This is the eleventh video in the holiday series, Twelve Days to Christmas. For the twelve days leading up to and including Xmas day, I'll be posting a different holiday classic performed with my close friends and collaborators. Hope it's as fun to watch these as they are to make.
Best friends. Best job. Best Holiday. #12D2Xmas
"Deck the Halls" or "Deck the Hall" (which is the original version of the lyrics) is a traditional Christmas, yuletide, and New Years' carol. The melody is Welsh dating back to the sixteenth century, and belongs to a winter carol, "Nos Galan", while the English lyrics date to 1862.
DEEP COVER is the video series from Saint Paul, MN based musician Charlie Christenson. Over the course of the next year, Charlie will be taking request and recording covers that span the musical spectrum. Have a request? Leave it in the comments below.
I've loved this song since graduate school, but it's been forever since I've sang it.
Charlie's note: I'm not a registered guitar player.
DEEP COVER is the video series from Saint Paul, MN based musician Charlie Christenson. Over the course of the next year, Charlie will be taking request and recording covers that span the musical spectrum. Have a request? Leave it in the comments below.
For me, there's no greater songwriter than Paul Simon. It was difficult to choose just one Simon song to cover, but as I was playing through a few of his songs, this one seemed an obvious birthday gift for my younger sisters and god-mother, all with birthdays this month; as well as a way to honor my mom, who I miss every single day.
We collect all this video and all of these photos and most of the time they just sit on our computers. The time never seems totally right to pull them out and watch them... but, making a video like this is a nice way of looking back while also creating something new. This video took the longest to edit, but I'm really happy and proud of how it turned out. Hope you enjoy it and that it's not too sappy.
This is the tenth video in the holiday series, Twelve Days to Christmas. For the twelve days leading up to and including Xmas day, I'll be posting a different holiday classic performed with my close friends and collaborators. Hope it's as fun to watch these as they are to make.
Best friends. Best job. Best Holiday. #12D2Xmas
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", a song written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, was introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis. Frank Sinatra later recorded a version with modified lyrics. In 2007, ASCAP ranked "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" the third most performed Christmas song, during the preceding five years, that had been written by ASCAP members. In 2004 it finished at #76 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs rankings of the top tunes in American cinema.
DEEP COVER is the new video series from Saint Paul, MN based musician Charlie Christenson. Over the course of the next year, Charlie will be taking request and recording covers that span the musical spectrum. Have a request? Leave it in the comments below.
For more info on Charlie, visit his website: charliechristenson.com
This is the eighth video in the holiday series, Twelve Days to Christmas. For the twelve days leading up to and including Xmas day, I'll be posting a different holiday classic performed with my close friends and collaborators. Hope it's as fun to watch these as they are to make.
Best friends. Best job. Best Holiday. #12D2Xmas
"This Christmas" is a song by American soul musician Donny Hathaway released in 1970 by Atco Records. The song gained renewed interest when it was included in 1991 on Atco Records' revised edition of their 1968 Soul Christmas compilation album and has since become a modern Christmas standard, with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers reporting that it was the 30th most-performed holiday song of all time.
Phil Upchurch said the song was "absolutely the premiere holiday song written by an African American". It was written by Hathaway and Nadine McKinnor.
DEEP COVER is the new video series from Saint Paul, MN based musician Charlie Christenson. Over the course of the next year, Charlie will be taking request and recording covers that span the musical spectrum. Have a request? Leave it in the comments below.
ANIMAL TRACKS by the indie folk trio, Mountain Man. I've loved this song since the album (Made the Harbor, 2010) was released, and have played it at just about every live performance I've done in the past three years. I think it's a great way to start the video series.
If you haven't heard Mountain Man, you should check them out:
This is the seventh video in the holiday series, Twelve Days to Christmas. For the twelve days leading up to and including Xmas day I'll be posting a different holiday classic performed with my close friends and collaborators. Hope it's as fun to watch these as they are to make.
Best friends. Best job. Best Holiday. #12D2Xmas
"The Christmas Song" (commonly subtitled "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" or, as it was originally subtitled, "Merry Christmas to You") is a classic Christmas song written in 1945 by Bob Wells and Mel Tormé.
