Christmas in June

For the last few days I've been sitting in my cave, sorting through and transcribing Christmas songs. And it is WEIRD! At a time when the sun is working hard to bring the pavement to a boil, electricity bills shoot to a place where the sky's the limit and beaches beckon with a promise of unrelenting r&r, I am holed up with my trusty youtube listening to "Jingle Bells" in Japanese. And some tune in Danish. And Swedish. In the end this vastly disparate collection of tunes will hopefully gel into some sort of "Gesamtkunstwerk" that we'll unleash on unsuspecting audiences come Christmas. But for now I am resisting the pull of "Petit Papa Noel" and "Vom Himmel hoch ihr Englein kommt". Such is the nature of the business though. You want to tour with a Christmas project containing songs from all over the world on the topic? Put your nose to the grindstone, wade through the molasses of gooey fare and find the nugget that will, 6 months from now, express a precious aspect of a holiday that, at this very moment, you really couldn't care less about.