Musician makes mark poking fun at politics

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Roy Zimmerman’s politics run unapologetically to the left of … well, just about everyone. He’s been letting people know about it and making them laugh through song for two decades . On Saturday, he plans to bring his music to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Las Vegas, 3616 E. Lake Mead Blvd.

“I started writing songs in junior high,” Zimmerman said. “They were about what was going on and the funny things that were happening around me. I was trying to crack people up.”

He formed the comedy quartet The Foremen in the early ’90s, performing folk music similar to the work of The Kingston Trio and The Limeliters.

“We were doing that before the ‘Mighty Wind’ guys did such a good job at that,” Zimmerman said. “Pretty soon, the songwriting for that group began to drift into political waters.”

Zimmerman counts Tom Lehrer and Phil Ochs among his influences, musicians he describes as ” folkies with a strident, lefty sort of message.” He is also influenced by American musicals, including the works of Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart, citing the cleverness and humor of their lyrics.

He has begun a series of interviews he’s posting on YouTube called Ear to Ear in which he talks to other musicians and satirists about their craft. Clips from his songs also are posted on YouTube, with titles such as “My Conservative Girlfriend,” “The Unions Are to Blame,” “Ted Haggard is Completely Heterosexual” and “Buy War Toys for Christmas.”

This year, he is fulfilling what he calls a campaign promise to perform in all 50 states before the Republican National Convention, scheduled for Aug. 27 in Tampa, Fla. He attempted the same thing during the 2008 presidential campaign but fell short by three states.

“Hawaii was a bridge too far, and Alaska was a bridge to nowhere,” Zimmerman joked . “And it turns out, New Mexico is a state.”

He already has hit Alaska this year, and he’ll be in New Mexico not long after his visit to Las Vegas. He’s confident he’ll reach his goal this time.

Melanie Harby, Zimmerman’s wife and occasional songwriting collaborator, is coming along for the tour this time, too.

“Both of our kids are in college, so we can do this trip,” Zimmerman said. “We’re about to essentially drive across the country twice.”

The Unitarian Universalist Church in Las Vegas isn’t the first or last Unitarian Universalist Church he’ll perform at on this tour. Zimmerman and Harby book the shows themselves and have found the denomination to be a receptive audience.

“I play a lot of UUs across the country,” Zimmerman said. “I’ve found that it’s a great place to find a group of people who are tuned in politically and spiritually. They’re also unafraid to laugh in church.”

In addition to the performance Saturday night, Zimmerman plans to perform a few songs at the church service at
10:30 a.m. Sunday and host a songwriting workshop at 2 p.m. at the church.

Danielle Bell and her husband, Robert, are members of the church and are slated to open for Zimmerman.

“We’ll be doing a lot of stuff,” Danielle Bell said, “from the Beatles and Leonard Cohen to an acoustic cover of (Ozzy Osbourne’s) ‘Crazy Train.’ ”

The Bells perform four or five times a year at “UU Song Cafe” events Danielle Bell organizes.

“It’s kind of part of our program of open discussion here at the church,” Bell said. “We use music as discussion and as a jumping off point for further discussion.”

Bell is also director of Lifespan Faith Development.

“That’s what we call our liberal religious education program,” Bell said. “I have a friend who jokes that it’s our ‘too cool for Sunday school’ program.”

“You can say I’m preaching to the converted,” Zimmerman said. “But I’m also singing to people who are waiting for that message and need to hear it. It does my heart good to sing for them. I play in a lot of red states, but even there I find a lot of blue dots and progressive people.”

Zimmerman is calling the shows “Live from the Starving Ear,” a nod to the San Francisco nightclub the hungry i, lowercase intentional, which hosted seminal performances by Bill Cosby, the Kingston Trio, Mort Sahl and many others.

The Starving Ear is Zimmerman’s virtual nightclub and global meeting place that he brings with him wherever he goes.

Zimmerman hopes his humor can transcend his politics and reach folks on the other side of the aisle.

“People come up to me after a lot of my shows and tell me they disagreed with everything I sang,” Zimmerman said. “But they tell me it made them laugh, anyway.”

Contact Sunrise/Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.