According to Tormé, the song was written during a blistering hot summer. In an effort to "stay cool by thinking cool", the most-performed (according to BMI) Christmas song was born. "I saw a spiral pad on his (Wells') piano with four lines written in pencil", Tormé recalled. "They started, 'Chestnuts roasting..., Jack Frost nipping..., Yuletide carols..., Folks dressed up like Eskimos.' Bob didn't think he was writing a song lyric. He said he thought if he could immerse himself in winter he could cool off. Forty minutes later that song was written. I wrote all the music and some of the lyrics."
The Nat King Cole Trio first recorded the song early in 1946. At Cole's behest – and over the objections of his label, Capitol Records – a second recording was made later the same year utilizing a small string section, this version becoming a massive hit on both the pop and R&B charts. Cole again recorded the song in 1953, using the same arrangement with a full orchestra arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle, and once more in 1961, in a stereophonic version with orchestra conducted by Ralph Carmichael. Cole's 1961 version is generally regarded as definitive, and in 2004 was the most-loved seasonal song with women aged 30–49, while the original 1946 recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1974.
This is the fourth video in the holiday series, Twelve Days to Christmas. For the next nine days, including Xmas itself, I'll be posting a different holiday classic performed with my close friends and collaborators. Hope it's as fun to watch these as they were to make.
Best friends. Best job. Best Holiday.
Thumbnail photo by Scott Poupis.
"Jingle Bells" is one of the best-known and commonly sung American songs in the world. It was written by James Lord Pierpont (1822–1893) and published under the title "One Horse Open Sleigh" in the autumn of 1857. It has been claimed that it was originally written to be sung by a Sunday school choir; however, historians dispute this, stating that it was much too "racy" (and secular) to be sung by a children's church choir in the days it was written. Although not originally intended on having any connection to Christmas, it later became associated with Christmas music and the season in general.
This has been THE song of Summer 2015 for me.
Before there was space funk, there was heartbreak. On some cosmic level, Thundercat knows this. Strip away the technique, the phasers, and the astral glitter of Stephen Bruner's recent EP and what's left are the raw materials of loss and pain. He stares bald-faced into deep melancholy and then drops globs of dope bass shit on top. This has made Thundercat more than just a child of P-Funk, but a futurist songwriter who's in tune with the outer sounds of Flying Lotus, Kamasi Washington, and the rest of L.A.'s Brainfeeder label.
On "Them Changes", a sampled beat from the Isley Brother’s "Footsteps in the Dark" introduces a shaggy '70s R&B groove before Thundercat's six-string bass sets the swirling mood. "Nobody move there's blood on the floor/ And I can't find my heart," he sings, the melodrama of his words coupled with a wide-eyed bass line that adds a subtle shade of humor. But to Thundercat, the stakes really are that high; believe him when he concludes he's a "heartless, broken mess." At the very end of the track, the spotlight turns briefly to Washington's sax, as he plays Thundercat out of the club and into night, while behind them the party just keeps on bouncing (via Pitchfork.com).
More Thundercat: http://www.brainfeedersite.com
Published on Jun 28, 2015
This week I'm vlogging with my friend Charlie Christenson at his studio space in Lowertown, St. Paul. Charlie shares how he got started down his path in music and what he does now to keep his skills sharp as professional musician.
This is the second video in the holiday series, Twelve Days to Christmas. For the next eleven days, including Xmas itself, I'll be posting a different holiday classic performed with my close friends and collaborators. Hope it's as fun to watch these as they were to make.
Best friends. Best job. Best Holiday.
"What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" is a popular song written in 1947 by Frank Loesser as an independent song—not written for a particular movie or musical.
The trio live from the Acadia in Minneapolis, MN on Saturday, July 27th, 2013. The tune is an original called "One Eye."
CC, keyboard/voice
Matt Edlund, drums
Adam Meckler, trumpet
This is the start of the holiday video series, Twelve Days to Christmas. For the next twelve days, including Xmas itself, I'll be posting a different holiday classic performed with my close friends and collaborators. Hope it's as fun to watch these as they were to make.
Best friends. Best job. Best Holiday.
"White Christmas" is a 1942 Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting.
Accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song. One story is that he wrote it in 1940, in warm La Quinta, California, while staying at the La Quinta Hotel, a frequent Hollywood retreat also favored by writer-director-producer Frank Capra, although the Arizona Biltmore also claims the song was written there. He often stayed up all night writing — he told his secretary, "Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I've ever written — heck, I just wrote the best song that anybody's ever written!"
Peter Remiger and I hard at work on overdubs for the final section of "Break My Back," the third track off our upcoming EP, Shipwreckee. #sharethedespair