Knocking Bush

Local singer/songwriter Charlie Imes’s new album includes the song “Worst Presnadent Ever,” featuring the George W. Bush impersonator from Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.

“James Adomian is also the guy always playing Bush on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” says Imes, who describes how the impressionist came to be on his album:

“I produced DemocracyFest at SDSU’s Open Air Theatre a while back, which included Cindy Lee Berryhill, Berkley Hart, Laurence Juber, and comedians like Al Franken and Marc Maron entertaining between speeches by politicos like Howard Dean and Maxine Waters.

“A year later, when I was recording ‘Worst Presnadent Ever,’ I contacted a couple of well-known Bush impersonators only to discover they wouldn’t do this type of song knocking Bush. I even bugged my connections at liberal talk-radio stations, to no avail.”

DemocracyFest comedian Marc Maron finally put Imes in touch with a willing Bush impersonator.

“So James Adomian was great, but now that I want to shoot a video of the song, he’s a lot harder to track down and schedule.”

The tune appears on Imes’s upcoming album On an Island – also the name of a recent high-profile CD and DVD by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour.

“On an Island seemed to work better than The Wall around an Island or Dark Side of an Island,” jokes Imes.

A CD-release party takes place August 16 in the Barefoot Bar on Mission Bay.

– Jay Allen Sanford