by David Budin
Last year, I interviewed Warren Zanes – who became the Rock Hall’s vice-president of education in 2003 – about his feelings about Cleveland and his plans at the Rock Hall. Everything sounded great on both fronts at that time. He recently announced that he was leaving his position and Cleveland, so I went back and talked to him again.
Zanes, who has a Ph.D. in art history, is also a musician. He’s a former member of the rock group the Del Fuegos with his brother, Dan, and he’s a singer-songwriter who has recently released his second CD. His wife, Elinor Blake, is also a singer and songwriter who records and performs under the name April March, singing mostly in French, and who has become very popular in France and other countries. She has also worked as an illustrator for Archie Comics, an animator and writer for the Ren & Stimpy series, and an animator for the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse series, and toured for a year with the legendary Ronnie Spector as one of the Ronettes. She still does illustration work.
Zanes and Blake, who have two young sons, have been living in Cleveland Heights, and the Rock Hall’s education department seems to have thrived under Zanes’s leadership.
On Wed 5/10 at 7PM, Zanes will lead one of his always edifying and entertaining behind-the-scenes sessions at the Rock Hall. This time, though, his special guest will be himself. He’ll discuss his new CD, People That I’m Wrong For, including, he says, “the songwriting process, the recording process and thoughts on record production in a changing musical climate,” and perform a few songs from this his new CD and his previous one, Memory Girls. The event – which will also include a Q&A and CD signing – is free, but you need to make a reservation by either e-mailing eduATrockhall.org or calling 216-515-8426.
The next night, Thu 5/11 at 9:30PM, Zanes will perform his songs with a band at the House of Blues, in the Cambridge Room (appropriate, apparently, because he is, after all, probably the only rock artist out there with a Ph.D.).
Cool Cleveland: A year ago we were sitting right here, talking about how you had recently moved to Cleveland and how much you liked it and everything. So something has changed, apparently.
Warren Zanes: Yeah. Or no.
Okay, just so you’re really clear on that…
No, nothing has changed in the sense that the family was adjusting and at that point Pierre was a tiny, little baby then, and as he’s grown up and demanded more of us, we have, to an increasing degree, recognized a certain family deficit – that we don’t have the grandmothers, we don’t have the cousins, we don’t have the aunts and uncles – so the decision to leave Cleveland is as simple as that. We are going to be closer to family, where we can spontaneously get into a car and go see pretty much everybody in our inner circle, which we haven’t been able to do in Cleveland.
There was a trade-off: In coming up here I was able to do things that I never could have done back home; and on a lot of levels we’ve had a high-quality family life, despite the absence of that inner circle. But it came down to getting back into the loop.
Are there lots of family members out there?
We’re going to a town in New Jersey that is 13 miles outside of Manhattan. My brother is in Brooklyn, my mother is in New Hampshire, Elinor’s brother is in up state New York and her sister is in D.C. So we can get in a car and in half a day get to everybody. And that’s not the end of the story, either: There is the friend network, too, which is in the New York area; we lived in Brooklyn before we came here.
Elinor’s mother died a while back, right?
Yeah.
What about her father?
Her father died when she was about 15, and then her Mom died when she was around 30 and it’s definitely one of the things that has made being close to her siblings more important. There is a clear distinction between the two of us in that I’ve got a mother that I call whenever anything is up; she doesn’t. So her siblings fit into that role and being away from them has been a challenge.
And you have a sister?
Yeah, in Vermont. And I talk to my mother and my sister – it’s probably inadvisable to admit to this – but I talk to them just about every day. So we’re close, and Elinor’s equally close with her family.
You already bought a house in New Jersey, but I thought you were going to still be here at the Rock Hall for a while.
Well, we move in July, and then I will commute between there and here, July through November – like, a half week, each week -- so it’ll be pretty rigorous commuting.
Where are you staying when you’re here?
I’ll probably stay at a hotel.
Why can’t you stay right here, at the Rock Hall?
Yeah, I guess l could set up a cot in the office. No, I’ll stay in a hotel. Then November 2006 through November 2007, I’ll come in for my programs. I’ll come in for Song Writers, I’ll come in for Hall of Fame Series, I’ll come in for American Music Masters and I’ll come in for Rock in the Schools program. And then if I need to consult on the library archive meetings, I’ll come in for that. So it won’t always just be that half a week thing, it will be something driven by immediate programming necessities. And I’ll have an office in our house to work from there, too.
So you’ll be still on staff at the Rock Hall through November 2007?
Technically not on staff, because as a satellite entity, I don’t think legally you would call it staff; I think you go into the consulting category.
