Much of America was riveted to Monday’s Grammy Award show to see the Police reunion or to watch the Dixie Chicks get the last laugh over President Bush, but adults all over Brooklyn cheered when kid’s rock legend Dan Zanes bested his not-so-bitter rival John Lithgow in the Best Musical Album for Children category.
Too bad that most of Zanes’s biggest fans were asleep by the time the Cobble Hill artist and former Del Fuegos frontman collected his award for his most-recent album, “Catch that Train.”
But Zanes appreciated their good vibes all the way in California.
His win was also a minor victory for opponents of Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-project; Zanes is a member of the Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn advisory board.
“I am immensely grateful for all of the emails of support and congratulations,” Zanes said in an email blast to his fans this week. “It made the entire experience even more meaningful.”
He collected the award with his cohort, the rapping Father Goose, who appears on all of his albums.
“We had a wild time,” said Zanes, who beat Baby Einstein, Beethoven’s Wig, Trout Fishing in America and Lithgow, the TV and Broadway star who has crafted a third career in children’s music.
It’s Zanes’s first Grammy. An earlier classic, “House Party,” was nominated in the same category a few years back.
Zanes was a veteran rocker by the time his Del Fuegos broke up in 1991. After a hiatus growing chard upstate, he moved back to New York and started cranking out album after album of rock music loved by kids (and even more loved by parents sick of Raffi and other dumbed-down children’s music).
