Mulberry Lane does a smiley, bubblegummy rendition of “Christmas in Wisconsin.” But they’re disqualified because the same exact song is sung to sub in Nebraska AND Iowa. Cheaters!
The Mears Brothers Band list as many municipalities as they can in their “Christmas in Wisconsin,” making this a school lesson more’n a country carol. They perform a clean, by-the-numbers professional pop kind of country. You need your clean boots on to dance to it.
If you’re looking for the Northerner wit, I’d like you to meet Courtney Wosick. Her “Hey Der Hi Der Ho Der” to the tune of Mele Kalikimaka is a short, no-disrespect funny way to access the WI accent for the holidays. Home movie quality, however, so treat it like an impulse peruse.
Nah nah nah nah and fa la la la, my friends. It’s time for more a cappella. That collegiate kind like we have already seen. All those boys organized and simultaneous and harmonized… sigh. So let’s visit University of Wisconsin-Madison and check out the Mad Hatters. They bring crowds to their feet with their Michael Jackson, Timberlake, U2 interpretations, and more. Eight albums available on their website (though you don’t get to buy a nifty red blazer). So here, now is “Wisconsin Christmas” with quick wit and a little walk-through their world from cheese curds to Bucky Badger. Make room for your toes to tap.
It’s a dark place of failed American Dreams, it’s a lush land of scenic hunting and paranoid manor-holders… I don’t know what you are: Wolverine State of Great Lakes/Peninsulas.
And it took a while to find you some plum pudding plainsongs, but when i did… Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice!
The prettiest and most Chamber of Congress worthy is Brian d’Arcy James (that guy in all those musicals!) off his solo album From Christmas Eve to Christmas Morn (which is the longest night of the year). You can buy a download of “Christmas in Michigan” from his website, or see it because some big fan ‘tubed it. Holy holly, that guy’s got pipes!
Now, you can help me. Another posting by the Meijer Choral Group, “A Michigan Christmas Card,” is a dearly pleasant piece reeking of community and adult pop. But who/what is this? PR for some megalomaniacal corp? Quick cash for some kids with a recording studio? The lifelong dream of some tunesmith(s) (Robertson-Farnsworth)? I must know! For 1985 this is pleasingly inoffensive.
Paul Ritchie, who has written for Xmas in KY and KS, rhymes ‘Michigan’ with ‘wish again’ in “Christmas in Michigan.” You can sample a bit of it on Youtube or buy it i guess. The melody is a bit lazy but i do dig the turn of lyric.
Dan Adamini wants to get more narrowly regional with “Christmas in Upper Michigan,” but his cliche-carpeted walk in the woods makes me shiver. Setting your keyboard to Church Organ doesn’t festivate the tune, dude.
Dewey Longuski wins for most in-jokes with his “Christmas Time in Michigan is Here.” (Land of the Hand?!) But his twanging, children’s piano tinkling, nasaling funtimes is a discordant diorama for demograghics. Instead of a being a cutesy song for the very young, or an alt song for the recently young, or even an MOR for the Boomers, this seems to be a song for childlike adult news announcers to underplay their local news outros.
So, let’s go to Detroit (no one else is). Karen Newman sings “Christmas Eve on Woodward Avenue,” a real show stopper full of little cherubs backing up the talent. Adorably twee. But this gets a little too local for me; not so much referentially, as pathologically.
Lest you think these people have no sense of humor for the holidays (Hello, Da Yoopers!), lemme drop a “Christmas in Detroit” number on you. Genesis the Church has set up the most unlikely looking entourage of white hiphoppers gassing local lyrics to ‘Christmas in Hollis.’ Love the scenery, gaped at the gentirfication, and worried about the small mentions of “The D-E-T.” So, not it.
Finally, I’m going to double down on the dark. As I did with Ohio, I’m going unwashed after hours club music. “Christmas Day in Flint, Michigan” by Beth Cahill from Songs for Sarah is not christmas at all. And she’s Canadian. It’s a dark folk lullaby, a real woman’s song. I insist it’s listenable. Merry Mary.
Honorable mention to Tony Wolf for “The Indiana Christmas Song.” There’s no Indiana in it, but there is humor that moved me to the depths of my stockings. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Booby Prize goes to “Somewhere Hovering Over Indiana,” a children’s song about waiting for Santa. If you don’t recognize it, it’s a selection from A Christmas Story–The Musical. It was nommed for a Tony and got good reviews… but come on guys! This is not how to run The Great White Way! Retreads of mediocre classics with unimaginative wordplay blows egg nog!
