J.D. McPherson makes a holiday album for Scrooges
Old-school rock ’n’ roller forgoes the standards to create a set of original songs for ‘Socks’
J.D. McPherson enjoys taking in the holiday shows available, “whether it’s a symphonic deal or going to see ‘The Nutcracker’ or watching Brian Setzer do his Christmas thing.”
That last one, the annual holiday show by the former Stray Cats frontman, nudged McPherson to come up with his own holiday gig and album, for which he wrote a set of new original holiday songs and set them to some songs with the sort of deep grooves one might have expected to hear in the late 1950s.
“Hopefully,” he says, “we offer something to the rock ’n’ rollers out there who maybe want to get out of the house once or twice a month.”
Holiday music can set eyes to rolling like an ornament fallen from a tree. The 20th-century standards remain ageless, but they’ve also become part of a formula for musicians looking to make a quick cash grab at year’s end: cobble together nine or 10, add some strings or brass and enjoy some holiday spending money.
McPherson, who will play his fourth album, “Socks,” at the Continental Club on Tuesday, decided the songwriting would be the entry point for a better holiday album.
“How can anybody beat Darlene Love? Or Sam Cooke singing standards?” he asks. “I wouldn’t even assume to try it. Those songs are so ingrained in our culture, and they’ve been done so well. So my idea was to come up with new ideas, not just new songs. Thematic material that hasn’t been looked at before.
“So how was this going to happen? Honestly, it was easier to try to come up with songs that fell into unexplored territory than to write more saccharine Christmas material. The trick was to set up some funky parameters.”
Anticipation and disappointment came to mind quickly, which fed his song “Socks,” about the ubiquitous stocking stuffer. “Socks” proved such a lively tune, it lent its name to the collection. As McPherson recalls, “I remember being so bummed out one year when I wanted a Game Boy, and instead got a long-sleeve Polo shirt.”
McPherson is 41 now, so even the disappointments of youth have faded.
“I love getting socks now,” he says.
He also made a decision to treat the writing and recording of “Socks” as something other than a holiday-timed diversion. The Oklahoma native first made an impression six years ago with “Signs and Signifiers,” a bright set of oldschool rock ’n’ roll and R&B, with a lot of swing and punchy little instrumental parts that always served the song first.
“I really didn’t want to do this unless we were making an actual album,” he says. “To produce it in a way so if somebody was listening to songs on shuffle or it came on the radio, it wouldn’t stand up too much. There were little Christmas song tips we needed to include. But we also had one rule: No jingle bells allowed.”
So he spent time studying the old rock songwriting vets Leiber and Stoller, figuring out how to write efficiently with a dash of humor. And the songs weren’t hashed out at the last minute: McPherson recorded them as spring settled in earlier this year.
“It was 90 degrees outdoors, 100 percent humidity,” he says. “So we turned the AC down low, put up a tree. I’m sure every holiday album ever made was recorded in the middle of the year. So we did that for the sake of solidarity.”
In addition to the old R&B and jazz holiday albums, he took queues from Nick Lowe’s “Quality Street,” subtitled “A seasonal selection for all the family,” and the Pogues’ “A Fairy Tale of New York.” And Kurt Vonnegut was also on the mind.
“I’m an observer of people and personalities,” he says. “So I’m pretty enthusiastic about Christmas, but I understand the cynicism, too. I recognize some people don’t like this time at all. That there’s something deep down there. So I tried to get to both. I said, ‘Let’s appeal to Tiny Tims and Scrooges.’ Why not try to get both on board?”