Year-round Yuletide oddities
Track down that last stray calf, cowboys are heading home for Christmas.
The “Cowboy Christmas Dream” is a warm home, according to Michael Webb in what wanders from western past folk into almost garage. Bang the guitar slowly.
Mary Kaye’s back with the endearing “A Cowboy Christmas Tonight.” Lilting, uplifting, the poke’s amongst folk.
You awake, it’s Christmas day… not exactly. It’s still night. But work needs done at the ranch. Stomp your bedraggled feet to gain some feeling and find your boots. It’s a bunkhouse holiday.
Riders in the Sky are the alarm clock you want to wake you with “Deck the Bunkhouse.” Listen to the whole half minute of it and you’ll know what i mean.
“Christmas in the Bunkhouse” sounds more like time off from Gene Davenport. This is honky tonk swing, but you’ll feel a square dance coming on.
Everyone’s jumping on the cowboy Christmas song bandwagon and talent is no prerequisite.
Donna and Carroll Roberson strangle out “A Cowboy Christmas” stringing together cold, God, and cattle with little emotion, just pop plodding.
With ladles more orchestration, Wayne Newton lounges up “Cowboy’s Christmas” for the casino-goers. The attempt to psychoanalyze the loner goes awry with the coconuts clacking as horse hooves missing the beat of the electric bass.
Xmas animals have been manipulated variously on this blog, but there’s always one more on the loose.
Most comic songs about killing Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer are country howlers that don’t approach the cowboy mystique. But Fortress of Attitude’s “I Shot Rudolph and I’m Sorry” has got the bang-bang twang of real rawhide (not to mention frontier justice from Santa himself). Just genius.
“Coyote Christmas” features some rudimentary yodeling and sentimental anthropomorphizing from Liz Anderson.
Downtime for cowboys might result in feats of strength and skill. The showcasing of man vs. enormous domesticated animals usually results in some painful ouchies, but that’s the cowboy way.
Brenn Hill’s “North Pole Rodeo” is clever, concise, and dispatchful a country tune as one could hope for.
No Swiss miss, the cowboy yodeler. The sudden register change from chest-voice to falsetto expresses something the recalcitrant hombre can’t put into words.
Jim Whitman may be ‘The Yodelling Legend’ but his “The Christmas Cowboy” is all upper register, the yodeling on some echo feature.
‘Pulling out the glottal stops’ The Vipers ladi-la-i-tee across ukulele and trombone for “The Yodeler’s Christmas.” Buy those boys a lozenge.
Will Ryan straight shoots “I Wish I could Yodel for Christmas.” Highly entertaining, but are we digressing from the cowboy theme?
Leave it to ‘Deputy’ Douglas Green fronting Riders in the Sky to put passagio to perfection in “The Christmas Yodel” a true cowboy workout.
Are cowboys looking forward to the holidays?
“Cowboy Christmas Eve” by Bri Bagwell & Kip Calahan Young has all the pickin’ and fiddlin’ them boys need to work up the nerve to sashay up to the barn dance. Them ladies are a-waitin’. R.W. Hampton plays this as a duet.
Bobby Boyles downplays this idea as a meditation of the silence of the season. “Cowboy Christmas Eve” here is somber and religious. The wide open spaces’ll do that to you. Bary Ward takes this out of the front room into the studio.
Lynsay Ryan married a guy born 12/25. So she’s in earnest with her lite-country “Christmas Baby” song. She’s home with some range. With her sweetie.
Don’t take the kids! Not for Xmas! Oh, wait, Santa’s fair game. I mean, since ‘Nightmare before Christmas’ that’s just the cost of learning lessons.
While i might avoid the Danny Elfman original soundtrack, let’s cue up Romeon Hustle to see how “Kidnap Sandy Claws” plays in the ‘hood.
Draztik gets a BLUE ALERT with their mad rap “Kidnapping of St. Nick.” It’s all about unfairness of a closed economic system, but the video takes itself seriously (careful of the 1/2 minute epilogue where Santa gets back his).
Jim Boutell goes honky tonk with “Someone Kidnapped Santa Claus.” It’s all kidsong begging for the big guy’s return, but with beerstains and spilled ashtrays.
While codified and proscribed over 50 years ago, identity theft is now more than ever the new mantra of fearmongers everywhere. Digital age drawback, dudes.
James Schramm does a half-minute of driving pop honky tonk with “Christmas Identity Theft.” But it’s all about the cosplay. And forgetting to turn on your clones’ ‘phone.