Fri. Sept. 16

    In the 1980s, Boston rock fans knew Warren Zanes as the younger, guitar-playing brother of Dan Zanes, leader of the Del Fuegos. Warren was just 17 when he came down from Andover, NH to join the trio. His bandmates nicknamed him Ork Boy. This, Zanes, notes Zanes did not exactly help him with the ladies. That and the fact that he looked about 12.
    “I walked into the madness of band life and the haze of a fantasy of what it might be,” said Zanes, 46, looking back. “I came out of it off the rails and insane.”
    Big in Boston, the Fuegos had moderate national success. Warren lasted five years, and fought with his brother about not being allowed to contribute songs. (They’ve since made peace and played two Del Fuegos reunion concerts at the Paradise earlier this summer.)
     But it’s in his post-Fuegos life, where Zanes has blossomed.
     He wrote a bio of Dusty Springfield. Martin Scorsese asked him to interview George Martin, Eric Idle, Jeff Lynne and others for a documentary on George Harrison. (It airs in Oct. 5 and 6 on HBO.) Zanes is currently working on an authorized biography of his friend Tom Petty.
    His day job? Zanes is Executive Director of Steve Van Zandt’s Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, which is creating an on-line rock ‘n’ roll curriculum for middle and high school students.
     And he’s just released his third solo album, “I Want to Move Out In the Daylight.” It’s a brooding, emotionally charged album, with many catchy, mid-tempo rock songs. Zanes and his wife, Elinor Blake (also known as singer April March) have separated and are in the process of divorce.
    Breakup songs and albums are staples of rock ‘n’ roll.  “This just felt like I was chronicling a breakup without pointing fingers,” said Zanes, by phone from his Montclair, NJ home. “The word I would choose wouldn’t be ‘bitterness.’ I might say there’s more anger. You can see the way the sequence goes. It’s almost like those cycles of grief they talk about.”
    Zanes made the album last year in Nashville with drummer Nick Buda and multi-instrumentalists Brad Jones and Daniel Tashian, both of whom co-produced. Zanes will play a solo acoustic show at Toad Sept. 16.
    Music has always been central to Zanes’ life as a writer, musician and academic. He holds a Masters degree and two Ph.Ds. This, he noted with some bemusement, despite the fact that he was near the bottom of his class at Philips Andover Academy. “I was twice asked not to return by my dean,” Zanes said. “My focus was elsewhere.”
   His collegiate work led Zanes to a post as Executive Director of Education at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, where he worked five years. He’s both book-smart and street-smart. Or, as he put it: “There’s a measure of validity I have that comes from the fact that I put some time in in a Winnebago with these other lunatics [Del Fuegos).”
   Zanes continued creating music all along, releasing solo albums in 2003 and 2006.  
     “Then,” he said, “when my family broke up, it was just one of those classic moments where the faucets were turned on in a big way. Music’s got that power. If you’re going through something tough, music is a place to take it. As a listener and as a songwriter, we all know what it does. There was an abundance of songs and there’s nothing as fun and satisfying as turning songs into recordings.”
     Zanes isn’t claiming his situation is unique. He hopes the music strikes a common chord.
     “Everybody goes through a mid-life crisis,” he said. “Your parents get older, your friends are getting older, some career doesn’t pan out. You go for years with a youthful mindset, based on some misconstrued sense of your own power, and suddenly this [expletive] structure comes down and you’re left without any reference point. And you've gotta let the whole thing come down before you build the next one. Living in that kind of destruction is not easy.
    “The record came from the guy in the middle of that. I was pretty lost, but knew enough to go make a record and that the process would help me. The voice on that record is alternately devastated and senses that something better is on the way."
The show is free and starts at 8.
(This is an expanded version of a story that ran in the Boston Herald last month.)

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