Here we are once again friends, after a twenty year absence! Hard to believe the changes in all our lives since 1997, when I put the super deluxe double-CD RLC X in your hands. I'm happy to know that the RLC tradition has lived on, with folks breaking out the CD set for decorating the tree music, party time, or just festive listening during the holidays. I've done my best to keep the music out there to folks who may have never received a Randy Little Christmas package. I'll not get into all that history, you can just head over to last year's Advent Calendar to get a couple dozen stories and songs, and the general feel of all this RLC craziness.

Alright, then... let's concentrate on this year. For RLC 11, we've got 11 festive tunes that I've worked hard... nay, fought to get together for you. It's not like in the Before Times (as my girls refer to the 90s or anything earlier), when carefree, single Randy could la-dee-da about and get a handful of songs together for the holiday season. I've got a wonderful wife now, two beautiful girls, a mortgage... well, you get the idea... it's much harder to carve out writing, playing and recording time when you're living the 'grown-up' life.

I also fought with technology this year. Again, in the Before Times, I recorded all this stuff on tape. Actual tape. Cassettes. On a device call a tape recorder. Mine let you put down multiple tracks beside each other, and build up a song a chunk at a time. Well, home recording tech has changed a lot since then... even the RLC X double CD package used some just-then-available technology to make it all happen. So, I tried to go Jetsons this year, only to be thwarted by maddeningly persnickety ghosts in the (Windows) machine that drove me crazy. So, for the large part of the album, I went old school. Back to my four-track tape recorder; a machine that does things without software pecadillos getting in the way of what you want to do. OK, enough of that. Let's get to this years batch of festiveness.

This song has been in my head for twenty years. I had that little guitar figure in G that you hear throughout, and came up with a verse structure to it, but worried that I'd copped it from somewhere and didn't know it. I listened for it all the time, but never heard it. Oh, and I had that first line: "Turn the page, it's Christmastime again." I imagine I've written hundreds of verses or parts of verses in my head since coming up with it, but nothing stuck but that phrase, and the first few lines of the last verse. This year, I got serious about completing the tune, and wrote the verses you hear now, tweaking the rhythm of the delivery and some of the word choices to fit the mood I wanted to get across. At the end of a productive day playing guitar with Paul Johnson just a couple of weeks ago (I'm writing this on Christmas Eve, 2017), I started strumming the song, playing the little riff, and Paul asked "What's that?" I said "It's a song I've been trying to write for twenty years." He said "That's cool... I don't think I've ever heard that exact little guitar run... let's do it." So, we tuned up, hit 'record' and ran through it a few times. We got a good feel, and went with it, and I cut the vocal a couple of days later. After two decades, I think I finally got it right.

Wade Mathias has been a friend of mine for nearly 40 years. I first met him when he was guitarist in Tidewater's X-Raves, and went on to do some sound/roadie work with the band for a time. As a fan, I loved their high-energy music, and was happy to be able to tag along for a bit of their wild ride back in the day. I was even a member of a revamped X-Raves combo featuring Wade and Clinton Midgett. Clinton had a bank of keyboards to flesh out the two-man band, and I was their computer operator, managing the loading of song files between songs when we played live. Amusingly, I won the Port Folio Musician's Poll Award for 'Best Computer Operator' in 1985. I was a shoe-in, as I was the only computer operator in any band in Tidewater.  Wade and I stayed in touch, and he's helped me in ways he probably doesn't even know about. During a visit in the Summer of 2016, I told him I'd like him to think about doing a track for the 20th anniversary RLC 11 that I'd decided to do in 2017. I suggested a 'surf' version of "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen," and was I surprised to find a nascent version in my email box this past May. It was sooooo good! We talked about some tweaks here and there, and it just got better. And better. And better. We finally (I say 'we' but this is all  Wade, y'all) ironed everything out, and man is it terrific!

OK, so we've all heard Van Halen's very first tune off their very first groundbreaking album from 1978 a jillion times. First when it came out, blasting from every Camaro and Trans Am around and at every teenage party we went to, and then a jillion more times on classic rock radio now that we're driving vans, SUVs, and... well, not going to teenage parties anymore. This is a parody I've had in my head for a number of years, casting the singer as one of the reindeer (we don't know which one) on Santa's team. I got my girls to join in on the choruses, and the Pan-MIDIrian Orchestra provides the bombastic musical backing.

We all know the Rudolph special. Clarice sings this one to Rudolph and the two are gettin' snuggly when Clarice's dad Comet calls her back to admonish her "No doe of mine is going to be seen with a... a... red-nosed reindeer!"

So, I've had this arrangement in my head for years. I was joined by 2/3 of The CAZZ on this one, my friends Denise Lawrence Brown and Dickie Fulcher. I've know Dickie since grade school, and Denise for over three decades, and it was really great to get to knock out a couple of tunes (there's another coming up below) with these two rockin' old friends. The late release (Christmas Day 2017) of RLC 11 kind of made the title of this one the theme of getting the album together and out to you this year.

