Dan Zanes: Parades and Panoramas

From the desk of Ned P. Rauch:

In the first song off his 2004 record, "Parades and Panoramas," Dan Zanes sings, "There's snakes on the mountain, eels in the sea, 'Twas a red-headed woman made a wreck out of me." It's such an unlikely thing to hear from Zanes, the guy who, since the snuffing of his last band, the Del Feugos, has become New York's most beloved singer of children's songs. (He's so beloved in part because he and his arrangements are so good, grownups, even those of us without kids, get a kick out of him.)

This record, though it sounds like his others (mostly acoustic instruments, a bit of electric guitar here and there), is a collection of songs culled by Carl Sandburg, the late, great American poet. Back in the 1920s, Sandburg mined the hinterlands for folks tunes to include in his "Songbag." Zanes reaches into the bag and pulls out 25 beauties: "Railroad Bill", "All Night Long" and "The Shantyman's Life" among them. Songs like these, about jobs lost, spouses departed, men gone off to war, seem to fit our times pretty well.

Backing him up are his usual (and completely unusual for anyone else) support staff: A chorus of kids, Marc Ribot on guitar, a tuba player (or two), a guy named Father Goose and the songbird-voiced Barbara Brousal.

My friend Tim gave this record to me for my birthday, and we listened to it while stuck in a traffic jam on the Mass Pike over the weekend. Nothing eases an aching clutch leg like a pack of kids singing, "We'll roll, roll, the chariot along."