12 Days of Wintertide - Day 10

The Ghost Ship

"And my eyes caught on a rising pinewood forest
Growing up from the deck of a ghost they called Rouse Simmons..."
 

Many months ago, I was given a book as a very, very early Christmas gift: The Christmas Tree Ship, by Carol Crane, and the story and paintings within those pages unlocked memories I had forgotten. (The book is beautiful by the way and would make a great Christmas present if you need any Christmas present ideas...)

Reading this true story, I suddenly remembered walking into the Steel Beam Theater in St. Charles, Illinois, with my family in 2004 to see a musical called "The Christmas Schooner". The play was wonderful and heartbreaking and lovely...

On a late-November night in 1912, a ship called the Rouse Simmons was carrying thousands of Christmas trees to Chicago. Leaving Thompson Harbor, Michigan, the captain and crew made this voyage every year, trading their normal cargo of lumber for soft evergreens to share a little bit of Christmas with the families watchfully waiting for them at the docks by the Clark Street Bridge. 

They sold trees and garlands for less than a dollar each, but the captain soon became lovingly known as Captain Santa because he would often give the trees away to families, not accepting payment.

The Christmas ship was lost in a terrible, angry storm that icy November. People did claim to see the vessel in the days and weeks that followed, but the Christmas trees that washed up along the shore confirmed a different story. Nonetheless, for awhile... it was a ghost ship. I am certain I too would have preferred to believe the tricks on the eyes to the tragedy.

Captain Herman Schuenemann's wife, Barbara, longed to carry on her husband's tradition, seeing it for what it was--a good-hearted, open-handed Christmas gift that so many looked forward to every year. Holding his memory close and continuing to make the trip he had loved was a way to help the captain's goodwill live on.

Today, 109 years later, the Coast Guard now delivers trees to Chicago for Christmas. 

(In a recent radio interview, I misspoke and said it was the Air Force... I was quite embarrassed to be me. Just the other day, my niece sent me some of her artwork--an illustration of a "Ghost Plane" flying over and dropping off Christmas trees from the sky... It is one of the funniest things I've ever been surprised with.)

The captain and his crew live on. One of my favorite categories of "things to write about" is True Stories. Well, this one grabbed a hold of my heart and wouldn't let go. The more I read about this captain and his crew, the more I believed I knew them. This different time didn't feel so far away, and I wanted to capture my own misty glimpse of the ghost ship... 

And to join Barbara in keeping alive the memory of Captain Santa.

“Merry Christmas to you and yours from me and all of mine...” 

All the love,
Brittany

P.S. You can listen to "The Ghost Ship" here!

12 Days of Wintertide - Day 9

O Holy Night

“A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
Yonder breaks a new and glorious morn…”
 

While still considering which cover songs to include on Wintertide, "O Holy Night" tugged on my sleeve. The words, the original melody, the accompaniment, the dynamics… “O Holy Night” is about as classic as classic can be. There's a reason we still sing this song. There's a reason so many artists have recorded it. There's a reason it still brings tears to my eyes hearing it live--despite having heard it so many times before. If I had to pick a favorite Christmas carol, "O Holy Night" would be it.

However, setting the carol next to everything I had written and already recorded for this album--setting it side by side with the other tracks--made me uneasy. The other songs felt like neighbors, but this one didn't. I didn't know where I would place it in the song list... 

So I had another idea.

For as long as I can remember, Sara Groves’ songs have been good friends of mine. "Painting Pictures of Egypt", "I Saw What I Saw", "Maybe There's a Loving God", "It Might Be Hope", "Floodplain"... She has a song for every season of the heart, and phrases from her songs run through my thoughts all the time.

She has a couple of Christmas albums herself (and I highly recommend them), and on one of these albums, she included her own arrangement of "O Holy Night". At this point, having listened to it so many times and having sung it so many times, I love Sara's version as much as the original.

(I know, right--how can that be?! Well, it's just beautiful.)

While the melody and style may be different, the heart of the song remains the same. That is my favorite thing about new arrangements of hymns and carols...

The words remain the same. The heart remains the same. The thing that changes is the setting of the story, giving it a new voice without really changing very much.
Like a new light on an old, beloved conversation.

Recording Sara Groves' arrangement of "O Holy Night" has given me the chance to share a different version with you, to highlight the work of another artist I love and possibly introduce you to her library, and still include my favorite classic in an unexpected way.

