Dan Zanes
January 19th, 2008 John Posted in Interviews, Music |
In the 1980s, Dan Zanes fronted the Boston band, the Del Fuegos, but in the 21st Century, he has found a second life singing music for kids, with the understanding that music can bring families together. Zane’s CDs are a mix of traditional and new songs filtered through his own experimental and homemade roots John Doe, Lou Reed, Sandra Bernhard, and Debbie Harry. He’s also done slightly more adult-themed CDs — really slightly — covering the tunes of Carl Sandburg and collecting a number of bawdy traditional sea chanties. He won a Grammy Award for the album “Catch That Train” and has authored two children’s books. Most recently, he produced an album for his musical co-hort, rapper Father Goose.
JM: When did you first begin to drift toward children’s music?
DZ: In 1994, 95. My daughter was born in 1994, and between the time of leaving the Del Fuegos and my daughter being born, it was mostly a time of retreating, really. I stopped listening to the radio and reading rock magazines, listening to rock and roll. I just lived upstate for awhile, did some gardening, and just pulled back really. Got out of the lifestyle of it all and got interested in other things.
I didn’t know the landscape of children’s music, but I was really excited that she and I were going to have this shared experience of listening to music together, so imagine my disappointment when I went to the store and it looked as though everything was tied into a TV show
The whole thing has been step by step. My first thought was where are the updated versions of the records I listened to when I was growing up - Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Ella Jenkins, Burl Ives, folk music. Where’s the handmade music for kids and grown-ups now? And I was able to find some really good music that I still enjoy and I’m not someone who’s really spending a lot of time complaining about the state of childrens music, but I didn’t find the handmade sound that I was after. That’s what inspired me to make a tape for kids in the neighborhood.
What I felt happening was that people would have the same experience I would have, they would go in and they would buy records and, for whatever reason, they wouldn’t connect with the things they were finding in the mainstream stores and they would just put on their Beatles records, for example, and I thought the kof romantic love, something gets missed. I was thinking why can’t there be more music that grown-ups and children can listen to together? Why does it have to be so segregated, that there’s this children’s music that the grown-ups can’t sink into, then there’s this grown-up’s music that’s predominantly about romantic love that children don’t really understand at the age of three, and can’t there be music that fits the bill for everybody?
JM: And that tape turned out to be your first release, “Rocket Ship Beach?”
DZ: The idea was to make a couple hundred cassettes and give them out for the holidays and then get back to my solo career singing about old girlfriends. I really had fun doing it and I just would wake up in the morning and think of an idea for a song and by the end of the day, it would be done and I would say ‘Alright, that’s that, what else do we wmaking music with this idea that we’d give it out to people. It felt very communal and everybody was excited, much more excited about the cassette than they were by my solo record. I always had a good reaction to excitement about music, especially if it’s mine. And because I had so much fun making it, I started playing more shows for kids . People started asking me once they heard the cassette, so I found some dads, some friends of mine, and we got a string band together, and I was learning how to play a banjo, listening to a lot of Mike Seeger, and I started thinking about other string instruments it would be fun to play. It’s just been this natural path.
At one point we went and played for a school in my neighborhood here in Brooklyn and it was three of us, three white dads up on stage in front of a fairly mixed crowd of kids and about half way through I realiznt for kids to be able to picture themselves doing it. So I called my friend Barbara Brousal, who’s a singer/songwriter here in New York, and asked her if she would want to come play some shows. We’ve been playing together ever since. The band has changed, members have come and gone as it’s gotten better and better, but Barbara’s always been a part of it and all of a sudden, from her very first show, I could see all these girls watching the band and looking at it in a much different way. I realized that we were on the right track. That’s one of the big message, the big one for me is that we’re here doing it but it’s something that anyone can do and let’s get started by singing along.
JM: Have you ever worried that it would be a challenge to introduce this more traditional, old-fashioned sound to kids?
DZ: I don’t really think of it that way at all. I live in Brooklyn, I tour with a Jamaican rapper as part of the permanent group, I feel like we’ve got this nutty melting pot that came about very naturally. I’m sure a kid could be at a show and really want to come up and have a close look at a banjo and get in the car and want to hear the Spice Girls and it all made complete sense to them. And really it makes sense to me to. My listening habits aren’t that different from the average three year old in that regard. I have this capacity to completely switch gears, I think it all makes sense.
