Dan Zanes
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Dan Zanes was a member of the popular 1980s band, The Del Fuegos and is currently the front man of the Grammy winning group Dan Zanes and Friends.
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[edit] History
Dan Zanes was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1961, and spent his childhood in Texas and then in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He ended up living on the outskirts of Concord, New Hampshire.
He started playing guitar when he was eight and began taking Leadbelly 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, Dan went off 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 Tom Lloyd. Zanes and Lloyd took their breakfast back to the dorm and right then and there 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 The Del Fuegos.
[edit] The Del Fuegos
The Del Fuegos played in lofts, bars, 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, Dont Run Wild. In 1987, Zanes married Paula Greif, the director of the video for the Del Fuegos song, I Still Want You.
[edit] Children's Music
When he and his wife had a baby, they moved back to New York City. Zanes subsequently began playing music with a group of 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 ("I realized I was ignoring half my audience, he recalls"), 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 (2001), 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 Roseanne Cash. The third recording, Night Time! (2002) is a little bit more mellow, maybe not bedtime music but at the very least dinner music; on it, Zanes collaborated 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 wild instruments as tuba, accordion, pump organ, djembe and saw. House Party was nominated for a Grammy in the Musical Album for Children category.
In 2007, Zanes received the Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children for Catch That Train!.
[edit] Trivia
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.