Runner up goes to Bob and Tom fast and loose with derogatory references in “If Santa was a Hoosier.” Humorful ho-downery.
How ’bout an honorable mention for some authentic kids’ Christmas music? Dierdre Jenkins (from Christmas Across America) gets silly with “Hoosier Gonna Kiss for Christmas.” The orchestration adds a theatricality to the fun, though those oboes are creeping me out–like this really is some weird mystery we need to solve: “Who?” “Who is kissing whom?” I gotta know!
My main Holiday Award Holder is Straight No Chaser’s “Indiana Christmas.” These guys were a glee club at Indiana University and someone dropped a video of their “12 Days of Christmas” on the ‘tube (nearly 10 years after they made it) which led to record deals and tours. Notes sharp as icicles, harmony warm as loved ones snuggled up to the hearth, the message as merry as it is melancholy… Call me a fan.
Brandston altrocks “Christmas in Ohio” as a metaphor for how much you cheer me up, babe. Which is all poetical and slick, but not holiday.
Laura Elder has sent up “Christmas in Killarney” by singing about Ohio. She’s all home-canned sweet preserves, she is. Irish humor is the best, all dancing and laughing and hitting below the belt.
Chantilly Lace has got a startlingly sinister bit of nostalgia entitled “Christmas in Cleveland.” Something, so the song relates, went wrong with young love around the holidays way back when, and it sounds like like we’re about to suffer a snow-covered body count by some Santa-looking killer. Well, that’s my read on it.
Keeping up with that new sound the kids like in their rock and their roll (’90s-style), I’m gonna pop open my advent to The Raveonettes’ “Christmas in Cleveland” from their album Wishing You a Rave Christmas. These are, wait for it, Danish indie rockers (purportedly influenced by the Everly Bros). I like the garage post punk noise here. It reminds you that Christmas is about young people lost in the world… y’know like Jo-boy and Mary-baby looking for some friendly refuge for birthin’. Sune Rose and Sharin Foo are old school cool, despite their overmodulated indecipherable lyric-noise. Don’t join in and sing along!
I was tempted to go so schmaltz i might’ve never come back: Kenny Rogers’s “Kentucky Homemade Christmas.” I shudder to contemplate how the soft-rock country po-folk fun mistletoed me with its rank, sweet givingitude.
Equally downbeat is Paul Ritchie’s “Old Kentucky Carol” of which a sample is offered on Youtube. Paul, the big tease, is a serial noeler, with songs for Kansas and Michigan as well. His effort here is noble, mainstream, and forgettable.
Steven Curtis Chapman goes hesitantly upbeat with “Christmas in Kentucky.” But he segues from KY home to ‘Christmas is Everywhere!’ Hey now–don’t go global on me, Steve Curtis… L.A.? The African Plains?! I love the message of love, but part of my parade here is locachoral. Love home, stay home, sing home.
Perry King sings Ronnie King’s mellow “Christmas in Kentucky” on the ‘tube (nice guitar closeup) and it’s all unplugged and roots o’ rock. I feel a slow dance comin’ on.
If you succumb to becoming a collector of Commonwealth carols, consider “The Kentucky Wassail Song” from Fred Waring and his little group, a lovely historical repro from a previous century (probably be worth 100$ on Antiques Roadshow).
So–finally–I was all set to offer The Roustabouts’ “Christmas in Kentucky,” a honky-tonk howler that makes me grin (MMG).
Then someone told me about Phil Ochs singing “No Christmas for Kentucky.” No offense, Bluegrass State, but protesting folkrock from the ’60s beats drunk-songs from the ’50s. If you’re not familiar, Philip David Ochs was a song writing hippie from the counter culture movement; he gave his mental health to give us “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” and “Draft Dodger Rag.” He’s doing his best Pete Seger here, reminding us that being poor when everyone else is celebrating SUCKS (despite what Kenny Rogers sings). Now go back to the mines!
The Mecca of Music, Nashville, brings a lotta attention. Everybody wantsa sing ’bout the holiest of holy times in TN. We’ve already referenced Alabama‘s “Tennessee Christmas,” which was cowritten by Amy Grant (sometimes referred to as “Tender Tennessee Christmas”) and, in the spirit of giving, is covered by Steve Wariner, Point of Grace, Lee Greenwood, Danny Gokey, Krista Branch, Zorema, Isabeau, Otilia, and bunches of others i don’t even wanna know. All right already.