And then are you going to do something else, or are you just going to retire?
Unfortunately, it’s just too early to retire. The way we structured, it is that it really becomes, as of November 2006, more of a part-time job. So I will have some time for myself in there, and whether my future has me going into museum work or has me going into university teaching, another book is the key. You have to have it on the resume, so I’ve got a couple of book ideas that I want to work on, and that’s what I’ll be doing.
Also, it will be nice to be at home with the kids more, because they are at the age where if I’m leaving at 8:00 and I’m coming home at 6:00, I’m not seeing that much of them. And that’s a perk of how this transition is being crafted. I mean, if some perfect job comes up, we won’t say no because I need to stay at home, but this is a great transition. And then after November 2007, our objective is to still see how can it work for the museum having a person doing some kind of adjunct work in the New York area.
But the Rock Hall will be looking for somebody to replace you, eventually, right?
Yeah. And I’ll be part of the process; but the search will be underway almost immediately. We’ve already sat down and talked about it.
So if they find somebody that’s better than you, then they won’t need you to be a consultant.
When I came in, there wasn’t somebody in my office who could hand over the keys to the castle and integrate me, introduce me to the place. So even if there is overlap, it’s being used positively. And let’s say they come in and there is American Music Masters to do, well they’re going to get to learn by seeing how it gets done, what the obstacles are. Same with Rock in the Schools. It’s just a more comfortable hand-off and if significant overlap happens, there is an opportunity just to build from this program. If you’ve got an extra set of hands, well, there is always more to do than we can possibly do in the education department.
How are they going to look for somebody? I mean they found you, as I recall, sort of by accident, by reading an article in the New York Times that mentioned you.
They had a search firm on the case, but what it ended up being was that Howard Kramer read an article in the New York Times and passed to Jim Henke, and then Jim mentioned my name to Terry Stewart, so it was a very organic process.
In my own career experience, I went against people’s advice every step of the way, because the message was loud and clear: Either choose the university or choose music, but don’t try to keep your feet in both worlds, because they don’t intersect. And because I didn’t want to let one or the other go, I stayed in both, and then only with this job did it look like I was consciously crafting something. But the truth is, until I took this job everybody looked at it as a foolhardy approach to building a career.
So when it comes to going out into the field and looking for somebody who has a Ph.D, and has taught at the university level, and who’s published in the academic world, but who also knows the music business, it’s very hard to find that because most people took the advice and they chose either the university or the music business. So, there are a couple of ways to approach it: You can look for somebody who’s in both worlds or you can see if there is any way to make a couple of hires and have the leader of the department be the Ph.D, who is, first and foremost, an educator, and then maybe hire somebody else at a director level to oversee more of the production side of it – the Songwriters to Soundmen, the American Music Masters.
So, best-case is to find one person who does both. But if that search gets to be an insurmountable challenge, then you can split it off. I think there are ways to be creative with it.
There aren’t too many people that I know of, who have both the rock background and the Ph.D.
It’s an odd combination.
Do you people have a club or something?
No. No secret handshakes or anything.
It’s hard to find. We’ve already started to get resumes, despite the fact that we haven’t even announced a job opening. When I was hiring an education programs manager, I got about 300 resumes right out of the gate. People want to be involved, there is no question, so I’m sure we’re going to get a flood of resumes. We’re also going to think in-house about who we know, who’s already a friend of the museum, who already is out there actively playing the role of the educator, historian; but in all likelihood, it will be a slow and methodical process.
When we talked last year, you said you really liked Cleveland and you were surprised that the people who live here always put it down. So, are you now one of those people who lives here and puts it down?
No, there are a number of things I love about Cleveland. Clearly, the arts are big in Cleveland. We fell in love with the Museum of Art. When it was still open we went there every week – we went every Sunday as a family –and when they closed we were shattered.
And that’s why you’re leaving, right?
No. The Natural History Museum, Western Reserve Historical Society, the Rock Hall, the Science Center – we’re so in the loop of arts and culture in this town, and that’s been great. The size of Cleveland, that’s been great; I feel like I can really get to know everybody who’s administering and developing programs from Playhouse Square, Cleveland Play House, Case – everybody does know everybody else. There is a tight community that is interested in arts-driven education. That’s been fantastic for me and I’ve learned a lot. This is a fascinating laboratory. I love the size, I feel far less anonymous than I do in New York. In New York, you’re always fairly anonymous.
Unless you kill somebody.
Yeah, then you’ll get your attention.
