Christmas 2017

Although our name is The Brown Christmas we are not, nor have we ever been, a 'Christmas' band. That said I always look forward to putting out a new Christmas album. There's such a wealth of material to draw from, and it's always fun to 'get in the spirit' with some mangled Christmas merriment.

I have noticed that on every Christmas album we put out there's always an exceptionally abrasive song, usually with me screaming over a wall of sound. This time it's a cover of "Hey Santa," which is my personal favorite on this release. I was trying to pull up the lyrics for the Carnie and Wendy Wilson "Hey Santa," but instead got the Straight No Chaser "Hey Santa." Shortly after I started screaming I realized my error, but there was nothing to do but to continue belting out lyrics to a song I've never heard before.

The title comes from an event several years ago when I was working retail. Christmas was over, all our holiday merchandise went on sale at increasingly large discounts. Eventually items were 90% off and everything was gone; everything except a 4ft X 5ft X 18in display of candy canes. We just couldn't sell these, so I was told to throw them out.

Now my memory is a little fuzzy, but these were the typical boxes of candy canes you see for sale, I think there are a dozen or so canes in a box. I put these into larger cardboard boxes which might have fit 24 boxes of candy canes. I filled up about six boxes, put them out by the dumpster, then loaded them into my car when my shift was over. So using those numbers that's around 1728 candy canes. For the album title we used Thirty-six since in seemed like a funny, yet still plausible number.

Only a few days into having these at home did I realize that neither my family nor myself particularly enjoyed candy canes. However I think you will enjoy this album.