Twelve Songs of Christmas: Recent Episodes
Alex Rawls
”The Twelve Songs of Christmas” tries to sort out the place of Christmas music in our culture by talking to the people who make it.
Season seven of 12 Songs comes to a conclusion with three very different conversations and artists. Ha-Sizzle is one of the finest examples of the New Orleans-specific brand of hip-hop known as bounce. I talked to him about his Christmas in New Orleans in front of a live audience.
The members of the British punk band Goddammit Jeremiah talk about their irreverent approach to Christmas and Christmas music and share a few of their holiday favorites that haven't made much of an impact here in the States.
At the end of an interview with MacMcCaughan of Superchunk for another story, I got a few minutes to talk about their cover of John Cale's "Child's Christmas in Wales," as well as his other attempts to make music for the season.
In that conversation, The Kinks' "Father Christmas" was referred to for the second or third time this season, and it took a lot of discipline not to play it again.
We also hear new music from É Arenas and Saturday Looks Good to Me, the latter from the new compilation Have Yourself a Merry Indie Christmas Vol. 4. I interviewed its compiler/producer Kevin McGrath in 2022.
In the episode, I mention a piece I wrote for The New Orleans Advocate. I also mention this year's downloadable Christmas mix, which you can get by writing me at alex@myspiltmilk.com.
12 Songs will return on July 24, 2025. Mark that date on your calendar or subscribe to 12 Songs wherever you get your podcasts.
We're approaching Christmas, so this week I have excerpts from longer interviews that I'll run at full length next season. Steven Wilson is the driving force behind the British art rock band Porcupine Tree, and last year on a challenge he used artificial intelligence to write a Christmas song, something he felt that he couldn't do on his own.
The whole conversation goes deep on the relationship between artists and AI, and the odd experience of encountering an AI version of himself online. Here I tried to capture part of that conversation and keep it relatively focused on Christmas.
I have a challenge for next season though, because he talked about his favorite album being a Christmas album by The Hiltonaires. I've seen it under two different titles, and he thinks there might be more. Unfortunately, none of them are for sale in any of the digital stores, so I couldn't find any music from it that I could play in this episode. If any of you have digitized a Christmas track from the Hiltonaires, please let me know.
The second interview is with É Arenas, the long-time bass player with Chicano Batman. We talk about his relationship with the band as it enters an "indefinite hiatus," and how he started a yearly project of making songs that he considered Cumbia Navideña--a genre he invited with cumbias for the holiday.
We only get part way though his catalogue of seasonal music, but in addition to talking about his own music, he turned me on to the Héctor Lavoe and Willie Colón classic Asalto Navideño and music by Rigo Tovar.
Then I talk to Kelcy Wilburn of New Orleans' Americana band Ever More Nest. In 2015, I wrote a story for The New Orleans Advocate on her first Christmas song, "Christmas with You (Merry Me)," which at the time doubled as a Christmas song and a celebration of the Supreme Court affirming the rights of same-sex couples to marry. As she explains, it also served as a quasi-proposal to her partner.
We talk about that, the Christmas music of her youth, and the way life as a working musician led to her new Christmas EP, Merry Little Thing.
This episode also features new Christmas music from Sara Noelle, Kristian Noel Pederson, and Popular Muzak.
If you'd like this year's exclusive listeners-only Christmas mix, email me at alex@myspiltmilk.com.
Finally, follow, subscribe or do what you have to do to get 12 Songs in your podcast feed. We only have one more episode after this in 2024, then we'll return in time for Christmas in July 2025. If we're in your feed, new episodes will show up without you having to hunt for them.
We're officially in December, the Christmas season, and I have more interviews than I can get through in the weeks leading up to Christmas. From here on in, I'll run excerpts from the interviews I've done, and I'll run them in their entirety next season.
This episode starts with some clean-up business after last week's conversation with Midge Ure on "Do They Know it's Christmas." I referenced Ed Sheeran's complaint that he would have preferred to be left off the 40th anniversary mega-mix, and the charges against the song by Fuse ODG. In the episode, I reference Bob Geldof responding to criticisms of the song.
I also mentioned one of my favorite new releases of the season, Dadi Freyr's How Dadi Stole Christmas.
This episode, I talk to Joey Williams, musical director for The Blind Boys of Alabama. In the episode, I mention that they surprised me with a new release, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" with Jay Buchanan. We talk about their album, Go Tell it on the Mountain, and when we revisit this conversation next season, we'll also talk about their collaboration with Taj Mahal, Talkin' Christmas.
Another new track comes from Nick Bhalla, who recorded the album Saint Nick with his jazz piano trio. As this version of "Christmas Time is Here" shows, it borders on lo-fi in its emphasis on mood and melody. Hopefully I'll be able to get him for the show next season.
I also interview Bruce Sudano, who has a new album, Talkin' Ugly Truth, Tellin' Pretty Lies. When I revisit this interview in its entirety next season, we'll get into that and his start with Alive and Kicking, the band that recorded the one-hit wonder "Tighter, Tighter" in 1970.
We talk about his relationship with Donna Summer, who he wrote songs for, married, and managed. We start talking about Bad Girls, the first album he worked on, then move to Summer's 1994 Christmas album, The Christmas Spirit, which was reissued on vinyl this holiday season.
After that, I talk to singer, songwriter, and friend of 12 Songs Alexandra Scott about Sia's Everyday is Christmas. It's a loose conversation as we work through some thoughts about a Christmas album we both really like, but with a few reservations.
Finally, on Black Friday I appeared on WBUR's "Here and Now" to talk about songs you might want to add to your holiday playlists. The segment is online now, and even if you've already heard it, you might want to visit the page since it has a playlist with some additional songs that I would have featured if we had another hour.
Finally, DJ David Kunian invited me to join him on his radio show to spin and talk about Christmas music on WWOZ in New Orleans on Tuesday night. The show is online for the next two weeks if you'd like to check it out.
Midge Ure from The Rich Kids, Ultravox and Visage co-wrote and produced "Do They Know it's Christmas" 40 years ago this week on November 25, 1984. He recently released a new live album, Live at the Royal Albert Hall 04.10.23, so we talked about that, touring, the Blitz club and his memories of the sessions for "Do They Know it's Christmas."
In this episode, I talk a little more than usual to contextualize the song and the interview. We talk about the new 40th anniversary mega-mix, which is due out Friday but the video is already out. I'll talk more about it next week.
I also mention the documentary Band Aid the Song that Rocked the World, where Midge Ure tells the story of the song in 2004.
I also found it interesting to think about this next to USA for Africa's "We Are the World." Band Aid led the way, and the American version feels very American because, as the Netflix documentary The Greatest Night in Pop showed, it threw cool out the window and simply marshaled the biggest names in music that they could get, whereas Geldof and Ure bet on the cutting edge of British pop to not only raise money but make charitable donations cool.
Next week I'll talk a little about the 40th anniversary mega-mix and some developments that have sprung up around it.
In the episode, I mentioned this year's playlist. I envision it as an alternative to the all-Christmas radio stations and recommend you listen to it on shuffle so you don't know what's coming next. It will also grow as I hear more songs that I want to share or listen to and decide what's missing.
Once again, I'm also making a special, listeners-only downloadable Christmas mix. If you want one, email me at alex@myspiltmilk.com and I'll send it over.
Husband and wife duo Dean & Britta have a sound that suits contemporary Christmas music beautifully. They've done a few movie soundtracks including 13 Most Beautiful, an album of songs commissioned by the Andy Warhol Museum to perform songs beneath Warhol's silent films shot between 1964 - 1966.
Their sound is evocative but spare, with deeply reverbed guitars and melodic touches that bring '60s scenes to mind without being stuck there. On A Peace of Us, they and frequent collaborator Sonic Boom from Spaceman 3 work a similar magic. It's easy to envision it as part of the soundtrack to an evening during the Christmas season, entertaining enough to get your attention and hold it, but it doesn't demand your time and focus.
As Britta Phillips and Sonic Boom - Pete Kember - explain, that's in part because the album is an expression of their relationship, and something they have been working on in bits and pieces since 2007 when Dean & Britta recorded a 45 with "Old Toy Trains" and "He's Coming Home." Kember talks about how he suggests covers, and how that too is part of their relationship.
In the episode, I reference my 12 Songs conversation with the Drive-By Truckers' Jay Gonzalez.
The episode also premieres a new Christmas song by the folk-rock band Dawes. I'm very entertained by the seasonal story-song "Christmas Tree in the Window," and you can stream it or download it at Dawes' Bandcamp page.
I'm also happy to feature a new song by Gina Birch, who you know from the British post-punk band The Raincoats or from her art career, if you know her at all. (I recognize those are very specific bona fides, but they're meaningful to me) This holiday season, Birch covered Yoko Ono's Christmas song, "Listen, the Snow is Falling," which appeared as the b-side of "Happy Xmas (War is Over)." You can download it at her Bandcamp page.
Finally, at the end of the episode I talk about the version of "Do You Know How Christmas Trees are Grown" by Jackie DeShannon. It's available in the main digital marketplaces, so you can check it out first and see if it's for you.
Twelve Songs goes to Las Vegas this week, first to talk with Sally Olson and Ned Mills of the tribute act Carpenters Legacy about The Carpenters and their Christmas music. This year, they took their affection for both subjects to the natural conclusion and recorded "Christmas Time with You," a Christmas song made in the mold of the Carpenters.
After that, I talk to comedian and ventriloquist April Brucker, who released a song sung by her and her puppet May Wilson, "Merry Christmas I'm So Glad I Didn't Marry You." We talk about ventriloquism, novelty songs, and the age-old tradition of using Christmas music to draw attention to your thing, whatever that thing is.
In the episode, I mentioned ChristmasUnderground.com and my interview with its creator, Jim Goodwin. I also talked about the Holly Jolly X'masu podcast focused on Japanese Christmas music, and mentioned my interview with its host, Scott Leopold. Also in the hype department, I talked about appearing on Gerry Davila's Totally Rad Christmas podcast to talk about "Do They Know it's Christmas " by Band Aid Mk I and Band Aid Mk II.
The episode closes with a great version of "Christmas Time is Here" by Kelli Jones and Daniel Coolik from the EP A Very Melancholy Christmas.
Earlier this season, I interviewed The Drive-By Truckers' Patterson Hood about his ambivalent relationship with Christmas music. This week I talk to the Truckers' long-time guitarist Jay Gonzalez, who takes a different path to a similar place. We talk about his relationship to the band as a full-time member since 2008 who isn't Hood, Mike Cooley, or long-time drummer Brad Morgan, and his love of Christmas songs that might or might not be Christmas songs.
Along the way, I play music from his Roll Up a Song by Gonzalez Smith and Jay Gonzalez Inflatable Orchestra Vol. 1.
I've been out of the country, so this week is an encore presentation with two very different artists--pop instrumental piano player Jim Brickman and Jeff Plate, the long-time drummer for the arena rock band Trans-Siberian Orchestra. When I conducted these interviews in 2020, I was really interested in how COVID-19 would affect two acts that have made holiday season tours a meaningful part of their business. I could imagine Brickman's music translating to a live-streamed show, but TSO delivers sensory overload with four forms of fire (if I remember correctly) and a lighting rig that itself moved like a Transformer regardless of what the lights attached to it did.
I also interviewed long-time TSO musical director Al Pitrelli in 2018 during the first season of 12 Songs.
This week I'm talking with blues artist Jontavious Willis, who recently released his album West Georgia Blues.
I wanted to talk to Jontavious not because of his Christmas music--he doesn't have any yet--but because he's doing something that I've been trying to pay attention to as people make contemporary music in traditional forms. We go a little longer with Jontavious talking about the blues in general to help get at that thought a bit.
But we also got to a number of his favorite blues Christmas songs, and I like that he's not doctrinaire in his choices, folding in Rev. J.M. Gates, The Emotions and James Brown among others. Early on he mentions Minnie Ripperton, and it takes a bit before I get to her, but I played "Christmas Love" by the Rotary Connection, which featured Minnie Ripperton on lead vocals.
In the episode, I also mentioned that I did a guest spot recently on the Totally Rad Christmas podcast, which focuses on Christmas in the '80s. We talked about "Do They Know it's Christmas" by Band Aid and Band Aid II from 1989 with a version of the song produced by the British pop hit making team of Stock Aiken Waterman. It's a fun conversation and worth the time.
Finally, Jontavious mentioned Lowell Folsom's "Lonesome Christmas," then rolled on to other songs so I never got to include a song by him. If you haven't heard it, here it is.
This season has featured surf Christmas music, calypso Christmas music, Sicilian Christmas music and smooth jazz Christmas music, so it can't be too much of a surprise that we finally get to Cajun Christmas music. I think Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys are an important band as they picked up the work of maintaining endangered musical traditions that was started by a generation before him, and he influenced the generation that followed by finding contemporary ways to express those traditions.
In today's interview, we talk about Feufollet's Chris Stafford, who I wrote about shortly after he died at My Spilt Milk.
When I played "Silent Night" by Harry Fontenot, I didn't identify it. It's from the album Merry Cajun Christmas.
I also mentioned that you can find Riley's Party at the Holiday, All Night Long and other contemporary Cajun music at ValcourRecords.com.
If you're interested in taking Cajun accordion lessons from Steve, you can reach him through his Facebook page or the Contact info at MamouPlayboys.com.
Americana artist Mindy Smith has been referred to on 12 Songs before. At some point in the COVID years I talked about my love of "Santa Will Find You" from her 2007 album My Holiday, and last year when I talked to The Indigo Girls, we talked about the song "It Really Is (a Wonderful Life,)" which they recorded. It turns out it was written by Chely Wright, but the only version I knew was Smith's from My Holiday.
For me, this was an interview I had long looked forward to, and it was made possible by the release of Quiet Town, her first album in 12 years. The album will be out tomorrow, though the song we play, "Something to Write in Stone," is out now along with two other songs. On October 4, it will all be for sale.
In the episode, I mention the heartbreaking (to me) Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club on Bandcamp, which I just heard will have two new singles available this year.
Mindy Smith will be on tour much of the rest of 2024, and you can find out where she'll be at MindySmithMusic.com.
Music journalist Annie Zaleski returns to 12 Songs this week. She last appeared in 2022 to talk about Wham!'s "Last Christmas." In 2023, she wrote This is Christmas Song by Song: The Stories Behind 100 Holiday Hits, so she's back to talk about a few of the songs she wrote about.
In the episode, we talk about the Kate Bush Christmas special and the Kacey Musgraves Christmas special, both of which are awesome in their ways.
I've long believed that if you can't get a good interview out of the Drive-By Truckers' Patterson Hood, you should hang up your keyboard and mic. The Truckers are a richly layered project with the loud guitars and pounding drums used to drive a lot of meatheaded lyrics instead supporting subtle storytelling that deals class and race as well as rock 'n' roll. For much of their career, they've used their albums to come to grips with the American South as it exists today, but the songs sound like songs, not a sociology textbook.
I caught up with Hood between legs of the "Southern Rock Opera Revised 2024" Tour. Southern Rock Opera put the band on the map in 2001 when it used the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd as the pry bar to get into some of the issues mattered to them. It charted the course for the band since then, so it has a lot of legacy.
I expected the Christmas end of this conversation to be Hood talking about the Christmas songs he likes and his relationship to Christmas music, but while prepping for the interview, I discovered there are two Drive-By Truckers Christmas songs in the world. Those, obviously, get the 12 Songs breakdown as well.
To see if the Southern Rock Opera tour is coming your way, visit DriveByTruckers.com. I wrote about the New Orleans stop on the tour on my Substack page, The Cream.
Saxophone player Boney James has two Christmas albums, Boney's Funky Christmas and Christmas Present. Both make sense as the place where jazz and R&B meet, and that was transparently the case when he recorded his first album, Trust, in 1992.
We talk about those early years in addition to his Christmas music, and we discussed having an album of new music in the can that he wasn't at liberty to talk about or play. Since we recorded the interview, the album's title--Slow Burn--and its release date were released, along with two songs. It's due out October 18, and we feature one new song from it, "Butterfly," with guest spots by Cory Henry and Marcus Miller.
I wrote a piece on James based in part on this interview for My Spilt Milk.
The episode ends with a Christmas song from British punk band/cult fave Helen Love. If anybody knows where I can get an mp3 of this half of a split single, please let me know. The song is too awesome not to be in my collection.
Our surf Christmas episode inadvertently laid the groundwork for this week’s, which focuses largely on Calypso Christmas music. New Orleans’ Charlie and the Tropicales released Presents for Everyone, an album of Calypso Christmas songs, in 2023.
This week I’m talking to trombone player and bandleader Charlie Halloran about the album, Calypso Christmas music, Mighty Sparrow, tiki bars, and being a working working musician in New Orleans. We talk briefly about an indispensable Calypso Christmas album, A Calypso Christmas, which includes classic tracks by Lord Kitchener, Lord Nelson, The Mighty Spoiler and more. You can find it in the digital marketplaces.
You can get Presents for Everyone on vinyl on Charlie and the Tropicales’ Bandcamp page, and you can also find a digital version of their new album, Jump Up, which we hear in today’s episode. We also talk about Mighty Sparrow Christmas music, which is available through the digital download stores.
I finish this episode with another New Orleans project, Haunted House Party and music from last year’s The Spirits of Christmas. The DJ-oriented beat tape for the holidays is also available in all formats including vinyl on the Haunted House Party Bandcamp page.
In 2021, I interviewed Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick, a band I've only grown to appreciate more over the years. They released their first three albums--Cheap Trick, In Color and Heaven Tonight--in 18 months, and Dream Police followed a whole year later. They toured constantly at the time, which makes that productivity all the more impressive.
In 2017, they released a Christmas album, Christmas Christmas, an album that's easy to like and easier to admire after Petersson talks about the inspirations for the songs.
I talked to Petersson because the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers had a new album out, In Another World, and the conversation was a lot about what a band that tours as much as they do does when COVID forces it off the road.
I don’t usually get to end a conversation on Christmas music with memories of radio legend Art Bell and his late night deep dive into the paranormal, After Dark with Art Bell. But that’s what happened when I talked to Mark Christopher Lee of the British lo-fi indie rock band The Pocket Gods. It took a lot of discipline not to end the show with After Dark’s theme, “Chase” by Giorgio Moroder. Instead, the episode ends with “Merry Christmas to the Drunks, Merry Christmas to the Lovers,” a new-to-me track by the Edinburgh indie band ballboy.
My conversation with Lee on The Pocket Gods covers a lot of ground as we talk about influential British DJ John Peel, Phil Spector, John Cage, and the way Lee morphed the band into a conceptual art project that explored how musicians do and don’t get paid in a streaming ecosystem dominated by Spotify.
Late in the conversation, we talk about Lee’s forays into documentary films. You can find Weird: The Life and Times of a Pocket God, Inspired: The 30-Second Song Movie, God Versus Aliens, and The King of UFOs: Royal UFO Secrets Revealed at Tubitv.com or the Tubi Roku app.
All of the music on today’s show is available at the iTunes Store, but 2021’s A Quantum Christmas Song, which is more than 115 hours long, can only be purchased as a full album and requires more than 8 GB of disc space to download. I think Mark will understand if you choose to stream rather than buy that one.
Michela Mussolino introduced me to a new body of Christmas music this week. The New Jersey-born Memphis resident specializes in Sicilian folk music, and she recorded an album of predominantly Sicilian Christmas songs in 2022 on La Notti Triunfanti.
We talk about how someone arrives at that specialty, the deep history behind some of these songs, and how moving to Memphis affected some of the songs on the album.
In the episode, Michela talks about “Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle” being one of the best loved Italian Christmas songs, so I chose Andrea Bocelli’s version to give you a taste of it.
For more on Michela, visit MichelaMusolino.com.
I have so little surf Christmas music in my collection that I turned to WTUL DJ Hunter King, host of "Storm Surge of Reverb" to see if there was a substantial body of surf Christmas music. As I expected, the answer is yes.
We talk about old and new Christmas surf, Hunter's relationship to Christmas music, and vinyl because it almost goes without saying that as a surf music fan, he's a vinyl guy.
In the episode, I mention my insane Dick Dale interview--really a monologue--and it's so dizzying it's worth your time.
I was pleasantly surprised how easy much of today's playlist was to find. A lot is on Bandcamp, and I found The Avalanches' Ski Surfin' at the iTunes Store. I only had to ask for mp3s from Hunter for The HE 5, and you can find their excellent version of "Auld Lang Syne" on the 2015 Psych-Out Christmas compilation. I assume Iggy Pop's version of "White Christmas" was the album's sales pitch, but I got it for the versions of "Silent Night" and "Jingle Bell Rock" by New Orleans' Quintron and Miss Pussycat.
