Category: country

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.

The country jukebox boot stompin’ of “Six Tons of Toys” sounds pretty with the fiddling from Paul Brandt. But, me, i’m partial to the thrown away vocals and LesPaul fingering from Dave Dudley. That overload only sounds like big-rig trucking because it’s meant to. Still, it’s Santa with the twelve thousand pounds of kid-loot.

The Young Fables admit to an obsessive bent toward the holidays. In “OMG It’s December” they drink, sing, correspond, and decorate with Way More Lights than may be necessary. Purdy country twanging (the kind that cutely censors).

Failure to launch is better than failure at flight. Like Buzz Lightyear, Santa has to land–or fall with style. What’s the opposite of flying?

Hadley Park has a sweet if nasal country cutup “Santa Crashed His Sleigh in Our Garage.” Hope he got to you first.

Now reindeer in general are fine symbols of Christmastime, hailing from the Arctic so it’s always like winter when they’re near. Majestic but adorable. Neutral enough to be portrayed in any mood, in fact. Let’s have fun–in song–with this Xmas staple.

Was there a time “Back Before Santa Had Reindeer“? Wull, Chuck Picklesimer has a story to tell you in fine down home country style. Lissen up, young’n. (Fish?!)