The Del Fuegos are an American rock and roll band. Formed in 1981, the group came of age in Boston and its members still consider themselves products of one of the city’s many musical golden ages. After signing with Slash Records, home of X, the Blasters, Los Lobos, Gun Club and more, the band released three records on the label, including their charting songs “Backseat Nothing,” “Don’t Run Wild” and “I Still Want You.” Touring internationally with acts including Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, ZZ Top, and INXS, the group made friends and fans among such notables as Robert Plant, Sam Phillips, and, yes, Boston’s own Steven Wright. The relationship between brothers Warren Zanes and Dan Zanes, then and now, has been described as both “fractious” and “electric,” but the brothers, along with founding band member Tom Lloyd and drummer Woody Geissmann, have gone on to notable post-band successes. Dan won a Grammy and continues to record with his wife Claudia for Smithsonian/Folkways. Warren, a New York Times best-selling author and Grammy-nominee, is currently involved in the cinematic adaptation of his book, Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Tom, living in California, earned a Ph.D from CalTech and quietly remains the most successful of the bunch. Woody, a Boston-area fixture, founded Right Turn, an organization focused on recovery in the creative community, and is now promoting a book entitled A Life of Recovery and working on a musical, Rock Bottom. Though the Del Fuegos broke up in the late eighties–as Dan has said, “The ’80s were over, we were over”–they’ve reformed four times in the past thirty years to great celebration. This will be there second holiday show at City Winery.
Grammy award winning children’s performer Dan Zanes and Haitian-American music therapist / jazz vocalist Claudia Zanes have been making music with each other since the day they met in the fall of 2016.
The two decided while sitting at Dan’s kitchen table that afternoon that they would continue singing together and, in the spirit of progress and inclusion, would work with presenters to try and make all of their concerts sensory friendly.
Inspired by their artful modern-day all-ages folk music and their commitment to accessibility, the Kennedy Center commissioned Claudia and Dan to create a theater piece for young audiences. Night Train 57: A Sensory Friendly Comic Folk Opera premiered in October 2017 and has been performed several times since.
Their love of songs and communal music-making lead to a publishing deal with the Quarto Group USA and the result, an award winning songbook entitled Dan Zanes’ House Party: A Family Roots Music Treasury, was released in 2018.
In late 2019 the couple - now married! - moved from Brooklyn to Baltimore and what had been a full schedule of theater, school, and festival performances evaporated with the advent of the coronavirus. When a national state of emergency was declared in March, Dan and Claudia started their Social Isolation Song Series. For the next 200 days, in an effort to stay connected and uplift others, they performed a different song every day. This series of videos currently resides in the Library of Congress.
The two continue to adapt and reinvent and sing their way to new beginnings. In addition to music making, Claudia runs her flourishing handmade skin care business called CLEO Soaps and Dan continues his work with Constructive White Conversations, a white antiracist organization he co-founded in 2011.