So we still like Cleveland. But, like I told Terry [Stewart], if there were only some way you could move Cleveland to New Jersey, we’d stay. That was one of the points I wanted to make: I didn’t want to be listed as the next guy to leave town, because I think Cleveland has a ton to offer.
I have had moments of frustration, where I’m putting on a program and brought in someone historically important, say a character as remarkable as [songwriter and producer] Richard Gottehrer and looked in the audience and there were only 25 people. I’ve gotten mad at Cleveland, and I get frustrated with Cleveland, but know that those are the more rare occasions. And the truth is, with that same program [Songwriters to Soundmen], as I built it and as I’ve shown Cleveland that it was going to be consistent, people started showing up and that problem went away. So I couldn’t completely blame Cleveland, I had to prove to them that it really was a program that pertains to them and it would be there every month.
I’ve noticed that the last few I’ve been to have been much better attended.
Yeah, it’s grown. Because for programs like Songwriters to Soundmen, there hasn’t been a marketing budget. If somebody covers a guest, like you did with Gottehrer in the Plain Dealer, great, but we’re not going out to advertise. Our numbers have gradually gone up. This is what I wanted to happen; I wanted somebody to come because they knew the guest, but then have a great experience and take the gamble the next month and say, “I don’t know that person, but I had a good time last time.”
It appears that the momentum is building back up again.
This challenge in how to get your momentum back without the kind of money that was there in the beginning, that’s a big part of the trick. But it can be done, it just requires a ton of work and it requires an all-hands-on-deck mentality, which I’m happy to report in this building people get behind the programs. If there wasn’t an internal staff that believed in what we do here, it would be very hard. So, that helped to get some of the momentum back. Nobody could do it flying solo.
What about your music? Are you going to be doing more of that now?
The music really is a side dish no matter where I am or what I’m doing. But will I do more? Yeah, definitely.
Because there is more opportunity in the New York area, or because you’ll have more time?
It’s not a geographic thing. It might be more time. But I’ll still view it as a side dish, so it may look unchanged. For me, personally, to really be a player in music you’ve got to dedicate an amount of time and an amount of focus that I’m not willing to dedicate. I don’t want to stop acting as a historian, I don’t want to stop acting as an educator; these are two strikes against me to start with. But on some level I’ve learned a lesson in taking this job: Stick to your hybrid-ity, because those are the things that I’ll want to do; I’ll keep doing them and something down the road will be a perfect fit, but I might have to wait for it.
You might have to start your own rock and roll museum.
I think that won’t happen.
Being in the New York area, will Elinor be able to do more, creatively, than she has here?
Yeah, she’s going to. A lot of people that she plays with are in New York or L.A., so she’s closer to her New York scene. But also as an illustrator and animator, that’s either New York or L.A., too, so she is much closer to those work possibilities, and that’s a factor.
When I made my last record, I made it in five days. She’s finishing up a record in Chicago right now and she’s done it in three small, four-day visits, so being close to New York and the musicians that she typically plays with is going to make a difference, she’s going to be able to get more in-depth on her project.
You know, I gave up a music career a long time ago, and said I was through with it, but little by little, I’ve been playing more and more. I call myself a “recovering musician,” and I’ve been falling off the wagon lately. I don’t want to make light of addiction of any kind, but it’s really the same kind of thing. Music may not be as destructive to your health as drugs or alcohol, but it can actually be a real addiction in every way. My point is, you were a working, and successful, musician, and you still, obviously, want to do that. So if you do start playing your music more, will that make you want to do it even more?
Well, the problem is when you have multiple addictions, the music – it’s strong for me and when I play a handful of shows, I’m sure I’ll get the bug. But I also get the bug every time I teach a class about a subject that I feel passionate about – I want to teach that class again, I’m addicted there. And when I’m writing about music and I feel like I’ve really got a new way of looking at an old subject or a new way of looking at a new subject, I’m addicted to that, too.
So my trick is managing my addictions, to stay with that metaphor. But I don’t want to give any one of them up, so as I transition out of the vice president role, there is so much here that answers each of those addictions, and I don’t want to simply sever my ties. So I feel lucky to have forged something with the Rock Hall agreement that allows me to keep doing a good amount of what I love about this job, which is why I went to them and said, “What can we do?” I knew what my family needed and that was really clear, but we had to figure out to what degree I could keep some of this stuff alive, because I enjoy it too much just to walk away. So we negotiated it at home and then I came in and I negotiated it here and that’s how we came up with the long transition.
But it’s open-ended, so when we hit November 2007, at that point we won’t shake hands and part ways; at that point, hopefully, the question will be: How do we structure it now so that we can keep doing what we like doing together? (:divend:)