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Americana artist Mindy Smith has been referred to on 12 Songs before. At some point in the COVID years I talked about my love of “Santa Will Find You” from her 2007 album My Holiday, and last year when I talked to The Indigo Girls, we talked about the song “It Really Is (a Wonderful Life,)” which they recorded. It turns out it was written by Chely Wright, but the only version I knew was Smith’s from My Holiday.

For me, this was an interview I had long looked forward to, and it was made possible by the release of Quiet Town, her first album in 12 years. The album will be out tomorrow, though the song we play, “Something to Write in Stone,” is out now along with two other songs. On October 4, it will all be for sale.

In the episode, I mention the heartbreaking (to me) Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club on Bandcamp, which I just heard will have two new singles available this year.

Mindy Smith will be on tour much of the rest of 2024, and you can find out where she’ll be at MindySmithMusic.com.

Listen to this episode of The Twelve Songs of Christmas
Author: Alex Rawls
Title: Mindy Smith
The Twelve Songs of Christmas

Music journalist Annie Zaleski returns to 12 Songs this week. She last appeared in 2022 to talk about Wham!’s “Last Christmas.” In 2023, she wrote This is Christmas Song by Song: The Stories Behind 100 Holiday Hits, so she’s back to talk about a few of the songs she wrote about.

In the episode, we talk about the Kate Bush Christmas special and the Kacey Musgraves Christmas special, both of which are awesome in their ways.

Listen to this episode of The Twelve Songs of Christmas
Author: Alex Rawls
Title: Behind the Christmas Songs with Annie Zaleski
The Twelve Songs of Christmas

I’ve long believed that if you can’t get a good interview out of the Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood, you should hang up your keyboard and mic. The Truckers are a richly layered project with the loud guitars and pounding drums used to drive a lot of meatheaded lyrics instead supporting subtle storytelling that deals class and race as well as rock ‘n’ roll. For much of their career, they’ve used their albums to come to grips with the American South as it exists today, but the songs sound like songs, not a sociology textbook.

I caught up with Hood between legs of the “Southern Rock Opera Revised 2024” Tour. Southern Rock Opera put the band on the map in 2001 when it used the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd as the pry bar to get into some of the issues mattered to them. It charted the course for the band since then, so it has a lot of legacy.

I expected the Christmas end of this conversation to be Hood talking about the Christmas songs he likes and his relationship to Christmas music, but while prepping for the interview, I discovered there are two Drive-By Truckers Christmas songs in the world. Those, obviously, get the 12 Songs breakdown as well.

To see if the Southern Rock Opera tour is coming your way, visit DriveByTruckers.com. I wrote about the New Orleans stop on the tour on my Substack page, The Cream.

Listen to this episode of The Twelve Songs of Christmas
Author: Alex Rawls
Title: A Drive-By Truckers Christmas with Patterson Hood
The Twelve Songs of Christmas

Saxophone player Boney James has two Christmas albums, Boney’s Funky Christmas and Christmas Present. Both make sense as the place where jazz and R&B meet, and that was transparently the case when he recorded his first album, Trust, in 1992.

We talk about those early years in addition to his Christmas music, and we discussed having an album of new music in the can that he wasn’t at liberty to talk about or play. Since we recorded the interview, the album’s title–Slow Burn–and its release date were released, along with two songs. It’s due out October 18, and we feature one new song from it, “Butterfly,” with guest spots by Cory Henry and Marcus Miller.

I wrote a piece on James based in part on this interview for My Spilt Milk.

The episode ends with a Christmas song from British punk band/cult fave Helen Love. If anybody knows where I can get an mp3 of this half of a split single, please let me know. The song is too awesome not to be in my collection.

Listen to this episode of The Twelve Songs of Christmas
Author: Alex Rawls
Title: Boney James
The Twelve Songs of Christmas

Our surf Christmas episode inadvertently laid the groundwork for this week’s, which focuses largely on Calypso Christmas music. New Orleans’ Charlie and the Tropicales released Presents for Everyone, an album of Calypso Christmas songs, in 2023.

