Dan Zanes, Elizabeth Mitchell make music for kids

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1 DAN ZANES Associated Press August 29, 2013 Dan Zanes, Elizabeth Mitchell make music for kids BY MARK KENNEDY Dan Zanes and Elizabeth Mitchell had only been playing for about 10 minutes when the stage was invaded. The first to appear was a stuffed lamb. Then a cuddly dinosaur. Then all hell broke loose and kids on tiptoes were putting all sorts of beloved stuffed animals and a collection of 19 neatly organized My Little Ponys on the lip of the stage to get a better listen. Did they buy tickets? Zanes happily teased from behind a guitar on New York University s Skirball Center stage on Saturday. Actually, ponies and dinosaurs get in for free. If most concerts these days are about twerking and pyrotechnics, a Zanes concert usually involves some gentle choochoo dancing in the aisles, world beats and teddy bears. Plus, it s often over by noon that s when the target audience naps. We have wild dance parties before lunch, he says in an interview a day before the concert. Who else is going to say that, right? I don t care how many records you ve sold: Who s having the dance parties before lunch? Zanes, a rail-thin, bushy-haired Grammy Award winner whom People magazine has called the crown prince of contemporary kid s music, is a former member of the 1980s band The Del Fuegos who turned to children s music after the birth of his daughter and never looked back, building a career with infectious sounds from all over the world Zanes globe-trotting music appetite ranges from elements of Tunisian Sufi, the Louisiana bayou, Appalachia, the Caribbean and South Africa to making a CD completely in Spanish. He likes to call what he does 21st-century, allages, handmade social music, but everyone else calls them kiddie songs. I accept it. But I don t think of it as children s music, he says in his comfortable two-story Brooklyn home nestled in a diverse neighborhood populated by Bangladeshi and Pakistani immigrants. This is really music for everybody to sink their teeth into. Since his debut album, Rocket Ship Beach, in 2000, Zanes has recorded with all sorts of musicians, including Debbie Harry, Sheryl Crow, Natalie Merchant, Lou Reed, Ziggy Marley and Philip Glass. This month marks a new CD

2 Dan Zanes Associated Press August 29, 2013 page 2 of 3 collaboration with Mitchell, also a giant among the nap set. To parents, the teaming up of Zanes and Mitchell is virtually akin to Paul McCartney and John Lennon working together. In Turn, Turn, Turn, Zanes and Mitchell team up with Daniel and Storey Littleton her husband and daughter to create gentle folk tunes. Five are Zanes originals, and there are also several traditional songs such as Sail Away Ladies, Train Is A-Coming and Wim Wam Waddle. The songs came easily when the four sat in Zanes living room for three days this spring to pick out songs for the CD, which was recorded upstate near Woodstock, N.Y. A tour will hit Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts this fall. Songs were just flying out, he says. We just drink from the same well. We all love music and I think we love the idea of bringing some of these songs sometimes kicking and screaming into the 21st century. He and Mitchell have been friends since they met at a maternity shop in SoHo when his album came out, and they ve long wanted to record together. As a sign of how in synch they were, both showed up with a list of the same obscure songs, including My Creole Belle. That s kind of odd, you have to say, she says by phone. It was just really fun and really natural. He and I have really been on this similar path since Day One. We share a similar approach that if the heart and soul are in the right place then that s all that s important. Zanes and Mitchell her CDs include You Are My Little Bird, Catch the Moon and the Grammy-nominated Little Seed each emerged around the same time and have seen the genre of family music explode. He estimates there are at least 10 times as many people making and performing music for kids now. A lot of people felt sorry for me when I first started doing this. They really thought I d given up rock n roll so I could sing Old MacDonald every day, he says. People s imagination about what family music could be was very, very limited. He gets inspired by his environment and recently moved into a new home not far from Pakistani and Bangladeshi restaurants and women passing by in burkas. One neighbor is Haitian, another Puerto Rican. (One song from the new CD is Coney Island Avenue, which is a street near his home.) I like to ask people about what they listened to growing up, says Zanes, who was raised in New Hampshire. I m really appreciating the crazy quilt of cultures around me here. I just love that. I m just a curious guy.

3 Dan Zanes Associated Press August 29, 2013 page 3 of 3 Over the years, he has learned to play guitar, banjo, mandolin, piano, bass, ukulele, harmonica, jaw harp and spoons. But Zanes knows the sheer power of music on a toddler is the real beauty. Being able to sit down and play an instrument for young people, you might as well be pulling a ferret out of your sleeve, he says. It s that amazing.

