It Doesn’t Feel Like Christmas
The Story behind the song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1kGo04G5As
One hot July afternoon not so long ago, friend and co-songwriter, Randy Lewis Brown, and I sat down at our kitchen table and decided to write a Christmas song. Not an easy task when it’s 100 degrees outside. How a song comes to life is always a mystery to me and this song was not different.
We started by just throwing out ideas:
- We wanted to have some “time signature” changes
- We wanted to mention other Christmas songs in some way
- Not sure who said it or why we landed on becoming a person living in some sort of institutional care
- We tried to tell a story and to paint a picture that is, in some way, a part of all our lives now or in the future
Each idea we explored led to others, and we eventually became the person in the song. As each year passes, I find that I can relate to this situation.
We got about halfway thru the song with lots of loose ends. I presented the song to Linda to get her feedback (she is the artist who designs the pictures for the upcoming lyric video). It was then she told me that she wouldn’t do the video unless we came up with a positive ending.
The lyrics we had so far weren’t necessarily sad, at least in my mind. They represented a condition that we were surely present in many facilities especially during the holiday season and at other times during the year.
I took Linda’s feedback to heart and boldly continued working on the song. I am afraid that I didn’t get back to Randy as often as I should of – from this point on, how the song was finished has become a blur.
At any rate, the song was completed, and I took it over to Chris Gage’s Moon House Studio to record. This recording was finished in a few hours. Special thanks to my good friend, Phil Greer, for shaking the sleigh bells on the recording.
Please let me know how this song affects you and, if you think it touches on the spirit of the holiday, pass it on to your friends. HAPPY HOLIDAYS ONE & ALL!
In case you missed the earlier newsletters, here is a link to the ones we have completed so far this year.
https://richardpaulthomas.com/newsletters
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