I found a recording of our 30 NOV 2013 show at Austin’s Spider House Ballroom and found it so fun and funny that we decided to release the highlights from that night as a 14-track live holiday digital album!  Pre-save it here.

It includes three tunes we’ve never recorded in a studio:  My original “Made in China” plus “I’m Gettin’ Nuttin’ for Christmas” and “I’ll Be Probed for Christmas” complete with a tale of a very special (!) Christmas Eve.

The recording was made on a handheld, binaural digital recorder placed near the mixing board.  It was surprised how good it sounded considering that.  We did two sets that night and I picked the tunes we played best – or that were the most energetic and fun.

We have not played a full-on Nutcracker-heavy holiday show since about 2016 and listening to this, I’m struck by how really difficult these arrangements are to play.  Making it even tougher, long-time keyboardist Bill Petersen was not well enough to tour and perform with us by 2013 (he died 11 months after this recording was made) and we had simply distributed the essential keyboard parts among guitar, winds, bass and violin rather than finding a replacement keyboardist.  That made this stuff even more difficult.  Phil and I in particular play a LOT of notes. And boy… we sure played everything extra fast that night!!

I also love hearing our playful banter with the audience.  We’d really developed tough skin by playing this music at holiday events where we were just background music for casual passersby and we’d gotten into the habit of joking around a LOT with each other.  It was fun to play for a hometown audience that joined in that fun, wanted to dance and were enthusiastic.