Twelve Songs of Christmas

Julian Koster and His Singing Saws

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."

Susan Cowsill of The Cowsills

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 Bob 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. 

Filmmaker Mitchell Kezin and ”Jingle Bell Rocks!”

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.

 

Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel

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.  

A ”Molto Groovy Christmas” with Carlo Poddighe

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.   

”Last Christmas” with Annie Zalenski

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. 

Highlights of the First 100 Episodes, Pt. 5

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. 

 

Looking Back at the First 100, Pt. 4

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. 

Looking Back at the First 100, Pt. 3

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.  

Looking Back at the First 100, Pt. 2

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.