Dan Zanes is putting on a Lead Belly concert

By Tim Goodwin - Mar 28, 2017 | 0 comments

Grammy Award-winning musician Dan Zanes returns to Concord every year to perform a pair of benefit concerts for the Friendly Kitchen, an organization his mom, Hope Zanes Butterworth, has been involved with for many years. So last Saturday, Zanes got the audiences in the Concord High School auditorium dancing and singing along to his original brand of kids music. The concerts have raised lots of much-needed money for the Friendly Kitchen over the course of the last 16 years. Left: Donald Saaf uses his artistic abilities to quickly create a painting off words incorporated into a song. Right: Zanes sure does have a lot of friends to play music with.

If you’ve never caught one of Dan Zanes’s benefit concerts, you might want to consider it.

It’s a pretty awesome time that will have you tapping your feet and swaying those hips.

And it just so happens that the Concord native is coming home to raise money for the Friendly Kitchen on Saturday.

“Concord has been so supportive of me,” Zanes said. “And it’s always nice to see old friends.”

While Zanes is well-known for his work in the world of family music that can lead to giant sing-alongs or human trains moving through the crowd, this concert at the Concord Community Music School will be a little different.

Zanes has a new album coming out in July featuring songs by a musician named Lead Belly. Lead Belly is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who Zanes said “is the godfather of modern family music.”

Zanes was introduced to Lead Belly at a young age at the Concord Public Library, when it was suggested to an 8-year-old Zanes to check out the folk section. He found a record of Lead Belly’s music and has been basically playing it ever since.

“I’ve always loved Lead Belly’s music,” Zanes said. “I had no idea who he was, but it got me all fired up to play guitar.”

And now he’ll play it for all of you.

While this isn’t geared toward the kids, as some of his more recent benefits have been, that doesn’t mean you can’t bring them along – because they’ll enjoy it, too.

For the last two decades, Zanes has been playing these kinds of concerts to raise much-needed funds for the place to get a hot meal in Concord when you have nowhere else to go.

His mom, Hope Zanes Butterworth, has been involved with the Friendly Kitchen for many years and this is one of his ways to help out.

“We believe in the work,” Zanes said. “Unfortunately there’s a need, but it speaks to the whole idea of community helping community.”

Zanes will be playing with his good friend and brother-in-law Donald Saaf.

Even if you haven’t heard much – or any – of Lead Belly’s work, it’s being performed by Zanes, which automatically means it will be worth seeing.

“I love trying to capture the spirit of old music,” Zanes said.

Tickets are $15 and can be found at ccmusicschool.org. The show begins at 7 p.m.