Finally, in the closing notes I mentioned the best-of shows I did after reaching episode 100. Here's the first of that series.
The new season of Twelve Songs starts with an interview with Thomas Mertz, one of the founders of the social media game Whamageddon. To win the game, you must go from December 1 to Christmas without hearing Wham!'s "Last Christmas." Hear it and you're out. People play on social media on the honor system, but for Mertz, the fun is in the way the game has created a community.
Since he is in Denmark, he and his friends have a slightly different Christmas canon, and when they started playing almost 20 years ago, "Last Christmas" had the kind of ubiquity in Denmark that "All I Want for Christmas is You" now has in the United States.
We talk about Wham!, "Last Christmas," social media and Christmas music among other things, and I have scattered versions of "Last Christmas" throughout the episode. Covers are acceptable, so I have saved Wham!'s version to the very end and given listeners fair warning so that if people hear this episode in December, it won't put them out.
I don't stop to identify the versions in episode, but this episode's playlist is (in order):
"Last Christmas" - Carly Rae Jepsen
"Last Christmas" - Lucy Dacus
"Last Christmas" - Cano Caoli
"Last Christmas" - Sweet Crude
"Last Christmas" - Leo Moracchioli
"Last Christmas" - Aloe Blacc
"Jus Det Cool" - MC Einar
"Last Christmas" - Stardeath and the White Dwarfs
"Last Christmas" - Wham!
Last Christmas, I promised that 12 Songs would return with Christmas in July 2024. Since July 25 falls on a Thursday, it seemed like an appropriate day to return with the first episode of the new season. Here are a few notes on the upcoming season including a song that hints at a direction we'll go in the first month.
Season six of 12 Songs comes to a close with some of the highlights from the 2023 holiday season and a conversation with DJ/producer/business guy Raj Smoove and rapper/producer 504icygrl about the new Christmas in New Orleans EP. Raj and Icy talk about Christmas, community, business, and the historically awkward fit between hip-hop and Christmas music.
In the episode, I mention the Daily Beast story I wrote on Cher's Christmas and Christmas music in October, the streaming version of my Christmas playlist, Bill Adler's Xmas Jollies 2023 and Jim Goodwin of ChristmasUnderground.com's I'm an Igloo playlist.
If you haven't already done so, please subscribe, follow, or do whatever you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. That way, you'll know when we return in time for Christmas in July.
Today's show is a lot about the backstage of the music business as the Vancouver-based alternative rock band Mother Mother talks about finding a darker angle on Christmas music with "Cry Christmas" and their version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."
This week Ryan Guldemond of the band and I talk about how a rock band finds a way to do Christmas music in a way that's authentic, as well as why a band like Mother Mother would even do one in the first place.
In this episode, I also talk about new Christmas releases by Sara Noelle, My Morning Jacket, and music writer Kevin McGrath, who compiled Have Yourself a Merry Indie Christmas Vol. 3 in time for this season. If you like their music, you can go back and hear my interview with Sara from earlier this season and Kevin from last season.
I also mentioned in the show that listeners can still request my free playlist by writing me at alex@myspiltmilk.com. You can also hear my "Twelve Songs of Christmas Christmas" mix on Apple Music and Spotify.
This holiday season, Imogen Clark released "Not Christmas Here," talking about how all the wintery signs that Christmas is coming don't mean as much to her because she's from Australia. In the Southern Hemisphere, it's hot in December and white wine is their egg nog.
The song is a bit of looking ahead for Clark because she’s moving to the States next year. It’s also her fourth Christmas song, so we spoke recently about them, Christmas in Australia, and Australian Christmas favorites.
In the episode, I mention "A Twelve Songs of Christmas Christmas," a five-hour streaming playlist on Apple Music and Spotify that, if shuffled, will give you the effect of an all-Christmas music radio station minus the songs you've heard to death.
I also mentioned the 2023 Twelve Songs mix, which you can get free if you email me at alex@myspiltmilk.com to request it. It is a shorter, programmed mix, and it includes some songs that aren't on any of the streaming services including some great indie and Japanese Christmas songs.
This episode has been a few years in the making, but I was finally able to find a quiet moment in the busy lives of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of The Indigo Girls.
In 2010, they released Holly Happy Days, a holiday album that's very much an Indigo Girls album with their musical, personal, social and spiritual values shaping the songs in the way that they do on everything else the duo has released.
We had a good conversation not only about the album but how it fits into the long arc of their career--25 years when it was released.
Along the way, we get a little electronic bacon crackling while Amy is talking. I got it figured out fairly quickly, but there was no good edit point unless I dumped that section of the conversation, and I thought what she said was worth a few moments of crackle.
In the episode, I mention that this year's Christmas music mix is available. Send me a request at alex@myspiltmilk.com.
In the episode, I also mentioned an interview I did with Amy Ray for MySpiltMilk.com and my 12 Songs interview with Terre Roche.
Unfortunately, jazz pianist Dave Brubeck is no longer around to talk about his 1996 solo piano album A Dave Brubeck Christmas. Craft Recordings reissued the album this Christmas season, but Brubeck died in 2012 so I asked New Orleans piano player Matt Lemmler to help me get a handle on the album.
The resulting conversation is a deep dive into Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, and jazz piano. We talk about his most famous song, "Take Five," and detour to talk about A Charlie Brown Christmas because it really is that seminal a recording. Lemmler also helps us understand stride piano, a style Brubeck explores on his Christmas album.
One quick note: This is the rare episode of the podcast recorded me and my interview subject in the same room. That created a few audio complications, most of which I dealt with but there may be a few I couldn't catch. Thanks in advance for your patience, and I know how to prevent them in the future.
You can find A Dave Brubeck Christmas wherever you buy or stream music, and you can find Matt and his music at MattLemmler.com.
I listened to one episode of Scott Leopold's "Holly Jolly Xmasu" podcast and I was sold. As a Stereolab and High Llamas fan, I felt like there had to be a High Llamas Christmas song, and Scott found one on Christmas Songs, which also included a great Bossa nova version of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," a very unusual jazz piano take on "Sleigh Ride," and the ambient pop of Takako Minekawa on "Listen, the Snow is Falling."
Fortunately, much of that album--but not all of it--was available to purchase in the States. Much of the music he plays and all but one song that we play today aren't available for stream or download in the States.
Today, Scott and I talk about and play Japanese Christmas music, Japanese Christmas, and how he got into it. Collectors will recognize the contours of his story if not the specifics.
Blue Man Group started in 1987 as a performance art concept by guys who also harbored rock 'n' roll dreams. It has grown into an institution that has ongoing shows in Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, New York and Berlin. As of October, Blue Man Group now also has a Christmas EP, Overjoy to the World.
Today Blue Man composer Jeff Turlik and performer Bhurin Sead talk about all things Blue Man Group including how songs are written and recorded for a band known for playing percussion instruments made of PVC, and how holiday music fits into their shows.
I love when episodes overlap. Today, soul singer Eli "Paperboy" Reed talks about--among other things--his love of Huey "Piano" Smith's Christmas album, which we recently featured.
Reed has a new album, Hits and Misses: The Singles on YepRoc Records, and today we're talking about that and his Christmas music, including a snappy version of "Last Christmas" by Wham!
Along the way, we talk about a couple of tracks that weren't available on mp3, "What Do the Lonely Do at Christmas" by The Emotions and Reed's "Party Hard for Christmas." The link will help you get you to the first track, but he and/or his management appear to have taken down "Party Hard for Christmas." You'll hear why in the episode.
Chuck Brown has been dubbed "The Godfather of Go-Go," the distinctive Washington D.C.-based funk sound that has its own aesthetics and culture. This week, New Orleans' musicologist and go-go aficionado Melissa Weber shines some light on go-go and Brown because in 1999, he released The Spirit of Christmas.
Weber is an archivist at Tulane University, and in New Orleans she DJs at WWOZ and throws parties under the name she's best known by, DJ Soul Sister.
We talk about Brown, his Christmas music, and the 1991 compilation, Let's Go-Go Christmas.
New Orleans venerates its R&B royalty from the early days of rock 'n' roll, and many of them stayed active until they died, including Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Eddie Bo, Snooks Eaglin and Earl King. Huey "Piano" Smith was not one of them; he lived the last third of his life until his death earlier this year out of the limelight.
Since Smith also recorded one of my favorite Christmas albums, 1962's Twas the Night Before Christmas, I invited journalist John Wirt on the show to talk about Smith--his heyday, his heartbreaks, his later years, and his Christmas album, which comes with a story that I learned reading John's 2014 book, Huey "Piano" Smith and the Rockin' Pneumonia Blues.
Capitol Records tried to cash in on the '90s lounge revival with its "Ultra-Lounge" series--albums that pulled tracks from the label's vaults that fell under some of the umbrellas that came to associated with lounge including crooners, mambos, space-age sounds, and tiki bar music. In 1996, it released Christmas Cocktails, with series compiler Brad Benedict pulling together holidays songs from those genres.
It was so successful that Capitol released Christmas Cocktails Vol. 2 in 1997, then Christmas Cocktails Vol. 3 much later in 2012 with a different, more pedestrian creative team. By that point, Benedict and the Ultra-Lounge creative team had gone on to Shout Factory Records for the "Wonderland" series, three similar compilations of Christmas music that had different label libraries to draw from.
Christmas Cocktails was influential at the time and is still fondly remembered, so this week I'm discussing it with the King of Jingaling, Brad Ross MacLeod from one of the OG Christmas mp3 blogs, falalalalala.com.
We talk about his site, lounge, reissues, nostalgia, the contemporary music that bridged these songs from the late 1950s and early '60s with the music of the '90s when the first two volumes came out.
Along the way, we talk about Peggy Lee, who I discussed in an episode with her granddaughter Holly Foster-Wells in 2021.
The name "Sara Noelle" sounds like something made up for Christmas music, but she had been a recording artist since 2010, 10 years before she released her first Christmas track, "Christmas at Sea."
Since 2020, the ambient folk artist has made a tradition of releasing new Christmas music each year, and it's not a reach to think her songs would make sense on David Lynch's Twin Peaks Holiday Special. Noelle's songs aren't haunted, but the electronic atmospherics paired with her treated voice make her songs sound like they come from somewhere else, even while they sound very human.
We talked about her Christmas music, New Mexico, and her recent releases, a cover of The Beta Band's "Dry the Rain" and her most recent album, Do I Have to Feel Everything? We also discussed a creative writing journal she edits, Lyrics as Poetry, with writing from members of the rock 'n' roll community.
In 2018 when I launched Twelve Songs, I published "The 12 Songs Manifesto," a statement of my core beliefs about Christmas music.
Now that we're in our sixth season and have a lot of listeners who weren't around back then, I thought it was worth revisiting and documenting in podcast form. I flesh out my thoughts, add a few and revise a few that no longer seem as crucial to me. And, I have music by Luther Vandross, Rockin' Sidney, Paul McCartney, Alexander O'Neal, The Bird and the Bee, SUNBEARS! and more to put some musical meat on those bones.
There was one late edit that some of you will notice. There is no Number Eight in my manifesto, not because I didn't have one but because I discovered while looking for an image to accompany this episode that the musician I featured had been found guilty of some extremely un-Christmas-y behavior. It was too late in the process to redo the whole passage, so I simply cut it.
Chris Marchand's blog post "On the Importance of Sad Christmas Songs" makes the argument its title promises, using "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as Exhibit A. Podcaster and writer Chris Marchand last appeared on Twelve Songs to break down Sufjan Stevens' Christmas albums, and this week he returns to talk about "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."
The song written for Judy Garland to sing in the movie Meet Me in St. Louis was too bleak in her mind for the situation, so it was revised to be merely guarded and tentative. We have her version, a performance of the original lyrics, and a few that followed to see how artists handle the song's mood and message.
Last week, I started the story of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," taking the song from being written by Haven Gillespie and J. Fred Coots, to the first version by banjo player/bandleader Harry Reser, to the version that popularized the song by Eddie Cantor.
This week, the song grows up with the help of Phil Spector, The Crystals, and Bruce Springsteen.
"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" is an orphan, a Christmas song without a singer attached. "White Christmas" has Bing Crosby, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" has Andy Williams, and "Happy Holidays" has Peggy Lee. But who sang the early version of the Christmas classic that casts a shadow over all the versions that follow? Nobody.
This week and next week, I'll tell the story of the song, from its writing to its place in the Christmas canon today. I'll tell the story of the song growing up, starting this week with its early days.
"Player's Ball" is a contemporary Christmas classic, but it's not very Christmas-y by design. Today, Big Boi of OutKast talks about why the song is the way it is, and how it ended up being the first solo release from the group.
After that, we have an encore segment from 2018. At the time, I talked to writer David Dennis Jr. about the song. Today, David's resumé has expanded somewhat. He recently launched the podcast Rap Stories, which features interviews with rappers about albums important to him. Last year he released the book The Movement Made Us, in which he helps his father tell some of the stories of his early days as a worker in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. David is also a regular participant on ESPN's Around the Horn.
In 2021, I talked with music journalist Alison Fensterstock and singers Dayna Kurtz and Alexandra Scott about versions of Eartha Kitt's "Santa Baby." That was a good conversation, but I still had questions and found some of my answers in other less famous Christmas songs recorded by Kitt. Those songs and some others in her repertoire filled in some blanks that we'll explore today.
This episode is based on an essay I wrote for The Daily Beast than ran on Christmas Day 2022.
The Roches' 1990 We Three Kings is the Christmas album you'd expect from the folk trio as sing a set of holiday classics gorgeously, often a cappella, and occasionally with their tongues ever so delicately in their cheeks.
Terre Roche remembers their Christmas shows, the Caroling Carolers, and getting shooed off the sidewalk in front of Trump Tower in a conversation about singing with her sisters.
The occasion for the conversation is Christmas and the release of Kin Ya See That Sun by Terre and Maggie Roche. It's a book that reflects on their first foray into the music business with humbling results. Terre talks about being young women in music in the early 1970s and some of the challenges they faced.
In the episode, Terre talks about a video of one of Suzzy's introductions to "Good King Wenceslas."
I also mention my Christmas mix, which I'll send you. Write me at alex@myspiltmilk.com to get one. You can also find Jim Goodwin's indie Christmas mix at ChristmasUnderground.com, and Brad Ross-McLeod's old vinyl Christmas mix at FaLaLaLaLa.com.
We also heard "Marshmallow World" from Nikki Yanofsky, which you can hear now on all the streaming services.
This week's episode features indie Christmas music--indie hip-hop with DJ and producer Amerigo Gazaway, British indie rock with Les Bicyclettes de Belsize's Charlie Darling, and British music journalist Kevin McGrath, who compiled 108 indie Christmas tracks for Have Yourself a Merry Indie Christmas Volume 1 and Volume 2. All of their music is available now on Bandcamp. Right now, Amerigo is also selling a limited edition vinyl pressing of his A Christmas Album paired with a vinyl pressing of the accompanying remix album with vocals.
During my conversation with Amerigo, we talk about his collaboration with rapper Mega Ran, who appeared on 12 Songs in 2020. While talking about his search for indie Christmas music, McGrath mentioned visiting the Christmas Underground website. Last week, I talked to Christmas Underground's Jim Goodwin on the show.
With Christmas approaching, it's time when I have more good conversations than I have weeks until December 25. Today, I have two conversations that I really enjoyed, one with Dennis Diken of rock band The Smithereens, and one with Jim Goodwin, who runs the indie rock Christmas website ChristmasUnderground.com. The Smithereens' 2007 Christmas album Christmas with The Smithereens was released on vinyl this holiday season, and Goodwin has been busy posting new and new-to-you indie Christmas tracks that he found on Bandcamp.
During the episode, I mentioned this year's Christmas music mix, which you can get by writing alex@myspiltmilk.com. For those who would rather stream music, I have posted a four-hour holiday playlist on both Spotify and Apple Music. Not only will you not hurt my feelings if you shuffle it; you'll make the experience better. I didn't sequence the songs because at that length, I can't feel like there's a right or wrong sequence to the songs. Besides, I shuffle it when I listen to it, and it helps keep it fresh for me.
British pop/soul singer Joss Stone released Merry Christmas, Love earlier this year, and it's a bit of a departure for her as she set out to make a "posh" album, something on the surface very different from the music she's known for.
It's still very much a personal project, down to the influence of her daughter and the son she was pregnant with while recording the album. We talked about the ways that personal choices show up in a project as big and orchestrated as Merry Christmas, Love.
In this episode, Alex also talks about The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, The Old 97s, and two British indie Christmas compilations, Have Yourself a Merry Indie Christmas Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.
In 2020, I had a good conversation with Steven Drozd of The Flaming Lips about the surprising amount of Christmas music they have, starting with Atlas Eets Christmas, which they recorded and credited to "Imagene Peise." We talked about that album's origins, which make sense when you hear them, as well as the Christmas on Mars project and a host of other holiday one-offs the band has recorded.
I ran this conversation that fall, but since I'm on family vacation this Thanksgiving week, I'm re-running this episode.
This year's "Twelve Songs of Christmas" Christmas mix is available now. Write me at alex@myspiltmilk.com and I'll send you a folder with the file and a song list. You may know some of the songs from the show, but I think it's a safe bet that most of these songs or versions will be new to you.
Laurie Berkner had one of those days when we got together to talk. A plumber came to work on her bathroom while we did our interview, and his work is the occasional backdrop for our conversation.
Still, the children's music artist talked at length about the making of her second Christmas album, Another Laurie Berkner Christmas, and the way making music for children affects her art. She's part of a generation that grew up with rock 'n' roll and makes music true enough to its spirit that parents who themselves love music use her music as a first step in that direction for their kids.
In our conversation, we talk about musicality, faith, and the song she'd love to do but won't. It's a lot of fun and shines a little light on the children's music world.
In 2020, I interviewed Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of the indie rock band Low, whose 1999 album Christmas is one of the great indie Christmas albums, and a bold one because rock bands didn't record Christmas music at the time--at least not like that. Maybe they'd contribute a track to a label promo compilation, but they wouldn't tie their financial and artistic futures to such an unlikely project.
Low's music at the time was dubbed "slowcore," and while it wasn't necessarily slow, they did stake out a very individual musical space that was driven by introspection and meditation more than energy.
When I interviewed Alan and Mimi, they were sitting at a table at home in Duluth, Minnesota, and even though we were on opposite ends of a Zoom call, the coziness of their space and the conversation gave the conversation a vibe I'll remember.
I'm re-posting this interview because on the weekend, Mimi Parker died of ovarian cancer. People have been sharing photos and memories of Mimi on social media, so I wanted to add our conversation to the demonstrations of love for her, the band and the way they moved through the world.
Vince Guaraldi scholar Derrick Bang wrote the liner notes for the 2022 Super Deluxe edition of the soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas, and this week he talks about the 1965 cartoon, Guaraldi, and the soundtrack album sessions included in the digital and CD packages.
The digital version is out now and up on streaming platforms, and it includes the original 1965 mix, a new mix, and all of the sessions that have been found so far. The CD version also includes a Blu-Ray disc with the animated special, and it's due out December 2. The two-record vinyl version includes the album's original mix and a record with highlights from the sessions.
I've talked about Guaraldi and A Charlie Brown Christmas on 12 Songs with Steven Drozd of The Flaming Lips, Kristin Chenoweth, George Winston, and The Ornaments, and I wrote about Guaraldi's impact last year for The New Orleans Advocate.
If you want to read more by Bang, you find his film writing at his Blogspot.
Last year, Canadian folk artist Bruce Cockburn belated launched a tour celebrating 50 years in music. When we ran an excerpt from this interview last Christmas season, we started off talking about the tour. Since he's not on tour now, I cut some of that material but did start with a conversation on how someone with 50-plus years in the business relates to the music he wrote decades ago.
We focused our attention on Christmas, his 1993 album of Christmas music. We talk about its humble origins and the versions that inspired some of his takes. To let you in on the conversation, I also included Sam Phillips' version of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon's "Christ was Born on Christmas Morn," which Cockburn recorded as "Early on One Christmas Morn." He also talks about why he chose to sing the Huron Christmas carol "Jesus Ahtonnia" in its native language.
It's a good conversation that fits the album into conversations about faith and life, and what can happen over the course of more than 50 years.
On November 25, he will have three new releases—the digital album Rarities, which features songs previously on the Rumors of Glory box set along with tracks recorded for tribute albums to Gordon Lightfoot, Pete Seeger, Mississippi Sheiks and Mississippi John Hurt. He will also release vinyl versions of 1997’s The Charity of the Night and 1999’s Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu. You pre-order all of them now from his label, True North Records.
