Category: country

Scale HO for toy trains is 1:87. This is half of the O Scale and is the most popular.

Roger Miller set the standard for Xmas toy train songs with his country lullaby “Old Toy Trains.” This 1967 for his two-year-old son promised the goods but advised Don’t you think it’s time you were in bed?

1968: Glen Campbell brings a childish impatience to it.

1983: Raffi brings a childish internationality to it.

1985: The Statler Brothers bring a colorless march to it.

By now, no one wants OLD toys. So LITTLE is the new descriptor.

1989: Randy Travis brings a paternal assurance to it.

1998: Nana Mouskouri brings an angelic innocence to it.

2000: Toby Keith makes a sing-along out of it.

2008: The Forester Sisters bring mystical wonder to it.

2011: Matt Andersen brings elder wisdom to it.

2011: Jessica Lea Mayfield brings a homespun poverty to it.

2012: Mirusia Louwerse, Carla Maffioletti and Kimmy Skota bring a celestial transcendence to it.

2013: Inuit Susan Aglukark makes it a bit of a chant. (With Native translation.)

2013: Restless Heart make it redneck somehow.

Let’s end with the 37-year-old Dean Miller looped into his dad’s original recording for a duet. Touching.

Not exactly commuting, the American classic hobo did use the train system for shelter and support.

“Oscar’s Christmas Lament” by Hadnot Creek zips together blues and pop country to explicate the hopes and realities of the boxcar life. Tough stuff.

Protest singing from Bill White makes the same points the hobos make: trains are the only way to go. “The Christmas Train” is hard driving blues for those on the tramp.

“Santa Fe Sam and Hobo Bill” make the best out of hungry exposure around Xmas playing the What If game. Boxcar Willie does that talky sad storytelling to the weepy violins. …then there’s the miracle of ham and taters and all the fixin’s. Was it a dream–?

“Hobo Christmas” from Sharp & Cissell has that driving rock rhythm that elevates country to Americana, so their sad story is fun.

Grunge country splashes water in your face as Old 97’s sing their “Hobo Christmas Song.” Side effects include toe tapping, yodeling, and eye rolling.

Actual fiddlin’ country from Matt Andersen brings a nobility to the “Hobo Christmas Train.” Makes you feel like takin’ a gap year and joinin’ in.

Meeting cute on the train, but having already broken up Nicole Andrade lisps through “This Christmas” as a cautionary pop song tale against being alive.

Tangential, “Boy Wonder and The Christmas Tree Girl” from Nicole Tesseyman & Steve Carrigan involve runaways with colorful nicknames, living off the con and the big bad London, once they take trains. Jazzy folk that rocks.

Also sad, Christian Rowe thinks this “One More Christmas” could be the last with you. I know your train leaves tomorrow but you don′t have to go, he begs with New Age-y pop. Moving. A bit.

Taking the last train, Night Flight can’t shake the sense “It Doesn’t Feel Like Christmas.” Perhaps it’s that ponderous New Age alt rock. That doesn’t feel like music.

Back to the country music with Stan Rogers. So, sad. “First Christmas” is about the very young children. But the daddy is working 3000 miles away–in the mines! Mother is waiting at the train station… but, i’m not sure this is going to work out. Life sucks!

HoganBeats loops a piano riff to intro “Skiing.” Thoughtful instrumental noodling mixed with the odd this and that from Mad Men.

The world’s gone mad with tumbling down a slippery slope, worries The Glenn Crytzer Orchestra. But, if you “Keep a Little Christmas in Your Heart.” you’ll do fine in the snow, doanchaknow. Big band but nonchalant.

David Walburn gets down home with the cozy country of “Meat’s in the Freezer (Let’s Go Skiing).” See, the whooshing down the mountains is the reward for all the hard work of winter preparation. Ski haw.

Trying to make it through this snowy “Time of Year” Gabriel Gassi raps and R+Bs about skating on thin ice with you. Listen, gurl, you’ve got ’til the end of the song to change your mind.

Guess it’s more like a dirge than a carol, concludes Brittany Ann Tranbaugh in sassy country pop that deals with a breakup. There’ll be no skating, now. And “The Christmas Flannel” shirt she got YOU–she’s keeping that. Nice coping mechanism! Great tune.

Francis Blume half yodels, half warbles through the old timey country trembler “For the Holidays.” He wants to kiss you! He likes spending time with you: Like the time that we went ice skating drunk and you slipped and nearly broke your Ask me what I’m doing for the Holidays. Ask him!

Ralph’s World jams the kidsong with fine retro rock in “All I Wanna Do.” Contrasting the summer (swimmin’) with winter (sleddin’), all he wants to do is be outside. And play. With friends. Not much to it.

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (feat. Ed Sheeran) groove-rap “Growing Up (Sloane’s Song)” to instruct the newly born on all the milestones to achieve. Sledding is in there.

Excellent doo wop recall from Young Respect (feat. Gwam) belaboring the “Climate Change” effects on our winter fun. No more sledding is a downer.

Aaron Lewis wants to expand your horizons with his ‘bove the Mason-Dixon Line “Northern Redneck.” Nearly authentic country with a proper bubba ‘tude. Four wheelers, yeah. Sleds? It gets cold up here.

“Jimmy and Jesus” had a lot in common, twangs out James Bonamy. This down-home country tweaker honors the life of a work-buddy who said he’d just turned 29 on Christmas Day. But the martyrdom seems more different than the same.

Time to wax nostalgic for Citizen Band radios for Xmas. Again.

Robert J. Conti & Patrick J. Conti grumble through “C.B. Christmas.” But they do slip in a 10-4 good buddy. Fine guitar work, too.

Paul Brandt’s “Christmas Convoy” gets a GrandTheftAuto redo from JakeCRD. About time.

Now for something a little bit different. Charlie Stout hammers out a hardcore juke-joint ballad to “The Last Rattlesnake in All of West Texas.” This country corrida spledorizes a bad mama-jama what pokes his head out of his hole on a Christmas morning (115 degrees), feels his oats (no F-150s in sight), and takes a bite of a passing tornado. Tune in to find out what happens next….

“The Beatles Fifth Christmas Record (1967)” does nae sa much celebrate the year that was, but contextualizes the mess of the latter ‘Sixties. (Laughter.)

Did someone ask about maryjane? “Green Butter Christmas” is no ‘Alice’s Restaurant,’ but Hilary Marckx employs the same storyteller schtick to explain why you didn’t get your presents in ’67 (the fat man was TOO high!).

The poignancy of the holidays punches up every memory. Hayes Carll tells the tale of Lola’s kid who went off to the War around Christmas, and all she has left of her boy from her bar she built in ’67 is the black velvet painting of “Jesus and Elvis.” Dixie home grown country pop, with a sudden outro.