I hope you enjoy this different version!


All the love,
Brittany

12 Days of Wintertide - Day 8

Christmas for Cowboys

"Tall in the saddle, he spends Christmas Day
Driving the cattle over snow covered plains
All of the good gifts given today
His is the sky and the wide open range..."

Back when I was walking the aisles of that great library I once mentioned--the library of Christmas songs--looking for my cover songs to include on Wintertide,
"Christmas for Cowboys" caught my eye. I jotted this title down on my first list of song possibilities, and then the second list, and then the third... This song made it onto every list of potential songs I wanted to record, and it then sailed through my final choices. It made the final cut without hesitation.

I love this song.

I love this painting of a life well-lived in simple yet beautiful moments, trading a "football and eggnog and Christmas parades" Christmas for one spent hard at work on the "wide open range".

Simple beauty.

In "Christmas for Cowboys", it's the blanketed plains and the cattle themselves. A small, toasty campfire and the starry sky overhead. The quiet of the night and the voice of the wind. These are gifts to the cowboy--these are gifts to us, and they are as loving and grand as anything under the Christmas tree. They are enough.

The mountains around my home are lightly dusted over right now, but soon they'll be snow-covered like the cowboy's plains. I always look forward to the snow. The days are getting shorter and darker, but when it snows, the moon has something to reflect on--brightening the dreariness of gray, cold, too-short days. The stars will shine all the brighter, and looking up through the evergreen trees on the mountain, they will indeed be our "Christmas tree lights"...

This Christmas I want to be more on the lookout for these kinds of gifts, stepping away from the noise and removing everything else but the beauty so I can see how deep that beauty goes. If you come across such a gift this season, I would love to hear about it.

"Christmas for Cowboys" was written by Steve Weisberg and first recorded and released by John Denver in 1975. It's a song I've heard every year my entire life. Sometimes I choose to record a cover song purely because I love it, and I do love this song so much; but also keeping a songwriter alive in some small way in the songs they wrote... That is truly an honor.


Until next week...

All the love,
Brittany

12 Days of Wintertide - Day 7

Day 7: That Night

Remember when we stayed up through the night
Waiting for the satin northern lights?
We were too young to know
We’d never see them through a window frame of snow

We lay beneath the tree
In the living room, you and me
Looking through boughs at a thousand colored lights
That was our aurora that night...

When I was little, there were a few years where we got our Christmas tree at the very last second--on Christmas Eve. While I love the idea of getting a tree early and enjoying it for the days and weeks leading up to December 25th, there is something very sweet about a Christmas Eve tree. Finding a tree farm that is still open, everyone bundling up to go (because the whole family has to go, right?), finding and voting on the best tree (or at least a Charlie Brown tree that needs a home), the rushing about to find the boxes of ornaments in the attic and the garage, untangling all the lights and decorating with the Christmas music playing just shy of "as loud as possible", and then piling onto the couches to watch one more Christmas movie before bed while the tree shines by the stairs...

Forgive me for waxing a bit nostalgic... but I do love a Christmas Eve tree.

One of those years, after the tree was decorated and sparkling, my family all went to the kitchen to make popcorn and hot chocolate--everyone getting ready to watch either A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life, and I ran upstairs for blankets and pillows. When I came back down, I found my brother laying under the tree.

It struck me as rather funny, and I laughed as I asked him what he was doing.

"Looking at all the lights," he grinned.

He said I should see them, so seven or eight-year-old me dropped the armful of blankets and pillows and laid down to see what he saw. To this day, silly as it may look, this is still one of my favorite Christmas tree things--looking up through the branches at the lights.

While this is the final snapshot and the final moment in the song, this memory from so many years ago was the beginning of "That Night".
The very last lines were the first written.

All the love,
Brittany

12 Days of Wintertide - Day 6

The Band & Christmas in Killarney

So let's see, what haven't we talked about yet...

Oh! Oh, boy. The musicians. Allow me to introduce you to a few more of the incredible people who helped me make this album.

Joel Key (all the beautiful guitars), Aubrey Haynie (fiddle and mandolin), David Smith (upright bass), Wayne Killius (percussion), Garth Justice (percussion), Chip Davis (background vocals), Billy Davis (background vocals), and John Nicholson (engineer)--it is always an honor to watch and listen to these guys work. The experience of handing them one of my song demos and watching them become composers right along with me to transform that song into everything you hear...
It never gets old. World-class craftsmen, every one of them.

