Warren Zanes was seventeen years old when he entered the ranks of the Del Fuegos, a college-formed roots rock band headed by his older brother Dan. The outfit enjoyed a brief, intense burst of activity through the middle and later years of the 1980s before disappearing from view. Zanes then turned toward higher education, completing a bachelor’s degree and, drawn deeper into scholarly work, obtaining two master’s degrees plus a doctorate in visual and cultural studies from the University of Rochester in 2002, which later led to a teaching position at Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts.
While still immersed in academic commitments, he began laying down four-track recordings with Billy Conway of Morphine. These songs reached the Dust Brothers, the noted production team behind releases by the Beastie Boys and Beck, prompting the duo to sign him to their Ideal Records label. The resulting album was tracked in Nashville and included appearances by Emmylou Harris and Patty Griffin. Legal complications with Disney, Ideal’s parent company, nevertheless held Memory Girls in limbo for two years until the project was released from those entanglements and acquired by Dualtone.
Dualtone brought out the lush pop debut Memory Girls, tinged with roots rock accents, in 2003. After touring behind that record, Zanes accepted the post of vice president of education at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, yet he still managed to issue a second collection of rootsy pop, People That I'm Wrong For, in 2006.
