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=THE STORY=
Lots of people have said, "Do you think you'll ever make a Christmas CD?" At the release of "Hymns & Humns" David Coppins, a booster and helper, said, "Why don't you make a Christmas CD?" Finally, in mid-November, my wife said, "Hey, make a Christmas CD." So here it is. Mostly guitar, mostly simple, mostly about the words. It's more fun than I imagined! About the real Christmas--I hope that's okay.
=THE SONGS=
Were You There When the Angels Sang? I wrote this song many years ago, remembering a thought I'd had many more years ago. The question is perfectly sincere. Did we sing at Christ's birth? Does He Remember It Now? Janice Kapp Perry wrote this song when we were creating the Christmas episode of Scripture Scouts together. She's always generously credited me with the idea. I had the idea only because the Apostle Paul (at least) credited the baby in the manger with having made the universe. In The Bleak Midwinter I set the words of Christina Rosetti, which I've always loved, to a little folky tune I made up. I hope she won't mind. By the Virgin Born A battery of images about the Savior's life. This song, of course gave me the title for the CD. He Saw His Mother There J. S. Bach did maybe a dozen harmonizations of Hans Leo Hassler's hymn tune "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded." This is the one that stuck. The words are mine. What If Love Became an Apple? Some "what ifs" about very big things coming to us in small packages. The Holly and the Ivy The traditional carol, just fun. My five-year-old son had dumped out the basket of rhythm instruments. Lie Still The early eighteenth-century tune by Turlough O'Carolan called "Sh-beg Sh-mohr" has words (I think they're about a great battle of fairies), but I couldn't find any translations of them from Gaelic. So I wrote a "Joseph's Lullaby" to this haunting melody I first heard played by Tom and Gael Shults. Silent Night A little jazz guitar setting that morphs into a gospel version I've sung at Christmas concerts for years. No Room in the Inn Just a little story that came to me while I was watching my kids perform a "nativity" at church on Christmas Eve. Of course, we've trespassed in the stable all our lives.
I play 2 Martin guitars here, an M-36 and a 000-15S, an Epiphone Zephyr Regent, and a Fender Jazz bass. Drums courtesy of Kurzweill. Piano is Technics. The Angel voices are my angelic wife Laurie. Drawings courtesy of Leonardo da Vinci. Merry Christmas.
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