Description

However quietly, Warren Zanes has established himself as something of
an oddity in the music business. A platypus. His constituent parts are
many, but they don't add up to anything immediately recognizable.


​Zanes has been all of these things: a Ph.D and professor at several
American universities, a Vice President at the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame and Museum, a writer whose subjects range from Jimmy Rodgers to
Dusty Springfield to the Wilburn Brothers to the history of Warner
Bros. Records, a musician who made three records with 1980s rock and
roll band the Del Fuegos and three as a solo artist, a
thinker-for-hire who has worked on several high-profile music
projects, including, most recently, the upcoming George Harrison
documentary directed by Martin Scorsese, and the Executive Director of
Little Steven Van Zandt's Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, where his
work is an extension of his non-profit experience and his teaching at
Case Western Reserve, the School of Visual Arts, the University of
Rochester, and other institutions. Time Out New York has said of
Warren that he is "as smart a pop songwriter as there is."
Entertainment Weekly lauded his solo work as "a thing of indie-pop
beauty." Rolling Stone described that same music as having "flashes of
Beck and 1970s Paul McCartney . . . [and] a lot of what sounds like
XTC." Among those who have already stepped forward to praise his
latest recording are Cameron Crowe, Aimee Mann, and Tom Petty. But,
mostly, Zanes flies under the radar.