13

SUNDAY

All I used to know about Carl Sandburg was that he wrote a poem about how “The fog comes/On little cat feet,” and that he had a great enthusiasm for Abraham Lincoln. But thanks to Dan Zanes’ new CD, Parades and Panoramas, I now know that Sandburg was a hobo, a guitar-strumming folkie, and a collector of traditional songs, which he published in a 1927 volume called The American Songbag. The book divided 280 songs into chapters with such titles as “The Big Brutal City” and “Bandit Biographies.” Zanes, a onetime roots rocker with the Del Fuegos, is best known these days for his hipster kids’ records designed to give rocker parents a break from Barney. On Parades, Zanes, a fan of Woody Guthrie, sounds a bit like his idol as he adapts, with the aid of strummers and singers young and old, a collection of Songbag ditties. Hear Sandburg’s favorite singalongs, work-gang recitals, and pleas to God about train-riding, Mexican border life, the Erie Canal, and cockle shells when Zanes plays with Trout Fishing in America at 2 p.m. at Strathmore’s Music Center, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda. $19–$32. (301) 581-5100. (Steve Kiviat)