Local musicians! Annual holiday song project seeks your Yuletide covers
I start humming Christmas tunes sometime in February and don’t stop until the hangover sets in on January 1. Xmas tunes were such a part of my youth — caroling the nursing home circuit, Charlie Brown TV specials, wandering around the mall listening to muzak while lusting after the latest fad toy — that they are now as likely pop up on my internal iPod as Springsteen, the Stones, or Spoon.
Andy Plank.
Actually, it’s the nontraditional holiday songs — original tunes by The Flaming Lips, The Ramones, and Run-D.M.C. – that stick with me as an adult. After all, one can only hear Rudolph done up the same way so many times before it begins to grate on the nerves, right? That’s why I was excited to learn of local man Andy Plank’s compilation of Christmas tunes as covered by local folks. For the past four years, Plank has put together a new collection of holiday covers and released them to the public via the Volume One website. The cuts from last year’s comp, like Auld Lang Syne by The Heart Pills or Silent Night by Laarks guitarist Kyle Flater, are refreshing in their uniquely adapted arrangements — perfect to mix in to your standard Xmas playlist to spice things up. You can check out offerings from 2009 and 2010 right here.
This year the songs will again be hosted right here on VolumeOne.org and available for streaming and download. In the past, Plank has been personal curator for the compilation, but this time around he wants to open things up to the greater community. He encourages bands and artists in the region to submit their own Christmas cover song for inclusion on the compilation.
The deadline for bands to email an MP3 file of their song to Plank is December 4. For more info on participating, check out the Facebook page, or e-mail Plank at eauclairechristmas@gmail.com.