Paul Johnson has been a friend of mine since the early '80s. As I was telling my daughter Molly just today, I first met him when he was opening for the X-Raves, with his band, The Probe. I thought they were great, and went to see them a lot during their brief stint on the Tidewater music scene. The core of The Probe eventually became Waxing Poetics, and late one night on my shift at the 7-11 at 38th & Colley, Paul came in one night inbetween sets, and I recognized him immediately. He invited me out to see his new band, and I didn't hesitate to take him up on that. I was greatly enamored of the Poetics, and they became my 'thing to do' for the next several years, even road managing them for a bit. I am now their archivist and digital media manager (hey, go buy some Waxing Poetics music, will ya?). Anyway, back to now. Paul showed up just a weekend ago, and told me he thought he had a fun song for us to do. He had a little solar-powered Santa 'wobbler,' and he'd written a song about it. We got it together on guitar, Casio drum machine and toy-assisted vocals, and it's my current earworm. Catchy little tune. We did a silly video, too.

Part 2 of The CAZZ adventure is this tune. Paul Unger, the guitarist and lead singer for this Norfolk-based rock n roll unit was there for this one, and had arranged this old Detroit Junior party-time R&B stirrer for a rock treatment. Wow, did we rock it up. No way I could fit the old vocal style to this new arrangement, so I went with a spoken/sung approach, with a funky vocal treatment, and I think it came together pretty well. Paul is an innovative guitarist, and you can hear his wailing solos kick in between the verses, not to mention his spirited "Yeah, yeah, yeahs" throughout. I had to change the original 'ain't got no money' verse to something a little more inclusive. Paul, a talented videographer as well, shot a great video of the band at work on this one.

My sister, Susan, and her beautiful voice and natural talent for harmony shine on this one. I think she played a guide track on my Casio to key off of. Pretty sure this took only one or two run-throughs. What a simple and simply beautiful song.This 'orphaned' track from 1999 has finally found its RLC home.

My sister Susan's beautiful voice is featured on this lo-fi artifact, a forgotten file from a crappy Blackberry, but her voice on this arrangement of "In The Bleak Midwinter" shines through the digital murk. It's a treasure, too, as my sister's once-beautiful instrument has been stolen from her by radiation treatments for cancer.

Man, oh, man I love Blind Blake. Next to Robert Johnson, he's my favorite old-time blues artist. I was introduced to him via Leon Redbone's "Saturday Night Live" appearance singing Blake's "Diddie Wah Diddie" (though I didn't know that it was a Blake-penned tune or even of the existence of Blake and his work at the time). Came across a Blind Blake LP at Peaches on Military Highway one day, and there was "Diddie Wah Diddie!" Bought the album, then quickly bought the rest of the Biograph series of Blake's tunes (and every CD reissue since). I love his wistful voice, his songwriting, his sense of humor, and his guitar playing, which ranges from straight ol' blues to a nuanced and skillful ragtime approach. His ultimate fate was a mystery until just recently, when his grave and death certificate were finally found (his birthplace was listed as Newport News!).

"Blind" Arthur Blake's life ended December 1st, 1934, and his "Lonesome Christmas Blues" is represented here, with Paul Johnson playing my Dad's old Gretsch, me on second guitar and vocal. Danged if I didn't leave the verse about 'watchin' the snowflakes fall' out.

This 'orphaned' track from 2000 has finally found a home. Me, Paul Johnson, and Rob 'Big Bobby' Katherman on a song I wrote after my friend Anna spoke the words "Santa Rides Alone" in 1999, and I took that gem and polished it up a bit.

My Dad, Howard Holmes, sang this song to me in the car as we traveled from ORF to NC at Christmas 1998, telling me it might work on one of my RLC albums, which he had contributed to since the 4th one. Two weeks later, he didn't know when he was. He had recently been diagnosed with bone cancer, and it ultimately contributed to his passing in May of '99.  That year, when I was caring for him for a month and just before the passed (he thought I was Hank Williams for a time, but finally came around to accepting me as his son), I showed him the words to the song and asked him to sign the paper for me. He seemed surprised that I knew and had written down a song he'd (to him) just recently written. He had regressed in his mind to about 1958 and stayed there. My memory of the tune and the words fortunately stuck with me. The actual musical structure of the song eluded me, as my brain doesn't hear much in the way of pitch or song structure (as the oddity of some of my tunes makes plain). I mentioned this song to Wade, as we'd been working on "God Rest Ye" for some time, and he said he'd see if he could build a framework it. I believe he hit the mark!

Hmm... hang on a sec. Actually what Wade said was "Whatever I can do to help you realize this I will do." Let me pause here to give Wade some big props for his work and devotion to his contributions to this year's album; above and beyond don't come close.  We bounced emails and tracks back and forth, tweaking, suggesting, and generally working together towards something I had in my head. Wade was able to find that place and make me sit up straight, and we got this version of the song you now have.
I'm sure my Dad would dig it.

So, there it is, friends... Eleven tunes for A Randy Little Christmas album number EEEEEEEEEEEEEELEVEN!


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Randy Holmes randy@silvertoneworld.net