In 2008, the garage rock legends The Fleshtones released a Christmas album, Stocking Stuffer, and in true Fleshtones fashion, they made Christmas sound like them. Since 1976, they have delivered a brand of garage rock influenced by punk, R&B and soul with more than a hint of glam in their style and sound.
In this interview from 2021, singer Peter Zaremba talks about the album, its origins, and what was most important to them while working on it. He also talks about where the audiences for '60s-inspired rock 'n' roll are and how those communities come together. He reveals the bands that inspired the way they covered some of the songs, and those bands help explain why nobody sounds quite like The Fleshtones.
In 2008, the garage rock legends The Fleshtones released a Christmas album, Stocking Stuffer, and in true Fleshtones fashion, they made Christmas sound like them. Since 1976, they have delivered a brand of garage rock influenced by punk, R&B and soul with more than a hint of glam in their style and sound.
In this interview from 2021, singer Peter Zaremba talks about the album, its origins, and what was most important to them while working on it. He also talks about where the audiences for '60s-inspired rock 'n' roll are and how those communities come together. He reveals the bands that inspired the way they covered some of the songs, and those bands help explain why nobody sounds quite like The Fleshtones.
One of my favorite Christmas albums of 2021 was Merry Christmas from José James, which featured the jazz vocalist in a classic quartet that included pianist Aaron Parks.
We talked in 2021 and ran part of the conversation last holiday season, but we covered a lot of ground, some of it COVID-related but a lot of it focused on James and the way he bridges musical genres. We chew on jazz, hip-hop, and some of the subtle challenges involved in making Christmas music. The music's good, but I also love the way he turns conventional narratives and hierarchies on their head. It's tempting to give jazz musical primacy--certainly here in New Orleans--but he talks about how hip-hop set him on his jazz journey.
If you want more Christmas music news, follow 12 Songs on Facebook, and if you miss any episodes, you can find them at your podcast provider or TwelveSongsOfChristmas.com.
One of my favorite Christmas albums of 2021 was Merry Christmas from José James, which featured the jazz vocalist in a classic quartet that included pianist Aaron Parks.
We talked in 2021 and ran part of the conversation last holiday season, but we covered a lot of ground, some of it COVID-related but a lot of it focused on James and the way he bridges musical genres. We chew on jazz, hip-hop, and some of the subtle challenges involved in making Christmas music. The music's good, but I also love the way he turns conventional narratives and hierarchies on their head. It's tempting to give jazz musical primacy--certainly here in New Orleans--but he talks about how hip-hop set him on his jazz journey.
If you want more Christmas music news, follow 12 Songs on Facebook, and if you miss any episodes, you can find them at your podcast provider or TwelveSongsOfChristmas.com.
The world met Julian Koster as part of the Elephant 6 Collective in the 1990s, when he played a variety of instruments with Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, and his own projects, The Music Tapes and The Orbiting Human Circus. In 2008, he released The Singing Saw at Christmastime, and part of the conceit is that the saws actually do the singing. He's not playing the saws; he's encouraging them to sing.
That element of whimsy is part of the fun of Koster's projects and our conversation, though he brought engineer Nesey Gallons on the call with him to be a lifeline when Koster starts to drift too far out.
Our conversation covers some ground, from an unexpected appearance by Leadbelly to a Christmas interlude courtesy of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Koster and Gallons also turned me on to a Folksways compilation of Ukrainian Christmas songs. The song we hear is "The Miracle of the Birth."
The world met Julian Koster as part of the Elephant 6 Collective in the 1990s, when he played a variety of instruments with Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, and his own projects, The Music Tapes and The Orbiting Human Circus. In 2008, he released The Singing Saw at Christmastime, and part of the conceit is that the saws actually do the singing. He's not playing the saws; he's encouraging them to sing.
That element of whimsy is part of the fun of Koster's projects and our conversation, though he brought engineer Nesey Gallons on the call with him to be a lifeline when Koster starts to drift too far out.
Our conversation covers some ground, from an unexpected appearance by Leadbelly to a Christmas interlude courtesy of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Koster and Gallons also turned me on to a Folksways compilation of Ukrainian Christmas songs. The song we hear is "The Miracle of the Birth."
The Cowsills answer a number of pop culture trivia questions, starting with "What real life family pop band inspired the 1970 television show, The Partridge Family?" They had hits with "The Rain, The Park, and Other Things"--best known for the refrain, "I love the flower girl"--and "Hair," but the experience took a toll on family members, particularly Susan Cowsill's older brothers. She was a kid along for the ride and still under 10 when it hit, but as she talks about during our conversation, her teenaged brothers with rock 'n' roll dreams had a hard time dealing with what they became.
The Cowsills are a starting point for today's conversation because while Susan and her brothers worked for a few decades to establish themselves as solo artists, she regularly performs now as The Cowsills with Bill and Paul, and the three of them have a podcast now, The Cowsills Podcast. This summer, they performed on the Happy Together Again tour, and from November 1-December 10, they'll be guests on the Andy Williams Christmas Show at the Moon River Theatre in Branson, Missouri.
There are musicians who might have a hard time adjusting to a Branson residency, but Susan compartmentalizes her creative endeavors. She was part of the Americana/indie pop supergroup The Continental Drifters and she still plays solo gigs in New Orleans in support of solo efforts, but after all these years, singing with her brothers remains a powerful, important of her musical life.
Today we talk about the Christmas music she made and the Christmas music she loves.
Documentary filmmaker Mitchell Kezin released the movie Jingle Bell Rocks! in 2013. In it, he focused on the human side of Christmas music, whether with the musicians who make the music--much the same way we do on 12 Songs--or by talking to collectors about the music they're passionate about. Last year, I talked to Kezin about the movie and his Christmas music collection, and ran part of the conversation during the holiday season.
This week, I'm running a longer, more complete version of that conversation, where we talk about collecting, the song that got him started on Christmas music, and the lengths he went to get one of the interviews for Jingle Bell Rocks.
Right now, Kezin is at work on his 2023 "Merry Mix," the name he gave to his series of Christmas music compilations. You can get a hold of Kezin and see the songs he has used on previous compilations dating back to 1998. It's a dizzying compendium of songs you don't know by artists you haven't heard of, but they're consistently entertaining.
Twelve Songs returns after a life-induced hiatus with a good interview with Ray Benson from the Austin-based Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel. We talked in the spring when the band was coming to New Orleans to play Jazz Fest, and you can see my story focusing on the band celebrating 50 years in the game with its Half a Hundred Years album and tour. That tour is always going on or soon to restart, so check your local listings because if they aren't coming to town, they'll get there sooner or later.
We talk about COVID, which became very real for the band when members of the band were hit hard by it earlier this year. We also talk about his long-time musical friend Willie Nelson, Benson's admiration for his "Pretty Paper," and hear Christmas music by the band, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, The Resentments (on a song by one of my favorites, Jon Dee Graham), and Folk Uke, which features Willie Nelson and Arlo Guthrie's daughters.
In 2014, Molto Groovy Christmas remade holiday favorites inspired by Italian and French movie soundtracks from the 1960s. Tracks also reference Esquivel, Jimmy Smith’s soul-jazz, and other out-there sounds, and the project as a whole is defined by unlikely, psychedelic textural juxtapositions over gently funky grooves. The album came with a mystery, though. The cover reads, “Roman Coppola and Alessandro Cassella presents,” but it’s not until you open the package that you discover who actually made the music. That task fell to Italian musician and producer Carlo Poddighe, who arranged the songs and played all the parts.
This week, Carlo Poddighe tells the story of the album and talks about the fun and the challenges that accompany having a studio full of the vintage gear needed for a project like this one.
Molto Groovy Christmas isn’t on Spotify or Apple Music, but CDs and mp3s are available through Amazon and a few vinyl copies remain for sale at the album’s Bandcamp page.
Poddighe talks about the influence of a number of Italian soundtrack composers including Ennio Morricone, the best known in the United States. A Morricone track is included, as is a track from the 1995 album Vampyros Lesbos Sexadelic Dance Party, a very psychedelic collection of soundtrack music that prompted renewed interest in European soundtrack music from mid-‘60s to the early ‘70s. If you haven’t already done so, please subscribe to Twelve Songs wherever you get your podcasts so that you don’t miss an episode.
Twelve Songs returns to regular programming this week with writer Annie Zaleski joining me to talk about Wham!’s “Last Christmas” and our favorite versions of it. On Christmas Day last year, Zaleski told the song’s story at Salon.com, which is just one of the places where she has covered pop music and Christmas music over the years. She also wrote a book on Duran Duran’s Rio for the 33 1/3 series. The song has become a fascination of mine for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I’ve only really come around to it in the last few years. For a long time, I understood those who played Whamageddon online during the holiday season, but eventually the durability of the song and its stylish, bonkers, of the moment video won me over. Annie and I also talk about cover versions by Jimmy Eat World, Carly Rae Jepsen, Manic Street Preachers, and Lucy Dacus. The episode closes with one of my favorites from last year by Japanese noise rock band Boris. If it speaks to you, you can find it at Boris’ Bandcamp page. In the conversation, I mentioned the video for the version of "Last Christmas" by the Japanese rock band Chai, and Annie and I break down Wham!'s video.
When I started to look back at the highlights of our first 100 episodes, I envisioned it taking an episode or two, but once I started, I couldn’t keep the number down that low. Here we are with the fifth and final installment, and I can easily envision another episode or two of interviews conducted before 2021.
This week’s episode includes a few interviews that were special for me, including Steven Drozd of Flaming Lips, 11 Acorn Lane, guitar hero Steve Lukather, jazz vocalist Jacqui Naylor, ZE Records’ Michael Zilkha, Latin ska band Mento Buru, and singer Danny Boy and label exec John “JP” Payne of Death Row Records. There’s something special in each of these for me. Some were people I had really wanted to talk to, others were really good, provocative conversations, and in the case of the Death Row interview, it led to a story I wrote for The New York Times.
Next week, I’ll get to work on the next 100 with a new conversation. If you haven’t already done so, please subscribe, like, follow, or do what you have to do with your podcast provider to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed weekly.
We're in the home stretch of the look back at highlights from the first 100 episodes of Twelve Songs, with this episode getting into interviews during the pandemic when COVID affected everybody's plans. Guitarist and producer Chas Justus from Lafayette, Louisiana talks about how COVID made his collection of Cajun French versions of Chrlstmas classics--Joyeux Noel, Bon Chrismeusse--possible.
I really appreciated getting romantic pianist and composer Jim Brickman on the show because someone who has 10 albums of Christmas music has a more nuanced take on it than those who have only dipped their toes in the water. We talked in 2020 about how his Christmas music relates to the music he makes the rest of the year.
Many of my guests are indie musicians, in part because their music frequently lines up best with my aesthetics and ethics, but it's also important to me that we hear Christmas music as something people make today in a variety of forms and not simply nostalgia from our parents or grandparents' generations. Excerpts of conversations with retro soul artist Kelly Finnigan (who made the modern classic A Joyful Sound), Christian vocal group leader Ernie Haase, Jamie Hilsden of the Christmas punk band The Myrrhderers, and Amy Carlson of pop band Office Romance all come from that place, though the conversations are very different.
I hope after hearing this show and the other retrospective shows in this series, you'll want to subscribe to Twelve Songs (if you haven't already), listen to back episodes, and tell your friends. I hope these looks back make it clear that conversations about Christmas music aren't necessarily about Christmas or to be set aside until that time of year.
My look back at the highlights of The Twelve Songs of Christmas this week come from from a transitional period. I had good and very different conversations with musicians with very different careers, including the pop purists Hanson, the bluegrass crossover artist Rhonda Vincent, and indie rapper Mega Ran.
This week's show includes excerpts from those conversations, along Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low, and Martin Lynds and Jen Gunderman of The Ornaments, a band of Nashville session players who at the time of the interview had played the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack for 14 years running.
One note on this episode: I was surprised when I grabbed the file for the Rhonda Vincent interview that I found my voice distorted on it. It didn't sound like that when I produced the episode, but there's not much to do about that now. I tried to minimize how much of me you needed to hear in that excerpt, but you needed some of my fuzzy voice to give her answers context.
If this is the first of your retrospective episodes, you can hear the first two here and here.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify. During our post-Christmas break, we went live on the IHeartRadio platform, TuneIn, Audible, and Amazon's podcast platform. Now, you can ask Alexa and Siri to play the Twelve Songs of Christmas podcast and let them pop it up on your voice-controlled personal assistant.
Here in New Orleans, it's Mardi Gras, so I'm taking the rest of this week and the start of next week to be part of my city. We'll meet again in two weeks.
Last week, I started a look back at some of the highlights from the first 100 episodes of Twelve Songs of Christmas. This week, Scott McCaughey of The Minus 5 talks about his relationship to his Christmas songs when a stroke prevented him from playing them at their CD release show. Americana rocker JD McPherson talks about the inspiration for the songs on his modern Christmas classic, Socks, and Magic 101.9 program director Steve Suter takes us behind the scenes on the all-Christmas radio format. New Orleans singer Debbie Davis talks about what it's like to have a Christmas show that becomes a tradition, and songwriter Josh Rouse remembers Christmas music in Spain.
In the episode, I mention a few stories I'd link to--my piece for Nola.com on the all-Christmas radio format, and my interview with Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify. During our post-Christmas break, we went live on the IHeartRadio platform, TuneIn, Audible, and Amazon's podcast platform. Now, you can ask Alexa and Siri to play the Twelve Songs of Christmas podcast and let them pop it up on your voice-controlled personal assistant.
The previous episode with singer Meryl Zimmerman was number 100, and now that I've made it that far, I think it's time to stop and help some of you catch up. I've had a lot of episodes I'm really happy with that have moments I'm glad I helped to get into the world. Some realizations probably came together for the first time when we talked.
The conversations shed light on creativity, musicality, business, and spirituality--aspects the pop music enterprise that are too often overlooked or treated with too much care. I'm interested in all of these things, and Christmas music is a great vehicle to get into those topics.
You can hear all that in these excerpts from season one with guests Panorama Jazz Band, Robert Earl Keen, The Waitresses' Chris Butler and Mars Williams, PJ Morton, Pink Martini, and Lowland Hum. Originally, I thought I'd simply do one retrospective episode, but I realized pretty quickly that it would be three to four hours' long, or it would leave out too much to be satisfying for me. So I'll be back with more next week and likely the week after that.
Listening back is a little humbling, hearing some ratty production and a laid back intro affectation so extreme that I don't need to share any of that with you. You can't help but notice it though if you go back and check out the early episodes.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify. During our post-Christmas break, we went live on the IHeartRadio platform, TuneIn, Audible, and Amazon's podcast platform. Now, you can ask Alexa and Siri to play the Twelve Songs of Christmas podcast and let them pop it up on your voice-controlled personal assistant.
This is the 100th episode of The Twelve Songs of Christmas, and I’m spending it with New Orleans' jazz vocalist Meryl Zimmerman. In late November 2022, she released her second album, A Very Meryl Christmas, so we talked about it as a business proposition and chewed on the uncommon song choices she made for it. Some standards are there, but so are some less common choices. As you’ll see, the more familiar ideas are dressed up in uncommon arrangements that take them into interesting places. Her bossa nova version of “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” was compelling enough to make me seriously consider an episode focused on versions of that song to fit in the week after Christmas. It didn’t happen, but maybe next year.
In this episode, we talk about her cover of Louis Armstrong’s “Zat You, Santa Claus?” and I mention how Buster Poindexter’s version helped me see the song Meryl’s way. Here’s that version.
On this episode, I also draw attention to Attention K-Mart Shoppers, and online archive of digitized albums of background music played in the 1960s and ‘70s in Kresge and K-Mart stores. I’m fascinated by the Christmas albums, of course, but there’s a lot to hear there.
After this episode, I’m going to take a week off the start the next hundred episodes with a look back at the best of the first seasons. That will take more listening and editing than I can manage in a week, but I’ll be back with that in two weeks.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify. During our post-Christmas break, we went live on the IHeartRadio platform, TuneIn, Audible, and Amazon's podcast platform. Now, you can ask Alexa and Siri to play the Twelve Songs of Christmas podcast and let them pop it up on your voice-controlled personal assistant.
One sidebar in the last few years of 12 Songs has been the role of COVID in the creation of Christmas music. Some artists recorded Christmas albums to remind themselves that they were musicians during the pandemic shutdown of 2020. Some were able to get musicians who would otherwise be unavailable because COVID forced them off the road, and others had specific circumstances related to COVID that led to their Christmas albums.
San Antonio-based roots rocker Patricia Vonne falls into the latter category. In this week’s episode, she tells the story of what prompted her to record My Favorite Holiday, and how she got an army of musical friends including Rubén Blades, Alex Ruiz, David Grissom, Rosie Flores, Stephen Ferrone, Carmine Rojas and more to participate. I love Vonne’s energy and positivity in this conversation. She never stops selling, but that makes sense. Her story is a working artist’s story, and she lives from gig to gig and album to album. That’s a perspective that’s easy to overlook in the show biz world that many Christmas albums live in. This week’s episode also takes a quick look at the last Christmas-related hit of 2021, “Christmas Tree” by V of K-pop stars BTS. I argue that it’s not really a Christmas song and pay more attention to an earlier, truer Christmas song from BTS, “Christmas Day” by Jimin and Jungkook. If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify. During our post-Christmas break, we went live on the IHeartRadio platform and Amazon's podcast platform. Now, you can ask Alexa and Siri to play the Twelve Songs of Christmas podcast and let them pop it up on your voice-controlled personal assistant.
How does a white guy from Detroit end up playing Latin music? Pianist Arthur Hanlon, one of the stars of the HBOMax concert film Piano Y Mujer, talks about that and his relationship to Motown in this week's conversation. We talk about the EP he released before Christmas, A Holiday Christmas Piano, and the roles Facebook and COVID played in making it happen. Along the way, we also talk about earlier Christmas releases and how Christmas music fits into Hanlon's big picture.
This week, we also look at one of the bigger songs of the 2021 holiday season, "Merry Christmas" by Ed Sheeran and Elton John, and the song that beat them to become number one on the British pop charts at Christmas.
During our post-Christmas break, we went live on the IHeartRadio platform and Amazon's podcast platform. Now, you can ask Alexa and Siri to play the Twelve Songs of Christmas podcast and let them pop it up on your voice-controlled personal assistant.
This is the last episode of the Christmas season, but The Twelve Songs of Christmas is a year-around affair, so the conversations will continue in January after I take a much-needed week off.
This week's episode includes an interview with filmmaker Mitchell Kezin, whose documentary Jingle Bell Rocks! takes a deep dive into the world of Christmas music, talking to people who collect it and create it. It's streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime, and we'll talk more about the movie next year, but this week we discuss its origins including the songs and ideas that set him on the path for a documentary on Christmas music.
Then I talk to songwriter Jim McCormick, an old friend and successful songwriter in Nashville. Last year, he co-wrote his third number one, Gabby Barrett's "The Good Ones," and we catch up on the story behind that, as well as some of his favorite country Christmas songs. We talk about Kacey Musgraves, Randy Travis, Alan Jackson, Luke Bryan and more, thinking about the songs from the songwriter's or the industry's perspectives.
Finally, I talk to young country artist Bailey James, who is still finding her audience. We talk about dealing with COVID times and her two Christmas recordings, which at the time of the interview made up a quarter of her output. How does Christmas music create marketing opportunities?
Alexandra Scott returns this week to discuss two of Phoebe Bridgers' Christmas songs--"The Christmas Song" and her cover of Merle Haggard's "If We Make it Through December."
We also hear some of our favorite contemporary Christmas albums, JD McPherson's Socks and Kelly Finnigan's A Joyful Sound, and The Polyphonic Spree, who put tickets on sale for their 2022 Holiday Extraganza this week. JD, Kelly, and Tim DeLaughter of the Spree have all appeared on Twelve Songs.
We also heard new lofi Christmas music this week from Brooklyn's The Fundamental Sound.
Last week, my story on the influence of Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas appeared in The New Orleans Advocate. This week, a story I wrote on Christmas on Death Row, the Death Row Records' Christmas album, appeared in The New York Times. It's based in part on an interview on the podcast with Death Row vocalist Danny Boy and label exec John "JP" Payne from earlier this year.
I'm going to take a week off and return in January with a new episode. Christmas will be over the conversations continue.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
Thanks to Car Floats for the sponsorship.
