Merry Christmas EP
The final release for 2017 is a 3 song Christmas EP done by Fascinations Grand Chorus. Originally we were thinking of releasing a Christmas compilation, but since we put out the 10 year anniversary compilation earlier, we didn't want to do another tour through the vaults for Christmas songs.
Christmas Waltz was recorded mostly live with Jon Gonnelli joining us for acoustic guitar. We ended up doing the backing track all in a room together and it took a while to get all the chords down. Since it's a standard, the chords are definitely more complex what we normally play so it's a badge of honor to knock that out with the four of us in the room together in one take with no edits or overdubs. Later I did go back and put on a lap steel for leads and fills and Stephanie also cut her lead vocals since she was playing organ during the tracking.
This Christmas was fun to work on because it was a bit more repetitive and droney than other Fascinations stuff. My guitar part straddles a line between being noodling and a repeated part. The backing vocals turned pretty beautiful as Stephanie layered on her parts.
Merry Christmas obviously has a nod to late 50s rockabilly Christmas hits like Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree and Jingle Bell Rock. For that, you have to use a tic tac 6 string bass and Stephanie gets to finally use her saxophone skills for a solo.
