While we’re visiting the late ’70s let’s cash in on the Citizens’ Band radio chatter. Santa moves his toys like Freightliner, surely he must need to hail a fellow highwayman.
Robert and Patrick Conti rattle on roackabilly style with their “CB Christmas.” Lesson: trust a trucker.
Richard Gillis rolls on quaint country rock with his “CB Santa Claus.” Lesson here: trust all truckers; it takes a convoy.
Big Jim and the Goodbuddies lay it on heehaw thick with their “CB Santa.” Lesson [i guess]: country folks are funny–laugh away.
18-wheelers are to cars what space shuttles are to piper cubs. But let’s allow them right of way here because there’s a semi-full of cool Christmas songs about truckin’.
I’ll start out with the heat. ‘Convoy’ was a song from the ’70s and got many a cover and reinterpretation, including today’s “Christmas Convoy.” Paul Brandt goes Morning Zoo with sfx and overly dramatic line readings for his. I prefer Mike Austin’s tribute to CW McCall’s gigantic country crossover hit (how many songs get movies made about them?). 12-25, good buddy.
Well, a truck is a power-hungry, overdeveloped, oft redneck form of car, so let’s take a hillbilly minute to consider the pickup (before we get to proper truckin’).
Average Joe’s Muddy Christmas is a my-tee-fine pop country album for the holidays. So we’ll get in that truck with our hunney and have a “Muddy Christmas” care of Lenny Cooper. Nasty boy.
First of all, we need to establish why Santa should trade in his magic sleigh for some 4 x 4. Alan Jackson explains (to some suspiciously familiar rodents) why “Santa’s Gonna Come in a Pickup Truck.” Well, then how’s he gonna deliver my Humvee? (Okay Red Simpson did the pickin’ and grinnin’ better back in 1973. Love the outro.)
Foster Martin Brand, on the other hand, insists that “Santa Don’t Drive No Pick-Up Truck” made by Ford or Chevrolet. I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but the House of UnAmerican Activities Committee needs to look into this.
Fortunately The Lacs saw “Santa in a 4-Wheel Drive.” That should straighten everything out. But, as they are good ol’ bubba country posters’, they might have been mistaken/drunk.
Paul Michael Gross is a television developer and actor (Due South), but he also shares with us his love of country cliches in “Santa Drives a Pickup.” (In this case a ’67 Ford.)
Best mention of June for Christmas is from the April-May-June run “Christmas in April” by Butch Walker. Bradley Glen ‘Butch’ Walker was a bit of a somebody lead guitarist for metal and rock bands back in the ’90s and earlier. His gentle country-rock love song here is aw shucks sentimental and santarific. Love is Christmas no matter what month.
Let’s get inside the stable with the real manger-ettes finally.
Santa’s helping at the Gilmer Dairy Farm in “The Gilmer Dairy Farm Christmas Song.” Will Gilmer sings up a bucketful of ‘Jingle Bells’ parody with cows in mind and it’s worth half a listen.
Cattle drives gotta happen first, o’ course. Cowboy Greg & The Done Goods yodel out “Cows Love Christmas” with that open range fantasia that usually precedes delusional seizures and death.
Bringing the hoofed ones home for the holidays Daniel Gould of Music Tech Group, solemnizes “Give a Cow for Christmas.” This rocks and feeds back and, i guess, postulates that poor people could use a burger as a gift this time of year. Hmmmm.
But we must pause and salute the greatest cow novelty Christmas music album of all time: It’s a Cow Christmas by Terry Esau. This True Christian went a little nuts in the best possible creative way cranking out parody after parody of carols with a taurine twist or two. Check out “God Rest Ye Merry Cattlemen” (reverential)
and the best of the herd: “Santa Cow.” It’s disco meets rap meets country meets trucker rock. Mooo, boy.
Axis of Awesome comes to the rescue with a real Nativity four-footed number. “I Love Being a Cow” may have a sudden turn to watch out for though. Watch out.
