Christmas Extravaganza
A few years ago I put out a compilation collecting my favorite recordings over the last 10+ years. I originally intended to put out a Christmas compilation the same year, but working on other projects we were unable to get that done. This year, I revisited all of the Christmas songs I had recorded and then we also had a short list of songs we needed to record for the compilation. Here are some highlights about various songs on the compilation.
Blue Christmas/O Holy Night: These tracks are the oldest on the compilation and were done with Carolyn Sills featuring the Poor Man’s Roses backing her. I played steel and electric guitar in the band and we had a good run playing bars, restaurants and casinos as a top-notch Patsy Cline tribute. Each year we’d do a Christmas show playing some classic songs and we ended up picking 2 of our favorites to record. Both songs were recorded live and amazingly Carolyn cut her vocals along with the band. We wanted to capture the feel of a 1960s Nashville recording where an entire album was cut with the entire band and vocalist recording together. This was how Patsy Cline worked where she’d record to a 3 track with the band on stereo 2 track and her vocals on the 3rd track. We had an 8 track, so there’s some overdubs, but the base tracks were done all live with Carolyn operating the tape and cutting her vocals in the control room while we play in the live room. I went back over and added either steel guitar or a 2nd guitar overdub since I was playing rhythm guitar during the initial tracking. O Holy Night also had some harp added after the fact and Carolyn added some vocal harmonies. But otherwise what you hear is the sound of us playing live. I’m proud of these recordings because I think they allowed us to attempt the process followed by 1960s musicians we admire.
Holiday Spider: This song was done the year before the compilation and came out as a single. Originally we were thinking of the compilation coming out that year, but we couldn’t make it so all we got out was Holiday Spider. I love the chorus Jon wrote for this song. It brings a smile to my face everytime I hear it and I love that Jon and Herb were in the room together belting that out.
What Child Is This: I’ve always loved this song and wanted to try an arrangement using steel guitar. I think of the horseshoe theory with some religious music where old sacred music sounds closer to spooky music like doom metal than mainstream music. For this recording, I tried to go for that sound where it sounded old, musty, and recorded in some church at midnight.
Holidays Are Here/Christmas Dreaming: These two FGC songs were started around the time of Holiday Spider, but we got side-tracked by finishing FGC’s album. We revisited for the compilation and both follow the Phil Spector sound with a good amount of layers to the songs to give a dense and murky sound.
Merry Christmas To You: Justin Angelo Morey was finishing up some Black Hollies songs and when he heard we had a Christmas compilation in the works he asked to be on it. His song was the last to be recorded and it came together so quickly. We knocked out a good portion of the song in 1 session starting with getting the drums and bass down. I played a scratch guitar part which I later overdubbed with a real electric and pedal steel combo. Once that was done, Justin overdubbed an acoustic guitar and then Ashley came by to cut the vocals with Justin. They recorded their vocals on the same mic and we were going for an Everly Brothers sound.
