released Little Nut Tree, a family-style mixed-bag set of typically upbeat tunes that came packaged in a children's durable board book.

Wikipedia:

Dan Zanes was a member of the popular 1980s band The Del Fuegos and is now the front man of the Grammy-winning group Dan Zanes and Friends.

History[edit]

Dan Zanes was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1961, and spent his childhood in Texas and then in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Zanes ended up living on the outskirts of Concord, New Hampshire.

He started playing guitar when he was eight and began taking Lead Belly records out of the public library as soon as he was old enough to get a library card; according to his mother, "He was always very musical."

In 1981, Zanes went to Oberlin College in Ohio, where he was determined to start a really cool band. In the breakfast line on the very first day at Oberlin, he met up with former high school classmate Tom Lloyd. Zanes and Lloyd took their breakfast back to the dorm and immediately started a band and soon left school and headed to Boston ("It was between Boston and Austin," according to Zanes), where they became known as The Del Fuegos.

The Del Fuegos[edit]

The Del Fuegos played in lofts, bars, warehouses, small art galleries, clubs, barns, college dining halls, fraternity houses, gymnasiums, auditoriums, and, finally, big theaters.

Rolling Stone named the Del Fuegos "Best New Band" in 1984. Once, Bruce Springsteen jumped on stage to play "Hang on Sloopy" with them. With the Del Fuegos, Zanes made several records — The Longest Day (1984), Boston, Mass (1985), Stand Up (1987), Smoking in the Fields (1989) — and had a hit single, Don't Run Wild. In 1987, Zanes married Paula Greif, the director of the video for the Del Fuegos song, I Still Want You.

Children's music[edit]

After Dan Zanes and his wife, Paula Zanes, had a baby, Anna Zanes, they moved to New York City. Zanes subsequently began playing music with a group of other fathers that he had met in West Village playgrounds who were also there with their kids. These fathers playing music together eventually became The Wonderland String Band, which played at parks and parties and on a tape of songs that Zanes recorded at his home.

The tape was a hit locally—i.e. on the playgrounds where he and his daughter played—and Zanes realized that he liked making music that families could enjoy together, as opposed to music that is just for children or just for adults. So, he added a small number of women to his band, renamed it the Rocket Ship Revue, and began making a full-length homemade album, enlisting the help of some people he had met when he was a Del Fuego--Sheryl Crow, Suzanne Vega, and Simon Kirke, the drummer for Bad Company.

The album, Rocket Ship Beach (2000), was also a hit. The New York Times Magazine called it "cool", and added, "Mostly, though, Zanes' kids music works because it is not kids music; it's just music—-music that's unsanitized, unpasteurized, that's organic even." Sheryl Crow and Suzanne Vega made guest appearances on the album. The second album, Family Dance (2001) is composed of dance songs from a wide variety of musical traditions and features Loudon Wainwright III and Rosanne Cash. The third recording, the more mellow Night Time! (2002), features collaborations with Aimee Mann, Lou Reed, John Doe, Dar Williams, and other established musicians.

The fourth album in the family series is House Party (2003), a rambunctious 20-song collection with a diverse instrumentation that, in addition to the usual guitars, banjos, upright bass and drums, includes such instruments as tuba, accordion, pump organ, djembe and saw. House Party was nominated for a Grammy in the Musical Album for Children category. Music video selections from the House Party album played during the Disney Channel's morning program suite known as Playhouse Disney from 2005-2007. New music video selections occasionally play on Nickelodeon's Noggin.

In 2007, Zanes received the Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children for Catch That Train! (2006) and produced a children's reggae CD with Father Goose called "Its a Bam Bam Diddly", which also features songs performed by Sister Carol and Sheryl Crow. [1]

In early 2009, Zanes' ¡Nueva York! (2008) won in The 8th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Children's Music Album.

His seventh album 76 Trombones (2009) was a Broadway/Showtune themed album, featuring guest vocalists Matthew Broderick, Carol Channing, and Brian Stokes Mitchell.

Through the late afternoon of July 7, 2012, Zanes performed at a free public concert at the L.L. Bean flagship store in Freeport, Maine, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the famous Maine retailer. Dan Zanes performs at L.L. Bean, Freeport, Maine. July 7, 2012 Performing with his band, he entertained children and adults alike with several sets prior to Chris Isaak's headlining performance and monumental fireworks display later that evening.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

Charitable work[edit]

Zanes is a public supporter of several charities. Zanes donates some of the proceeds from Family Dance and Night Time! to the non-profit world hunger organization Heifer International.