A part-time musician from Chicago who liked Donald Trump’s campaign message decided to write a song when he overheard two boys talking down America.
The result, produced and recorded with a couple of friends, was “Let’s Make America Great Again.”
And now that Joe Ambroggio and his family are among millions doing better in the Trump economy, he hopes more Americans will be able to hear his song if the president likes it.
In the meantime, “Let’s Make America Great Again” can be heard on YouTube and Facebook and, Ambroggio says, on iTunes soon.
“I am an average guy from the Chicago suburbs that has been playing music and writing songs for a while now for my own enjoyment,” Ambroggio tells The Daily Signal.
The Joe Ambroggio Band still plays a few gigs a year.
But like many an amateur musician before him, the guitarist and songwriter has concentrated on family and work—in Ambroggio’s case, his job as a customer service and sales representative for an abrasives manufacturer an hour west of Chicago.
“I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and love it here, despite the murder rates in Chicago,” Ambroggio, 52, says. “I feel that our mayor [Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat] is deliberately holding Chicago back. I am glad he is not running again.”
Ambroggio says it long bothered him to hear “horror stories” of how military veterans were treated when they returned home, especially when they needed medical care.
Although he didn’t serve in the armed forces, he says his father, two uncles, and two grandfathers did.
“These people fought to keep us free. Some gave their lives for us, and our children,” Ambroggio says.
Fast-forward to early June 2016.
“I overheard some 12- to 13-year-old kids talking in a Walgreens one day about how ‘Dad says we need to move out of the USA because it is not a good place to live anymore,’” he recalls.
“That made me think, because I was always raised to be proud to be an American. So, one day at the office, I came up with the melody for the chorus, [which begins] ‘Let’s make America great again.’ I got home, jumped on my motorcycle, and in two hours, I had the lyrics written.”
The words to the song open with a tribute to those who have fought for America, the image of a flag cast to the ground, and then a twist on that overheard conversation:
My father once said these words to me
Said, ‘Boy, there’s nowhere I’d rather be
Respect yourself and respect our land
It’s great to be an American’
Swelling like any solid heartland rocker should, the chorus goes:
Let’s make America great again
Let’s show ’em what we can do again
We can do it if we try
Look ’em straight in the eye
Hold our heads way up high
Ambroggio, the son of a machinist and an executive secretary, says he got a good reception when he played the song live at a party later that summer.
He says he was going for “a Midwestern feel,” as in the music of rockers Bob Seger, John Mellencamp, and Kid Rock.
With the help of two musician friends, by that July he had recorded “Let’s Make America Great Again.”
Ambroggio plays guitar and bass on the final, nearly five-minute version, with Anthony Cyranek handling lead vocals and Tony Montana on drums. Montana also owns Spiral Groove Studios in North Aurora, Ill., where the song was recorded.
Hoping to attract some attention to his tune, Ambroggio emailed most of Chicago’s TV and radio stations “to no avail,” he recalls in an email to The Daily Signal.
He and his wife of 25 years, Margaret, a teacher, have two children: James, 12, is in seventh grade, and Molly, 19, is a sophomore at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
So far in his presidency, Trump has helped the Ambroggio family because taxes are lower, more money is in his and others’ paychecks, and the economy is booming, the musician says.
America also is respected again, he says, and he and his family will be safer because of increased defense spending to rebuild the military.
“I have voted Republican since 1984,” Ambroggio says. “I like for my family to be safe, and Republicans are strong on defense and the military. The thing that attracted me to Trump is that he really isn’t interested in special interests and really cannot be bought.”
“I supported Trump in the primaries, as he looked like the best choice to beat Hillary Clinton,” he says, adding:
He was strong on America first. It seemed to me that Barack Obama was deliberately tearing down America by going on his apology tour and making everything about being politically correct first, America second.
Trump is a numbers guy, and he was big on America getting better trade deals, bringing business back to America, creating jobs, and cutting government waste. All of these appealed to me.
I figured he would have the best chance of keeping his election promises.
“I think he is doing a great job,” Ambroggio says of the president a year and nearly nine months into his term.
Now, he would like nothing more than for Trump to hear the song and to use it during rallies and other appearances.
“Everyone says they think it would sound better than the Stones tune blasting out of the speakers at the rallies,” Ambroggio says.
The Rolling Stones’ 1969 song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” routinely blares after Trump finishes speaking at many events.
Ambroggio and Montana recently remixed their recording of “Let’s Make America Great Again,” and the songwriter hopes to make it available on iTunes before long.
