Twelve Songs goes to Las Vegas this week, first to talk with Sally Olson and Ned Mills of the tribute act Carpenters Legacy about The Carpenters and their Christmas music. This year, they took their affection for both subjects to the natural conclusion and recorded "Christmas Time with You," a Christmas song made in the mold of the Carpenters.  After that, I talk to comedian and ventriloquist April Brucker, who released a song sung by her and her puppet May Wilson, "Merry Christmas I'm So...

Earlier this season, I interviewed The Drive-By Truckers' Patterson Hood about his ambivalent relationship with Christmas music. This week I talk to the Truckers' long-time guitarist Jay Gonzalez, who takes a different path to a similar place. We talk about his relationship to the band as a full-time member since 2008 who isn't Hood, Mike Cooley, or long-time drummer Brad Morgan, and his love of Christmas songs that might or might not be Christmas songs. Along the way, I play music from his...

I've been out of the country, so this week is an encore presentation with two very different artists--pop instrumental piano player Jim Brickman and Jeff Plate, the long-time drummer for the arena rock band Trans-Siberian Orchestra. When I conducted these interviews in 2020, I was really interested in how COVID-19 would affect two acts that have made holiday season tours a meaningful part of their business. I could imagine Brickman's music translating to a live-streamed show, but TSO delivers...

This week I'm talking with blues artist Jontavious Willis, who recently released his album West Georgia Blues.  I wanted to talk to Jontavious not because of his Christmas music--he doesn't have any yet--but because he's doing something that I've been trying to pay attention to as people make contemporary music in traditional forms. We go a little longer with Jontavious talking about the blues in general to help get at that thought a bit.  But we also got to a number of his favorite blues...

This season has featured surf Christmas music, calypso Christmas music, Sicilian Christmas music and smooth jazz Christmas music, so it can't be too much of a surprise that we finally get to Cajun Christmas music. I think Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys are an important band as they picked up the work of maintaining endangered musical traditions that was started by a generation before him, and he influenced the generation that followed by finding contemporary ways to express those...

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...

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.  

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...

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...

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...

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 Trick, In 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...

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...

This week, Michela Musolino visits the Christmas music podcast to talk about ”La Notti Triunfanti” and Sicilian Christmas music.

I have so little surf Christmas music in my collection that I turned to WTUL DJ Hunter King, host of "Storm Surge of Reverb" to see if there was a substantial body of surf Christmas music. As I expected, the answer is yes.  We talk about old and new Christmas surf, Hunter's relationship to Christmas music, and vinyl because it almost goes without saying that as a surf music fan, he's a vinyl guy. In the episode, I mention my insane Dick Dale interview--really a monologue--and it's so dizzying...

The new season of Twelve Songs starts with an interview with Thomas Mertz, one of the founders of the social media game Whamageddon. To win the game, you must go from December 1 to Christmas without hearing Wham!'s "Last Christmas." Hear it and you're out. People play on social media on the honor system, but for Mertz, the fun is in the way the game has created a community.  Since he is in Denmark, he and his friends have a slightly different Christmas canon, and when they started playing...

Last Christmas, I promised that 12 Songs would return with Christmas in July 2024. Since July 25 falls on a Thursday, it seemed like an appropriate day to return with the first episode of the new season. Here are a few notes on the upcoming season including a song that hints at a direction we'll go in the first month. 

Season six of 12 Songs comes to a close with some of the highlights from the 2023 holiday season and a conversation with DJ/producer/business guy Raj Smoove and rapper/producer 504icygrl about the new Christmas in New Orleans EP. Raj and Icy talk about Christmas, community, business, and the historically awkward fit between hip-hop and Christmas music.  In the episode, I mention the Daily Beast story I wrote on Cher's Christmas and Christmas music in October, the streaming version of my...

Today's show is a lot about the backstage of the music business  as the Vancouver-based alternative rock band Mother Mother talks about finding a darker angle on Christmas music with "Cry Christmas" and their version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." This week Ryan Guldemond of the band and I talk about how a rock band finds a way to do Christmas music in a way that's authentic, as well as why a band like Mother Mother would even do one in the first place. In this episode, I also...

This holiday season, Imogen Clark released "Not Christmas Here," talking about how all the wintery signs that Christmas is coming don't mean as much to her because she's from Australia. In the Southern Hemisphere, it's hot in December and white wine is their egg nog.  The song is a bit of looking ahead for Clark because she’s moving to the States next year. It’s also her fourth Christmas song, so we spoke recently about them, Christmas in Australia, and Australian Christmas favorites.  In the...

This episode has been a few years in the making, but I was finally able to find a quiet moment in the busy lives of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of The Indigo Girls.  In 2010, they released Holly Happy Days, a holiday album that's very much an Indigo Girls album with their musical, personal, social and spiritual values shaping the songs in the way that they do on everything else the duo has released.  We had a good conversation not only about the album but how it fits into the long arc of their...

Unfortunately, jazz pianist Dave Brubeck is no longer around to talk about his 1996 solo piano album A Dave Brubeck Christmas. Craft Recordings reissued the album this Christmas season, but Brubeck died in 2012 so I asked New Orleans piano player Matt Lemmler to help me get a handle on the album. The resulting conversation is a deep dive into Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, and jazz piano. We talk about his most famous song, "Take Five," and detour to talk about A Charlie Brown Christmas because it...

I listened to one episode of Scott Leopold's "Holly Jolly Xmasu" podcast and I was sold. As a Stereolab and High Llamas fan, I felt like there had to be a High Llamas Christmas song, and Scott found one on Christmas Songs, which also included a great Bossa nova version of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," a very unusual jazz piano take on "Sleigh Ride," and the ambient pop of Takako Minekawa on "Listen, the Snow is Falling."  Fortunately, much of that album--but not all of it--was available to...

Blue Man Group started in 1987 as a performance art concept by guys who also harbored rock 'n' roll dreams. It has grown into an institution that has ongoing shows in Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, New York and Berlin. As of October, Blue Man Group now also has a Christmas EP, Overjoy to the World. Today Blue Man composer Jeff Turlik and performer Bhurin Sead talk about all things Blue Man Group including how songs are written and recorded for a band known for playing percussion instruments made...

I love when episodes overlap. Today, soul singer Eli "Paperboy" Reed talks about--among other things--his love of Huey "Piano" Smith's Christmas album, which we recently featured.  Reed has a new album, Hits and Misses: The Singles on YepRoc Records, and today we're talking about that and his Christmas music, including a snappy version of "Last Christmas" by Wham! Along the way, we talk about a couple of tracks that weren't available on mp3, "What Do the Lonely Do at Christmas" by The...