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A Virtual Sing-In is America at its finest -- inclusive, innovative, optimistic. It’s a truly populist rebuttal to the faux-populism of Trump and Company and the violence they’ve done to reason, to compassion, to science, to democratic institutions, to the rule of law, to immigrant families, to peaceful protesters … "This will be our reply to violence,” said Leonard Bernstein, “to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before." And more humorously, we might add. That’s our job as satirical songwriters - to use humor to do serious work, and to invoke the healing power of laughter.  Before COVID, we toured like crazy. It truly was a little insane how many miles we clocked as The Satire Delivery Service. While we were on the road, we never could have created Virtual Sing-ins because they are so time consuming - it takes weeks of solid work to gather all the separate submissions and edit them into one cohesive (and exuberant!) statement of resistance. But here’s the irony: Had we not been on the road for so many years, we never would have thought to make Virtual Sing-Ins.  We take our inspiration from the country’s Blue Dots - the most progressive people in some of the least progressive areas of the nation. We KNOW the Etowah County Democrats of Gadsden, Alabama who helped defeat Roy Moore. We KNOW the “Intoleristas” of Moscow, Idaho and their struggle to keep the Palouse out of the clutches of Imperial Oil. One of our favorite stops on the circuit is Hot Springs, Arkansas where the Democratic candidate for Congress was given a one-in-a-hundred chance of winning (and lost by 35 points) but whose supporters -- our friends -- went door to door for her anyway, articulating a progressive agenda that will eventually take hold. Yes, even in Arkansas.  Entertaining the troops in Hot Springs, AR When we were grounded by COVID, we realized we could go beyond entertaining the Blue Dots, and that we now had the opportunity to actually connect the Dots. We set out to get the country’s (and the world’s) progressives singing together. What a labor of love it has been creating these Virtual Sing-Ins and watching all these strangers sing and play and dance together, overcoming their quarantine-defined isolation. One of our favorite moments in “Vote Him Away #2” comes at the 1:13 mark when the band kicks in. It’s a flute, two clarinets, a fiddle, a trombone, a piano, and a helicon. None of these musicians knew each other or heard the others until they saw the finished product on screen. That moment is what happens in New Orleans where all genres of music go in the pot and AMERICAN music gets cooked up.  Y0u can get free mp3 audio downloads for “Vote Him Away” versions One and Two. You can make a contribution to help us get these songs out into the world. You can find a cornucopia of “Vote Him Away” merchandise available at the Roy Zimmerman Store. We grew up listening to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” and our Virtual Sing-Ins follow in that tradition:  Sing along with us! Drop us an email and we'll tell you how to participate. Thank you for coming along on this journey. -- Roy and Melanie We are pleased to offer you FREE DOWNLOADS of the mp3 audio files for some our recent videos. Just click on the record player. If you're able and so moved, you can also make a contribution of $5 or $10 to help us produce our next Virtual Sing-In. To add a contribution, just click on either the “Kick In a Lincoln” or “Kick In a Hamilton” box below.
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