Christmas Love Song

Following in the holiday tradition of my 2020 cover of “Blue Christmas” and my 2021 original “So Sorry Santa“, I present another original, just in time for Christmas, titled “Christmas Love Song.”

It’s been a year of highs and lows, the lows punctuated by the loss of a great friend, neighbor, and musical collaborator — the ‘C’ of the CPR Trio — Chris Pardue, who passed away in June following complications from surgery. It’s the world’s loss, for sure.

Chris and Peter and I were just getting started on a new project at the time, one Peter and I may resurrect at some point, but the loss of Chris definitely took the musical and creative winds out of my sails.

Yet, as tragic as that was, life managed to do what it does. It continued to move along. Differently, for sure, but forward nevertheless.

Earlier this year, I met Pam. We fell in love, and this song is dedicated to her.

At some point this summer, while I was out walking my dog Bernie, a song concept entered my mind. The idea was that there have been a million love songs written, but there’s never been a love song written specifically about <insert the name of your loved one here>. I played around with some melodies and lyrics, but I couldn’t get myself into the creative groove long enough to put together anything substantial, so I abandoned it.

Come October, I started thinking that I should get moving if I wanted to finish (write, record, release) a Christmas song by Christmas Day, so I sat in front of my piano and sort of found a few interesting chord patterns and a little melody I thought could work. My thoughts at the time were that I would record another novelty song, this time written from the perspective of someone who really loves eggnog. It was to be called “Ode to Nog.”

Thankfully, my attempts at actually writing the lyrics for this went (mostly) nowhere. October turned to November, then November turned to December, and I still didn’t have a Christmas song. One day (pretty sure I was walking Bernie again), I circled back around to my love song concept: A million Christmas songs out there, but not a single one written specifically for you, whomever your “you” may be.

I still procrastinated to the point where I didn’t even finish the basic song construction until the morning of December 22. I recorded all the instrumental tracks that day, then got to work on the lyrics. Nothing. By late that night, I had more or less given up on this. I thought perhaps I’d tweak the concept and get a creative spark in time to release a New Year’s song. Disappointed, I went to bed.

On the morning of Friday, December 23, I decided to give this one final shot. I sat down on my piano bench and asked myself what it was I wanted to say. I got “… a Christmas love song written just for you.”, then I got the first half of the first verse, and then things started to flow. I finished the lyrics in about 90 minutes, then got busy recording all the vocal tracks. By that evening, the first draft was done.

The next day, Christmas Eve, I got some great feedback from Peter, and rerecorded a few parts in order to incorporate his suggestions and fix a few things I thought needed some attention.

The instrumentation here consists of a few drum tracks I created using native GarageBand drum samples, a bass track which I played on my Squier Classic Vibe ’60s Jazz bass, two separate (and doubled) rhythm guitar tracks courtesy of my Gretsch 2420T 6-string, and a bouncing piano track which I played on my Roland RD-88 using its “Concert Grand” preset. The song also includes what surprisingly few Christmas love songs employ: A harmonica solo! The honest truth is that I had planned to write and record a nice guitar solo, but I’m not that great a guitarist, and time was running out, so I went with what I thought would be a reasonable alternative. A little unconventional, yes, but I think it works. Finally, the sleigh bells you hear are real live sleigh bells which I picked up last summer at a neighbor’s yard sale.

Merry Christmas, and thank you Pam for being my inspiration ❤.