One of my favorite holiday traditions, right up there with spinning music Christmas Day on KEXP, is the annual arrival of a new Christmas 7-inch from Seattle singer-songwriter
David Bazan (the artist formerly known as Pedro The Lion). Starting with the original rendition of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" back in 2002, almost every year Bazan has teamed up with his friends at
Suicide Squeeze to issue a limited-edition, colored-vinyl single featuring a pair of seasonal offerings, ranging from traditional fare ("The First Noel") to Bazan originals.
This year David returns with his own thoughtful composition, "Wish My Kids Were Here," accompanied by yet another pass (his third!) at "I Heard the Bells." In the midst of scurrying around for a family portrait sitting, David took time to chat about his ongoing Christmas project with
Festive!—a conversation we both realized was long overdue.
FESTIVE! Have you ever been coerced into dressing up as Santa?David Bazan: I haven't yet, but I imagine that's on the radar. My booking agent joked that that was part of contract for a college show that I'm playing in December, but I don't believe him.
It's going to be embarrassing if you show up unprepared. Although you could just run out to a drug store and buy some construction paper, string, cotton balls and a glue stick, and whip up a Santa hat and beard. I like that version of Santa Claus a lot.
I look forward to your Christmas 45s every year. Are there plans to compile them onto a single album someday? That's been the plan for a little while. Originally we were going to do that this year, but I ran out of time to make it happen. So we're going to do one more 45 next year, and the compilation will be available too. That's the plan.
When do you have to have the Christmas material in the can in order to make a holiday street date? If it's just a 45, then late July or early August. When we were going to do the compilation record, that deadline was May… and I missed that [deadline] by a lot.
Tell me about the writing and recording of this year's A-side, "Wish My Kids Were Here." Had you been nurturing the song for a while? Was it triggered by a specific inciting incident? The inspiration for that song is a little messed up. This last year, a couple of friends—or acquaintances—of mine and their wives, who my wife is pretty close with, got divorced. And they had kids. And the way in which the dads detached from the kids, standing them up on Saturdays when they were supposed to get together and things like that, really blew my mind, having kids myself. I'm gone from [my kids] a fair amount, at least a third of the year. And there's a lot of longing and a little anxiety about that: Am I messing them up by being gone so much? So when these acquaintances would act in this way, or clearly have other priorities in their lives besides their kids, it perplexed me. That was the impetus for the song. I started writing it out of a slightly mean spirit. I'm not sure… sort of accusatory. Even though I was adopting their viewpoint, it was sort of skewering them to a degree. And then once I got in it, to do any subject justice, you have to take it seriously. And I started sympathizing, and even empathizing. I could see me, the screw-up, in them.
I wondered at what point you were going to tell me this turned into a cautionary tale directed as a possible self. That's what happened. So there is a sense now where [the song] is both of those things. It is meant to skewer people who just aren't taking these sorts of things, that later are going to cause a lot of regret and really deep sadness, seriously. But a lot of these things turned into cautionary tales for me, that I then tell myself every time I sing it. With the Christmas songs, I sing them less than other songs, but that's been a common thing that's happened with my work.
When you sit down to write the Christmas originals, do you have a very specific plan and a deadline? Or do songs just sort of manifest themselves throughout the year, and if something seems appropriate for Christmas you earmark it for later? It's more like that first scenario: "Okay, it's time to write a Christmas song." Or it's time to figure out what songs are going to be on the single. Sometimes there's just one that's been rolling around since last Christmas. Like when I did
"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," I'd been wanting to do that one. That was just a natural fit. This year there wasn't any real obvious choice, and I had this idea for [an original] song, so there a came a time when I said, 'Okay, I've got to do this now.' That was in May, and I didn't get it done until another month or so.
You covered one of Low's Christmas songs a few years ago ("Long Way Around the Sea"). Have you guys ever discussed collaborating on a Christmas project? Are you going to jump up on stage and do a number with them when they play their Seattle Christmas show at the Tractor? It's possible. I think I'm going to go to the show and have dinner with Al and Mim. Often, if Al is around for my shows, will just kind of jump up and sing. But I don't have the chutzpah that he does. But I think those guys are amazing and the idea of collaborating with them on anything would be pretty exciting.
Don't make me start an Internet rumor that you're going to get up on stage with them. Then people would be disappointed if you punked out. That happened the other week!
John Roderick told
Eli Sanders that I would be at a
Patty Murray thing when I had no plans to do that.
You've recorded the new B-side, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," a few times now. What prompted you to revisit it again? I really liked the second rendering. I've never really been happy with the first one. The feeling of it wasn't quite right, I was going for something that I just didn't quite nail. So when I did it again for the
Maybe This Christmas Tree compilation, I liked that version a lot more. And I want that version—or something similar—to appear on my compilation. But Nettwork Records owns the rights to my version that I like. So if I wanted it on my compilation, I realized I'd have to do it again in some form. And since the last time I did it… the ending of the original Longfellow poem, which always really resonated with me and was hopeful, wasn't as hopeful. It didn't leave me feeling the same way anymore. So for a year or so, I've been trying to think of a way to change it a little bit so that it communicated the hopefulness that I feel now. That was the reason why I did it again, this year. So those two factors caused me to want to revisit it.
