Winter Star by Wychwood/Witchwire
Christmas music for weary hearts
Erin played fiddle.
Tim sang and played banjo, guitar, mandolin, flute, ukulele, kazoo, pedals and devices.
Chrissy sang and played guitar, saw, and glockenspiel.
For "Midnight Clear" Alexis played cello, Sarah played harp, and Kathy played bass guitar.
Recorded in Tim's bedroom and apartment, Decembers 2020-2024. Exceptions are that "Grinch" was recorded at the Log Drive Cafe in December 2018 and the last verse of "Bells" at Arlington Five Coffee during the December 2023 community sing. Singers and guitar players at the 2023 Yule Party included Marianne/Oddeline, Robert, Marina, Maureen, Canute, and Hayley. Jack Pyl played the brilliant tin whistle.
No electric instruments were used in these recordings, though some of the acoustic instruments were run through effects and processors. It was recorded with cheap gear and mixed on free software – so go make something better!
David Bazan wrote the original alternate verses for "Bells of Christmas" and "Silent Night" (that Tim sings in "Holy Night, Silent Night, Bloody Night?"). Check out and support his work:
davidbazan.bandcamp.com/album/dark-sacred-night
Thanks to other purveyors of stellar Christmas music like Sufjan Stevens, John Prine, Bright Eyes, and Low for inspiration and musical succor at an often grinding and fake time of year. (Also thanks to Nasca Octavian Paul for the beautiful audio stretching algorithm.)
Tracklist
Credits
The words and chords we used are found in the Christmas songbook here: wychwood.xyz/songbooks/
(If you want to play along with these recordings, we tuned our instruments down a half-step for Silent Night, Jingle Bells/Rock, I heard the Bells, O Come Emmanuel, and O Holy Night.)
Fair-use sound snippets and inspiration were gathered with thanks from:
Black Christmas (1974)
Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Gremlins (1984)
Poppy (is your mommy)
BBC Voices of the First World War
Duncan Barrett's Short History of the Christmas Truce
CBC talking about the Christmas truce
Michael Moore talking about Christmas bombings and genocide
Our Changing Climate talking about "Why We Need a War On Christmas"
Valerie Vande Panne talking about how "We Can Reclaim Christmas from Capitalism"
Paul Ringel talking about “Why Children Get Gifts on Christmas”
Stephen Nissenbaum talking about "The Battle for Christmas"
Thoughtslime talking about Rare Exports
Hbomberguy documenting the moral panic of the war of Christmas
Crimethinc talking about Christmas
Alan Lomax talking about the Puritans' war on Christmas
News from American Prestige, CBC, NPR
Various forgotten things
(No thanks or respect to any corporations that pretend to own any of these creations.)
~~~
Seriously, though, go watch Our Changing Climate's video on "Why We Need a War On Christmas" or read Valerie Vande Panne's articles on the commodification of Christmas.
Rant incoming...
To anyone who wants to put the Christ back in Christmas, why not start by remembering the Christmas story stars a peasant family in occupied Judea (AKA Palestine)? This was a family who got shoved around their land by colonizers (for a census) when they were just trying to welcome a new baby into the world. They then became refugees and had to flee to Egypt on account of the systematic slaughter of children in their home. Good thing that sort of thing doesn't happen anymore, right?
(Also if you want to make Christmas traditional again, it wasn't an important holiday to Christians until it was reinvented as a celebration of consumerism in the privacy of the nuclear family's home in the early 20th century. On the other hand, it was always an important pagan holiday dedicated to public revelry and sanctioned power reversals, like the poor getting to harass the rich with drunken wassailing until they were paid off with alcohol and silver – something that survived in a sanitized form as public carolling.)
So, Happy Yule, one and all!
License
CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. See the Creative Commons website for details.Tags
We identify only half-jokingly as “the world’s first blackgrass band.” We play old murder-ballads and other spooky traditional folk songs, with some bright and sentimental spots thrown in for contrast. Some days we’re acoustic purists. Some days we like to corrupt traditional folksongs with bits of black metal, ambient, and noise music. We’re trying to make folk music dangerous again.