This week, we have a few guests again as Christmas nears. Americana artist Amanda Shires is on hand to talk about For Christmas, and the way it reflects some of the less common impulses behind Christmas music. The husband and wife team of Rod and Rose—country singer Rodney Atkins and Rose Falcon—talk about why they recorded “Winter Wonderland,” and how their conflicting writing styles got them to a new song for this holiday season. Finally, indie multi-instrumentalist Julian Koster drops by to talk about his role in the 2008 album, The Singing Saw at Christmastime. We’ll have more with all three in 2022. In the news this week, host Alex Rawls contributed a story on the influence of Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas to The New Orleans Advocate. The story includes quotes from George Winston, Steven Drozd, Kristin Chenoweth, Joey Burns of Calexico, Mega Ran, and Jen Gunderman of The Ornaments, all drawn from episodes of this podcast. If you’re maxing out on the Christmas music you have, let us help. At Spotify, you can listen to our 24-hour “Twelve Songs of Christmas Radio.” Just click Shuffle and you get the Christmas radio experience minus the repetition. Or, you can email Alex@myspiltmilk.com to get an mp3 of our 90-minute holiday mix. If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
Last year, Twelve Songs did its first crossover episode with Jonathan and Julia Pretus of the Ranking the Beatles podcast. During the COVID shutdown in 2020, Jonathan took the time on his hands as an excuse to rank all of The Beatles’ songs, from his least favorite to his favorite. That list morphed from a Facebook conversation into a podcast with his wife Julia as the voice of reason. Since The Beatles didn’t release any true Christmas songs during their time together, last year we ranked the annual fan club-only releases, testing Julia’s patience in the process.
This year, we got together for a second crossover, this time ranking their post-Beatles Christmas music. Julia had reached a saturation point between watching, discussing, and podcasting about Peter Jackson’s Get Back and opted for a badly needed night off. Jonathan and I discussed the obvious choices by John and Paul as well as less obvious ones from George and Ringo. If you like what hear, you might consider adding Ranking The Beatles to your podcast feed.
Thanks as usual to our sponsors at Car Floats, who asked me to contribute a Christmas music playlist to their website. I’m pleased to have curated a number of playlists this season including the 23-hour “Twelve Songs of Christmas Radio” playlist on Spotify. Go to it and click Shuffle to get the all-Christmas radio experience but with a greater variety of music. You can also still get this year’s downloadable listeners-only playlist by writing me at alex@myspiltmilk.com to request it.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
Last week, Kristin Chenoweth was part of the episode focused on A Sentimental Christmas, an album of remakes of songs by Nat "King" Cole. Today, we continue that conversation to cover her new Christmas album, Happiness Is ... Christmas and 2008's A Lovely Way to Spend Christmas.
This episode also includes my interview with country legend Ronnie Milsap, whose Christmas with Ronnie Milsap was reissued this year, and guitar hero Paul Gilbert, who got in the Christmas music game this year with his new album, TWAS. Unfortunately, we had a wifi disconnect and, as you'll hear, had to pick up more or less where we left off. That gives us a choppy moment part way in, but that's life on the Internet.
This episode also includes new music from New Orleans-based jazz vocalist Meryl Zimmerman, who released A Very Meryl Christmas this year, and a cover of John Prine's "Christmas in Prison" by Aidan & the Wild, Lewin, and the Revanche Family. It's on Another Christmas Vol. 2, and I'll talk to someone from Revanche Records in Amsterdam next year about the label sampler as a marketing strategy.
This episode also includes new music from Americana band Loose Cattle, who recently cut a version of Neil Young's "Star of Bethlehem" with the holidays in mind. Michael and Kimberly of Loose Cattle were early guests on Twelve Songs, and if you're in New Orleans, they'll play a holiday show Saturday at The Broadside with many of their musical friends.
Finally, the episode closes with a version of "The Christmas Song" by The Polyphonic Spree. I interviewed Tim DeLaughter of the Spree last summer about their then-new album Afflatus and their Holidaydream Christmas album. At the time, he said that they planned to bring back their Holiday Extraganza this year in Dallas. It's on for December 18, and last time I checked, there were a few tickets still on sale. I'll be there this year, and if your tastes run toward the maximalist and psychedelic, it might be for you too.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
For this Christmas season, producer Jay Landers put together "A Sentimental Christmas with Nat "King" Cole," an album that refreshes some of Cole's holiday classics with new arrangements and a handful of new duets with new singing partners Johnny Mathis, John Legend, Gloria Estefan and more.
Today on the show, Landers talks about the hows of whys of putting together this kind of project, and why Cole continues to sing these duets well after his death. Kristin Chenoweth and Calum Scott are two of Cole's singing partners this time around, and they talk about the experience, Cole, and what they learned about him in the process.
Singer Alexandra Scott returns this week to talk about Icelandic pop artist Dadi Freyr and the Christmas songs he released in 2020 and 2021.
This episode ends with a lovely cover of Low's "Just Like Christmas" by Gabrielle Aplin. Last year, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker appeared on Twelve Songs in an episode that felt surprisingly intimate and, perhaps for that reason, became more personal than I expected.
This episode of Twelve Songs is sponsored by Car-Floats.com, which makes reusable fabric stickers for your car.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
This episode drops on Thanksgiving, and if you're listening on Thursday, Happy Thanksgiving.
Friday is Black Friday, the official, incontrovertible start to the Christmas season, and just in time for it, Twelve Songs has created an alternative to the all-Christmas radio station, Twelve Songs of Christmas Radio on Spotify. It's a 20-plus hour playlist of songs that are or should be Christmas favorites, and all you have to do is click Shuffle to get the radio effect, minus the commercials and station breaks.
If that sounds a little daunting, you can also email me at alex@myspiltmilk.com to get a copy of this year's 90-minute listeners-only Christmas mix. It covers a lot of ground and offers some new takes on Christmas classics, and it will almost certainly introduce you to some Christmas songs you haven't heard before.
For those looking for a more irreverent, indie-oriented Christmas collection, I recommend XO for the Holidays Vol. 10, which fits the bill nicely.
In this week's episode, I'm again featuring excerpts from interviews I conducted this fall. José James presents himself as a jazz vocalist for the hip-hop era, but that's only occasionally obvious on his new Merry Christmas from José James. On it, he and a traditional jazz trio give us a beautiful, timeless Christmas album that sounds like what might happen if a Sinatra-like singer fronted a Bill Evans-led band.
I also talk to Canadian folk artist Bruce Cockburn, who is starting his tour celebrating 50 years in the business in December. The tour should have started last December, but, you know, COVID. We talk about the tour and his 1993 Christmas album, Christmas, including one of the less likely songs on the album and where it came from.
Finally, I talk to Nashville's Twangtown Paramours, who have a new album, Double Down on a Bad Thing, due out in February. We talk a little about that, about how its recording was affected by COVID, and how they used a new Christmas song, "My Gingerbread Man," as a marketing tool.
This episode of Twelve Songs is sponsored by Car-Floats.com, which makes reusable fabric stickers for your car.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
Twelve Songs of Christmas is based in New Orleans, so in the spirit of the season and podcaster camaraderie, I recently recorded a crossover episode with friends who figured out how to shoehorn their two great passions into one podcast. Who Dat Jedis usually talks about the New Orleans Saints and Star Wars, and this week they asked me to join them to add a conversation on Christmas music to that mix.
I enjoyed this conversation because Aaron, Fredo and Dave's questions are the ones casual listeners to Christmas music have, and it was fun to connect them to some of the themes that run through this podcast and tie some of them back to specific episodes I've done over the course of the last three years.
We're still giving away our 2021 listeners-only Christmas mix. Write alex@myspiltmilk.com and request a copy.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find it at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
The next regular episode will be in your feed on Thanksgiving.
Last year, some time after Thanksgiving I had to change format and use excerpts from a few interviews to get to everybody I've talked to about Christmas music before the holiday comes. This year, I have to start now since I already have enough interviews to get to February if I ran one per show.
This week, I'm talking to some of my favorite people. The Fleshtones are the long-time garage rock gold standard, and singer Peter Zaremba is always a great person to talk to about that corner of the rock 'n' roll world. Since it seems like a shrinking one, we talk about that and how their most recent single, the Spanish-language "Mi Engañaste Bien," plays into that. We talk about the bond between record collectors and, of course, their 2008 Christmas album, Stocking Stuffer.
This week also features Susan Cowsill, the youngest member of the '60s family pop band The Cowsills. Susan has never stopped singing or making music, and has been part of New Orleans' music community since she moved here in the 1990s with The Continental Drifters. Cowsills memories are inevitable for her, particularly now that she and two of her brothers have a podcast of their own, The Cowsills Podcast. We talk about that, Branson, some of her favorite Christmas songs, Karen Carpenter, and the experience of recording a Christmas song for Debbie Davis and Matt Perrine's Oh Crap! It's Christmas Vol. 2.
Recently, the Numero Group reissue label released the very entertaining Christmas Dreamers: Yuletide Christmas (1960-1972), and this week I talk to Adam Luksetich about the process of pulling the collection together, and how his own relationship to Christmas music affected his choices.
Finally, singer Alexandra Scott returns to discuss Mariah Carey's re-entry into the Christmas music arena with her new song, "Fall in Love at Christmas," featuring Khalid and Kirk Franklin.
This episode of Twelve Songs is sponsored by Car-Floats.com, which makes reusable fabric stickers for your car.
We're still giving away our 2021 listeners-only Christmas mix. Write alex@myspiltmilk.com and request a copy.
f you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
It's mid-November, and with COVID numbers trending in the right direction, Mannheim Steamroller will return to the road soon. One of the Monsters of Christmas Rock, the group will start on Tuesday, November 16 in Loveland, Colorado, and it will have two companies on the road until December 30, when they'll finish up in Dallas and San Diego. The tour schedule is online, and tickets are on sale now.
The tour will take place as it has since 2008 without founder/composer/arranger Chip Davis, who talks about why in today's episode, along with his journey from a series of albums with "Fresh Aire" in the title blending classical music, electronic music, and prog rock to 1984, Christmas, and Christmas music. Davis talks about his electronic music influences, as well as how he found an audience for an act that didn't fall neatly in any musical camp.
He also talks about managing his success and dealing with the reality that Christmas music had become central to the Steamroller's identity, even if Davis didn't see it that way.
Also in today's episode, host Alex Rawls and singer Alexandra Scott discuss two Australian Christmas songs, Paul Kelly's "How to Make Gravy" and Tim Minchin's "White Wine in the Sun."
We're still giving away our 2021 listeners-only Christmas mix. Write alex@myspiltmilk.com and request a copy.
This episode is sponsored by Car-Floats.com, purveyors of removable, reusable fabric stickers for your car.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
This episode is bittersweet for me. The things I love on Quad City DJs' All-Star Christmas make me very happy, and this week one half of the Quad City DJs, CC Lemonhead, tells the story of the Jacksonville, Florida DJs' journey from "Whoot! There it Is" to "Tootsie Roll" to "C'mon and Ride It (The Train)" to "What You Want for Christmas." It's the kind of story I love, with people working up homemade solutions to musical challenges, and what happens along the way.
Unfortunately, one of the things that happened is that CC and his partner Jay-Ski fell out during the recording of Quad City DJs' debut album for Atlantic Records, Get on Up and Dance, and he was out of the picture entirely for the recording of All-Star Christmas in 1996. Equally unfortunately, I didn't know that until a half-hour into our interview. So far, Jay-Ski has not responded to interview requests, but I'm going to keep trying.
Fortunately, last episode's guest, Bill Adler, tracked down one of the singers on the album, an artist who goes by the name of Big Tyme and recorded "Xmas Blues," otherwise known as Bonquisha and Otis, which bounce rapper Big Freedia turned me on to on a previous episode. Adler wrote the story for LL Cool J's Rock The Bells website, so I this episode I read an excerpt of it to help answer one more question about the album.
In this episode, singer Alexandra Scott returns to talk with me about new Christmas music from Meghan Trainor, Ingrid Michaelson, and Amanda Shires. You can hear Alexandra's music on her Bandcamp page.
This episode is sponsored by Car-Floats.com, purveyors of removable, reusable fabric stickers for your car.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
The impulse to share my findings while collecting Christmas music led me to this podcast, and it led Bill Adler to Christmas Jollies, an annual Christmas mix that he has made and distributed to family, friends, and folks in the music industry since the mid-1980s.
Adler started his career in the music industry as the director of publicity at Def Jam Records and Rush Management from 1984-1990, so while his tastes are much broader than simply hip-hop, hip-hop Christmas music by Kurtis Blow and Run-DMC play a meaningful part in his own Christmas music story.
We talk about their Christmas songs today, along with the self-imposed parameters that anyone who makes mixes will recognize immediately. We also talk about some of the songs that he has and hasn't included on mixes in recent years including songs by Joey Ramone, Irma Thomas, and Aaron LaCombe.
The episode ends with a track that I incorrectly identified in the episode as "Santa Rap." I have thought of the song as "Santa Rap" for so long that it didn't occurred to me to check the title of the Treacherous Three's track from from the Beat Street soundtrack from 1984. If I had done so before I packed up my recording gear, I might have correctly identified the song as "Xmas Rap."
In the episode, I said that you can email me to get a special, listeners-only 2021 Christmas mix. Send me an email at alex@myspiltmilk.com and I'll send one your way.
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band has worked to be more than just the jazz band your parents knew. Creative Director and tuba player Ben Jaffe has worked to ensure that the New Orleans musical institution has a place in the contemporary music conversation. That has led to some choices that purists have questioned, but it also means the band still has a presence in the culture, unlike many of its peers.
This week, I talk to Jaffe about the hall’s holiday traditions and its own Christmas recordings, including a collaboration with singer Irma Thomas for the 2013 Holidays Rule compilation, and four Spotify Sessions recordings that the band did for the streaming service with previous 12 Songs guests Big Freedia, Boyfriend, and PJ Morton.
In this week’s episode, I also talk to Alexandra Scott about new Christmas music from Norah Jones and calypso Christmas music from Mighty Sparrow, Lord Nelson, and Lord Kitchener.
This week on the pod, I announced that am making a special listeners-only Christmas mix. If you wish to receive a copy, email me at alex@myspiltmilk.com.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
We met Dan Zanes as the singer of The Del Fuegos in the first generation of America's indie underground in the mid-1980s. As he explains in our conversation, he discovered after the band broke up that people were more interested in a cassette he made of family-oriented folk he made with his daughter, her friends and their parents in mind than they were in his solo album. That set his course, and he has been working in the family-friendly field for more than 20 years now.
We talk about family-friendly music, folk music, and how his Christmas album, Christmas in Concord, fits in to that musical world.
His wife and musical collaborator Claudia is part of the conversation as well, even though she wasn't with him on Christmas in Concord. She is on their new album, the social justice-oriented Let Love Be Your Guide.
This episode also inaugurates a change as singer and friend Alexandra Scott joins to talk about Christmas music with Alex, this week focusing on Kelly Clarkson's new "Christmas Isn't Cancelled (Just You)" and her biggest Christmas song to date, "Underneath the Tree."
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
"Santa Baby" has gone through some changes. When Eartha Kitt recorded it in 1953, it was controversial because women--and particularly black women--didn't talk about desire so bluntly. It was a cool artifact from one of Christmas' back rooms until Madonna covered it in 1987, and that seemingly put the song on the radar of a generation or two of women performers including Arianna Grande and Kylie Minogue.
This week, I'm joined by three strong women to discuss what makes Kitt's track special, and what changes when others perform it. Journalist and critic Alison Fensterstock contributed an interview with Rickie Lee Jones to Mojo earlier this year, and she is a regular contributor to NPR.org among other places. Singer Dayna Kurtz's passion and passions are clear in her work, whether the projects explore her personal life, her musical life (as part of Lulu and the Broadsides), or her activist life (as in the case of "What Would Jesus Say"). Alexandra Scott appeared on 12 Songs last year to talk about Dolly Parton's "Hard Candy Christmas," and singer Alexandra Scott has always made songs that sound like direct communications with the listener, whether the lyric reflects her innermost thoughts or something more fabricated. Even musical exercises sound meaningful when she sings them.
In the episode, I talk about Pearl Bailey's "Ten Pound Box of Money." That's the song from 1958 adjusted for inflation. When Bailey recorded it, the title was "A Five Pound Box of Money." Sorry for the confusion. Maybe a 10 pound box of money reflects my needs and desires more than Bailey's since that's the lyric I sing in my head when I think about the song.
This episode also starts to pay attention to the releases scheduled for the 2021 Christmas season starting with Brett Eldridge's "Mr. Christmas." The album by the same name won't be out until November, but the title track is out and we give it a first listen.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or favorites you want to share, I'm at alex@myspiltmilk.com.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
Bruce Iglauer didn’t plan to celebrate Alligator Records’ 50th anniversary the way he has. Iglauer started the blues label in Chicago in 1972 and intended to load up a bus with musicians from the label’s past, present and future and play around the country. Unfortunately, the Delta variant made that unsafe, so instead he has had to celebrate with an anniversary compilation, 50 Years of Genuine Houserockin’ Music, and talking about the label and the stars who defined it on shows like this one.
Iglauer’s here because Alligator has released two albums of new Christmas music, 1992’s The Alligator Records Christmas Compilation, and 1996’ Genuine Houserockin’ Christmas. He tells stories about some of the artists who cut Christmas music including Koko Taylor and Gatemouth Brown, and talks about the world that led him to form Alligator in the first place. Iglauer starts, though, by talking about how the COVID that forced Alligator to change its plans is affecting musicians.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or favorites you want to share, I'm at alex@myspiltmilk.com.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
Singer Grant-Lee Phillips is the first 12 Songs guest to have worked as a mall Santa. The solo artist who rose to fame in the alternative rock band Grant Lee Buffalo had Christmas songs talks about that experience this week, as well as what he learned about songwriting from Christmas songs.
In 2020, Phillips released the Winterglow EP, and he talks about the role the Gilmore Girls television show played in the title track, as well as how he selected the infrequently covered songs he also recorded for it.
In the episode, Alex also talks about the Texas Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel and music from their two Christmas albums, Merry Texas Christmas Y'all and Lone Star Christmas Night.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or favorites you want to share, I'm at alex@myspiltmilk.com.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
Think of this as a remix. Last year, I interviewed New Orleans bounce artist Big Freedia for an episode about his Christmas music including the EP he released last season, Smokin' Santa Christmas.
In early January, I interviewed New Orleans' founder of "rap cabaret" Boyfriend about Amy Grant's A Christmas Album. We also talked about her work with Big Freedia--a part of the conversation I saved because the Amy Grant conversation was a full episode on its own. (Boyfriend has also appeared on the show to talk about her love of The Carpenters.)
So this week, I've pulled the two interviews together, combining highlights of the Big Freedia interview with Boyfriend's behind the scenes point of view, and I've included a short digression into Boyfriend's first Christmas song, a version of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
This episode also includes another call-back. When I interviewed Calexico's Joey Burns, we talked about the Spanish language Christmas song, "Mi Burrito Sabanero," which they performed with singer Gabi Moreno on their Seasonal Shift.
This week, I go through some of the recorded highlights of the song's history, though they really don't make it any clearer why that song has developed a seasonal following in Miami.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or favorites you want to share, I'm at alex@myspiltmilk.com.
If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to get Twelve Songs in your podcast feed. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, and Spotify.
This week, Jamie Hilsden and I have a meeting of the minds about how punk's meaning and associations have changed over time, and his punk Christmas EPs--The Myrrhderers Slay Christmas and The Myrrhderers Slay Some More--give us the place to start that conversation.
Hilsden brings a very interesting perspective to the conversation as a Canadian Christian who grew up in Israel just a few miles from Bethlehem and started working up the demos for these songs while on tour with a band in Poland.
We chew on the challenges involved in converting Christmas songs to to punk, and which songs simply didn't interest him. We also talk about the record that served as proof of concept that Christmas punk could be good as punk and Christmas music.
You can find both EPs on his Bandcamp page.
In this episode, I also talk about a modern Christmas classic, Nick Lowe's Quality Street. I talked about the album and Lowe a bit with Eddie Angel of Los Straitjackets back in 2019, and other artists have talked about finding it reassuring because it proved that they could be themselves and still make seasonal music.
If you like what you hear or are curious, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts—Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, or Spotify.
Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Cheap Trick weren't sure a Christmas album was a good idea when asked by their label to do one, but 2016's Christmas Christmas worked out, and it's better when bassist Tom Petersson makes clear the thoughts behind some of their versions. They revisited the rock 'n' roll Christmas canon and made those songs rock more. No small feat in some of the cases.
We got time to talk because Cheap Trick has a new album, In Another World, which took on unintended meanings since it was finished in 2019 before COVID-19 hit. Petersson talks about what it's like to be a band that lives to tour when you can't tour.
