A Rockin’ Conversation with Dan Zanes

Dan Zanes, formerly of the popular 80s rock band The Del Fuegos, has grown to be the face of family music and the artist that most people associate with this relatively new genre. In 2007, Zanes received the Grammy® Award for Best Musical Album for Children, for his album Catch That Train! and has performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall to the Melbourne International Arts Festival. He has released 10 albums targeted toward family audiences and has earned an ardent following.

We recently spoke with Dan Zanes, whose song “Let’s Shake” is featured on Rock & Roll Playground, to explore the connection between family music and rock & roll.

Do you remember your first encounter with rock & roll?

Yeah, I heard Chuck Berry on the radio. That was it! (laughs) And I never really got too far out of the 50s. I wasn’t alive then, but we had oldies radio; Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Bo Diddley-those are the [musicians] I thought were great.

What was it about rock & roll music that you gravitated toward?

I just loved the energy of it. It sounded like it was about to cave in on itself half the time, especially Bo Diddley records. It was all hanging on by a thread, but it was totally artful at the same time.

Rock & roll is often associated with adult themes. Is there a different approach when writing rock & roll for kids?

I kind of want to have it both ways, you know? If it’s family music, you can sing about anything, but at the same time, I wouldn’t raise my daughter on a steady diet of pop music because the themes do tend to be romantic-love and sex, for the most part. It’s going to be impossible for a 3-year old to really identify with that, just the way that it’s impossible for me to identify with a song about putting on a pair of trousers, or eat[ing] with a fork… Those are not my experiences any more. I think that the middle ground is what I like. The energy of 50s rock & roll is something that I love to bring into family music, because I don’t think those guys really knew what they were doing from one minute to the next, so [the music is] wide open. [It's] very free form and the music itself is completely free wheeling, with all these different influences coming in. So I love that. I love that stuff in general where you don’t know where it’s going to go, or what they were even thinking when they were making it.

You’ve collaborated with artists Nick Cave, Philip Glass, Lou Reed, Angélique Kidjo and many more. This is certainly a testament to your vision as an artist, but do you think the interest of these artists also has something intrinsically to do with the genre of family music? What is it about your style of family music that attracts artists from hugely diverse backgrounds?

I don’t know (laughs)… Honestly, I don’t know. We’re just doing something that’s really personal. All of the people that I’m asking to come and join us are people that I really love. It’s all kind of a personal vision, but we’re just curious musicians. I think it’s sort of unfair to put too many boundaries on [family music], although I know we all like to do that, or to put too many names on it all. We’re just trying to make home spun music that sounds like people came over to my house for dinner, and when the meal’s over, we push back our chairs and play some tunes. We want to do the artful version of that. I feel really grateful that everyone’s agreed to come along for the ride. I don’t know exactly what it is, I feel lucky that people are doing it.

Do you think there are defining characteristics to family music? What differentiates it from other types of music?

I don’t know that much about family music, I really only know what I’m doing. My kind of family music or the stuff that we play, we might lean more towards the grown-ups one minute, or towards the young people the next, but we try not to leave anybody behind. We try to give everyone a lot of credit to have some sort of emotional connection to what’s going on.

How would you describe your particular musical style?

21st century, all ages, cranked up folk music.

Can you give us a little background on your song “Let’s Shake” on the Rock & Roll Playground CD?

I was just trying to pretend I was in The Del Fuegos again, and it’s always hard to write songs that people can dance to. It’s easy to sit around and write ballads all day. I was just trying to write something that didn’t sound like children’s music but could be played anywhere-at a wedding, or in someone’s back yard for a bunch of three-year-olds. I was just trying to think of something that would straddle the middle ground and again 50s rock & roll [came] to me. They never minded getting silly with their lyrics; I love that, I love that about it. Along the way we started taking ourselves a little seriously-not everybody, of course, but I think there’s a feeling that maybe you’ve got to be saying something, or there’s got to be some sort of importance to it all. That’s where I start to lose interest.

Other than early rock & roll legends like Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry, who are your musical influences and inspirations?

Really, Jamaican music and bluegrass are the things that inspire me the most. Anytime I go back and listen to dancehall records or my blue grass records, there’s always more ideas than my brain can hold. That’s kind of all I need to get inspired. There’s more music [from Jamaica] in the last 50 years than I could ever comprehend in my lifetime. [Jamaican music teaches you] how to make songs that are simple, [songs that] can be listened to 1000 times and always feel good while doing so. Songs that people want to dance to, songs that say something-it’s all in there.