TLPP: Fired From The Nashville Symphony - James Zimmermann

Lions of Liberty Network

Lions of Liberty

Comedy, News, Business, Politics

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2026

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of The Lou Perez Podcast, I talk with clarinet player James Zimmermann about being a nine-year-old on Broadway (you may have seen him in The Will Rogers Follies back in 1991), why old people gravitate to the fine arts, the slopification of entertainment, blind auditions, and his firing from the Nashville Symphony. Check out my book, That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r Watch my sketch comedy streaming on Red Coral Universe: https://redcoraluniverse.com/en/series/the-lou-perez-comedy-68501a2fd369683d0f2a2a88?loopData=true&ccId=675bc891f78f658f73eaa46d Rock XX-XY Athletics. You can get 20% off your purchase with promo code LOU20. https://www.xx-xyathletics.com/?sca_ref=7113152.ifIMaKpCG3ZfUHH4 Support me at www.substack.com/@louperez Join my newsletter www.TheLouPerez.com Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../the-lou-perez.../id1535032081 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2KAtC7eFS3NHWMZp2UgMVU Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/.../2b7d4d.../the-lou-perez-podcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb5trMQQvT077-L1roE0iZyAgT4dD4EtJ Lou Perez is a comedian, producer, and the author of THAT JOKE ISN'T FUNNY ANYMORE: ON THE DEATH AND REBIRTH OF COMEDY. You may have seen him on Gutfeld! , FOX News Primetime, One Nation with Brian Kilmeade, and Open to Debate (with Michael Ian Black). Lou was the Head Writer and Producer of the Webby Award-winning comedy channel We the Internet TV. During his tenure at WTI, Lou made the kind of comedy that gets you put on lists and your words in the Wall Street Journal: “How I Became a ‘Far-Right Radical.’” As a stand-up comedian, Lou has opened for Rob Schneider, Rich Vos, Jimmy Dore, Dave Smith, and toured the US and Canada with Scott Thompson. Lou has also produced live shows with Colin Quinn, the Icarus Festival, and the Rutherford Comedy Festival. For years, Lou performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater (both in NYC and L.A.) in sketch shows with the Hammerkatz and his comedy duo, Greg and Lou. Greg and Lou is best known for its sketch "Wolverine's Claws Suck," which has over 20 million views on YouTube alone. In addition to producing sketch comedy like Comedy Is Murder, performing stand-up across the country, and writing for The Blaze's Align, Lou is on the advisory board of Heresy Press, a FAIR-in-the-arts fellow, and host of the live debate series The Wrong Take and The Lou Perez Podcast (which is part of the Lions of Liberty Podcast Network), and co-hosts Happy Hour Econ with Phil Magness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey guys, welcome back to the Lou Perez podcast on the Lions of Liberty Podcast Network. I am your host, Lou Perez. And today I am joined by James Zimmerman. He is a professional clarinet player or clarinetist, which I didn't know that word existed.
0:22.2	But what do you prefer, James? Do you like clarinetist?
0:25.8	I mean, I think clarinetist sounds a little pretentious, so I just usually say
0:29.6	clarinet player myself, but whatever floats your boat.
0:32.3	To be fair, clarinet as an instrument kind of is pretentious.
0:37.1	To me, to a layman, it kind of comes off as a pretension, like, oh man, I'm dealing with a fucking clarinet as an instrument kind of is pretent. To me, to a layman, it kind of comes off as a pretension.
0:40.0	Like, oh man, I'm dealing with a fucking clarinet player,
0:42.2	a clarinetist here.
0:43.5	Sadly, that's true, but I try to keep it to being like a people's
0:48.2	instrument, you know, the regular instrument that people
0:50.7	often played in the fifth grade and try to be as regular as I can as a
0:55.2	client player can be.
0:56.5	How did you get into it?
0:59.2	I'm always really interested in hearing kind of like the origin story of musicians, in
1:05.2	particular where there are just countless instruments that you can play and then honing in on this one
1:12.8	specific one. Like, how did that work for you? Well, I started on violin when I was really little
1:18.5	doing Suzuki violin. It's a ear training type program. I had some proclivity for it, but I didn't
1:25.9	like the instrument. So then I switched to piano. My mom is a
1:29.1	pianist, and I was okay at the piano. I still play a little bit, but it's very disorienting,
1:33.2	trying to coordinate the two hands, read the music. So we had some woodwinds in the house. My dad is
1:39.4	also a musician, a regular business guy, but a sideman musician also, very accomplished musicians, both of my parents.
1:46.4	But we had a saxophone in the house, so I said, Dad, I want to play the sax. It seems easy.
	...

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