Roy Zimmerman

Satirical songwriter Roy Zimmerman brings his show “Roy Zimmerman: Wake Up Call” to Bellingham, featuring his hilarious, rhyme-intensive originals are also incisive calls to action, smart, savvy and undeniable. “Wake Up Call” is 90 minutes of these songs - funny songs like “Abstain With Me” and “I Want a Marriage Like They Had In the Bible,” heartfelt songs like “Hope, Struggle and Change” and “I Approve This Message,” and impassioned comic commentary.
In 13 albums over 20 years, Roy has brought… Show more the sting of satire to the struggle for Peace and Social Justice. His songs have been heard on HBO and Showtime. He has recorded for Warner/Reprise Records. He’s been profiled on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Zimmerman’s YouTube videos have amassed over seven million views, and he’s a featured blogger for the Huffington Post.
In 2012, Roy and his wife and co-writer Melanie Harby traveled 47,000 miles to 161 shows in 49 states. “Even in the Reddest of states,” Zimmerman reports, “we found Bright Blue Dots -- groups of people huddled together to do Progressive work where it most needs to be done.”
In every state Roy and Melanie visited they wrote a new verse to their song, “Vote Republican” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ege_RBhh37A), each one taking a different satirical slant on the GOP election year agenda. In the version recorded in Hyde Park, NV, for instance, Roy sits down with the statues of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and teaches them how to save a faltering economy in words taken directly from Mitt Romney’s website (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyJ0ORtLlfs).
Roy’s songs take aim at politics, of course; there’s a plaintive lament about how hard it is “To Be a Liberal,” a rollicking indictment of the “Socialist” policies of George W. Bush and Richard Nixon, a tender ode to “Citizens United.” There are social targets as well; a lesson in “Creation Science 101,” a lambasting of the “Defenders of Marriage” who oppose same-sex unions, a "Sing-Along Second Amendment."
At times though, Roy wears his heart on his Left sleeve. “Hope and Change is what you voted for,” he sings, “...but you know the slogan always needed just one more word: Hope, Struggle and Change.”

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