If you like what you hear or are curious, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts—Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, or Spotify.
In 2017, filmmaker Larry Weinstein shot Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas (available to stream on iTunes) for the Canadian Broadcast Company. The documentary starts in a fictional Chinese restaurant in 1967, and a number of music video-like performances set in that restaurant give structure to an exploration of the Jewish relationship to Christmas. The documentary is built on the fact that many of the Christmas classics were written by Jews--the same writers who wrote many of the great American songs.
Our conversation deals with the way that Christmas crosses cultural lines, and one additional line we talk about is Weinstein and the musicians he includes being Canadian. While much of the film is about the experience of Jews in America, we talk about how that experience was the same and how it differed in Canada.
In the episode, I included Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," The Platters' "Winter Wonderland," "The Little Drummer Boy's Bolero" by the University of Texas at El Paso Wind Symphony & Ron Hufstader, Lou Reed's "September Song" from the Hal Willner tribute to Kurt Weill, Lost in the Stars, and Lena Horne's "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."
I also ask Weinstein about a video by Rob Kapilow during which he argues that there are specifically Jewish musical choices made by Irving Berlin in "White Christmas." Here is that video.
The episode also features two Johnny Cash songs, "Merry Christmas Mary" and "Christmas as I Knew It."
In the conversation, I talked to Weinstein about musical director and producer Hal Willner. Last October, I interviewed producer Mark Bingham, who also worked with Willner.
The Dallas-based Polyphonic Spree formed in 2000, and the 22-person band seemed inconceivable. Former Tripping Daisy member Tim DeLaughter pulled together a band that gave him strings, horns, a harp, and host of voices to sing along. At the time, the band's look including choir robes and Dallas' proximity to Waco prompted the British press to speculate on the band's cult-like tendencies. DeLaughter talks about that including the origins of the robes in this week's episode.
In 2012, The Polyphonic Spree released Holidaydream: Sounds of the Holidays Vol. One, and it successfully merged the band's maximalist sensibility, its tendency toward psychedelia, and songs people can sing. It emerged from the band's annual holiday extravaganza in Dallas, which DeLaughter says will return in 2021.
We also talk about the band's new album, Afflatus, which also emerged from a live show. The Polyphonic Spree were scheduled to play a show of covers in March 2020, but decided that it wasn't safe hours before the show. As DeLaughter explains, they decided to record the songs that night to document the arrangements, and this spring he decided to release those versions of songs by Rush, INXS, The Bee Gees, Daniel Johnston, The Monkees and more. For my story on the album, go to MySpiltMilk.com.
This week's episode also includes my favorite band from this year's Eurovision Song Contest. Iceland's Daði og Gagnamagnið. This weekend, I discovered that they recorded a Christmas song in 2020, "Every Moment is Christmas with You." I've included that song in this week's episode and close with the Icelandic version of it, "Allir Dagar Eru Jólin Með Þér."
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In December, I talked to "folk pianist" George Winston about his then-new Christmas single, "Silent Night," which he released to benefit Feeding America. His version was inspired by electronic artist Joseph Byrd and New Orleans piano player Professor Longhair, and at the time I ran part of our interview.
This week, I'm running the interview in its entirety, as he talks at length about his affection for New Orleans' piano players then and now, and another pianist who influenced him--Vince Guaraldi. Through the conversation, we see Winston as a fan and as a technician, someone who methodically hears things in others' performances that he can repurpose for his own music. He also, understandably, talks about his own best-selling December and the challenges it posed.
In this episode, I also share my love of honky tonk hero Dale Watson, his Christmas album Christmas Time in Texas, and my favorite track on it, "Santa and My Semi."
In the episode, I mention the Ranking the Beatles podcast, which this week examines the closest thing to a Christmas song The Beatles recorded, "Christmas Time is Here Again." Jonathan and Julia from Ranking the Beatles appeared on 12 Songs last holiday season to rank The Beatles' Christmas fan club releases including "Christmas Time is Here Again."
If you like what you hear or are curious, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts—Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, or Spotify.
The 1996 album Christmas on Death Row has always stood out because it seemed so improbable. Death Row Records made its name on indo-fueled g-funk telling gangsta stories from the 'hoods of Los Angeles, and nothing in that sound or subject matter conjures up warm fuzzies. Digital wise guys writing listicles in the 2000s during the holiday season inevitably slagged it as a bad idea or a cynical one.
According to John Payne and Danny Boy, the story is far more complex, and they suggest that the album is better understood as a sign of what might have been had the label's signature stars and personalities not left Death Row in the months before, whether voluntarily (Dr. Dre), in handcuffs (Suge Knight) or murdered (Tupac Shakur).
Payne was one of Death Row's founders, and he is currently helping to shepherd the company through its 30th anniversary celebration, which involves reissues, releases of music from the vaults, and the creation of DeathRowExperience.com, a digital, gameified Death Row gallery.
Danny Boy was a 15-year-old singer from Chicago when he signed with Death Row, and he sang three songs on Christmas on Death Row. During our interview, he was in the process of going through an airport, and the interview gets a little extra sonic texture as a result.
This episode also includes a favorite from the 2005 Merry Mixmas on Capitol Records--Lou Rawls' version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," remixed by awayTEAM.
In 2018, violinist Lindsey Stirling released her Christmas album, Warmer in the Winter, and although she doesn't usually sing on her songs, today she explain why she decided to sing the title track.
Today's conversations is largely about versions of songs--the hows and whys of picking one version over another. It's an issue in her case because she has released two versions of "What Child is This?" including one from 2020 with Darius Rucker, and this year she has released an electric and an acoustic version of a new song, "Lose You Now." Christmas music is all about versions, and Stirling talks about how some choices highlight her musicality while another reflects her faith.
We also talk about touring because she announced this week that she has an American tour that starts July 3 in Kansas City.
Before I talk to Stirling, I quickly trace the journey of "I Wish it Was Christmas Today" from Saturday Night Live sketch to unlikely rock Christmas anthem with versions by Julian Casablancas, Cheap Trick, and at the end of the show, the Italian indie band Mikhail y Julio.
Starting in the mid-2000s, mp3 blogs were a way to share a musical passion and find the community that shares it. I wrote about two such mp3 bloggers who share their love of Louisiana music for 64 Parishes, and this week on the show I talk to Brad Ross-MacLeod, also known online as the King of Jingaling at FaLaLaLaLa.com.
He has shared his love of Christmas music since 2004, for much of that time digitizing old Christmas albums that were never released on CD or in digital form. For the most part, he focused on albums that come with a heavy side of nostalgia, or those where the holiday marketplace led to such improbable projects as strings or vocal groups adapted for the season to the trappings of pop music.
Ross-MacLeod's interests aren't simply retro though, as he shows in our conversation. He makes some unlikely connections and embraces a lot of music, not only the offbeat and mercenary.
In keeping with the mp3 blog mode, I also feature today a song I found on an mp3 blog on African funk from the 1970s. "A Groovy Christmas and New Years" by Ghana's Pee Pee Dynamite is awesome, and I'll let the blog that led me to him tell what story there is to know.
In the episode, I mention that there are other Christmas music mp3 blogs that I like. Since copyright holders began cracking down on mp3 blogs, I haven't visited them much in recent years and can't vouch for what you'll find there these days--a quick scan says YouTube videos have replaced the downloadable tracks in a lot of cases--but since these people's work helped me find a lot of Christmas music, I want to recognize them and share their sites in case you want to go digging too.
Santas Working Overtime
Hi-Fi Holiday
Ernie (Not Bert)
Christmas a Go Go
Christmas Underground
Singer Inara George and producer Greg Kurstin are The Bird and the Bee, whose stylish, semi-electronic pop draws influences including a few that came to be lumped--inaccurately, I'd argue--under the "lounge" umbrella. The results are far snappier than that implies, but Kurstin has access to a battalion of retro keyboard sounds at his disposal that, paired with George's cool voice, make every song sound hip and well-dressed.
Last fall, they released Put Up the Lights, their first Christmas album but not their first recording of Christmas music. Roofers banged around above her while George talked about the theory behind their Christmas music and how they made the album during the pandemic.
We also talked about how the album related to their "Interpreting the Masters" series, for which they recorded albums of covers of Hall and Oates and Van Halen. We also talked about how she as a woman related to songs written by David Lee Roth.
This week, I also talk about a Spotify playlist--repository, really--of Japanese Christmas songs that I recently found, and I feature two songs that particularly caught my attention: a cover of "Last Christmas" by Cano Caioli and "Koibito ga Santa Claus" by Seiko Matsuda.
There's a whole body of chiptune music--music created by manipulating the programmable sound generator in videogame consoles. People once observed that if something exists, there's a porn version of it on the Internet, and if music exists, there's likely also a chiptune version of it as well. Levi Buffum, who records under the name Doctor Octoroc, made a chiptune Christmas album in 2008 when he released 8-Bit Jesus.
This week, Alex talks to Doctor Octoroc about the hows and whys of chiptune music and about the challenges associated with it, which are not only plentiful but for him, part of the appeal. We also learn which contemporary Christmas act he likes, and though it's not one you'd expect, it makes sense.
This week, Alex also shows a little love to Luther Vandross' "The Mistletoe Jam (Everybody Kiss Somebody)" and Nancy Wilson's "The Christmas Waltz."
In 1981, Christmas albums for rock 'n' roll audiences didn't exist, and with the exception of a few snotty punk singles, there was nothing for young people who loved the music that emerged after punk and new wave. ZE Records' A Christmas Record occupied that space alone, though as label founder Michael Zilkha explains, the album was more of a marketing project than a specifically commercial venture. Still, it brought the world The Waitresses' classic "Christmas Wrapping," and included music by such iconic figures from the period as Labelle's Nona Hendrix, Was (Not Was), and Suicide.
In this week's episode, Zilkha remembers the label's origins and decline, and how A Christmas Album was in many ways emblematic of its heyday. In our conversation, he talks about Cristina--Cristina Monet--who was an artist on ZE, and she would become his wife. Since Zilkha didn't talk about it in the interview, I didn't bring up her death from COVID-19 in 2020, but I wrote about it at MySpiltMilk.com shortly after she passed.
In this week's episode, I use an excerpt from my interview with Chris Butler of The Waitresses from 2018. Earlier that year, I interviewed Mars Williams, who played saxophone on "Christmas Wrapping," and though I didn't include an excerpt from it, it shines more light on the experience. In today's episode, Zilkha talks about how the song has been covered, and although I don't announce it on the show, at that point I included a version by Kylie Minogue with guest Iggy Pop. The episode ends with an indie rock version by Hate Club from the Christmas compilation No Sleep 'til Christmas 8.
In December, I had more good interviews than I had time for, so I ran episodes that featured excerpts from conversations with a number of artists. One such musician was Joey Burns of Calexico. Calexico released Seasonal Shift in time for last Christmas, and last December I ran the part of our conversation about their version of "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" and the political significance that Calexico's music has taken on.
This week, I'm returning to that conversation, which again ranges wildly from talking about their musical guests, their method, and their musical default settings (which aren't what you might expect.)
Unfortunately, it sounds like someone is stacking poker chips throughout the interview. That sound wasn't audible when I talked to Burns, but it showed up on the recording for the first and only time so far. I wish it wasn't there, but since the alternatives were use the recording or don't, I went with it. I didn't find it too distracting; if you do, sorry. I wish it wasn't there either.
This episode also shines a spotlight on an album I consider to be a good but not great Christmas album: The Beach Boys' Christmas Album from 1964. I generally consider Christmas music to be a singles or playlist medium, but The Beach Boys' Christmas Album gets a lot of love. It deserves the praise it gets on the strength of a handful of songs, but the version of "Blue Christmas" illustrates some real problems that The Beach Boys just couldn't overcome.
Prog metal is not my musical sweet spot, particularly where Christmas music is concerned. But as the arenas full of people who attend Trans-Siberian Orchestra shows each holiday season testify, it clearly is for many. For that reason, I really enjoy talking to people working in that area. I want to understand it better.
Peter Orullian is one such artist. He's an author who moved to Seattle with his band and a dream that didn't quite work out. The band didn't survive relocation, but he continued to work with vocal coach while writing and working at Microsoft. He wrote the rock opera The Bell Ringer, which was recorded in 2019. He got a few chances to perform the show, but COVID prevented any potential 2020 Christmas tour from happening. He turned to YouTube to promote the project, but right he's looking ahead.
We talk about telling a story through heavy rock, and the aspects that were important to him. We discussed how to integrate a Christmas classic into a story like this, and how music played before 14,000 people can be intimate.
In addition, I talk about one of my favorite Christmas albums--Carla's Christmas Carols by Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, and the Partyka Brass Quintet.
In 2010, the two-man act known as 11 Acorn Lane released Happy Holy Days, an album of predominantly Christmas music that nods to two very different but equally legendary talents--Esquivel and Henry Mancini. Thomas Feurer and Neal Pawley discuss their affection for the two and how they created music in their footsteps instrument by instrument, bar by bar, in a Manhattan apartment in the dead of summer.
Feurer and Pawley talk about Esquivel and Mancini, how their own technical abilities shaped their music, and their relationships to the American Christmas music tradition since they were born in Switzerland and the UK respectively.
This episode also returns to last week's focus on indie rock Christmas music for two from the now hard to find Christmas compilation, Star Over: "This Spirit Thing" by Sunless and "Angels We Have Heard on High" by Ormonde.
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The British Cherryade Records has been indie in concept and practice for more than 15 years. For much of that time, it has released a yearly Christmas compilation, A Very Cherry Christmas, which is only released in limited quantities and predominantly as physical objects. Cherryade's Bandcamp page features links to their Christmas comps dating back to 2005, but the CDs have long since sold out and only a few tracks from each one are available to stream or download.
In 2020, Cherryade released an EP, not a full album, because they weren't sure they could get the CDs made, much less that artists could record songs during the pandemic. It is available for download in its entirety with proceeds going to The Music Venue Trust, a non-profit helping indie music venues survive the shutdown that accompanied the pandemic.
Christmas music collector and DJ Gareth Jones talks today about the story behind the 2020 EP, the series, and the way indie rock does (or doesn't) sound like Christmas. Jones also posted a three-hour mix of indie rock Christmas music on Mixcloud.
This week, we also highlight one of our favorite Christmas albums, Christmas Cookin' by organ player Jimmy Smith.
If you like what you hear or are curious, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts—Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, or Spotify. If you want to get the music from the show, buy it through the links on this page and you help to support 12 Songs.
Singer Jacqui Naylor cops to the phrase "jazz vocalist," but she has worked to broaden the tags used to identify her and the spheres where her music can live. Since she debuted in the late 1990s, she has leaned into her inner singer/songwriter on occasion, and with "acoustic smashing," she has jumped the jazz fences entirely, pairing songs by R.E.M., AC/DC, Peter Gabriel and other rock acts with famous jazz songs. She smashes David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on her new album, The Long Game, which is out now.
We talk about that song, the album, and her 2007 album Smashed for the Holidays, which features a number of well-known Christmas songs paired with songs by the heroes of arena rock. She talks about using that album as ID, as well as the business and art involved in making that album.
We also start this week's episode with "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" by the DJ and producer Kascade, who recorded the song on his 2017 album Kascade Christmas as a mash-up of sorts by setting it to the hook in Hall and Oates' "Sara Smile."
If you like what you hear or are curious, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts—Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, or Spotify.
If you're thinking of acquiring any of the music in the episode, do so through the links here and you help to support 12 Songs.
Guitarist Steve Lukather is best known for a thousand studio sessions, as a member of Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band, and as the sole founding member remaining in Toto. He has enjoyed the rock 'n' roll life, and even though he's not the wild man he used to be, he remains unfiltered in conversation. That made our conversation on his 2003 Christmas album Santamental and his new album, I Found the Sun Again, a lot of fun and really interesting. The musician in him can make observations others wouldn't, but he's still enough of a fan to appreciate the people he has played with.
If you like what you hear or are curious, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts—Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Pandora, or Spotify.
COVID-19 forced major changes to Mardi Gras, including no parades, but New Orleanians still found ways to honor to day and spirit of the holiday. Since I take Mardi Gras seriously, my family and I were out on Fat Tuesday to see - and be a part of - a socially distanced Mardi Gras.
In honor of the holiday, I've scheduled an encore presentation of the first episode of 12 Songs with Ben Schenk of New Orleans' Panorama Jazz Band. Panorama plays music from the traditional jazz repertoire and folds in music from other cultures that makes sense with it. Not surprisingly, the band has made good, interesting Christmas music that is musically and conceptually true to who they are.
In honor of Mardi Gras, the show opens with a new cover of the '70s Philly soul instrumental "T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)" by Panorama's parade band incarnation, the Panorama Brass Band.
If you like that or other music in this episode, you can get it by subscribing to Panorama's Good Music for You/Song of the Month Club.
Last December, listener and Anglican pastor Chris Marchand wrote to tell me about Let Nothing You Dismay--an EP of Christmas music that could serve as a the soundtrack to A Blade Runner Christmas--and a book he wrote, Celebrating The 12 Days of Christmas: A Guide for Churches and Families. While we swapped email, we started talking about Sufjan Stevens' five-CD Music for Christmas.
Pitchfork.com reviewed it and contended that the album's plain-spoken embrace of Christianity felt punk in an indie rock context. The review felt a little like an effort to hold on to Stevens and pull him into indie's doubt-everything ethos that he might not really share, but to be fair, Music for Christmas sends enough signals that it's hard to feel certain about readings of it. Because of that, I thought Chris brought a perspective that would prove useful, so we met online early in January to break it down a bit.
In this episode, I also went into the collection to pull out another favorite that's hard to explain. The fiercely Canadian Stompin' Tom Connors released Merry Christmas, Everybody in 1970, and it's hard to put your finger on what's so great about it. I try though.
If you like what you hear or are curious, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts—Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or Spotify.
Mento Buru from East Bakersfield, California has played around California's Central Valley since the early 1990s. Bandleader Matt Munoz explains how they, like many bands, have made a living and endured as a regional act.
Last Christmas, Mento Buru released the East Bakersfield Christmas EP, which features Christmas classics adapted to suit the band's Latin ska sound. Munoz talks about how and why they made it, along with the two Spanish-language Christmas songs--"Donde Esta Santa Claus" by Augie Rios, and "Feliz Navidad" by Jose Feliciano. We discussed his fascination with Augie Rios in an earlier episode, but this time we talk about where he found the Spanish lyrics for the song that was written in English.
Along the way, Munoz shares some of his holiday favorites, including songs by the Ramsey Lewis Trio, Cheech and Chong, and Alexander O'Neal.
This week's episode also pays some attention to Earth, Wind & Fire's 2014 Christmas album, Holiday, and the 2015 Sony Legacy repackaging of it with a few extra tracks as The Classic Christmas Album. I'm fascinated by it because the band doesn't simply lend its grooves to Christmas favorites. On a number of the tracks, it either adds seasonal lyrics to pre-existing EWF songs, or it reuses familiar horn flourishes and signature parts to make their versions explicitly theirs.
If you haven't already done so, please follow or subscribe to 12 Songs wherever you get your podcasts. If you listen via Apple, a five-star review would be much appreciated.
Chas Justus' musical taste ends around 1965, he says, and he has made his living playing in roots music bands in Southern Louisiana--the swing band The Red Stick Ramblers, and more recently in The swamp pop band The Revelers. Last fall, he brought together a number of his musical friends to record Joyeux Noël, Bon Chrismeusse, an EP of classic Christmas songs sung in Cajun French. He talks about how the project came about, and how COVID-19 helped make it possible.
Along the way, he turns me on to a couple of tracks--Belton Richard's Cajun French version of Buck Owens' "You're All I Want for Christmas," and Chicago guitarist Joel Paterson's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."
I first interviewed Justus in 2015 for MySpiltMilk.com. Here's that story on The Revelers.
In this week's episode, I also talk about My Holiday by Mindy Smith, a Christmas album that I think merits more far attention than it gets.
Before Christmas, I talked to Holly Foster-Wells, the president of Peggy Lee Associates, about her grandmother, singer Peggy Lee. In the episode that also included conversations with Joey Burns of Calexico and Grant-Lee Phillips, we talked about Lee's Christmas parties and her songwriting, which seemed to be aimed at children more than fans might expect.
Today, we resume the conversation to talk more about her songwriting, her role in her career, and the challenges she dealt with as a woman that men didn't.
During the Christmas season, Capitol Records released a two-CD/two-record set of her Christmas music, Ultimate Christmas.
This episode also includes one of my favorite bizarre Christmas songs, "Jingle Bell Hustle" by Wayne Newton.