Chet Atkins has composed a gorgeous pickin’ piece entitled “East Tennessee Christmas,” which has no lyrics (whose game to write some?).
And do not bother with Lallie Bridges’s ridiculous “Tennessee at Christmas” which is nearly word for word the same as her “Nashville at Christmas.” X-Mass production w/o musical gifts!
To take a break, I looked at Nashville Christmas songs. Nativity gold! Bob Walkenhorst’s “Christmas in Nashville” is that age old homesick-stuck-in-my-career ballad. I like the twist wherein he’s singing about the place he’s trapped (Nashville) and not the place he yearns for. Aww, he had me at “Three Wise Men in a bar…”.
Dan Schafer’s “Christmas Time in Nashville” lays down a honky tonk track for that late-in-the-drunk wistfulness fulla Christianity and regret.
One charity org. has a medley online that includes some homeless holiday conscience prodders: “East Nashville Christmas.” The 75 artists played wherever you might’ve donated a few years back. But their eastnashvillechristmas.com site is still allowing you to give for the Christ of it.
Still my playlist has gotta include “If Jesus Were Born in Tennessee” by Jason Cox & Bryan McKaig from their album Hark! A Providence Christmas. No lie, these Christian boys play this in church. It’s proper country, the funny kind (think Homer&Jethro, not Rick Dees): sly without irony. Now, these boys finally have a youtube channel and their traditional stuff rocks too, so give a listen, y’hear?
–our national tour of noels dedicated to our fifty favorite states of America.
Now, before you decide I won’t allow for famous folk on my x-country Xmas excursion, let’s consider talent. Many headliners rashly cash in with a seasonal sale (look up the numbers, December-dedicated disks hardly chart, but bring in great frankincense and myrrh over the long run) without a whole lotta litany nor agape.
Odd times, however, a true musician makes the rites right with passion and poinsettia-scented poise.
Carolers and God-resters, I give you Mr. Charlie Daniels’s “Mississippi Christmas” from his album Christmas Time Down South. This musician is the quintessential Southerner from his belt buckle to his hat. He wrote for Elvis and played backup for Dylan. But, yer right, this particular entry ain’t country before country was cool–it’s more pop banjo-ism. In 1990 blue grass was tickle-me Emo, after mainstream had mostly wrecked what Bill Monroe had wrought, but slightly before rock-a-billy was redeemed by traditionalists like Skaggs and Thile. Still, listening to those fingers a-picking here makes me think of elves making presents. Sorry, didn’t mean to get all ho-ier than ho…
Randy Brooks wrote “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” 1979 and has been cashing in ever since. Now, i hope to never to reference that song again, nor any of its dozens of doofus derivations, but the guy has got a song on his Randy Brooks’s Greatest Hit album from ’12 that addresses what i need to have said. Once Halloween is out of the way, nothing will stop the purposeful authorized onslaught of Christmas decoration and musicality.
So please allow this odd folk song “It’s Hallowe’en (A Christmas Song)“with its simple melody and special sacred sarcasm to transport you onto the holiday highway–it’s one way now.
The absolute scariest Christmas song ever has to be Fred’s “Christmas is Creepy.”
Fred Figglehorn, as grown out of by Lucas Cruikshank, was a helium-voiced six-year-old with deep emotional problems and millions of followers on his Youtube channel, and on Nickleodeon.
He’s as amusing as a screeching contest, but his song deals with the childhood traumas wrought by Christmas TV specials and stories on the overimaginatively young (He’s coming into the house? When I’m asleep?!)
It’s an added bonus that the performer is so upsetting and the song is so familiarly upbeat. I’m creeps totes.
There’s no better Christmas Ghost story than Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Terrifying the stuffing outta your contrarian soul in order to learn ya the lessons of the Baby J!
Boss Martians have a great rocker called “3 Ghosts.” I dance to it (but not a Halloween dance). (It’s currently blocked on Youtube.)
Animaniacs have a ChristmasCarol episode with songs. They’re fun, but 10 minutes later i’m starved for music again.
Which i guess means i oughta mention the Mr. Magoo Christmas Carol and its big hit “Alone in the World.” It’s sweetly sad, not ghosty enow.
Superplushybros’s “Christmas Carol Rap” is clever but clumsy and coulda used a bit more jingle in the backbeat.
Chris Blackwood’s musical adaptation includes the song “Link by Link” which is noisy and cutesy at the same unfortunate time.
But my favorite ghost song springing from this source has gotta be “Marley and Marley” from A Muppet Christmas Carol by the inimitable Paul Williams. Love ya, PW!
