Christmas albums are at once the most ephemeral and perennial of genres. Like cicadas, they define the atmosphere everywhere for a solid month and then are gone.
In the pop genre of this seasonal swell, the classic 1963 album “A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector” looms large. Released almost exactly sixty years ago, it is at once a rock classic given producer Spector’s classic “Wall of Sound” treatment, as well as a promo for his stable of artists. Much of what has followed in terms of holiday compilation albums – from the rock idealism of “A Very Special Christmas” to the brand-bending gangsta rap of “A Christmas on Death Row” – follows the Spector archetype.
The CD “A Shockoe Sessions Live! Christmas” is this year’s RVA model. It includes covers as well original songs written by six Shockoe Records artists. Next week, the music will come alive during a special holiday concert performance broadcast from the Hippodrome on Tuesday, Nov. 28.
A little background: Shockoe Records label was launched in late 2022 with significant advantages, not least of which was the backing of In Your Ear Studios, the long-running JAMinc in-the-studio sessions, as well as an ongoing, COVID-initiated streaming series featuring a who’s who of local bands. Last August, Shockoe Records helped take over Shockoe Bottom with the annual street party known as 804 Day, which had a good turnout.
According to Reese Williams, Shockoe Records’ chief communications officer and production coordinator, assembling a Christmas album to support Giving Tuesday on Nov. 28, seemed doable even on a 60-day timeline.
The festive album opens and closes with post-punk versions of songs from the famous Spector album. The lyrics for “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” started out in a coloring book from a 1939 mail order catalog. Set to music for famous cowboy singer Gene Autrey, it became a perennial hit a decade later. Richmond rock cut-ups, Knifing Around, rollick through this chestnut with winking affection. “The idea,” says Williams, “was taking a traditional favorite and putting it on its head.”
The next cut swerves from cheerful snark to Americana sincerity. “All We Need” by Tin Can Fish Band gruffly celebrates human warmth at society’s threadbare margins – proving that a bit of bittersweet is the secret ingredient in many of the best Christmas songs.
The first traditional piece, “O Come Emmanuel” offers a spare version of the 1,200-year-old plainchant melody performed as a duet here by Dr. Weldon Hill and Holy River’s Laney Sullivan. Recorded last year during a program for online radio station, The Breeze, the slow, minor key melody swoons gently into quiet contemplation … a tranquil moment inevitably shattered by Fight Club’s “Santa Needs a DUI.” The latter song is a sort-of-prequel to the bizarro Elmo and Patsy classic, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” albeit with a punchy, Replacements-like charisma and tight arrangement that lift it above mere novelty.
The song “All the Gifts,” with original lyrics by vocalist Erin Lundsford (Erin and the Wildfire) and music by local hip-hop producer, Ant the Symbol, comes across as sophisticated, modern R&B. “[Lundsford] said she always wanted to write a Christmas song,” Williams recalls. “They wrote and recorded it within three weeks.”
“Miss Christmas” by the 23-year-old pop/rock guitarist Rein, a.k.a. Jordan Reinecke, powers up the mix with a crisp, rock-and-roll cut that evokes both early Elvis Costello and Lenny Kravitz. Which inevitably means the next song, “The First Time” will be soft-edged and reflective. This duet between Saint Samuel [aka Sam McCoig] and Weldon Hill was, like “Emmanuel,” part of the 2022 Breeze sessions. The “first” in the title is the hushed first snowfall of winter. “The streets are silent, and they glow/The air is stiller than a stone.”
Which inevitably means the next song, “The First Time,” a duet between Saint Samuel [aka Sam McCoig] and Weldon Hill, involves the titular reference to the first hushed first snowfall of winter. “The streets are silent, and they glow/The air is stiller than a stone.” Like “Emmanuel,” this was also part of the 2022 Breeze sessions
This sets up the most serious song of the set. Veteran local performer Susan Greenbaum’s anthemic “Peace on Earth” offers a solo meditation on the coexistence of bright, angelic promise and the darkness of human reality. The lyrics of the chorus –“Every melody will be/a hymn of loss and memory/ a song of peace in a minor key” – seem perfectly timed for the current tragedies in the Holy Lands.
Lest profundity drag down the proceedings, Rodney “The Soul Singer” Stith and Shawn Chapelle deliver “Holiday 4 2,” featuring big emotions, great vocals, and a cinematic arrangement. Williams describes it as “the schmaltzy Disney/Hallmark track on the record, but weirder than that.” The song focuses on “a hot, illicit love affair that can only be consummated at Christmas,” he adds. “There is a twisted story buried in that premise, and if you are pondering it, you aren’t thinking about real-world crises.”
Any shred of negativity gets blown away by a bright, propulsive cover of a traditional classic “Feliz Navidad” from Paulo Franco’s Los Alacranes de RVA. “We are really happy with that one,” says Williams. “It takes a classic song and fills up the studio with love and camaraderie.”
Petersburg singer Stith returns for the penultimate “Baby Please Come Home.” Again, the vocals are impeccable and the band, featuring saxophone from James “Saxsmo” Gates, gets to stretch out in bluesy abandon. There is a loose-limbed, closing hour feel, like the ace “Saturday Night Live” house band when the credits play and everyone hugs and waves goodbye.
Which leaves room for one final twist: A raw, emotive version of “Merry Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” from stargazing rockers, Rikki Rakki. Arguably the best song from the Spector album, it was originally performed by singer Darlene Love. Here, Rikki Rakki singer Erika Blatnik’s rough-edged attack cuts through the polished assurance of more familiar versions from powerhouse stylists such as Mariah Carey or Michael Bublé. And like the Love original, she sounds like she actually means it.
Note: The CD also will be available at Plan 9 in Carytown and Crossroads Records at the Stony Point Fashion Park.
A Shockoe Sessions Live! Christmas at the Hippodrome will be performed on Tuesday, Nov. 28 at the Hippodrome, 528 N. 2nd Street. Doors are at 6:30 p.m. and music at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $35, which includes a copy of the CD or $20 for admission only. A portion of sales will go to benefit Feed More.