This week's episode features two very different conversations. First, I talk to Patrick Droney, a Nashville-based guitarist trying to establish himself as an artist who makes soulful contemporary rock music. In October, he released an EP, State of the Heart, and he'll flesh it out with an album-length version this spring. Between those releases, he put out a cover of Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You" as one of Spotify's Holiday Singles. We talk about covering Mariah and the role the song plays in his effort to establish himself.
Then, New Orleans musician Boyfriend returns to 12 Songs to discuss Amy Grant's first of three Christmas albums, A Christmas Album from 1983. Nothing in her catalogue would lead listeners to believe the album was in her background, but she explains why it is in fact one of her favorite Christmas albums.
Boyfriend also appeared to talk about "All I Want for Christmas is You" and The Carpenters' "Merry Christmas Darling."
Since I often ask the people I talk to about their early Christmas music memories, it seems only fair to share one of my own. To that end, I have included a song I discovered in my mom's box of singles: "I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas" by Yogi Yorgesson from 1949.
A new year of “12 Songs of Christmas” begins with a discussion of 1984. Music critic and journalist Michaelangelo Matos’ new book, Can't Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop's Blockbuster Year, looks at an amazing year in pop music that culminated with two Christmas classics--"Last Christmas" by Wham! and "Do They Know it's Christmas" by Band Aid. We talk about those songs and fit them into the story that Matos tells of 1984.
I interviewed Matos in 2015 when he published his previous book, a history of electronic dance music titled The Underground is Massive. You read my two-part interview on it at My Spilt Milk.
My second interview this week is a few minutes with Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd. When we spoke last fall, he volunteered his take on "Do They Know It's Christmas" at a point that would have been hard to connect to the rest of the interview. Since it made sense as a part of this conversation, I've included it here.
In addition to these conversations, I've shared one of my favorite modern Christmas songs--"Hark the Herald Angels Sing" by 11 Acorn Lane--and songs by Esquivel and The Three Suns that give it context.
In the recording, I talk about the album that introduced Esquivel to a new audience, Space Age Bachelor Pad Music. On the recording, I say it was released in 1984. I guess I had 1984 on my mind because the album came out 10 years later in 1994.
Finally, last month I posted an essay on Wham!'s "Last Christmas." You can find it online at TwelveSongsOfChristmas.com.
I'm ending 2020 with a bang on a number of fronts. First, I have four interviews for the nights before Christmas--"folk pianist" George Winston; singer Inara George of The Bird and The Bee; Jamie Hilsden, who performed this holiday season as The Myrrhderers; and Matt Munoz of the East Bakersfield ska band Mento Buru.
The second big news is that there will more in the upcoming months from all of these artists and others I have interviewed this season including Steven Drozd, Grant-Lee Phillips, Joey Burns of Calexico, and Holly Foster-Wells, Peggy Lee's granddaughter. Twelve Songs will take December 30 off but will return January 6, 2021 and will continue year-around at that point. I've always thought that the show was more about musicians and their musical, commercial and personal lives, and that Christmas music was simply a unique lens to help us get that view. I've never thought the show was simply part of the soundtrack to the season.
This episode's interviews need little explanation. Inara George's roofers decided the day and hour of our interview was the time that they needed to work over her room, but the hammering is only briefly noticeable.
Christmas is approaching and we have a lot of conversations to get to. This week, I spend time with Joey Burns of Calexico, Grant Lee Phillips, and Holly Foster Wells, singer Peggy Lee's granddaughter and the president of Peggy Lee Associates, which oversees her musical legacy.
Calexico released Seasonal Shift in November, and it's true to the band's long-time project as it lives in a place where cultures find ways to coexist. As such, Calexico projects often feel like they have political subtexts, and Burns addresses that.
Grant-Lee Phillips released the four-song Yuletide EP this year, and he talks about what Christmas music taught him about songwriting as a boy. He reflects on the experience of playing Christmas shows with Aimee Mann and being a mall Santa one Christmas season--a first for 12 Songs! He also talks about how his "Winterglow" ended up on Gilmore Girls.
Holly Foster Wells remembers Christmases with Peggy Lee including Christmas parties that inevitably features some of the top singers of the day singing Christmas favorites around the piano. She provides behind the scenes recollections of her decorations and her biggest Christmas hits. We'll have more with Wells on Peggy Lee soon.
This episode also spotlights Christmas Time is Here, a new album from sax player Benny Barksdale Jr. that sounds like home cooking--not quite smooth jazz but close, and the kind of warm sound and easy groove that sounds great at Christmas time.
[NOTE: My apologies for the technical issues in this issue. I'm not sure how they happened, but they have been fixed. Thank you for your patience.]
Bounce doesn’t seem like a natural pairing with Christmas, but there are a number of artists and producers who have made bounce Christmas music. None have taken to it more prominently or prolifically than New Orleans’ Big Freedia, who will release her second EP of Christmas music, Smoking’ Santa Christmas on Friday. It follows 2016’s A Very Big Freedia Christmazz and an assortment of single tracks including one, “Make It Jingle,” from 2016’s Office Christmas Party soundtrack and another as a feature on RuPaul’s “Jingle Des Bells.”
We talk about her relationship to Christmas music as an artist, as a businessperson, and as a New Orleanian, where one of the songs that signaled the onset of Christmas for her was “Otis and Bonquisha.” I didn’t know the song, so we take a time out to briefly explore “Xmas Blues” by Big Time.
Big Freedia also released the paperback edition of her memoir, God Save the Queen Diva, on December 1. It’s on sale now.
Since Christmas is approaching, this episode has a second interview, this one with retro soul singer, producer and songwriter Kelly Finnigan. Finnigan is best known as the singer for Monophonics, and this season he released A Joyful Sound, which is exactly the album you’d expect from a student of soul music. Along the way, he talks about the influence of Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield, Charles Stepney, and gospel music. He talks about the role those artists had shaping the music, and the trust he placed in members of the R&B community around the country who contributed to the album.
I also revisit my Twelve Songs Manifesto, which lays out my beliefs about Christmas music, and share music by Louisiana artists Chas Justus, who along with musical friends from South Louisiana released the EP Joyeux Noel, Bon Chrismeusse, and Museumgoer, who radically remakes Stan Kenton’s “What is Santa Claus?” with a vocal by me.
If you like this week’s show, subscribe or follow 12 Songs at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and now, Pandora.
A packed episode with new Christmas music from Phoebe Bridgers, Nick Lowe with Los Straitjackets, and guitarist Patrick Droney, who covers Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You" as part of this season's Spotify Singles.
This week I have two interviews. First, I talk to singer Judith Owen and comic actor and satirist Harry Shearer, who have hosted "Christmas Without Tears"--a holiday Christmas party on stage--yearly since 2005. They talk about the event, Christmas music, and their plans to stream "A Very Virtual Christmas Without Tears" on Friday, December 11. Normally, they would have musical guests from the cities they perform in; this year, they'll have performances from Richard Thompson, Jon Cleary, Steve Lukather with Ringo Starr, Julia Fordham, Topsy Chapman and Solid Harmony, The Stanton Moore Trio, burlesque artist Trixie Minx, Chris Difford of Squeeze, actor John Goodman, Donald Fagen, and many more.
I interviewed Owen and Shearer about Christmas music for MySpiltMilk.com in 2012, and recently I talked to Shearer about his new album, The Many Moods of Donald Trump.
After that, I talk to actress Amy Carlson (FBI: Most Wanted, Blue Bloods, The Society) and guitarist Seth Jabour (Les Savy Fav, 8G Band) to discuss Office Romance, their project with Syd Butler, also of Les Savy Fav and the 8G Band. So far, they have got together to record two Christmas records, the most recent of which, Holidays of Love, was released this fall. We talk about Amy's love of the classic Christmas compilations--the kind I talked about with Joe Adragna of The Junior League last year--and how Jabour and Butler's job making music for The Late Show with Seth Meyers helped them write music for the album.
For the occasion, Carlson put together a Spotify playlist of songs that inspired her or that we talked about in our conversation.
If you like this week’s show, subscribe or follow 12 Songs at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and now, Pandora.
This week's episode represents two opposite ends of the musical spectrum--the quieter, romantic sounds of pianist Jim Brickman and the prog-rock power of Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Both are associated with Christmas music and have recorded more than their fair share of it, and both were scheduled to be on tour this year during the holiday season.
I talk to Brickman about the series of live-streamed shows he will undertake via Zoom starting on November 29 that will in part benefit the venues he was scheduled to play while tour, all of which have faced severe financial hardship since they can't present shows. Fans will have multiple chances to see him this December, while Trans-Siberian Orchestra will play one live-streamed show on December 18. How the TSO spectacle will translate to the television or computer is an open question.
Brickman talks about the close relationship between his seasonal music and the music he makes the rest of the year--an affinity so close that it makes sense that he has recorded numerous Christmas albums.
I talked to Al Pitrelli, musical director for TSO in 2018. Today I talk to drummer Jeff Flake - a TSO lifer - about what a TSO member does during the fall when he or she doesn't have a tour. And what does he listen to for Christmas?
This Thursday is Thanksgiving, and if you need some music to help you be thankful this year - an understandable condition - here's a Spotify playlist from listener Michael Maling to help you feel the day. Masked. At a distance.
If you like this week’s show, subscribe or follow 12 Songs at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and now, Pandora.
The Flaming Lips have recorded a lot of Christmas music, and Steven Drozd and I talk about why that makes sense for the psychedelic rock band as we talk about their Christmas output. He goes back to the version of “Little Drummer Boy” that they worked out in the van on the way to an in-store in Minneapolis and comes forward to 2019’s cover of David Bowie and Bing Crosby’s “Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy” and his own “Christmas Snowflakes on the Autobahn,” which he describes as “Kraftwerk meets Mannheim Streamroller.”
The conversation meanders to cover not only their output over the years including Atlas Eets Christmas, a project he initiated that was released under the name Imagene Peise. He talks about recording the title track with Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon, and singer Wayne Coyne’s deep commitment to Christmas. We discuss the musical mystery that is Jackie Gleason, his feelings about Christmas on Mars, his podcast, Sorcerer's Orphan, and The Flaming Lips’ 24-hour Guinness World Record tour, which I covered for Spin.
The Flaming Lips’ most recent album, American Head, is out now, and the band has scheduled socially distanced concerts on December 10 and 11 in Oklahoma City’s The Criterion, where 100 fans will watch from the space bubbles that Coyne employs to walk over the fans at concerts. The shows have sold out, but watch CriterionOKC.com for additional shows, and follow waynecoyne5 on Instagram in case additional shows are scheduled.
For the occasion, Steven curated a Christmas music playlist, which you can find in the show notes and at TwelveSongsOfChristmas.com.
If you like this week’s show, subscribe or follow 12 Songs at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and now, Pandora.
For a musical record of 12 Songs so far that doubles as a solid soundtrack for the holidays, check out our “12 Songs of Christmas So Far” Spotify playlist.
The American rock band Low recorded one of the newer contenders for a spot in the Christmas music canon when it cut "Just Like Christmas" for its 1999 EP, Christmas. As Low's Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker reveal, the EP emerged spontaneously, driven in part by wondering whether they could intentionally write a body of Christmas songs.
The EP became an important part of the life of the band in a number of ways as it helped to get them attention and money at a time when they needed both. It has become enough of a part of the band's story that Low has returned to Christmas music a couple of times--in 2008 with "Santa's Coming Over" (which doesn't appear in the podcast) and in 2016 with "Some Hearts (at Christmas Time").
In the episode, we talk about Low's "Taking Down the Tree" from Christmas, and mention but don't play Tracey Thorn's cover of the song. It's excellent and well worth hearing. We also talk about a Gap ad from 2000 that featured Low's version of "Little Drummer Boy."
If you liked today’s episode, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts—Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or Spotify.
When 2020 started, The Goo Goo Dolls had no plans to record a Christmas album, but it’s November and we have It’s Christmas All Over. Today The Goo Goo Dolls’ John Rzeznik tells the story of the album and talks about his relationship to Christmas music growing up. How do fans of rock ’n’ roll who have been historically suspicious of sentimentality sing such sentimental songs? And how do guys who learned to play by making their own songs handle some of the Christmas classics?
It’s Christmas All Over was released on October 30, as was A Tori Kelly Christmas. Today, host Alex Rawls reviews Tori Kelly’s new album, which includes two new Christmas songs and her version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” from the movie, Sing!
If you liked today’s episode, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts—Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or Spotify.
Singer Ana Cristina Cash released her album Shine in early 2020 and had prepared to tour and promote it before Coronavirus forced her to change those plans. Instead, the Americana singer and wife of John Carter Cash recorded a cover of “Male Kalikimaka” as a way of going to her and her daughter’s happy place. It was Cash’s second Christmas release in two years; In 2018, she released My Christmas Collection.
We talked about both projects, touching on how being a mother and the daughter of Spanish-speaking immigrants from Cuba affected her choices. We talked about her work in the Cash Cabin Studio, and about her thinking before she recorded “Baby It’s Cold Outside” as a duet with her husband. She hears the song as “rapey,” as many do. For those who are curious, here are two interesting defenses of the song that focus more the woman's agency. They don't necessarily change the way the scenario sounds, but they add some useful context.
https://bigbutterandeggman.tumblr.com/post/154013148291/teachingwithcoffee-its-time-to-bring-an-end-to
https://www.thejustice.org/article/2019/12/understanding-baby-its-cold-outside-in-a-positive-light
Country singer Janie Fricke's music still sounds like country music, which is rare these days. In late September (when according to Rod Stewart, you really should be back in school), Fricke released A Country Cowgirl Christmas, the first Christmas album in her 43-year recording career. She is now her own label, and she talks about the whole project is based out of her Texas ranch, from figuring out what songs to do at the dinner table to filling CD orders in her home office. Along the way, she focuses on the songs as extensions of her life.
In this week's episode, I also talk about singer Debbie Davis and her husband Matt Perrine's efforts to record a second volume of their Oh Crap! It's Christmas so that they can pay New Orleans musicians to work. She's trying to crowdsource funding for the project, and you can find out how to help at her website. Debbie and I talked about Christmas music on the podcast last season.
The first crossover episode for "12 Songs"!
Sooner or later, it happens to every podcast. In this case, I'm talking to husband and wife team Jonathan and Julia Pretus, who host the "Ranking the Beatles" podcast, which ranks Beatles songs, working from the bottom up. Jonathan appeared on "12 Songs" last year to defend Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime," and this week he and Julia help break down The Beatles' annual fan club-only Christmas messages, which range from the relatively straightforward to borderline musique concrète.
These tracks are not easily purchased, but they can be found on YouTube and mp3 blogs online. One song, "Christmas Time (is Here Again)," was released in 1995 as the B-side of "Free as a Bird." You can, however, find Ringo Starr's faithful version from his 1999 album, I Want to Be Santa Claus.
In this week's episode, I also review Dolly Parton's third Christmas album, A Holly Dolly Christmas.
Our theme music comes from AF the Naysayer, who now has the vinyl seven-inch version of his new single, "Adelheid." You can hear it and get it at his Bandcamp page.
Before our conversation, bluegrass musician Rhonda Vincent never thought about the lack of Christmas music in her house growing up. She played in her family band, The Sally Mountain Show, but they didn't play Christmas music onstage or at home.
Vincent chews on that with Alex Rawls while talking about the ideas behind her two Christmas albums, Beautiful Star (2006) and Christmas Time (2015), and her upcoming residency in Branson, Missouri, "Christmas in Branson." She talks about the challenges posed by Christmas shows, bluegrass and country Christmas standards, and the challenge of singing Christmas songs.
Before that, Alex reviews Carrie Underwood's new Christmas album, The Gift.
In the episode, Rhonda talks about "Beautiful Star." While preparing for the interview, Alex ran across this history of the song. Producer AF the Naysayer made the 12 Songs theme music, and he has a new single, "Adelheid," on Strange Daisy Records.
Rapper Mega Ran recorded A Very Random Christmas in 2011, then updated in in subsequent years to make it what he calls "a living album." In our conversation, he talks about how A Charlie Brown Christmas inspired the album, and how the project emerged from a desire to fill the Christmas hip-hop void.
As a part of the conversation, we talked about the sketchy history of Christmas hip-hop including OutKast's "Player's Ball" and Jeremih and Chance the Rapper's Merry Christmas, Lil' Mama, and the songs that were a part of his Christmas growing up.
New Orleans' producer AF the Naysayer provided our theme music, and he has a new seven-inch 45, "Adelheid," on Strange Daisy Records.
When singer Eddie Cantor performed "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" near the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1936, people knew it was a hit because of the amount of sheet music sold. Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" returned to the charts so regularly in the years following its initial release in 1942 that he followed it up in 1945 with a similar sentiment in "I'll Be Home for Christmas."
Christmas music and the charts have a long history together. Legend has it that Phil Spector, who made his fame producing hit singles, recorded, A Christmas Present for You with Darlene Love, The Ronettes, The Shirelles and more because he thought that Billboard's newly created Holiday album chart gave him his best chance of album success.
Writer, critic, and chart historian Chris Molanphy tracks not only how songs perform on the charts but how they work, and as he illustrated last season in an episode of his podcast "The Hit Parade" at Slate.com, changes in chart rules helped Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas" reach number one on the Hot 100 in 2019, 25 years after the song's release.
This week I talk to Chris about Christmas music and the charts, and particularly how Billboard factoring streaming into chart positions opened the door for decades-old Christmas favorites to return to the charts and, in many cases, to make the charts for the first time.
This week's show also includes a first listen to "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" from the upcoming A Holly Dolly Christmas by Dolly Parton.
Last Christmas, Ernie Haase and Signature Sound released "A Jazzy Little Christmas," the product of a collaboration between his vocal quartet and Tony Bennett's long-time arranger Billy Stritch. Haase talks at length about their collaboration, and how the album fits into their career as Christian recording artists. He talks about how he squares the spiritual and the secular in his recordings and the holiday season.
A couple of notes:
1) We recorded this interview last January, well before Coronavirus had become part of our national discourse. That explains why he talks about Christmas music tours without a hint that they might not happen, and it explains why he sees snow on the ground while talking to me.
2) At one point in the conversation, I brought up a caroling event that I organize each year in New Orleans. I didn't want the conversation to be too much about me, and since I believe I have mentioned it before, I cut a number of references to it. At one point though, I couldn't do that without losing something interesting that Ernie said. And doing so would have changed the context for a few things he said, which wouldn't have been fair to him.
In this episode, I also mentioned I'd link to the trailers for upcoming Christmas albums by Meghan Trainor and Carrie Underwood.
When I first conceived of “The 12 Songs of Christmas,” I imagined singer Alexandra Scott as my co-host. That didn’t happen because she wanted to be a singer more than a co-host, and it wouldn’t have worked because she moved from New Orleans to Virginia, but the first episode of Season Three is a glimpse of what might have been. This week, Alexandra joins me as a guest to talk about one of our favorite semi-modern Christmas songs: “Hard Candy Christmas.”
We trace the history of the song from the Broadway soundtrack album for the musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas until we reach the much-loved Dolly Parton version, discussing what’s gained and lost in each version, and what Dolly brings to the song. En route to Dolly’s version, we play the version from the film adaptation with audio grabbed from this video since there is no album that includes it.
We then move on to two more stellar takes of “Hard Candy Christmas” by British singer Tracey Thorn and the combination of RuPaul, Barbara Mitchell and Michelle Visage. Both are exceptional for very different reasons.
Along the way, we talk about nostalgia, musical theater, stardom, and whether or not the song is a Christmas song at all.
For more on Alexandra Scott, you hear and buy her music at her Bandcamp page.
Boston-based alt-rock band Letters to Cleo made its name in the 1990s and had its biggest hit in 1994 with "Here & Now." It split in 2000, reunited briefly in 2007, and it now exists-ish, coming together each November to play a series of shows. It doesn't occupy the same space in the band members' careers that it once did, but they found reasons to continue to play together.
This week, Alex Rawls talks to guitarist Michael Eisenstein about the state of the band, its plans, and how they led to this year's EP, OK Christmas. He discusses why it happened now and not sooner, and how the gigs they've done since made it possible now.
After that, Alex reviews new Christmas releases from the Peter Holsapple Combo, I Don't Know How but They Found Me, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, and Rebecca Angel. For full-length videos from these songs and more reviews, visit a recent reviews column at MySpiltMilk.com.
This is the last episode of season two of 12 Songs. It will return for season three on the first Wednesday after Labor Day. If you haven't done so yet, please subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. That will help others find out about the pod and make sure that you don't miss an episode when 12 Songs returns.
