Every year I spend a couple of months working on something called Tis the Season To Be Cheesy. This year was volume 9. Each Christmas season, I work on putting together a disc of some of the most earnest, but off the mark Christmas music I can find. It's become a bit of a tradition and in a couple days I'll post a link to an MP3 version for those that weren't able to get a CD version. While I like it, and I get a kick out of doing it every year, it's not the Christmas music I listen to by choice. Over the next few days I figured I'd post some of the music that never seems to go away, the stuff that I'm really close to. Maybe you'll feel the same way.
Track 1. Phil Madeira - Christmas This YearPhil might be one of my favorite songwriters. Most of the time he's a songwriter and Nashville studio rat, adding Hammond B-3 to a long long list of records. On the side he's also a singer songwriter. A few years ago he came out with an album called Three Horse shoes, a collection of songs he wrote while hanging out at a pub in the english countryside. One of the songs was this one. Living in Colorado now, I can relate. It's not that I dread heading back to Minneapolis next week, but it's still going to be 34 hours in a car driving back and forth. Someday we'll have the money to just bring everyone down here.
Track 2. Steve Hindalong and Derri Daugherty - Babe In the Straw"One of the first CDs I ever bought was The Choir's Circle Slide. It was one of those CDs that helped drag me out of a very dark place and they've been one of those bands I've continued to follow because of it. Ang and I danced to a Choir song as the first dance at our wedding. In the early nineties, they came out with a lenten mass masquearing as an album full of collaborations from Alternative Christian artists called At the Foot of the Cross. It's one of the CDs I meditate with at Easter, but a few years later they did a similar project called Noel. Every year, Noel is one of the first CDs I pull out around Thanksgiving. I love to light some candles, dim the lights and just soak in this album and the next album I've selected a track from. Even if you think you've never heard of Steve Hindalong, you've probably heard his work. A few years ago he and Marc Byrd collaborated on a song you've no doubt heard or (more likely) sung, God of Wonders There's your 'Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story' moment of the day.
Track 3. Over the Rhine - The First NoelGrowing up in my family, ever year we'd attend the Sunrise Service at Easter and the Candlelight Service on Christmas Eve. I really grew to love walking out of the church after midnight and feeling the chill air and the silence covering everything like a blanket. Usually, there would be a few snowflakes floating down through the air. This song is the soundtrack of the drive home. When I listen to it, it brings back those images and I get a little shiver. The album it comes from, The Darkest Night of the Yearranks right up next to Noel on my Christmas album list... and I think it still will fifty years from now.
Anyway the first three tracks. There'll be another three tomorrow, and so on the rest of the week.
Merry Christmas.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I lived near the Rhine river. I will have to listen to the song.
Post a Comment