I listen to country regular-like (from the wife’s influence), and i like honest country: Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn… but something happened near the ’80s. Pop music (including elements of disco) invaded and it just wasn’t country any more.
It was bad.
This 1996 Bellamy Brothers Christmas cash cow is just such awfulness. Listen to “Our Love is Like Christmas” all (including the wooden, cutesie couple banter intro AND outro) if… you… dare.
Alienation means we just don’t belong–NONE OF YOU EVER LOVED ME!! Being an alien can be so sad. The Pocket Gods sing about the disenfranchised extra terrestrials in “Alien Xmas Song.” Soft rock emo hopeful wistful noise.
More rocking (alt/folk) are The Hot Buttered Elves, investigating what weird genealogy Santa must have with “Alien Santa.” Clap along!
Rednecks and aliens have always shared a special relationship. Watching the skies is like watchin’ out for revenuers. But getting abducted and probed is just some more family drama for inbred backwoods hillbillies. So give a minute to the foolishness of anote4u’s “Aliens Stole My Christmas Tree.” Hee hee haw.
Other science fiction futuristic shows and movies have little Christmas song love. Battlestar Glactica? Farscape? Babylon 5? Stargate? ALF? Red Dwarf? VR5? Continuum? Forget it.
Then there’s Firefly.
Mikey Mason, the least likely Bubba to sell a sentimental nerd ballad, wails through the 5 stages of loss for that ’02 Joss Whedon western/space opera mashup misstep in “Please Bring Firefly Back for Christmas.”
Wah wah: my home state has little identification with 12/25.
Christina Eastman was a farmer’s daughter from Oregon who became a casino singer in Vegas. I figure that says it all. This tune came out some twenty years ago and reeks of lounge breath.
The big one you’ve probably heard in this department is “Colorado Christmas” popularized by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. This is the classic homesick hallelujah that puts L.A. in its place (damn you to hell, comfortable climates!) and elevates the Rockies to Heaven (‘cuz the air’s so thin, i guess). I honestly prefer many of the female versions (like Meredith Grenfell-Bird‘s vocals for The Clear Creek No Name Band’s cover) of this tune to these gritsters. Been there, don we now our cliched ugly sweaters.
Now i am not going to count most of John Denver’s ouevre, including “Aspenglow,” as it doesn’t really yell The Nativity in The Centennial State. I need the words said (preferably in the title). But please listen with half an ear to these lesser known songs i found and see’n iffen you can’t detect a trace of that spherical-headed troubadour’s influence.
More homegrown (if awfully familiar in that way) is Melinda Trondson’s “Colorado Christmas,” a young, happy strummer of a song with old country harmony and comfortably worn (out) literary devices.
Steve Martin has observed that nothing played on the banjo can be sad–it’s so chipper! Working hard against this hypotheis is Ashleigh Caudill’s “Colorado Christmas Eve” about new love snuggled indoors during the holidays. This mournful maundering muzzles Joyeux Noelle in all its glee.
“Christmas Colorado Cowboy” by Jill and Allen Kirkham also measures the season in its severity by the hard labor of the keeper of the herd. But the guitar/fiddle gravitas here seems earned and reverential. Like one of those prayers where you keep your head down just an extra minute
Contrarily, Mark Putt Explosion plays with the whole legalized pot whoop-de-doo for Colorado with “Mile High Santa,” Ha ha, Santa’s in trouble with the police. Ho ho… hum.
Naw naw naw, I’m going to stay sticky-sweet sincere here. “Colorado Christmas Cowboy,” by Dan Schafer, plays that 1970s country styling… you know, the kind that had a story unfold so that the refrain changed its meaning a little bit after each verse, but the melody was a bit more pop than it shoulda been… you know? Remember when ‘loving country before country was cool’ was actually a pop song that was hardly country at all? Good times. Oh yeah, and near death experiences are pretty relatable this time of year.
