Dan Zanes grew up in New Hampshire, a self-described "Yankee WASP." In 1981, at the age of 20, he moved to Boston and, with bassist Tom Lloyd, founded the Del Fuegos, a band that also featured brother Warren Zanes on guitar and Woody Geissman on drums. From humble beginnings ("We could barely tune our guitars," Zanes says with characteristic modesty), the group went on to become one of the seminal roots rock bands of the 1980s and perhaps of all time. The Del Fuegos released four albums between 1984 and 1989, each garnering critical acclaim and enough commercial success to keep the enterprise going. However, as Zanes observes, after a turbulent decade marked by lineup changes, sibling animus and the requisite (?) substance abuse problems, the band had "…gone from being a spirited r&b garage band to a professional rock group and it suddenly became clear at the end of the eighties that it was all a lot more fun for everyone back when we didn't know what we were doing."

Zanes laid low during much of the 1990s, resurfacing in 1995 to release the brilliant and shamefully under-publicized Cool Down Time. Although Zanes's trademark tremolo guitar, just-woke-up-and-ate-sandpaper voice and polished songwriting were all there in abundance, the record marked a sea change from his work with the Del Fuegos. Songs such as "No Sky" and "Carelessly" were more apt to traffic in sober reflection than were the balls-out narratives of heartache, alcohol and misspent youth typical of the Fuegos.

After Cool Down Time, Zanes disappeared again. By now he'd married and become a father and, having gotten his personal life in order, had begun to confront the difficulties in reconciling his artistic goals with the joys and responsibilities of family life. It seemed that maybe they were mutually exclusive. Or were they?

Beginning with a simple idea to make kids' music that's palatable to the whole family (God knows there's plenty that's not) Zanes recorded Rocket Ship Beach with friends famous and not-so-famous in late 1999. He then set about the daunting task of selling it himself via the Internet. festival five records, Dan's homegrown label, is well-represented by its cordial, detailed and singularly unpretentious web site. Perusing the site, one begins to understand the pleasure Zanes gets in making music and involving others in the process he adheres to the nitty-grittiest of the folk aesthetic.

Slowly, stellar reviews for the album began to appear and the orders started to roll in. Zanes has since been profiled in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly and elsewhere. Moreover, Zanes and "The Rocket Ship Revue" have become a Sunday afternoon fixture at The Park, a relatively new restaurant and bar in Chelsea. Glitterati such as David Duchovny and Tea Leoni, Stella McCartney and Liv Tyler have been spotted there. More important to Zanes, throngs of toddlers can be seen moving and grooving to his music with an enthusiasm and lack of self-consciousness that is decidedly un-Downtown.

Recently, Dan finished the follow-up record: a family dance party album similar in spirit to RSB: loose, organic, funky, soulful; a mixture of covers and originals performed by Zanes's Brooklyn irregulars and a variety of out-of-town co-conspirators both young and old.

We spoke in Brooklyn on September 7, 2001. A few days after September 11, Dan assured me that he and his family were fine, though his daughter had called for "a moratorium on twin towers talk. She's ready to get back to her life, but who isn't?" After preparing to cancel gigs, Zanes found that parents and children both wanted him to play, which he and his band have continued to do "with gusto."