In 2012, Kishi Bashi recorded “It’s Christmas, But It’s Not White Here in Our Town.” The song was a Kickstarter premium he offered when trying to raise money for his debut album, 151a, and once it was finished, his label Joyful Noise proposed releasing it as a limited edition Flexi-disc. Recently, I talked with Kishi Bashi about the song and how he built it—like his other songs—through a series of overdubs and looped parts that he played on his violin. We also talked about his upbringing as the son of parents who came from Japan to America, and how their experiences helped shape his Christmases.
When we spoke, he was on tour in support of his most recent album, Omoiyari. Kishi Bashi is a multi-instrumentalist whose primary instrument is the violin, and he generally performs and records as a one-man act, looping parts to create a full band experience even though he’s the only one playing. His songs have often had a psychedelic pop beauty to them, but on Omoiyari, his songs have higher stakes as he addresses the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. He uses his songs to try to better understand and connect with not just the situation but the people involved, and he does so without sacrificing the beauty that is present in his compositions.
During our conversation, I referred to an archive titled Attention Kmart Shoppers, where someone digitized the vinyl records and cassette tapes that stores were provided to play as background music. I played part of one of the Christmas albums, which you can hear in its entirety and download from the site.
I also talked to New Orleans’ Boyfriend about The Carpenters’ “Merry Christmas Darling.” Boyfriend also has new Christmas music that we didn’t mention since it wasn’t out when we recorded this conversation. She collaborated with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for a version of “You’re a Mean One, Mr Grinch” from How The Grinch Stole Christmas. It’s an exclusive to Spotify, and you can hear it there or at MySpiltMilk.com, where I wrote a round-up of New Orleans-based Christmas songs that include all four of the Preservation Hall tracks that showed up as Spotify singles this Christmas season, and two new takes on classics by Kristin Diable.
New Orleans singer Debbie Davis started recording Christmas music with her husband Matt Perrine when that was the Christmas gift that they could afford. In 2014, they released their Christmas music CD, Oh Crap! It's Christmas, and I got the story behind the album then at MySpiltMilk.com.
The album led to a yearly holiday show, and the upcoming show--December 15 at Cafe Istanbul in New Orleans at the time of this recording--was the occasion for our conversation. For that reason, we focused more on performing Christmas music.
During our conversation, we talked at one point about John Legend's rewrite of "Baby It's Cold Outside." Here it is, if you haven't heard it yet. We also talked about Lowland Hum's version of "Christmastime is Here;" here that is. I interviewed Lowland Hum last season, and you can find that really interesting interview here.
Recently, I posted a 12 Songs Christmas music playlist on Spotify. If you want a soundtrack for the season that’s fresh—or fresh to you—I think you’ll enjoy it.
If you haven't subscribed to 12 Songs yet, this is a good time to do so because the season ends strong. Go to Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify and subscribe.
This year, singer/songwriter Josh Rouse released The Holiday Sounds of Josh Rouse. As he explains in our conversation, it’s the culmination of years of songwriting during the holiday season, and the songs are both true to his art and the season. The craft they display is impeccable, and they fill a void in the Christmas music market because they’re aimed first at adults, whereas the hundreds of Santa, Frosty and Rudolph songs speak first and most compellingly to children.
Rouse wrote most of the songs on the album while living in Spain, where he has lived off and on since 2004. He talks about how Spanish audiences he encountered responded to American Christmas music, and about how Nick Lowe’s Quality Street affected his own thinking about Christmas music.
Rouse has a few Christmas shows left this week in the Northeast. If you want to see one, check JoshRouse.com for details and tickets.
Recently, I posted a 12 Songs Christmas music playlist on Spotify. If you want a soundtrack for the season that’s fresh—or fresh to you—I think you’ll enjoy it.
If you haven't yet subscribed to 12 Songs, this is a good time to do so because the season ends strong. Go to Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify and subscribe.
In this encore presentation of an episode from last spring, Alex Rawls talks to Scott McCaughey of The Minus 5 about the band’s Dear December and the unusual circumstances surrounding its release. McCaughey finished the album, then shortly before its release in the fall of 2017, he suffered a stroke. That ended any promotion for the album as well as any performing for McCaughey, who started in Seattle’s Young Fresh Fellows, and also played in R.E.M.’s touring band and The Baseball Project with Peter Buck and Steve Wynn.
In our conversation, he talks about the road the recovery and how not being able to play those songs for a while affected his relationship to the album. He also talks about how the song choices for the album and its release were affected by The Monkees’ Christmas Party album, which includes some of his songs.
After that, Alex reviews new Christmas releases from Rob Halford, Ne-Yo, Keb’ Mo’, John Legend, and Diana Ross.
If you haven't yet subscribed to 12 Songs, this is a good time to do so because the season ends strong. Go to Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify and subscribe.
I hadn't planned on this season circling in on two or three common features, but this season has included a number of Nashville acts, a number of discussions of A Charlie Brown Christmas, and two acts that made their marks on MTV in the 1990s. Two weeks ago, 12 Songs featured Matthew Nelson of Nelson, and this week I talk to Isaac Hanson of Hanson--three brothers who were introduced to the world as teenagers in 1997 with the release of "MMMBop" and the four-times platinum album it came from, Middle of Nowhere.
Isaac has done enough interviews since then to know how to hit his marks, but he's also pretty candid about Hanson's place in the world in the late 1990s, and although releasing the Christmas album Snowed In as the follow-up to Middle of Nowhere was not the most intuitive choice, it helped the band do a few things that they thought were valuable.
We talk about that and the challenge of interpreting Christmas songs on Snowed In and 2017's Finally It's Christmas, an album that also makes clear how hard-wired their pop sensibilities are. We also talk about rewriting Paul McCartney, which they did for their cover of "Wonderful Christmastime"--another song that got a lot of talk this season--and the thought processes behind it.
Hanson recently started their first holiday music tour, which will continue until December 21 when they play The Paramount in Huntington, NY. If you're like me and in New Orleans, they'll play The Fillmore on December 10. Go to Hanson.net for tour dates and tickets.
In other 12 Songs news, I recently said that I would post a Christmas playlist of my own. Here it is, 2 1/2 hours that I hope will find as much fun as I do.
On December 10 at 10 p.m. Central, I will appear on WWOZ with my host and friend David Kunian to play and talk about Christmas music. If you're in New Orleans, you can check the show out that night; if you're out of town, it will be streaming live on WWOZ.org.
And finally, for the rest of the Christmas season, we'll go to two shows a week, with the last one coming on Christmas Eve. If you haven't yet subscribed to 12 Songs, this is a good time to do so because the season ends strong. Go to Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify and subscribe.
Salvation Army used record bins are crowded with Christmas albums presented in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ’80s by companies such as Firestone, True Value, and businesses that have since shut down. They often feature cover art that resembles a Christmas present or invokes nostalgic holidays from the past. On this episode of “12 Songs,” host Alex Rawls talks with New Orleans’ Joe Adragna about those albums and particularly one that was important to his family’s Christmases, A Very Merry Christmas Vol. 5, sold by Grant’s department store in Long Island.
They talk about how these albums not only reflect but shape Christmas practices, and what the song and artist choices say the conception of Christmas put forward by these companies.
Adragna is a pop classicist who records under the name The Junior League, and earlier this year he released a new album, Adventureland.
After that conversation, host Alex Rawls talks about The Molly Burch Christmas Album by indie singer/songwriter Molly Burch (really this time!). The new album is Burch’s third, and Rawls reviews it, talking about how it fits into her body of work and some of the smart musical choices she makes on the album. We also hear her unusual take on “Last Christmas” by Wham!
For many, Nelson is the answer to a trivia question: What twin blonde guitar-playing brothers had a hit in 1990 with “Love and Affection”? Matthew Nelson acknowledges that his profile isn’t what it once was this week on “The 12 Songs of Christmas,” where he talks about This Christmas and This Christmas Too, companion albums that were released in 2015 and 2016. Each features the songs with a mix of vocal and instrumental tracks; songs that feature vocals on one album are instrumentals on the other, and vice versa.
Matthew Nelson and his brother Gunnar are third generation in their family in the public limelight after their father, singer Ricky Nelson, and their grandparents Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, who had their own sitcom Ozzie and Harriet from 1952 to 1966. Matthew remembers Christmases with his family and talks about how he and Gunnar came to make not one but two Christmas albums, and why he considers “Blue Christmas” the hardest Christmas song to cover.
The albums became part of a plan to do Christmas shows each year, and this year their Christmas tour starts on November 23 and runs through December 21. Go to their website for tour dates and tickets.
After that conversation, host Alex Rawls talks about The Molly Burch Christmas Album by indie singer/songwriter Molly Burch. The new album is Burch’s third, and Rawls reviews it, talking about how it fits into her body of work and some of the smart musical choices she makes on the album. We also hear her unusual take on “Last Christmas” by Wham!
If you’re listening to this episode here, please subscribe to 12 Songs through Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. That way, you don’t miss an episode and I have numbers to help convince artists and their managers that appearing on the podcast is a good idea. Those numbers also help advertisers see “12 Songs” as a way to reach their markets. It’s a win/win!
A Charlie Brown Christmas has a special place in the hearts of many. The cartoon from 1965 introduced generations of children to “ennui” before they had a name for it, and the soundtrack by The Vince Guaraldi Trio added some emotional gravity to effervescence that characterizes much of the Christmas canon. The album’s centerpiece, “Christmas Time is Here,” became a Christmas standard in the 1990s, when it was covered by Mel Tormé, Chicago, Shawn Colvin and guitarist Steve Vai, and last year Houston’s global indie/psychedelic rock band Khruangbin released a great version of the song.
During the 12 Songs conversation with Chuck Mead that started this season, Mead talked about his inability to play Christmas concerts because his drummer, Martin Lynds, was busy in December with another band, The Ornaments, who perform the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack from beginning to end in a series of show through the month of December in Nashville. The Ornaments have been doing playing these gigs for 14 years now, and recently, host Alex Rawls talked to Lynds and pianist Jen Gunderman about The Ornaments, Vince Guaraldi, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and what’s wrong with Santa in the animated Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
After that, this episode returns to a guest from earlier this season, Joel Dinerstein. Dinerstein is a professor at Tulane University who has written extensively about notions of cool in America, and he recently appeared on 12 Songs to talk about cool and uncool Christmas songs. During that conversation, Dinerstein talked about A Charlie Brown Christmas, but since the episode was lengthy with a lot to think about before it got to that section, Rawls decided to hold that section until now. The second section of today’s show is that exchange.
Recently, listener Raymond Martin shared a massive Christmas playlist that he posted on Google Play. You can hear it here, and if you have a Christmas playlist you want to share, you can reach Alex through Facebook or by emailing alex@myspiltmilk.com. If you think you've got good taste in Christmas music and/or some cool obscurities, show us what you've got. 'tis the season!
Finally, if you’re listening to this episode here, please subscribe to 12 Songs through Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. That way, you don’t miss an episode and I have numbers to help convince artists and their managers that appearing on the podcast is a good idea. Those numbers also help advertisers see “12 Songs” as a way to reach their markets. It’s a win/win!
In this special NSFW episode of "12 Songs of Christmas," singer Erin McKeown makes the case against Christmas and holiday music. In 2011, she released F*ck That!--and in this episode, we do say "Fuck"--which started as a laugh and ended up being a tool to work out some demons. She talks with host Alex Rawls about her fairly typical childhood experience with Christmas, and how at some point her questions and issues surrounding the holiday came together to constitute a genuine antipathy toward the holiday season.
This conversation features music from F*ck That! as well as "Hey Lord" by Suicide and "Christmas with You (Merry Me)" by New Orleans' Kelcy Mae.
After that, Alex talks about Lucy Dacus' recently released version of "Last Christmas," which was originally done by Wham! To help explain his take on that song, Alex also plays Taylor Swift's version.
This is an encore presentation of an episode from last spring with Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini. He was one of the first people I wanted for 12 Songs because when I first interviewed him in 2014, our conversation ended with a then-off-topic conversation on Christmas music. He had an appreciation of beautiful Christmas music that I liked but was only starting to work out a way to discuss. The pianist and bandleader for contemporary lounge band loves Christmas music, and when I interviewed him for the show last fall, he turned me on to a beautifully weightless version of "O Come All Ye Faithful" by Julie Andrews.
Unfortunately, that interview was lost to the technical difficulties that accompany working new gear into your recording set-up, but we were able to talk again last spring. This time, we talked more than before about the business of Christmas music, including the place their Joy to the World occupies in the band’s catalogue, and the role Starbucks played in getting the project off the ground.
As Lauderdale explained in a story on the band’s history that I wrote at MySpiltMilk.com, Pink Martini began playing predominantly Henry Mancini compositions. The band emerged at roughly the same time as the ’90s lounge revival, but it outlasted the other bands from that time because of his affection for the music itself and its more exotic manifestations. In October, Pink Martini released two new EPs, Bésame Mucho and Tomorrow, with vocalists Edna Vazquez andi Jimmie Herrod respectively.
Pink Martini will play a series of Holiday shows in California starting on December 1, including a 7-day, 9-show stand in San Francisco. Tickets are on sale now.
JD McPherson’s got a great backstory as a guy from small town Oklahoma who loved playing rock ’n’ roll so much that he finally started touring in his 30s. Fortunately, he’s good at it and has been able to sustain a career since. But that’s not why he’s on “The 12 Songs of Christmas.” In 2018, he recorded Socks!, which is perfect for people who want their Christmas music as schmaltz-free as possible. This week he talks to host Alex Rawls about he solved the problem of how to write Christmas songs with an approach that reveals a deep love of rock ’n’ roll history.
This week, Alex starts a new segment and talks about a song that ought to be part of the Christmas canon, Charlie Rich’s “Santa Claus’ Daughter.” The song went unreleased in 1965 when Rich recorded it, so its obscurity is understandable, but its playfulness is undeniable and Rich’s Elvis-like vocal makes the song sound familiar on first listen.
If you’re listening to this episode here, please subscribe to “12 Songs” through Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. That way, you don’t miss an episode and I have numbers to help convince artists and their managers that appearing on the podcast is a good idea. Those numbers also help advertisers see “12 Songs” as a way to reach their markets. It’s a win/win!
In 2016, I wrote a piece for Nola.com on the all-Christmas radio format. Those who dislike Christmas music dump on it loudly, but it is quietly enjoyed by so many people that Christmas music is big business. It made stars of Pentatonix and draws audiences that make it lucrative for radio stations around the country to temporarily change formats and go to an all-Christmas music format.
While researching that piece, I got the impression that most stations dealt with the same limited playlists--often 200 to 250 canonical Christmas favorites. While talking to Steve Suter, program director for New Orleans' Magic 101.9--an Adult Contemporary station the rest of the year--I discovered that he deals with many of the same issues that other channels face, but he also makes choices that other stations don't because New Orleans and South Louisiana have produced a substantial body of Christmas music. He not only includes some of those songs in the station's all-Christmas playlist but features them prominently, even though they aren't as well-known as some of the best loved Christmas songs.
Most of the songs included in this episode and the artists who recorded them are obvious from the conversation, but there is one exception. Suter talked about the challenge of choosing between versions of "Sleigh Ride," and I picked one that I like. Nothing in the conversation makes it clear that it's by She and Him."
Los Lobos have covered a lot of ground over the course of their more than four-decades-long career, but they had never recorded Christmas music. Earlier this month, they rectified that with the release of Llegó Navidad on Rhino Records. According to band member Steve Berlin, it was something that they had talked about and liked in concept but never got around to until Rhino approached them with the idea. In today’s episode, he tells the story of how the album moved from concept to completion, and what he learned about Christmas songs in Spanish-speaking countries in the process.
The conversation reveals as much if not more about Los Lobos as it does about Llegó Navidad. Berlin talks about how the band works in the studio, and how its place in the music world affects the decisions they make. The resulting album is typical of the band in that its integrity and dignity are as undeniable as its sense of fun. They’re adults, so Llegó Navidad is never silly, but they’re playful where they should be—“Feliz Navidad,” “Dondé Está Santa Claus”—and soulful when they need to be, as on “Christmas and You.” Because most of the songs come from the Spanish-speaking world, they’ll be fresh to a lot of American ears and arrive without the baggage that accompanies many versions of songs from the American Christmas canon.
Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” is one of America’s least-loved Christmas songs if you read the annual lists of worst Christmas songs, but it’s also one of the most popular, so much so that Forbes reported in 2010 that it likely earned him between $400,000 and $600,000 annually. A sense of economic injustice likely fuels the outrage that writer Chris Chase expressed toward it and John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” in 2010:
Them putting out this dreck is like if Irvin Berlin wrote The Thong Song. It’s like if Van Gogh had done macaroni art. I don’t care if the latest American Idol runner-up warbles his way through O, Holy Night, just don’t let me hear the great Paul McCartney butcher a song in the holiday season.
Andrew Winistorfer defended the song for Vice.com in 2012 in a piece that often reads like an overcorrection—he claims the song is “the original--and by far best--Chillwave song”—and Annie Zaleski wrote at Salon.com in 2016 that “‘Wonderful Christmastime’ represents one of McCartney's biggest post-Beatles pivot points — a low-pressure song where he reasserted his independence and started a metamorphosis that would linger for years. Sometimes, the most unexpected (and most polarizing) gestures end up being the most enduring.”
The song has proven to be very coverable, far more so than the biggest contemporary Christmas song, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You,” and on this episode I talk to two artists who have recorded versions of the song. Electro boogie duo Tuxedo cut an on-brand version in 2014, and New Orleans rock band The Breton Sound cut a pop-punk version a year later. For this episode, Alex Rawls talked to Tuxedo’s Jake One and The Breton Sound’s Jonathan Pretus about the song, versions of it, and their other Christmas songs.
Tuxedo recently released its third album, Tuxedo III.
This is an encore presentation of Alex Rawls' interview with Jimbo Mathus of the Squirrel Nut Zippers. It first appeared late last March as an accidental loosey, and Mathus, the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ Christmas Caravan, and their conversation deserve more attention than they got at the time.
The band was at the height of its popularity in 1998 when it recorded Christmas Caravan at the request of their label. Even though no one in the band felt particularly excited by Christmas music, it made a memorable one that includes “Hanging Up My Stockings,” a song written by a band members’ parents. Mathus talks about the experience of recording that album, and recording a Christmas single, “Mardi Gras for Christmas,” in 2018 with the current, New Orleans-based Squirrel Nut Zippers lineup.
Every year around Christmas time, websites, news outlets and blogs pile on poor Christmas music, mocking the Christmas music that the writer considers the worst. The dynamic usually feels like a return to high school, where the songs are deemed inferior for the listed reasons, but really, they’re shunned because they’re not cool enough. Is Christmas music really that uncool? Or are there cool Christmas songs? If there are, what makes them cool?
Tulane University professor Joel Dinerstein has made a study of cool, and he is my guest this week on “12 Songs.” In 2014, Dinerstein co-curated the “American Cool” photography and cultural history exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, and he wrote three books on the subject, American Cool, Coach: A Study of New York Cool, and The Origins of Cool in Postwar America.
In our conversation, we talk about the Ray Conniff Singers, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, The Crystals, Dean Martin and more to discover that yes, some songs are cool, some are definitely uncool, and some become cool part way through.
Punk rock “was about how rules were made to be broken and making your own entertainment,” The Mekons’ Jon Langford said in 2004. The idea that punk meant choosing your own path and following your own muse has helped the punk band remain musically and conceptually provocative, and it gave him license to incorporate country, folk, reggae, pop, and glam into the music he has made with The Mekons, The Waco Brothers, The Three Johns, in side projects and on his own. And, it led to Christmas music.
Jon Langford is the quintessential indie artist, working his music and art to put together a paycheck and body of work he can live with, and his Christmas recordings reflect that. Each comes from a situation where the marketplace and inspiration overlapped, and in those situations Langford and his co-conspirators on a project found ways to give the songs integrity. In our conversation, we talk about a children’s music project he was involved with, Wee Hairy Beasties, as well as an impromptu Waco Brothers’ Christmas song, and “Christmas Carol, Christmas Ray,” a reflection on the holiday season when he was growing up in Wales that he recorded with the Men of Gwent.
Along the way, he mentioned the folk song “Green Grow the Rushes,” so we’ve included a version of it by The Singing Milkmaids, and because he mentioned Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody,” we finally get an opportunity to play it. The episode ends with Langford reading a revised version of “Twas the Night Before Christmas” written as a promo for Chicago’s Bloodshot Records, which has released his Waco Brothers’ albums. It’s excerpted in the episode, but here it is in its entirety.
Since his experiences in Newport in South Wales form a big part of this conversation, I’ve posted his video for “Christmas Carol, Christmas Ray”—which we talk about—and a clip of a Welsh holiday tradition that he only heard about as a kid but never saw with his own eyes. He couldn’t explain it, but here it is, with the singing in Welsh.
