Dan Zanes

A high-pitched, pre-show buzz echoes from the walls of the renowned Somerville Theatre near Boston. As powered-up amps hum, a restless anticipation builds. Just when the impatient crowd threatens to riot, a musician plugs in a thrift-store guitar. Before my wife and I can ask whether escorting him to his first concert was a mistake, our son screams and stares as the lanky rocker with his electro-shocked mane and permagrin turns to his colorful band and counts off the opener. His arms aloft, our son pushes past me and makes a dash to the rapidly filling pit down front. Swaying with the horde, he dances arm-in-arm with a short, blonde pigtailed stranger. We assess the danger that’s been unleashed; has our son been lost to the monster called rock ’n’ roll?

Before I can make it out of the aisle to rescue him he comes running back to our seats, sweaty and smiling. “Dan Zanes, Dan Zanes, Dan Zanes,” he says before running back for more. My son is not yet two, and even though he doesn’t know his own last name, he can already play air guitar to Dan Zanes. Clearly the world of kids’ music has changed for the better.

Children’s music was once a sparsely populated wasteland of repetitive nursery rhymes and lullaby retreads, where parents withered under the torture of off-key choruses again and again and again. But, in recent years, a bumper crop of original players has brought life back to the genre. These aren’t nursery-school teachers or bloated purple dinosaurs, but real-life rock stars. Besides Zanes (once of Boston’s mighty Del Fuegos), a number of former and current axe wielders are widening the age range they’re reaching—Ralph Covert, They Might Be Giants, Justin Roberts, David Grisman, Trout Fishing in America and Lisa Loeb come to mind. Yet few of these artists made conscious decisions to forego life in the fast lane for life in a minivan. In most cases it seems more like a byproduct of—dare I say it?—“family values.”

As Zanes—whose kid-friendly eighth solo disc, Catch That Train, was released in May—notes after the Sommerville Theater show, “One year I was in The Del Fuegos opening for Tom Petty in Madison Square Garden and a few years later I was playing in the subway down below it, not so much to stay alive, but just as a way to keep playing because I didn’t know what else to do with my musical life, until I started playing songs for my daughter.”

As if on cue, Zanes’ 11-year-old daughter Anna—who strums ukelele in the band—strolls in and starts playing with my awed son.

So is it strange for Zanes to be in this building again, now playing for much younger-skewing crowds? He laughs heartily, “Only because we may have been lucky to get one night here back in The Del Fuegos [days] … now we’re doing four-show runs. But it seems so natural to be doing this that it never seemed like an odd transition. It just transcends the setting because the enthusiasm is the same—it’s just a younger audience.”

DON’T CALL IT “KIDS’ MUSIC”

“I think this notion of children’s music that’s just for children and not for anybody else is a fairly recent phenomenon,” says Zanes. “I like the idea that it truly is ‘all-ages’ music. To me it’s more like music for a family reunion, where the band is in the corner. At times you’re leaning towards the grandparents and other times you’re leaning to the one-year-olds, but you never wanna lose anybody or all hell breaks loose. It’s more ‘we are all in it together and this is it.’ I mean, ‘The Hokey Pokey’ started out as a grownup song and kept evolving. Soon we’ll have a generation that doesn’t know that ‘Yellow Submarine’ or ‘Octopus’s Garden’ were Beatles songs; they are just gonna know them as songs they sang together in kindergarten.”

As Ralph Covert, leader of indie-rock band The Bad Examples, says, “I have no interest in making ‘kids’ music.’ I won’t ever make a ‘kids’ record,’ but I’ll make music kids love.” Covert also leads Ralph’s World, one of the most acclaimed “all-ages” acts around. Like Zanes, Covert’s conversion was a series of happy accidents after becoming a father.

“One of the reasons behind the resurgence of kids’ music is because it’s one area of music creation that is not bounded by genre or expectations. Kids have such an unbridled passion for things just because they like them; no explanation needed. Therefore you can push boundaries creatively without feeling the pressure from anywhere to come up with a ‘hit.’ Which is a good thing, because this audience will let you know if they connect with the material in about seven seconds flat.”

The Billboard charts from March bear out the trend: the top three sellers were all kid-oriented—the soundtrack to the Disney TV movie, High School Musical, (the frankly creepy) Kidz Bop Kids from the Razor & Tie label, and Jack Johnson’s Curious George soundtrack. Even Starbucks is getting in on the action by featuring material by Noggin-network favorite Laurie Berkner in stores.

“For the mass media component it’s a no-brainer,” Covert says, musing about whether this phenomenon is due to harmonic convergence or clever marketing. “Plus, you can’t be a good water-skier without a powerful boat pulling you around. More importantly it’s family music; it’s a chance for parents and their kids to share something musically and mutually enjoyable, which hasn’t been readily available for quite some time.”

Musical sharing indeed—on the way home, with me drumming the steering wheel and my son on lead vocals, we crank Great Lake Swimmers’ “See You on The Moon” again and again and again and again…

Jay’s (Son’s) Picks
Hugo “Go-Go” Sweet's most played on his Fisher Price “Kid Tuff” FP3 player

1. Dan Zanes Catch That Train
2. Buck Howdy Giddyup
3. Garcia/Grisman Not For Kids Only
4. Ralph’s World Green Gorilla, Monster and Me
5. Great Lake Swimmers See You On The Moon
6. Daddy A Go-Go Big Rock Rooster