4 DAN ZANES Wall Street Journal October 1, 2011 Inside Dan Zanes' Kid Music Empire BY JOHN JURGENSEN You might expect the headquarters of a kids music kingpin to look something like Pee-wee s Playhouse. Full of whimsical props and maybe a talking animal or two. In the Brooklyn, N.Y., office housing the record label and recording studio of Dan Zanes, the 80s rocker turned family-music entrepreneur, there is a yipping Chihuahua (Maxine), a giant cut-out pigeon and a handful of diddley bows (picture a one-stringed guitar made with a cigar box). But the computers and stacks of shrink-wrapped CDs attest to the more mundane business of competing in the field of so-called kindie rock. There s so many more people doing it now, a lot more competition for people s limited funds to buy music, says Mr. Zanes. He looks like a skinnier version of Saturday Night Live -era Steve Martin, but with a curly mop of silver hair. He wears white jeans, black ankle boots and a polka dot shirt. Twelve years ago, the former Del Fuegos front man passed around a cassette tape to friends of songs he d recorded for his daughter, Anna, now 16 years old. His plucky takes on Leadbelly and other folk sources formed a template for future commercial releases. His 2006 album Catch That Train! won a Grammy. The trophy sits on a table in the office, where lately people have been polishing it for luck ahead of this week s release of a new Dan Zanes and Friends album, Little Nut Tree, featuring Sharon Jones, Andrew Bird and others. He set up shop in this squat brick building about six years ago. His office is two blocks from his home in the Boerum Hill neighborhood, not far from where a new arena is being built for the New Jersey Nets. He shares the front office with his distribution company, Virtual Label. Shelved near the desk where his guitar player, Sonia De Los Santos, designed the packaging for Little Nut Tree, sit two neat stacks of fan mail. Dear Dan Zans, reads one card decorated with a heart, I like your music. Love, Kaise. His young correspondents routinely ask about his hair. A small room in the rear serves as a recording studio. Tapestries hang neatly on the walls. In the middle of the room, lyric sheets are taped to a green support beam, where Zanes and Joan Osborne belted the last song recorded for the album, Everybody s Going to Be Happy. Taped to a microphone stand is another sheet scrawled with chord changes, evidence of fiddle player Elena Moon Park s work on a collection of songs from China, Japan and Korea. For Zanes s label, Festival Five Records (with one full-time employee that s not Zanes), it s a way to diversify, as with his Spanishlanguage album Nueva York, released in When I look at the landscape for family music, there are some really glaring holes. It s overrun with white people. It doesn t at all reflect the world that we live in. Next to a desk and the Apple laptop that he records on is a tall bookshelf crowded with songbooks. He pulls out a copy of The American Songbag, a compilation of folk songs published in 1927 by Carl Sandburg. The book s frayed red cover is faded pink and dozens of curled Post-it notes mark pages. To choose songs from the book for his 2004 album

5 Dan Zanes Wall Street Journal October 1, 2011 page 2 of 2 Parades and Panoramas Zanes faced a challenge: he can t read music. I had a piano teacher from my daughter s school come in. There s 280 songs in here. He played the entire book for me. Corporations like Disney are famous for focus-grouping their products with kids. Zanes tested songs with his daughter. But now that she s a teenager, he also sends recordings home with friends and coworkers who have young kids. I don t move forward until a little circle of people sign off on it. In the recording studio, the piano bench often doubles as a buffet table, especially when there are kids in the room to contribute vocals. Zanes says, It s not a session if we don t have organic corn chips. Dan Zanes and Friends perform Sunday afternoon at New York University s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, and at weekend gigs around the country in the coming months.

6 DAN ZANES NPR September 27, 2011 Dan Zanes Plants A 'Little Nut Tree' BY STEFAN SHEPHERD When Dan Zanes became a father 16 years ago, he took seriously the decision of which song to play to his newborn daughter first. He chose the 1968 Jamaican hit Little Nut Tree. Now, after more than a decade of recording music for families, the godfather of the kids music renaissance has released a new album called Little Nut Tree on his own label. Zanes is known for recruiting guest artists from far and wide, and featuring them in individual songs on his albums. After 2006 s Grammy-winning Catch That Train, Zanes took a few musical detours, releasing a Spanish-language album, a collection of spiritual and gospel music, and a Broadway-themed album. While there were good individual songs on those records, none had the same melting-pot mixture of his earlier work. On the new album, Zanes brings back that big grab-bag, moving from Jamaican rock-steady to children s folk songs, from Middle Eastern sounds to indie rock. But it s his belief in the power of singing that has always been one of Zanes most appealing attributes, with kids naturally responding. His positive attitude isn t cloying, so it attracts a wider age demographic. After a summer of tumultuous economics and weather, the idea of hosting a dance party in your basement might sound like wishful thinking. But songs like Zanes In the Basement not only inspire kids, but also get adult heads bobbing. Even if your party s guest list isn t that impressive, you can still push the tables and chairs out of the way and just dance.

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