Americana artist Chuck Mead loves Christmas music and has performed and recorded it on his own and with the band that got him in the public eye, BR5-49. In today's conversation, he talks about getting a chance during one of those periods when country music labels signed country traditionalists, only to discover that radio and audiences wanted whatever's current more.
Still, Mead's love of Christmas music has professionally come in short bursts for him. A single here, a compilation track there. As a songwriter, he thinks he has said all he has to say in "The Happy Holiday Song" and doesn't see himself doing an album of other people's songs or writing an album's worth for himself.
Still, the Christmas tracks he has been involved with have all been interesting including his South Texas rock steady cover of Eddy Arnold's "Will Santa Come to Shanty Town," an idea that came to him from via his A&R man on the project, Cheetah Crome from punk band The Dead Boys. The experience inspired the track "I'm Not the Man for the Job" for Mead's most recent album, Close to Home.
For the album, Mead recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Studio, continuing his run through legendary roots music recording studios. Memphis isn't obvious in the album's sound, but the choice made sense because Mead served as musical director for the Broadway musical Million Dollar Quartet--a story based on Memphis Sun Studios' legends Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins.
In our conversation, we talk about BR5-49 performing a cover of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen's "Daddy's Drinking Our Christmas Away" with Marty Stuart on an episode of The Marty Stuart Show. For the episode, I cut the conversation before the song. Here's the clip in its entirety.
For more on Chuck Mead, you can visit him at his website and his Facebook page, and you can get Close to Home, his previous albums and merch from his website's store. If you have comments, suggestions or favorite Christmas songs, you can find me at the 12 Songs homepage and Facebook page.
I was interviewing Dave Alvin when he realized he had sat down next to an ant bed, and while talking to Tav Falco of Panther Burns for this podcast, he briefly hung up on me while the bandmate driving the van got popped for speeding. Such is the glamorous life of the touring musician.
Falco made his name in Memphis in the early '80s by occupying the space where punk, art, and the avant-garde intersected. In 1979, he performed a cover of "Train Kept A-Rollin'" on a local television show, and that version prompted the host to ask, "That's anti-music, right?" then announce, "That's the worst sound I've heard come out on television." His Behind the Magnolia Curtain (1982) chronicles that phase of his career, and while his music has always come from a personal place, it was never as out as that again.
In 2017, he surprised fans when he released A Tav Falco Christmas, which featured him playing some of the most popular songs in the Christmas songbook in ways that took the songs at face value. It seemed odd at first blush, but the title of his 1994 album--The World We Knew--could serve as his mission statement. His fascination with what we've lost over time was always going to lead him to Christmas music at some point.
For more on Tav Falco and Panther Burns, here's a critical essay I wrote in 2012 an interview with him from the same time, and a review of the photography exhibit that he showed at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, accompanied by a showing of his films, and a concert by Panther Burns.
I wanted to interview Thomas Lauderdale for 12 Songs since I interviewed him in 2016 to preview a summertime show in New Orleans and we detoured into 20 minutes of unusable conversation on Christmas music. The pianist and bandleader for contemporary lounge band Pink Martini loves Christmas music, and when I interviewed him for the show last fall, he turned me on to a beautifully weightless version of "O Come All Ye Faithful" by Julie Andrews.
Unfortunately, that interview was lost to the inevitable technical difficulties that accompany working new gear into your recording set-up. Pink Martini tours the world and stays so busy that it has taken until now to get a second chance at an interview on Christmas for the podcast. This is not the same conversation we had the first time. We talked at length about "White Christmas," which appears in two different version on Pink Martini's Joy to the World just as we did the first time, but we also talked about the role of Starbucks in the album's origin. We talked about the Christmas song he wished that he hadn't recorded, and his inability to get a handle on Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You."
Before the conversation turned to Christmas music, we talked about Pink Martini's early days as "the house band for progressive causes" and its debut album, Sympathetique. I've edited most of that from this podcast to keep it focused on Christmas music, but you can read that part of the interview at MySpiltMilk.com.
The Squirrel Nut Zippers had to make their 1998 holiday album Christmas Caravan, says band member Jimbo Mathus. It was part of the deal when Disney bought the hot band's label, Mammoth Records, so even though no one in the band felt any particular fondness for Christmas music, they wrote and recorded an album anyway in the summer heat in New Orleans at the now-defunct Kingsway Studios.
Mathus tells host Alex Rawls about how the band recorded what has come to be a holiday classic despite the odds against its success. It only includes one cover of a holiday favorite--"Sleigh Ride"--and a song written by the drummer's parents. He also tells the story of how some songs have had to change over time, and how the rejuvenated Squirrel Nut Zippers released new Christmas music last season.
The conversation was part of a larger one that also discussed Mathus' new album, Incinerator, due out April 5. You'll be able to find that story at MySpiltMilk.com shortly after its release.
Johnny Mathis has one of the most distinctive voices in popular music, and in 2014, I got a chance to interview him about Christmas music. He talks about another day in music when musicians were expected to record Christmas music, and the role that music played in his career. He also talks about working with arrangers Percy Faith and Don Costa.
I conducted this interview by phone, so the sound quality is less than optimal. Still, you can clearly hear it, and Mathis is someone who has a very different perspective on Christmas music than many of the indie artists that I have talked to about Christmas music.
The husband and wife team of Lauren and Daniel Goans perform as the folk duo Lowland Hum. In their social media, they employ the hashtag #supportquietmusic, and when you hear Lowland Hum, you can hear that "quiet" pertains as much to aesthetic and philosophical concerns as it does volume.
This spring, they'll release a new album, Glyphonic, and we talk some about that, but we focus our conversation on their 2017 album, Songs for Christmas Time. Many of the same musical ideas that shaped that album affect their non-holiday music, so we talk about how they play out. We also discuss their faith and the unexpected ways that it influences the song and arrangement choices of Songs for Christmas Time.
Over the course of this week's show, we hear music from Songs for Christmas Time and Glyphonic, as well as music from John Fahey and Johnny Cash.
In 2017, The Minus 5 released Dear December, but it didn't play any CD-release shows or holiday shows that year because the lone constant in the group, Scott McCaughey, had a stroke a week before its release.
Recently, host Alex Rawls talked to McCaughey about his stroke and how it affected his music and his relationship to the album. He recalls the music of his youth that inspired him including a track by The Voices of Walter Schumann that he quoted on Dear December, and talks about the role that The Monkees' 2018 Christmas album, Christmas Party, played in the making of Dear December.
Alex Rawls spoke with the Norwegian Americana band Darling West before Christmas about two Christmas music videos that the band posted on YouTube--a version of "Blue Christmas" and the Norwegian folk Christmas song, "Kling No Klokka." Mari and Tor Egil Kreken talked about the place that American Christmas songs occupy in the Norwegian celebration of Christmas, as well as the popularity of canonical Christmas songs sung in Norwegian. Mari talked about the love of Jussi Bjørling's version of "O Helga Natt"--"O Holy Night" in Norwegian.
One caveat: This conversation was recorded via a computer call while the Krekens were at home in Norway and starting to work on a new album (While I Was Asleep, due out February 15), so the sound is less than optimal.
One cause for celebration: This episode marks the debut of our new theme music, made exclusively for "12 Songs of Christmas" by New Orleans' producer AF THE NAYSAYER. I've really liked his work for a while now and am glad to have his music be part of the show. You can hear more of his work on his Soundcloud page.
During the recent Christmas season, Toronto animator Joren Cull and his cousin, musician AJ Ing, released “The 179 Days of Christmas,” a nearly nine-hour-long Christmas song that takes “The 12 Days of Christmas” far, far, far beyond its logical conclusion. Understandably, the song got attention. The AV Club called it “the worst Christmas song,” but it’s not. It’s among the more challenging due to its length and deliberately sing-song presentation, but as I insist in The 12 Songs Manifesto, the worst Christmas song is the forgettable Christmas song, and this isn’t that.
I talked to Joren and AJ about the song, including its origins and how they did it. One commenter on Reddit speculated that they recorded the last day, then cut and pasted the file endlessly to create the song. According to Cull, they didn’t. He talked about the song's absurd length, why it's that long, and how it plays into their sense of humor. He sees the song as less of an FU to Christmas music and as something more playful, in a similar spirit as an Andy Kaufman bit.
As a part of my conversation with Cull, we detoured understandably into the world of novelty Christmas songs (In the Manifesto, I argue that all Christmas songs are novelty songs), where he turns me on to the Pac-Man Christmas album and I turn him on to “KITT Saves Christmas,” a Knight Rider Christmas song with a better electro-funk groove than I remembered.
Four notes and three apologies:
1) How polite are Cull and Ing? I called their song “The 178 Days of Christmas” while talking to them and they never corrected me. I deserved at least a casual correction—179—but no. Sorry guys.
2) I had tech issues and had to record my interview with Joren on my phone. As a result, the audio is rattier than usual. Again, sorry. Thankfully, I had the glitch solved by the time I talked to AJ.
3) This week’s show is a day late for the second time. This time, I realized when it came time to edit the episode that wrangling a nine-hour mp3 on a MacBook Air that is already feeling stressed and stuffed is akin to piloting a tanker, and it didn’t move with anywhere near the speed I needed it to in order to be up on our usual Wednesday drop date. Note to self: Think about the file size when wrangling nine-hour songs in the future.
4) “The 12 Songs of Christmas” will move to every other week starting with the next episode. Twelfth Night has passed, so the 12 days of Christmas are really behind us. I’ve always envisioned this podcast as a year-around conversation and since I never thought of it as a soundtrack or appendix to the holiday season, I don’t see a reason to stop. I know that there are others out there like me who like Christmas music and aren’t done with it when the decorations are stowed in the attic or shed. There are also others out there who want to hear interesting conversations about how and why music is made, and how it fits into a number of contexts, no matter the song’s subject matter.
Still, booking and recording and editing and uploading a podcast while wrangling the accompanying website and social media while also working on MySpiltMilk.com and teaching a class and having a family life has proven to be enough of a task that something has to give. Rather than half-ass all of them, I’d rather find a schedule that allows me to do all of the projects to my standards, which are becoming more demanding as my editing and recording chops improve.
Los Straitjackets' Christmas albums--2002’s ‘Tis the Season for Los Straitjackets and 2009’s Yuletide Beat--are inventive in a way that you don't expect from surf rock and might not expect from Christmas music. They're respectful of their tradition, so much so that their version of "Sleigh Bells" owes a lot to The Ventures' version from 1965. But they're not hamstrung by their respect for their genre and open with "La Bamba" en route to "Feliz Navidad."
In the recent Christmas season, the band released Los Straitjackets' Complete Christmas Songbook, which also includes loose tracks including a live version of Vince Guaraldi's "Linus & Lucy" recorded in 2015 when the band spent the Christmas season on tour backing Nick Lowe.
Guitarist Eddie Angel talks to host Alex Rawls about Nick Lowe, Christmas shows, mash-up arrangements, and his relationship to Christmas music. The show also includes Christmas music by The Ventures and Nick Lowe.
The episode also features the return of Nashville songwriter Jim McCormick to talk about The Band's "Christmas Must Be Tonight." The song from 1977's Islands is sincere in a way that most Christmas rock and pop isn't, and it prompts Jim and Alex to talk about The Band, Bob Dylan and his Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart, and one of the many roles Christmas music plays in the culture.
This week, I talk to Chris Butler of the 1980s’ band The Waitresses about their Christmas single, “Christmas Wrapping.” The band got enough interest and acclaim that they were asked to record the theme song for CBS’ 1982 high school sitcom Square Pegs, but the band never quite caught on in the way a lot of people thought they would. In 1981, The Waitresses were touring on the strength of their signature song, “I Know What Boys Like” when the one-off track they cut for Ze Records’ A Christmas Album, “Christmas Wrapping,” started to get attention. In 1983, it charted in England, and today it is better remembered than “I Know What Boys Like” and “Square Pegs,” and the song represents the new wave era when radio stations go to the all-Christmas format.
In our conversation, Butler talks about writing for Patty—Patty Donahue, The Waitresses’ singer, who died of cancer in 1996. Her distinctive sing/speak gave the band its identity because it made the band’s songs sound like natural extensions of her. He also spoke of his affection for XTC’s “Countdown to Christmas Party Time.” Unfortunately, the song is not for sale digitally and I don’t have it in my collection, so I couldn’t include it in the show. You can hear it here.
Earlier this fall, I interviewed saxophone player Mars Williams about his Albert Ayler Christmas project. Williams played saxophone with The Waitresses, and at the time we talked about his memories of “Christmas Wrapping,” including his decision to include it on Mars Williams Presents: An Ayler Xmas, Vol. 2. I have included a relevant excerpt from the Williams interview for this conversation on “Christmas Wrapping.”
Twas the week before Christmas, and host Alex Rawls talked to the legendary singer/songwriter Rodney Crowell about Christmas Everywhere, the holiday album he released recently. The conversation deals with Crowell's relationship to Christmas music, but it's clear in the conversation that the same ideas and aesthetics that have shaped his songwriting for decades shaped his Christmas music as well. He worked to make Christmas music that is true to his art and that surprises in the same way that his songs can. With the title song certainly, he succeeded.
In the second half of this week's show, Alex talks to singer K.C. O'Rorke of the New Orleans funk/rock band Flow Tribe. This is the 10th year for the band's annual Christmas week show, and O'Rorke talks about the art and commerce of it along with the band's first Christmas song, "Hammered for Christmas."
During the conversation, Alex fumbles for the artist and title of a song he picked up from the program director of New Orleans' Magic 101.9, which goes all-Christmas at some point every holiday season. The song is "Papa Noel" by Brenda Lee. The song is also included in the episode, but here it is as well since it's not clearly identified in the show.
Last week when the Grammy nominations were announced, New Orleans' PJ Morton was among the honorees. He is nominated for Best R&B Album (for Gumbo Unplugged), Best R&B Performance (for "How Deep Is Your Love" featuring Yebba), and Best Traditional R&B Performance (for"First Began").
The news came while Morton's attention was on another album--Christmas with PJ Morton, his most recent release on his own Morton Records label. The album presents Morton first as an interpreter of songs, including a glam/funky take on Mariah Carey's "All I Want is You." He did pen two songs for the occasion, including "Do You Believe," a contemporary gospel song featuring Yolanda Adams.
Host Alex Rawls recently talked to Morton about the album, gospel and secular music, Christmas with Bishop Paul Morton and the family, and the business of Christmas music. He also talked to New Orleans' Boyfriend, who returns to 12 Songs to about Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You," the most recent song to enter the Christmas canon. The conversation talks about Mariah now and then, Love Actually, Phil Spector and nostalgia.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra knows where its bread is buttered. Its press shots are not of individual members but of its live show, which has become legendary for its spectacle with lights, lasers, pyro and countless moving parts including cherry pickers that carry members out over the crowd.
Alex Rawls talked to TSO guitarist/musical director Al Pitrelli about what a Christmas prog-metal band does for Christmas, and how he as a guitarist in the metal band Savatage responded when he was brought a Christmas song to play--"Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24." Pitrelli also talked about TSO founder and songwriter Paul O'Neill, who died in 2017.
During the conversation, we also hear "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24," "Christmas Canon Rock," and "Wizards in Winter"--the song that launched a thousand light shows on suburban houses and lawns during the holiday season.
For more background, see Alex's interview with Pitrelli on TSO's early years for The New Orleans Advocate in 2015.
Seattle singer/songwriter Kristin Chambers is in the process of making her name, and she has done so in part by singing Christmas music. She has recorded one album, Snow Globe, and one EP, Merry Christmas, and they have helped to shape her identity more than she expected. Chambers talks with host Alex Rawls about the musical appeal as a singer and songwriter of Christmas songs as well as dealing with the success of that part of her songbook. They also talk about her background in theater and how it might relate to Christmas music.
In the second part of this week's show, Alex talks to saxophone player Mars Williams, best known to many for his stints with The Waitresses and The Psychedelic Furs. Williams also plays with Witches and Devils, his Chicago-based tribute band to free jazz hero Albert Ayler. Mars Williams Presents: An Ayler Xmas Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 document his efforts to fuse Ayler's music and method with Christmas music, something that's not as random an idea as it might seem at first.
Williams also remembers recording The Waitresses' 1982 Christmas classic "Christmas Wrapping," and explains how he adapted it to fit with Albert Ayler's "Soul Cry."
For more on Mars Williams' Albert Ayler Xmas project, see Alex's story at MySpiltMilk.com.
Delicate Steve is a guitar hero for our time with no obvious North Star guiding his musical choices and no piety for the The Church of Shredders. In today's interview, he talks about being a child of Napster, and the self-taught musical education that came from downloading a world of music has led to a career of music that doesn't fit neatly in any box. He started at Luaka Bop, where his personal musical vision was thought of as psychedelic world music (the "psychedelic" part sounds right), and now he's on Anti-, where his instrumental music simply seems personal and at home.
He recently released The Christmas Album, but as this conversation shows, Steve Marion is hardly a holiday true believer and approaches the songs as songs instead of as attachments to the season. In his talk with host Alex Rawls, he discusses Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, and his approach to instrumental music.
Alex also talks this week to journalist David Dennis about Outkast's "Player's Ball." The song fits squarely into the "12 Songs" mission because its story is very much a business one, but it also reveals that Christmas doesn't live equally in everybody's imagination. David and Alex talk about why, as well as the role Sean "Puffy" Combs' video for the song played in shaping Outkast's image.
Today host Alex Rawls talks to Scott Kelly, who started The Wizards of Winter to play a tribute to Trans-Siberian Orchestra as a benefit for a local food bank. Kelly talks about the aesthetics of prog-rock Christmas music, and the challenge of finding the right people to play it.
The Wizards of Winter will be on tour performing their holiday rock opera "Tales Beneath a Northern Star" through the end of the year.
In the second segment, Alex talks to Nashville songwriter Jim McCormick, who Alex profiled McCormick in 2012 when he had back to back number one records with Brantley Gilbert's "You Don't Know Her Like I Do" and Jason Aldean's "Take a Little Ride." McCormick talks with some envy about "A Baby Changes Everything" from Faith Hill's 2008 Joy to the World. They discuss the song--which Alex pairs with The New Pornographers' "Joseph Who Understood"--and what comes with singing Christmas songs.
Host Alex Rawls revisits familiar territory when he talks about Toronto and Southern Ontario among other things with Chris McKhool of the Canadian progressive string band Sultans of String, who released a Christmas album, Christmas Caravan, last year. They talk about Turkish strings, "Happy Xmas (War is Over)," and Mario Lanza during Christmas dinner.
This week, Alex also talks to New Orleans musician Boyfriend about her affection for The Carpenters and particularly "Merry Christmas Darling," which found a new musical life when it appeared in the 2003 film, Love Actually.
You can find the Sultans of String on Facebook and the band's website, and you can hear Boyfriend on her Soundcloud page and find out more about her on her website.
If you've got thoughts on this week's episode, please share them on the 12 Songs Facebook page.
Alex Rawls talked to Texas' singer/songwriter Robert Earl Keen backstage at Tipitina's, where Keen played earlier this fall. While talking, the two realized that they lived in the same Houston suburb at the same time and because they grew up there, the references in some Christmas songs mean nothing to them.
The conversation focused on the story behind Keen's "Merry Christmas from the Family," which has become an Americana holiday staple. Keen tells its story and talks about its repercussions, and one of his few attempts to cash in on anything, "Happy Holidays, Y'all."
Tickets to see Robert Earl Keen in concert this fall with Lyle Lovett, George Strait, and in his "Cosmic Cowboy Christmas" shows are on sale now through his website.
Tony Award-winning actor Michael Cerveris and his friend Kimberly Kaye have careers in the theater and on the small screen, and they formed their alternative Americana band Loose Cattle in the late 2000s. In 2017, they released Seasonal Affective Disorder, their conflicted Christmas album. In this conversation with host Alex Rawls, they talk about their cover of John Denver's "Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk This Christmas," Tammy Wynette's "Merry Christmas (We Must Be Having One)" and the appeal of the sad Christmas song.
For more on Cerveris, Kaye, and the story behind Seasonal Affective Disorder, see Alex Rawls' story from 2017 at My Spilt Milk.
New Orleans' Panorama Jazz Band folds a world of cultures and musical styles into its version of traditional jazz. Bandleader Ben Schenck and host Alex Rawls talk about how Christmas music fits into its business, and how one instrument can make a version distinctive. Music on today's show is available on Panorama's Bandcamp page on Song of The Month Club: Good Music for You.