Where Are The Chestnuts?

People are asking questions about the new LW Christmas Vol. 1 recording. Here are some answers.

1. No, it is not me singing on all those songs. (And ha ha, by the way.) Those are women on some of those songs. My friends Katie and Janel sing the ones that sound like women are singing them. And the songs that are sung by a guy with a really great, very cool voice with a bit of an edge: that’s my young Padawan Jereme. He’s the bomb. But thanks for thinking I sing like a woman. And thanks for thinking I could possibly sing as well as Jereme. But I can’t.

2. We don’t have that “chestnuts” song on the recording, and many others that we might have liked to do, because we had to do original or public domain songs to avoid copyright infringement issues. We’re going to look into getting license to do some other things next year, but we thought the limitation actually helped us to produce a Christmas recording that was a little less trite than is usual these days.

3. Yes, that “first song” is one of mine. The song “By the Fire” is an original, based on an old poem by Longfellow. Another song writer did this with another Longfellow poem. It’s the song “I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day,” which we did not record, by the way. And the bridge on “Away In A Manger” is also original. Everything else on the recording is traditional Christmas stuff arranged by our team of musicians.

4. The cover artwork for the recording was done by a local artist named Jim Pappas. He doesn’t have a website yet, but he’s wanting to get one going. If he does, I’ll let you know about it on my blog.

5. Yes, there are a lot of different musicians on different songs. We got as many involved from the church as we could with the time we had. And the kids singing on Jingle Bells are from our church. I used a hand held field recorder to record them at church then dropped the track into the mix, along with recording some of the kids in the studio. We plan to get even more of our people on the next one next year (if we do one, which we might). It was a pretty big group of people overall laying down tracks and getting it finished. They all rock. Mightily.

6. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.


Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011