Holiday ‘Socks’
Oklahoma native JD McPherson brings new seasonal album ‘Socks’ home for the holidays
JD McPherson brings a new seasonal album home for the holidays.
If someone had told JD McPherson five years ago that he would be coming back to Oklahoma from his home in Nashville, Tennessee, to play a show of his alloriginal Christmas songs, he probably wouldn’t have believed it.
“I would have said, ‘How dare you?!’” the Oklahoma native said with a chuckle. “I was definitely ‘No, I will never do a Christmas album.’ I have said that out loud a couple of times. It’s just, at the very beginning of my sort of I guess professional career ... one of the things I said yes to was a Christmas song. And it turned out fine, and it did well for us and everything . ... And it just goes to show that the old saying ‘never say never’ actually holds water, because I ended up doing it. I just got an idea to do it … and it kind of all came together.”
The singer-songwriter and guitarist, who hails from Broken Arrow, opted to make an unconventional Christmas collection, right down to the name: “Socks.” The title track is a slinky blues ode from a child disappointed to find foot coverings in his stocking, while the riproaring rocker “Santa’s Got a Mean Machine” gallops through the tale of a hot-rodding St. Nick. His previous yuletide song, the swinging “Twinkle (Little Christmas Lights)” is featured on physical copies of “Socks.”
“It’s just a rock ‘n’ roll album . ... No ‘Jingle Bells’ allowed,” McPherson said, adding that he and his band will play not only most of “Socks” but also some unusual covers and songs from their previous three albums at their all-ages Oklahoma City concert Friday night at the Tower Theatre.
Early inspiration
The love of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll that inspired his debut album,” 2010’s “Signs and Signifiers,” slipped right into “Socks,” which is woven from 10 original songs that sound like classic Christmas music of the 1940s and ‘50s.
“Whereas our other records kind of started getting weirder and weirder and louder and fuzzier, this record made sense to go back to kind of the early sounds of rock ‘n’ roll. I was more inspired that way, and it was fun to do it, too,” McPherson said.
The former schoolteacher made sure his Christmas collection doesn’t get too sticky with holiday sentimentality, but he didn’t want to make it a big bah-humbug, either.
“I kind of have both in me: I have the 5-year-old, enthusiastic, ‘I love everything about this’ kind of attitude toward Christmas, but I also kind of have a cynical veneer over a few things. So, I kind of tried to cover both bases, appeal to the Scrooges and the Tiny Tims alike,” he said. “You know, Scrooges need love, too.”