Twelve Songs of Christmas

Mindy Smith

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.

Behind the Christmas Songs with Annie Zaleski

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.  

A Drive-By Truckers Christmas with Patterson Hood

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. 

UPDATE: Since this episode went up, Hood announced his upcoming solo album, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, due out February 21, 2025. The first song, "Werewolf and a Girl," is out now. 

Boney James

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. 

Calypso Christmas with Charlie and the Tropicales

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. 

 

Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick (an encore presentation)

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. 

A UFO-Friendly, Spotify-Protesting Christmas with The Pocket Gods

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. 

“La Notti Triunfanti” with Michela Musolino

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. 

Surf Christmas with Hunter King

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.

Whamageddon!

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!