Welcome to A MIGHTY LITTLE SONG

by Roy Zimmerman and Melanie Harby

Welcome to our Substack newsletter A MIGHTY LITTLE SONG! We’re so glad you’re here.

In 1988, Melanie started working for Joni Mitchell as her in-house guitar tech. During one of her afternoons at Joni’s house, she told Joni about a band she and Roy were thinking up - a satirical folk quartet of squeaky-clean white guys in suits singing four-part harmony about mining disasters, slave rebellions, and high seas plunder. Joni thought it was a funny idea and said there’s certainly a need for “mighty little songs.” Her example of such a song was her own “Big Yellow Taxi,” a three-minute gem that’s been sung by countless activists over the years as they’ve torn up parking lots and restored paradise.

A few years later, Roy founded that satirical folk quartet: The Foremen went on to release five albums of banjo-fueled political satire, two of them for Warner Reprise Records.

This spring, thirty-six years after Melanie’s chat with Joni, we will release ROAD MAP, an album of classic social justice folk songs reimagined to fortify and inspire us in this precarious time. “Big Yellow Taxi” is the first track. 

Joni’s phrase “a mighty little song” is a perfect encapsulation of our belief in the power of music and community to affect positive change.

Alas, we’re pretty sure that Tom Lehrer – another of our great inspirations – would pooh-pooh that idea.

Tom has said, “I don’t think satire has an impact on the unconverted. It’s not even preaching to the converted; it’s titillating the converted. I’m fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the ’30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War.”

We respectfully, but emphatically disagree with Professor Lehrer. In fact, we know for sure that he’s wrong because his music changed us. We both grew up in conservative families in white-washed California suburbs in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And we both listened as teenagers to the contraband that was The Dr. Demento Show on (gasp!) FM radio. Tom Lehrer’s music played a huge part in each of our journeys to free thinking and progressive politics.

And if music, literature and the arts are powerless to affect change, why is the Right so intent on banning and burning books, Barbies and Beyoncé?

One reason Tom doesn’t believe in the power of his funny songs to change hearts and minds might be that when he was touring, he played big concert halls and so probably didn’t get to interact much with his audiences. 

When The Foremen disbanded in the mid ‘90s, Roy started touring as a solo act. When our sons graduated from high school, Melanie joined him on the road. We toured this country countless times over the last two decades, visiting every nook and cranny of the contiguous forty-eight states. 

And we drove, not from concert hall to concert hall, but from Unitarian Church to folk club to progressive event to someone’s living room. Throughout our touring years we made a concerted effort to play for the “Blue Dots” - the most progressive people in the least progressive parts of the country. Our conversations with our audiences soulfully shaped our music and outlook. And we were able to hear firsthand what our music has meant to people.

Covid abruptly ended our touring career in 2020. (Truth be told, we were getting a little long in the tooth to be on the road so much.) When we were newly grounded at the beginning of the last presidential election cycle, our virtual sing along “Vote Him Away: The Liar Tweets Tonight” in its four versions across all of social media garnered over 150 million views (that’s not a typo). 

That song seems so naive now: Hey, we’ll just vote him away, and he’ll go away. If only that were true. In his satirical takedown of satire itself, Peter Cook used the most extreme example of anti-democracy to make his point: “the satirical Berlin cabarets of the ’30s … did so much to stop the rise of Hitler.” Hitler and Nazism had become comfortable punchlines by then. 

But as the mighty Rachel Maddow details in her magnificent book PREQUEL, elements of fascism are always burbling in the seedy underbelly of our body politic, just waiting to flare up. When that flare-up happened January 6th with Trump’s refusal to concede, we did not immediately recognize what was happening. Is this really a Hitler-esque moment in history? Yes. Yes it is.

Even our sequel to “Vote Him Away” –  which we called “Lock Him Away” – seems naive now. The courts are not coming to our rescue; it is up to us to Vote Him Away again. Facebook and Instagram are unconscionably censoring “political content” now, so it’s unlikely that our new videos will attain the massive exposure of “Vote Him Away.” But we’re looking forward to digging much deeper in our analyses here on Substack and on YouTube. Those deeper conversations are what these times call for.

The beauty part of Substack is that we truly can have two-way conversations here. The newsletter is free of charge, of course. But you can also upgrade to a paid subscription for $10 a month (or $100 for a year) to support our work and to be able to comment on the posts. And we can reply back to you, as can other subscribers. (The comment feature has to be subscribers-only in order to keep away trolls.)

As a paid subscriber, you’ll also receive passes to exclusive monthly online concerts that we can tailor to the conversations we’re having. And you’ll also receive links to monthly Q & A sessions where Roy can directly answer your questions and ask you questions. If you’d like to join the conversation and can’t afford the $10/month, please let us know and we’ll put you on the guest list.

As Maddow says, “Previous generations of Americans have confronted this same type of threat before us. What was required then, in the 1940s, was the plucky, creative, heroic efforts of clever, brave Americans, journalists, activists, lawyers, people of faith, citizens of all stripes who came to democracy’s aid when it needed them the most. That is what got us through back then. And now, almost a full century later, we get to learn from what they left us. We inherit their work.”

There’s so much at stake in this election that it’s easy to become overwhelmed and debilitated. It’s the paralysis of panic. It’s certainly something we struggle with. And we know you struggle with it, too. The three most common responses to our recent videos have been variations of: “I just can’t look at his face,” “I just want to go to sleep until the election is over,” and “What should we be doing?“ We all must do everything in our power to stay in that third mindset - “What can we do today to defend democracy?”

Our new tagline for this election year is: SING, LAUGH, DEFEND DEMOCRACY. It’s a testament to how weird and dire these times are that it’s “LAUGH” that seems to be the tallest order. But it’s so important to keep each other’s spirits up.

To quote the late, great Molly Ivins: “So keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doing it. And when you get through celebrating the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was!”

We hope this newsletter will be both a balm and a fuse for you. We’ll tell you stories about Joni Mitchell, Tom Lehrer and other people you’ve heard of. But we’ll also tell you about non-famous freedom fighters who’ve spent their lives defending democracy in the reddest parts of the country. We’ll introduce you to the activists who are doing the work right now in the all-important swing states, and – through them – we’ll connect you to the frontlines of this election. We’ll share who we listen to when we’re looking for the best takes on the state of the race. We’ll talk about what it means to “do politics,” and every week we’ll try to answer that all-important question: What should we be doing?

Thank you for joining us on this journey. Together, let’s SING, LAUGH and DEFEND DEMOCRACY!