Christmas Done Paisley Style

By Angie Reynolds

Just imagine. It’s 90º on a hot and humid day in July. A perfect day for lying out by the pool and catching some rays … enjoying a picnic and some ice cold watermelon … resting in a hammock under a shade tree. Nope! For some artists it’s time to record a Christmas album. So how does an artist get in the Christmas spirit while recording holiday tunes in the middle of summer’s heat?

“Well, you hang up some lights and you put up a tree even if it’s July,” Brad Paisley says of recording his very first Christmas CD. “We had a great time doing it. It was also weird. You’d walk outside it’d be 90º, walk in and then there’d be a tree and reindeer and all kind of stuff all over the place. It’d be great to record one of these at Christmas time, but nobody ever wants to work then.”

Opry member Brad Paisley has made a career of embracing his love for tradition while creating music that is distinctly his own, and that gift is richly displayed on his first holiday album, Brad Paisley Christmas. The 11-track collection delivers what Brad does best, musically blending heart and humor, this time amid new holiday songs and traditional favorites stamped with Brad’s ever-stellar guitar work and arrangements done in Paisley holiday style.

Brad Paisley Christmas contains classics such as “Silver Bells,” “Away in a Manger,” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” But around here we’re partial to Brad’s spontaneous moment in the studio when he made a slight adjustment to the lyrics of “Winter Wonderland” which includes a shout-out to Opry member Jim Ed Brown.

In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he’s Jim Ed Brown
We’ll sing “Pop a Top” with Mr. Snowman
When chapel bells are ringing all around

A song Brad wrote when he was 12 years old, “Born on Christmas Day,” is included on the CD. It is special to him for many reasons.

“When I wrote it, it was something that was sort of beyond my capacity at the time,” he explains. “It was really kind of strange how it came together. I did something that I felt was really special and different. I think I must have had some divine help.

“And then when I was [invited to join] the Opry, it was at Christmas time. When they came out and did the invitation, they played a piece of that on the video screen to show me when I was little singing. And then I went ahead and sang the rest of it on the show. So that song is very special to me in that sense.”

In 2000, as part of the Grand Ole Opry Country Christmas Album book, Brad made a prediction about the future of this special song. “I have a lot of tapes of that song, and we’re trying to figure out a way that I can record that and save part of the original with me singing it. Maybe do a duet with myself. I sounded a lot more like Alison Krauss than George Strait back then.” That prediction came true. Original audio of his performance as a 13 year old making his first official appearance on the legendary Jamboree U.S.A. (a popular radio show in Wheeling, WVA) is mixed with Brad today to create a unique “duet.”

Also among the originals is the lighthearted, Santa’s-secret-agent tale of “Penguin, James Penguin.” When you hear the song you can just imagine an animated penguin helping Santa save the day.

“That was kind of our thinking when we finished the song. It was like ‘man this is begging for a little animated story or some sort of piece to go along with it for kids to watch.’ It’s something that I’d love to do. We’re talking to some folks about it for either next year or sometime in the future.”

And to wrap up the CD, Brad brought back the Kung Pao Buckaroos – Bill Anderson, George Jones, and Little Jimmy Dickens – with a laugh-out-loud exploration of holiday political correctness gone woefully awry on “Kung Pao Buckaroo Holiday.”