Dan Zanes
“Zanes’ kids music works because it is not kids music; it’s just music—music that’s unsanitized, unpasteurized, that’s organic even.”
— The New York Times Magazine
Dan Zanes occupies a unique place in American music where sea shanties, English music hall, North American and West Indian folk music, play party songs, the spirit of early rock-and-roll and soulful originals collide. With his band, Dan Zanes and Friends, he has toured the world sharing handmade 21st century social music with enthusiastic crowds of kids and kid sympathizers.
From thrift shop basements to Carnegie hall, from Brooklyn to Bahrain and beyond, the Grammy award-winning Zanes has been introducing new songs and reconnecting people to songs that have always been there, and still are— although people may have forgotten about them. Referred to as “the family-music genre’s most outspoken and eloquent advocate” by Time Magazine, his widely-acclaimed music has all been featured on Sesame Street, Playhouse Disney, Nickelodeon, HBO Family and Sprout.
In 2014, Dan partnered with the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music to launch an innovative new music education program for kids. In Dan Zanes House Party: Songs and Stories from America’s Neighborhoods, children and their parents sing, dance, listen, and learn to make music an integral part of their everyday lives while interacting with the music and stories of the diverse cultures that make up America’s neighborhoods. Children in the classes are able to explore the rich tapestry of American folk traditions through songs, stories, movement, puppetry and games.
Zanes was born in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1961. He was a member of the Del Fuegos from the beginning to the end of the eighties and with them made The Longest Day (1984), Boston, Mass (1985), Stand Up (1987), Smoking in the Fields (1989), and the hit single, “Don’t Run Wild.” In 1994, he released a solo CD, Cool Down Time, shortly after which he moved to Brooklyn, New York with his family, where he then released Rocket Ship Beach (2000) which became an immediate hit with families around America.
Pomegranate managed Zanes’s tours nationally and internationally for over a decade, including co-creating Dan Zanes Holiday House Party and connecting Zanes and compay with a slew of Pomegranate artists.