They all know each other so well that most of the time I'm just trying to keep up with them and decode any shorthand and studio lingo before the music starts.

I've learned so much from working with these artists.

They've also given me so many stories...

Some of my all-time favorite moments in the studio were all the behind-the-scenes of "Christmas in Killarney".

Before recording a song, we always listen to the demo first. The demos are recordings of just me and my guitar, setting down the framework and a place to start. While listening, there's usually discussion about who might take which solos, about the turns, about little changes to chords and counts, about possible melodic themes and the dynamic, heart-of-the-song moments...

When we started listening to the demo for "Christmas in Killarney", suddenly everyone was talking about Irish pubs and what it's like playing in Ireland. (And I, for one, was wishing we could all be magically transported there. I'd love to play in Ireland... Someday.) This song was one where we didn't have to talk about it too much. It's a more familiar Christmas song, but we were also all on the same page from the start.

We wanted to sound like we were playing in a hole-in-the-wall place in Dublin.

The fiddle solo lines, the guitar strumming throughout, the dipping bass notes, the vocal harmonies, the washboard moment, the drums, the second ending...!

(The second ending was my mom's idea. She whispered to me halfway through the recording that everyone should come back in and the song shouldn't end yet. So if you love that second ending as much as I do, let her know. We've gotta give her a whole lotta credit! :) )

When someone asked about adding handclaps, Joel responded with, "Yeah, we could use a little more racket."

Racket.

Never before have I wanted "racket" in a recording, but watching Joel and Wayne add the layered tracks of clapping together--that was a racket. Since everyone purposely avoided sticking too strictly with the beat instrumentally, we didn't want the clapping to be too uniform either. So Wayne kept fake-clapping to throw Joel off the beat and off of wherever Wayne would actually clap. Though of course he knew what he was doing, it was a funny picture--the percussionist not knowing where or how to clap.

And all that "racket" makes the song.


I love these guys, and I am so grateful for and humbled by their beautiful work on Wintertide.


-BJ

Release Day ❄️

Day 5: Album Release

Last year was... stormy. For so many reasons that you already know about.
After losing over forty shows in 2020 and struggling with how to deal with that, I was encouraged to focus on what I could do. So I turned my attention to the Christmas album I've always wanted to create but hadn't had the time for yet. I couldn't control the gigs being canceled left and right, but writing, recording, and building a new album... By the Lord's grace, these things I could do.

I am delighted to announce that my Christmas album, Wintertide, is now available!

I am so excited to share it with you! You can purchase the album on my website, and it is also available on all of the streaming platforms--Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music.... (Just a note on the streaming options, only nine of the fifteen songs will be available on these platforms--all of the originals and two of the covers.) If you do stream the album, it would mean so much to me if you'd share it with someone!

Album Art

Oh, let's talk about the artwork--is it not gorgeous?!

When I asked my sister Angelina if she would be willing to create the album art for Wintertide, I knew whatever she came up with would be beautiful. She is an incredible artist, and I can't tell you how thrilled I was when she said "yes"!

I found a few photos for inspiration, trying to give her somewhere to start, but to be honest, I just showed her pictures of snowy watercolor trees. I also shared some of the lyrics from "Wintertide" (the song) and "Call Me North". She took the few meager things I gave her and came up with this beauty! When she sent me the first preview, I thought, "That's it! It's perfect!" I didn't realize it was just a rough draft or that this preview was at a smaller scale. I didn't see how it could get any better than that!

These paintings wrap around the entire album. As you open it up, there is more to see, and if you open it up all the way, the images flow all the way across the front and back. The forest greens and grays, the misty trees, that cabin, the deep blues, all the kindly, wild, free creatures... I just love it. I hope you love it too.

Thank you, Angelina, for your beautiful work.

Oh, one more thing. Fun fact: when Angelina shared the final draft, I noticed the wolf on one of the panels... All of the other animals in the artwork are mentioned in the album, but there were no wolves in any of the songs. Since I had a couple more songs to write at the time, I managed to tie howling wolves into one.
See if you notice... Listen for the wolves.


All the love,
Brittany


P.S. Psst...
Make sure to stop by @bjeanmusic on Instagram to enter the giveaway that's going on over there...