This week I’m talking to trombone player and bandleader Charlie Halloran about the album, Calypso Christmas music, Mighty Sparrow, tiki bars, and being a working working musician in New Orleans. We talk briefly about an indispensable Calypso Christmas album, A Calypso Christmas, which includes classic tracks by Lord Kitchener, Lord Nelson, The Mighty Spoiler and more. You can find it in the digital marketplaces.

You can get Presents for Everyone on vinyl on Charlie and the Tropicales’ Bandcamp page, and you can also find a digital version of their new album, Jump Up, which we hear in today’s episode. We also talk about Mighty Sparrow Christmas music, which is available through the digital download stores.

I finish this episode with another New Orleans project, Haunted House Party and music from last year’s The Spirits of Christmas. The DJ-oriented beat tape for the holidays is also available in all formats including vinyl on the Haunted House Party Bandcamp page.

Listen to this episode of The Twelve Songs of Christmas
Author: Alex Rawls
Title: Calypso Christmas with Charlie and the Tropicales
The Twelve Songs of Christmas

In 2021, I interviewed Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick, a band I’ve only grown to appreciate more over the years. They released their first three albums–Cheap TrickIn Color and Heaven Tonight–in 18 months, and Dream Police followed a whole year later. They toured constantly at the time, which makes that productivity all the more impressive.

In 2017, they released a Christmas album, Christmas Christmas, an album that’s easy to like and easier to admire after Petersson talks about the inspirations for the songs.

I talked to Petersson because the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers had a new album out, In Another World, and the conversation was a lot about what a band that tours as much as they do does when COVID forces it off the road.

Listen to this episode of The Twelve Songs of Christmas
Author: Alex Rawls
Title: Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick (an encore presentation)
The Twelve Songs of Christmas

I don’t usually get to end a conversation on Christmas music with memories of radio legend Art Bell and his late night deep dive into the paranormal, After Dark with Art Bell. But that’s what happened when I talked to Mark Christopher Lee of the British lo-fi indie rock band The Pocket Gods. It took a lot of discipline not to end the show with After Dark’s theme, “Chase” by Giorgio Moroder. Instead, the episode ends with “Merry Christmas to the Drunks, Merry Christmas to the Lovers,” a new-to-me track by the Edinburgh indie band ballboy.

My conversation with Lee on The Pocket Gods covers a lot of ground as we talk about influential British DJ John Peel, Phil Spector, John Cage, and the way Lee morphed the band into a conceptual art project that explored how musicians do and don’t get paid in a streaming ecosystem dominated by Spotify.

Late in the conversation, we talk about Lee’s forays into documentary films. You can find Weird: The Life and Times of a Pocket God, Inspired: The 30-Second Song Movie, God Versus Aliens, and The King of UFOs: Royal UFO Secrets Revealed at Tubitv.com or the Tubi Roku app.

All of the music on today’s show is available at the iTunes Store, but 2021’s A Quantum Christmas Song, which is more than 115 hours long, can only be purchased as a full album and requires more than 8 GB of disc space to download. I think Mark will understand if you choose to stream rather than buy that one.

Listen to this episode of The Twelve Songs of Christmas
Author: Alex Rawls
Title: A UFO-Friendly, Spotify-Protesting Christmas with The Pocket Gods
The Twelve Songs of Christmas

Michela Mussolino introduced me to a new body of Christmas music this week. The New Jersey-born Memphis resident specializes in Sicilian folk music, and she recorded an album of predominantly Sicilian Christmas songs in 2022 on La Notti Triunfanti.

We talk about how someone arrives at that specialty, the deep history behind some of these songs, and how moving to Memphis affected some of the songs on the album.

In the episode, Michela talks about “Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle” being one of the best loved Italian Christmas songs, so I chose Andrea Bocelli’s version to give you a taste of it.

For more on Michela, visit MichelaMusolino.com.

Listen to this episode of The Twelve Songs of Christmas
Author: Alex Rawls
Title: “La Notti Triunfanti” with Michela Musolino
The Twelve Songs of Christmas