With all the tumult in your life over the past couple years, did you ever consider abandoning the Christmas singles? There was a year in there where I didn't do one. But in general, no. Partly because I love David Dickenson [of Suicide Squeeze] so much, and this is a way of being associated with him, a way to maintain our association. It's been a tense project on some levels. It wasn't an easy fit from the beginning. My relationship with Christmas music has been strained. It's gotten less strained over the years, where I've gotten a lot more comfortable with the idea of doing Christmas music for the sake of ambiance. And I've really enjoyed that tension; each year, it's been tense all over again, to figure out a way to be myself and make a couple of Christmas songs that are true to my tastes and what kind of resonates with me about the holiday.
If you were somebody whose aesthetic was less spiritually and philosophically grounded, you could get away with interpolating a lot more holiday material into your repertoire. But at this point, for you to do "Santa Baby" would be wildly inappropriate.That's what I felt. I feel like I'm inching towards a little less self-seriousness, as far as how the releases are perceived. But that would be a pretty big jump. I would have to do another 8 or 10 of them before I was able to get that far.
It certainly has been interesting to watch the Christmas singles evolve as your relationship with Christ has evolved. Yeah. And there was one 45 a couple of years ago that had straight hymns. I didn't monkey with the lyrics at all. And I used a synthesizer to kind of obscure, or imply tension, when certain lines would come down the pike. It's been interesting for me, too. Honestly, that's why I keep doing it. It forces me, every year or so, to sit and think about that. And I'm so glad that I went through the process this way, on accident, rather than just making a Christmas album. Because the thought process would have been longer and been more intense, but it would've only happened one time. This is an on-going meditation of sorts. I may be bummed when I'm not doing it every year.
I hope it won't stop! I assumed that the compilation album would close a volume of the story, but that you would continue making the 45s. I hadn't consider that I would keep on. But now that I'm thinking about it, I really would rather keep doing it.
Why would you stop? I don't know! I'm not really a planner, so I don't think that far ahead.
You're not going to stop loving David Dickenson. And even if your relationship with Christ took some radical turns, there would still be room to explore those twists in music. There are so many themes you can explore at this time of year.I agree completely. And [my relationship with Christ] has changed about as radically as it could, I would think. And there's still so much to ponder and think about. I'm far enough from that change that I'm far less hostile, far less defensive, about the superficial aspects of Christmas or religion or whatever. Now it's just endlessly fascinating.
The weird thing about it is, when I was younger, my escape from the commercialism of Christmas was the nativity, and the real deep sort of idealism and hopefulness that came out of how that story is handled within Christianity. When that was gone, I didn't really have the same escape from the commercial aspect of Christmas. So it's been interesting to find a substitute for that, so that there's something to really cherish every year about it, and escape from the over-commercialization of the holidays.
Do you feel like having children has aided you in that pursuit? It has. It complicate it. Part of the over-commercialization was so fun as a kid, getting presents and the sheer excitement of all that. And I don't want to rob them of that, but I want it to be balanced, too. Having kids makes everything more vivid. The stakes go up. Just focusing on family, in spite of all the conflict that comes along with that, that's really what I like now: That's kind of my escape. That and
It's A Wonderful Life.
You're scrambling around to do a big family photo today. Is that a holiday tradition in the Bazan clan? No, not necessarily. My parents live in California, and my sister and her husband and child, and my wife and children and I, we all live here. So periodically when we're all together, somebody will come up with the idea and we'll try do something like this. When we have people over for Thanksgiving and Christmas, there is a time when we all pile up around the couch and my wife sets up the automatic camera, and we all do that. But not in a studio.
You were talking about Christmas as a child. Did you delineate very strictly between sacred and secular Christmas music as a youngster? No. Because in no other sphere of my life was secular music allowed, so I didn't really make that distinction with Christmas music. My strongest memory of Christmas music is just riding different places in the car. At a certain point in the year, there would be all this Christmas music. My wife is kind of Christmas crazy. The iPod with 1,001 Christmas carols comes out about this time. Last year it was Halloween. This year she waited. So it's reminiscent of that part of my childhood, and I just have the most warm feelings listening to Judy Collins and whoever. She really stands out as having the sweetest presentation of that material. But that Alvin and the Chipmunks song, and all the classics. If I wasn't married to my wife, I wouldn't be consuming them as much any more. But she insists, and I like it.
(Photo of David Bazan by Lyle Owerko, courtesy of Barsuk Records.)
