The me&thee invites you to strap yourself in for a night of song, stories and most of all laughter as we welcome Don White and Roy Zimmerman. Bring your handkerchief because you will be shedding tear of laughter during this co-bill. Lynn-based White has had local audiences in stitches for years at his performances. He recently published Memoirs of a C Student, a collection of twelve of his short stories. California-based Zimmerman recently reported on a party he attended in honor of Woodstock’s 40th anniversary. “It was a great event. Thousands of psychedelic relics, rolling their own . . . oxygen tanks. The Jefferson Facelift played. There was a loitering contest. I dressed completely in hemp, because it IS more comfortable than cotton. And I’ve never had a pair of pants that stayed lit that long. But no nudity, unless you count baldness.”

If you laugh and cry within the same ten minutes, you either need a vacation or you are sitting in the audience at a Don White show. This working class family man from Lynn, Massachusetts has emerged as the thoughtful songwriter of the decade whose relevance to our lives is evidenced by the powerful reaction he evokes at every concert. Radio audiences, too, are not safe from the Don White experience. Valerie Adams of WNCS Radio, Vermont said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Every time I play “I Know What Love Is” the phones light up like a Christmas tree. Stereo Review magazine called it “ . . . A candidate for song of the year.”

In 1974 Don started hitch-hiking around America. “I went to Alaska and Newfoundland. That first trip I was gone eleven months and I only spent $1,100,” he says gleefully. His wife — then girlfriend — Theresa joined him on the road. They backpacked around the country for three years with a guitar and their dog — a female whose first ‘heat’ inspired the breathtakingly funny The Shameful Ballad of Lijah The Orchard Queen — finding occasional work as itinerant farm hands and laborers. “The freedom was addictive,” he says. Since settling down in Lynn, Don has worked on a craft of songwriting and performing. He learned his art in the trenches: often doing nine shows a week at Catch A Rising Star over two and a half years. Studying the masters who passed though that fabled club, he developed his own infectious brand of humor and pathos that rivets the crowd wherever he plays.

Don White illuminates the human experience though his writing and performing. His motivation for doing so is eloquently expressed in the spoken word piece he performs after singing “Heartbeat of Heaven.” Whether he is singing, speaking, or setting up the sneakiest punch line of the night, Don has the hearts of his audience. They know they have his.

Don White photo by Craig Harris

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The Los Angeles Times says, “Roy Zimmerman displays a lacerating wit and keen awareness of society’s foibles that bring to mind a latter-day Tom Lehrer.” 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.” Roy says he has been writing topical since Mrs. Hemphill’s wig blew off in seventh grade. His songs have a decidedly Lefty slant. We used to have a name for Right Wing satire — we called it “cruelty.” He has shared the stage with George Carlin, Bill Maher, Kate Clinton, Dennis Miller, Sandra Tsing Loh, kd lang, Andy Borowitz and Paul Krassner, and played a series of shows swapping songs with The Pixies’ Frank Black. He founded and wrote all the material for the satirical folk quartet The Foremen, who recorded for Warner/Reprise throughout the Nineties. He wrote about five hours of material for the group. They never did it all at once, but we kept it ready in case they had to filibuster. He has just released his fifth solo album, Faulty Intelligence. Roy says, “I hope it gets good reviews, but mostly I hope it gets denied under oath by Karl Rove.”

No artist on the coffeehouse circuit today is better than Don White at combining the heartfelt aesthetics of the singer-songwriter with side-splitting laughs. He mines the same regions for his jokes as he does for his serious songs: his streetwise, sometimes warring, sometimes loving family in Lynn. Scott Alarik, Boston Globe

A self-described “chord hack,” White doesn’t try to wow anyone with guitar wizardry. Instead, his act is about homespun truth and spot-on timing. He’s a confessional songwriter, recounting his own foibles — and those of his (assuredly sainted) wife and kids — with wide-eyed openness. He’s the kind of writer who can take a split-second moment in his life (like a look his wife gives him when he’s splayed out on the sofa with the dog) and turn it into a five-minute musical epic. Whit Hill, arborweb.com

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[Roy Zimmerman is] a unique type of superhero who possesses the power to nearly coax urine from the unwilling bladders of his audience members (via laughter). He delivered some of the smartest satirical songs that I’d ever heard.”Jeff Penalty, lead singer for The Dead Kennedys