Kid
Rock: Pop acts make records for small-fry music lovers.
By Thor
Christensen
Once upon
a time, if you asked singer Dan Zanes what he thought of kids'
music, he'd have looked at you as if you were speaking Swahili.
"I'd
have said 'Kids? I think I know that word, but remind me again
... What are they?'" he says, laughing.
As leader
of the hard-partying, roots-rock band the Del Fuegos, Mr. Zanes
spent much of the '80s sleeping in vans and playing a succession
of dank, smoky nightclubs. Today, he makes a living singing "Polly
Wolly Doodle" to bright-eyed audiences whose beverage of
choice is milk or apple juice - not Jack Daniels.
They're also
hitting a time-honored trail traveled by the likes of Pete Seeger,
Taj Mahal, Linda Ronstadt and Ladysmith Black Mambazo - who've
all recorded children's records. For Mr. Zanes, however, the album
that inspired him to give up rock 'n' roll was Not for Kids Only,
Jerry Garcia and David Grisman's 1993 CD of old folk tunes.
"For
me, it was a vision of what a children's record could be,"
says Mr. Zanes, who found the disc while searching for music to
play to his daughter, who's now 6. "It showed me it doesn't
have to be all songs about brushing your teeth. It could be the
kind of record I'd listen to if my daughter was around or not."
"It's
easy to see why kids' music has such a bad rap when you go into
the big chain stores, because it's 90 percent music from TV and
Disney movies that's made in the big studios with the big sound
and the big marketing push," Mr. Zanes said. "I wanted
to make music that sounds like everyday life, like a family band
playing on a front porch."
He recently
released his debut kid's album, Rocket Ship Beach, a collection
he describes as "hopped-up folk music." The disc, which
includes cameos from Sheryl Crow and Suzanne Vega, came out on
Mr. Zanes' own children's music label, Festival Five Records.
While he confesses
some of his rocker buddies have expressed "bewilderment when
they hear I'm doing this," the singer says the
think there's a radical edge to us that we hope won't be diminished
by this."
Yet Mr. Zanes
says one of the best perks of playing for tots is throwing off
the burden of being edgy and hip.
"[In
the Del Fuegos], I used to come up with all these phony lines
Copyright
© 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
back
to press home page
|
dz & friends
bios 