Dan Zanes

About six weeks ago while we were out at Papa and Grandma's place in the Berkshires, Andrea noticed that Dan Zanes was going to be playing in Great Barrington at the end of September.

For those of you who don't subsist on a daily TV diet of Noggin and the Disney Channel, Dan Zanes is the coolest man alive. More seriously, he's a former member of the Del Fuegos who started playing children's music about 10 years ago when he had a child and discovered that most children's music was borderline insipid (or perhaps not even borderline). So he started writing his own children's songs, mixing in a generous helping of classics both obvious (Skip to My Lou) and less so (old Leadbelly songs, Spanish ballads, bits of early Americana--stuff you might happen across at a flea market).

When we got home I went online to purchase tickets and discovered that the show was nearly sold out--more than a month ahead of time. So we snatched up three tickets in a hurry and last weekend headed back up to Massachusetts to catch the legend.

I'll say this to everybody out there who has kids under age 8 or so: if Dan Zanes is passing through town, you must get tickets. He puts on an absolutely fabulous show, and Fiona adored it.

When he came out, he asked all the kids if they wanted to have a show or a party. The kids answered predictably enough, and so Dan Zanes told them that at a party nobody stays in their seats, everybody should get up and sing along and dance and do whatever else they wanted to do. He played for about 90 minutes, and I think Fiona danced for about 89 of those (it took Andrea awhile to figure out why she was so sore the next morning, until she remembered the workout daughter and Dan put her through).

When it was over, we bought Fiona a book that had the lyrics to one of Dan Zanes's songs, along with pictures, and it included a CD with that song and four more. We've been singing along together to those five songs every night this week, and while I'm never happy to have songs stuck in my head all evening, they're actually good songs.

Oh, and Fiona did get Dan Zanes' autograph in her book; that's the back of her head (I couldn't get at an angle where I could show them both):