I feel like they’re really open minded, but, you know what, I don’t give up on any age group because I feel there’s a little bit of a myth to that and I think that that’s the exterior to a lot of older kids. But when I’ve taken the time to really get to know anybody over the age of eight, it’s presented in a different way, but I really believe that immediate response is so uninhibited. I think kids might get a little more inhibited, but the open mindedness, I’m really such an optimist about this, the open mindedness is still there. Don’t give up on teenagers!
There’s a lot out there and kids have a chance to get into a number of things. Many levels to what’s going on as far as what they’re listening to.
JM: What you eventually produced is not just a Pete Seeger simulation.
DZ: I have to say that it would have been that with my original idea if I had just thought ‘Well, you know, maybe this is it, I’m going to play a banjo, and people will sit quietly and we’ll sing Michael Row The Boat Ashore together.’ And, believe me, I was completely comfortable with that idea, but that’s not at all the way it’s worked out. We’ve taken our cues from the people who come to our shows, to one degree. I realized that people want to dance, so every show sort of dissolvea dance party. Also, I think of it a little like a Grateful Dead show. The band is there as a reason for people to get together, but I never expect to get 100% of anyone’s attention. I just think the idea that music can create a communal environment and an event where neighbors can gather together - and I think singing along, which is a big part of this show - is just a natural extension of that idea. I love to look down and see people talking to each other or seeing people they haven’t seen in awhile and catching up, and kids running up and down and breaking into spontaneous free dancing, that stuff is just great for me, and we get to be a part of it.
JM: What sort of song appeals to you to sing?
DZ: I have three things, really, with the songs. I have to like it, for starters. It’s got to mean something to me and if it doesn’t, then I move right on to the next one. Then my wife has to like it, then my daughter has to like it, and that’s really it. There are so many good songs that kids do like about things that are their own experiences of leinto those songs the way some people can.
I like the songs that you grow up with that can meaningful to you later in life in some way, and still mean something to you when you’re three. I think music is a nice way to learn about the natural world, and life and death and all that stuff. I think those bigger themes fit right in.
JM: It’s about more than the songs with you, though — it all seems inseparable from the participation.
DZ: One of the things, just based on my own experience and this isn’t really just for kids as it is for everybody, growing up, if I heard an instrument in a song and it sounded good, that would make me want to play. I really feel like the more people are playing together and singing together, the more possibilities exist for the world. It’s really a good time for that. I don’t think that kids really care if a record sounds like it was made in a nice studio. I make my records in my basement, and I really try to keep them sounding like people iwhat I’m interested in, just trying to pass on this excitement. I’m not an educator or anything like that, but I’m really excited about music and I’m trying to pass on my enthusiasm. That’s, I guess, the bottom line to me. I think it’s exciting, I think it’s a good thing for people to do together, it works on every level for me, and I think that it is not something that happens naturally these days. Not in as many schools, it’s just not part of everyday life. It’s something that is best enjoyed when you’re in it doing it yourself. Again, that’s my message. The more pehands on. Just got into ukuleles a little bit. There’s a woman in the band who plays the saw. I made a list of every sound I wanted to have on this record and we got about three-quarters of the way through it. We’re just finishing the record now and we’ve really got a lot of instruments on it. I can’t say that any of us have really mastered too many of them, but it doesn’t take much to start having fun with it.
JM: It sounds like the band is getting out of it what kids and families should — you get to experiment and play.
DZ: It has to be that way, it has to be something that’s exciting for everybody. If anyone in the group ever feels like they want to learn a new instrument, then we find a way to work it into a song or two. It’s a complete open door musically, for whatever anyone wants to do. At the beginning and the end, there’s no real musical masterplan other than get five really talented people and see how cool we can make it sound.
JM: And you’re probably inspiring a generation of kids to be the same way.
DZ: I was doing my shift at the co-op todthat were doing it and playing in it, it became a thing like playing in a ska band or something that was on the list of musical possibilities to consider if you want to play in a band. It really made my day!
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