Calendar

Emma’s Revolution
Moving Forward Concert

Known for fearless, truth-telling lyrics and melodies you can’t resist singing, Emma’s Revolution is the dynamic, award-winning activist duo of Pat Humphries & Sandy O. The duo are in their 20th year performing together. Emma’s Revolution’s songs have traveled around the world and have been sung for the Dalai Lama, praised by Pete Seeger and covered by Holly Near.

With one eye on the news, Emma’s Revolution consistently writes songs about critical issues happening in the world and enthusiastically lends their voices to the movements those issues inspire. “Our House is on Fire” was selected as the opening track for Hope Rises, a compilation CD from a national nonprofit co-founded by Noel (Paul) Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary. “Keep on Moving Forward” opened the UN’s Committee on the Status of Women’s Bejiing+25 Conference. The song originally opened the NGO Forum of the 4th UN World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, becoming its unofficial anthem. Emma’s Revolution are winners of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest Grand Prize and the first Phil Ochs Award.

“Our work has always been about building connection, love and justice through song,” the duo says. “During this pandemic, we have moved much of our work online, creating opportunities for people to sing together (Zoom-style), use songwriting as a way to process emotions in an unsettled era, and attend concerts where they can have a sense of connectedness, solace and even joy in this challenging time.”

As independent artists and queer and non-conforming women, Emma’s Revolution has a national presence among communities, organizations and venues that share the duo’s vision of valuing people over profit, choosing compassion over violence, demanding accountability, and building a more just and sustainable world.

“Fervent and heartfelt” ~ The New York Times

Masks welcomed for everyone’s continued safety

7:30 Revel’n

Evelyn Idzerda and Ron Snyder have wowed Best Cellar audiences in the past with their fine harmonies, flashy guitar playing and great song selection.

8:30 The Idle Hands Trio

Nick Rivard, Dave Chiller, and Ben Woodman will bring something new, to The Cellar: Acoustic Gypsy Jazz. Some great instrumental work to classic songs of the past.

 Best Cellar is held on the last Friday of each month of the school year.
Admission is pay-what-you-will, with a minimum of 2 dollars. Kids are free and welcome.
Coffee, tea, and gluten free cookies are fifty cents each.
Masks are encouraged but not required.
In “the cellar” of the church, with an entrance around the back of the church.
For more information contact Mark Weiss at mjweiss@alyrica.net

Roy Zimmerman is a satirical songwriter in the Tom Lehrer/Phil Ochs tradition with a great gift for clever and funny lyrics that really rhyme and an incredibly entertaining banter between his song

“You’re brilliant. Just brilliant!” — Terry Jones, Monty Python

Tom Lehrer himself says, “I congratulate Roy Zimmerman on reintroducing literacy to comedy songs.  And the rhymes actually rhyme, they don’t just ‘rhyne.'”

Joni Mitchell says, “Roy’s lyrics move beyond poetry and achieve perfection.

“He spent the Comedy Boom years of the Eighties doing stand-up in San Francisco, sharing stages with George Carlin, Bill Maher, Kate Clinton, Dennis Miller and many others. He wrote all the material for his funny folk music quartet The Foremen, recording two albums for Warner/Reprise Records. He’s done several shows with The Pixies’ Frank Black, swapping songs in a solo acoustic setting.“Roy Zimmerman simultaneously inspires me and makes me laugh my ass off,” says comedian/author Paul Krassner.

Zimmerman tours almost constantly, taking his funny songs about fracking, creationism, marijuana laws, government shutdown, same-sex marriage, guns, taxes and abstinence across the country, often playing in some of the least Progressive places in America for the most Progressive people there.  “I get accused of preaching to the converted,” he says, “but I don’t think of it that way. I think of it as entertaining the troops.”  The world is full of funny songs, but Zimmerman’s hilarious, rhyme-intensive originals are also incisive calls to action, smart, savvy and undeniable. 

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.Sing Out! Magazine writes, “Zimmerman is a guy on the left skewering folks on the right with rapier-sharp lyrics … underneath the caustic satire is a man who is surprisingly optimistic.”