I hope this will be the last week that “Twelve Songs” will be affected by my book project. I’ve returned this week to 2022 and an interesting conversation with scholar Derrick Bang about Vince Guaraldi and A Charlie Brown Christmas. We talked after the release of the Super Deluxe version of the album, which included most of the tracks recorded for the album, including ones that didn’t get used and in some cases didn’t get finished. For me, they helped me appreciate Guaraldi, particularly when you hear him stumble through passages that sounded effortless by the time he nailed them down.

Meet Vince Guaraldi and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (An Encore Presentation)

In 2025, the veteran string band Old Crow Medicine Show released OCMS Xmas, the first Christmas album in their lengthy career. Last season, we ran part of our conversation with Ketch Sekor and Morgan Jahnig from the band about its relationship to Christmas music and the album they made, but we had so many interviews at the time that we could only run part of it.

This week, I can run it in its entirety, which I think is worth it because while the band loves its down-home sound, they’re also students of the form and its history, so some real insights and personal moments slip into the conversation. I’m also always here for a band that doesn’t hide its class consciousness.

It helps that OCMS Xmas is also a very good Christmas album with a number of slyly smart touches throughout the album.

Folk/country singer Stompin’ Tom Connors flew the flag for Canadian culture starting in the late 1960s and continued to do so until he died in 2013. His music documented the people and places he saw traveling across Canada, and the best encapsulation of that project and his sound is Across This Land with Stompin’ Tom Connors from 1973. It’s online in its entirety for free on YouTube.

In 1970, he released Merry Christmas Everybody, which is a very Stompin’ Tom Christmas album. It’s available in the digital marketplaces, but with songs added to it because, I suppose, 12 songs might be considered too few in the current market. The added songs are fine–“The Hockey Song” is a Stompin’ Tom classic–but they’re not part of the album as I know it.

“Merry Christmas Everybody” by Stompin’ Tom Connors

Season eight ends with what I hope will be a tradition–a Christmas party, with a few guests and a lot of music.

This week’s guests include comic artist Peter Bagge, singer Judy Whitmore, and indie rock artist Hibou.

Bagge is coming to New Orleans in January for the Fan Expo, and I have been a fan dating back to his NYC punk days. He’s best known for the comic Hate and the young-punks-in-love adventures of Buddy Bradley and his friends. Last year, he considered how they’d grow up in Hate Revisited.

While talking, we discussed his favorite Christmas music.

I also talked to vocalist Judy Whitmore, who has also been pilot Judy Whitmore, author Judy Whitmore, and … I’ll let her explain. Her album, Christmas, flies the flag for the classic aesthetics of Christmas music.

I also mention in the episode an article by April Clare Welsh at ChartMetric.com that quotes me in her piece on the way Christmas music is become sadder. Is that perhaps because the world is getting sadder?

I also featured new Christmas music from É Arenas, whose 2024 interview ran in full earlier this season. This year, he recorded a new song, “Go Santa Go,” and included it with all of his holiday music on the new vinyl album, Yo Soy Tu Santa.

Earlier this year, I interviewed the indie pop artist Hibou for my non-Christmas website, My Spilt Milk, but while I had him on the line, I had to ask him about Christmas music as well.

Finally, I mentioned this year’s Christmas Underground playlist and the streaming version of my own playlist.

We’re in the last weeks before Christmas and I have more interviews than I can handle.

This week starts with a version of “Wonderful Christmas Time” by Twanguero before we get to my interview with Roland Gift, ex of Fine Young Cannibals. He talks about the way a new Chanel ad campaign with Dua Lipa and Blackpink’s Jennie has introduced a new generation to the Fine Young Cannibals’ “She Drives Me Crazy,” and about FYC40, an compilation of the band’s hits with a second disc of dance remixes.

Gift also mentions the video for “Everybody Knows it’s Christmas.”

I follow that with Ketch Secor and Morgan Jahnig from Old Crow Medicine Show, who this year released OCMS Xmas, their first Christmas album. There’s a lot of good stuff in that conversation, more than we have time for in this episode, so I’ll revisit it in its entirety next season.

Finally, I talk to Lorin Sklamberg of The Klezmatics about the reissue of their album, Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah, where they added music to lyrics written by Guthrie. Here too, there’s more good stuff than we had time for, so I’ll return to this next conversation next season as well.

One mea culpa: The most embarrassing moment of the season comes in conjunction with this interview because on Apple Music, the song I lead into the conversation with appears as “Ny Psycho Freylekhs.” I pronounced it that way, then realized when I downloaded the song after the introduction had been recorded that it was “NY” as in “New York,” not “Ny” as in the end is nigh. I never feel smart staggering through other languages, but I haven’t felt as dumb as I did when I saw the proper spelling.

The episode ends with music by Haunted House Party from A Strange Daisy Christmas.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) made itself part of this year’s music story with AI acts The Velvet Sundown, TaTa Taktumi and Breaking Rust making news one way or another.

This week, Ken Kessler of the podcast The Sounds of Christmas and Gerry D from the Totally Rad Christmas podcast join me to talk about the way AI Christmas music foreshadowed some of this. We talk about an early effort created by University of Toronto researchers, “Rudolph the All-Gracious King” and it’s companion how-it’s-done video), and the heavy metal “Christmas Overdrive.” We also talked about faux-vintage Christmas songs posted at the RAI Music page.

I started thinking about how to address Brian Wilson’s death on the podcast since we learned of his passing. “Little Saint Nick” and The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album are Christmas classics that needed to be addressed, but how or with who? The answer came when Oglio Records announced that it planned to reissue a 25th anniversary edition of Brian Wilson: Live at the Roxy. The promotional efforts behind that release put a number of possible interviews at my disposal.

This week, writer David Leaf talks about Brian in 2000 and 1963’s The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album. Leaf has written liner notes for numerous Beach Boys and Brian Wilson releases, and wrote The Beach Boys and the California Myth (1978) and SMiLE: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson, which was released earlier this year.

In the episode, I mentioned the new Beach Boys’ holiday EP A Little Saint Nick Christmas with The Beach Boys. It’s all previously released songs and mixes, but it’s on sale now.

I also mentioned the upcoming Strange Daisy Christmas, a compilation of Christmas songs by the New Orleans indie community on Strange Daisy Records. You can order it now online from Bandcamp.

I featured Loucey’s version of Darlene Love’s “Christmas (bAbYpLeAze CoMeHoMe)” in the episode, and earlier in the year I interviewed Cherie McCabe of Loucey after the release of their debut album, Participation Trophy Wife.

Next week, I’ll be back with more on Brian Wilson when I talk to musician Probyn Gregory about playing in Brian’s band in concert and in the studio when he recorded his 2005 solo Christmas album, What I Really Want for Christmas.

Remembering Brian Wilson Pt. 1: “The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album”

Toronto’s Kristian Noel Pedersen has released 27 EPs or albums of Christmas music, 26 of which are on his Bandcamp page. What started as a goof became a project that stretched him as an artist. We hear music from all phases of his Christmas career including (in order):

1. “Home Alone Pt. 1”

2. “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”

3. “All I Want for Christmas is You”

4. “A Step-Mother’s First (and Worst) Christmas Ever”

5. “Merry Christmas Baby”

6. “Christmas Without You”

7. “Hard Candy Christmas”

8. “Silver, Never Gold”

9. “What Are You Doing (on Christmas Eve)?”

10. “Pack Your Bags!”

We also hear a new song, “A Very Gen X Christmas” from The Static Dive.

In my conversation with Kristian, I mention the episode on Hanson with Isaac Hanson, and the one that traces the musical life of “Hard Candy Christmas.”