Dan Zanes

In 1994, after years of rocking in the 1980s with the Del Fuegos, singer/songwriter Dan Zanes created his own band, the Dan Zanes Trio. The group got started when Zanes was hanging out with producer Mitchell Froom in lower Manhattan; after adding drummer Jerry Marotta, they began playing their minimalist, sparse blues and folk-rock to small crowds in small clubs. Produced by Froom, the trio's debut LP Cool Down Time -- a raw rock effort influenced by '60s-era R&B -- appeared in 1995. From 2001 to 2007, Zanes released numerous high quality children's folk albums before unleashing a terrific collection of Latin material, Nueva York!, in 2008. ~ Richard Skelly