Dan Zanes
01/05/2020
A Mentor's Memoir
I had half an idea what Dan Zanes looked like, but I was struck when I saw him walk into the camp dining hall. I noticed how much "presence" he commanded as he ambled through the dinner line with his impish humble grin framed under wild shocks of slightly greying hair. Windsor Mountain International Camp in the woods of New Hampshire is a virtual revolving door of funky offbeat characters showing up for one or several days; most are greeted with the open arms of equanimity, but everyone seemed to notice Dan Zanes, though most of them didn't know him from a hole in the wall. I did, but I didn't know how much an aging rocker turned children's folksinger would change my ideas about creating and performing music.
Old dreams die slow and often imperceptible deaths; we imagine the possibilities of life until those hopes fade into the impossibility of reality. And so it is with my music: What was once grand dreams of pushing the frontiers of folk music as a writer and performer has become a steady, predictable and somewhat rewarding role as a low level folkie in a small circle of New England, but I also know that if I stopped playing tomorrow the ripple of my absence would not be felt on any distant shore. That in itself should keep me humble, but I reached into my reservoir of pride and approached Dan with the hubris of a beaten lion. I introduced myself as a worshipping fan, but he seized the opportunity to show how much he already knew about me and seemed eager to hang out and play music together. We set a loose time and place: somewhere in camp, sometime after all the kids were in bed.
And so at ten o'clock at night, within a screaming buzz of mosquitoes, I sat in the dark on the steps of the dining hall porch playing my old gibson. I was too proud to walk across camp to the cabin where Dan and his wife were staying and our plans were too loose to be presumptious on my part, but it wasn't long before I heard "Hey Fitz" and there was Dan with his mandolin and a tuner. He started with "Sitting on Top of the World," a tune I barely knew; I followed with "Crawdad Hole" and "Salty Dog" before we moved indoors and attracted a circle of counselors not on duty. We played well into the night: all old folksongs; all with refrains and choruses so that everyone could sing along, and every one from the treasure chest of memory and experience. For my part I wasn't trying to impress anybody—I just wanted to hold my own with one of the greats, but I soon realized that Dan wasn't out to impress anybody either; he just loved the old songs—the songs I've been learning and singing for the past thirty years. It was an old-fashioned sing with old fashioned songs and plenty of laughs.
I walked back to my bus that night energized, though regretful that I had to go back to Boston the next day for several small shows. I wanted to sing again in a circle of friends and strangers, not in the corner of a bar, or to the bus lines at a camp, or in a fancy hotel ballroom—-which is what I was heading off to do. I wanted to recreate the night again—and again. I wanted to keep the well flowing with song after song. I racked my head for the hundreds of songs I have learned and unlearned over the years. I was once convinced of the beauty of everything that I sang, mainly folks songs, sea shanties, raucous sing-alongs and long murderous ballads—even my own quiet and contemplative songs.
The awareness of a songs intrinsic power has always emboldened me with the confidence to sing and play unabashedley, but lately that confidence has been slipping. I listen too closely when someone says that a certain song does nothing for them, or that it is a musical dead-end; I try to win a crowd over with the tried and true. I haven't invited Barry Lyle over for years; I haven't opened a Guiness for him and sat with the tape recorder going, all the while cajoling song after song out of him—songs that really are all but lost, save to scholars and a small band of balladmongers-Dan Zanes among them.
In the not too distant past, Dan was the lead singer for The Del Fuegos, a popular rock band. I am not one to pry or preach to the past, but I gather the lifestyle reached a breaking point and he moved in the direction of playing folk songs for kids (especially after the birth of his daughter Anna, now ten and a great kid in her own right), albeit with a killer band of musicians. He's put out seven CD's of music. The best in my mind is a collection of sea songs. It is a mesmerizing stream of classics, many of which I sang for years playing in the Boston pub scene, every song recorded in rough mixes tinged with beauty and realism. He makes no claim to nautical experience, only to a love for the music itself. It works for me on every level.
I'll admit that it makes me rue that I never recorded them myself. I felt the same ruefulness when the "Brother, Where Art Thou" soundtrack came out, and more recently Springsteen's "Seeger Sessions," both of them full of songs that have been mainstays of my set lists for years. But at least it makes me sit here and ponder my next move—and move I must—or fade away. As much as I appreciate my iconoclastic image, I also recognize how much of my life has been spent emulating people I respect, be it Thoreau or Kerouac, or Dylan or Dan Zanes.
I don't want to do what Dan Zanes does, but I do want to live with the spirit of his genius and integrity. I need to both let go of some things and grab on to others. I need to follow Thoreau and live deliberately; I need to create experience like Kerouac; I need to tap into the well of words like Dylan, and most importantly I need to turn my ship in the direction of a new and distinct horizon like Dan Zanes.
I need to follow my own advice. "It's one step and you turn..."