The Christmas season is about giving and getting, and Sir Walter Records is providing Triangle residents with a local, musical variety of both.
Tonight, Raleigh pub Tir Na Nog is hosting the CD release party for this year’s iteration of the label’s annual compilation of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill bands playing Christmas songs—the fourth such volume since 2006’s Have a Holly Raleigh Christmas. This year’s album, entitled Have a Holly Raleigh KIDSmas, reflects the label’s request that groups submit tracks oriented toward children as well as celebrating the holiday spirit.
Stephen Votino, a member—along with Jeff Carroll, Shawn Gillen and Robert Courts—of the four-person cohort that comprises Sir Walter Records, said the decision to release a children’s album this year was done largely as a change of pace.
“I think it was Shawn who was talking about how bands like Mommie and Sandbox—bands we have on the CD this year—how they write normal music like rock and roll or pop, but make it more of a kids’ song, and that’s become trendy and popular,” Votino said. “So we thought we’d just give it a shot and see what our artists could come up with and see how sales do this year.”
It’s clear what the listener is receiving: 12 tracks from some of the area’s best young bands, including nationally known Merge act the Rosebuds and Durham jazz/hip-hop foursome the Beast. But anyone who purchases Holly Raleigh is giving as well.
All proceeds from sales of the compilation go to Raleigh’s Community Music School, a non-profit organization. The school gives private music lessons and loans instruments to about 120 students a year from low-income families, and it puts on recitals for those involved.
“Basically, it costs the school about a thousand dollars a year per student,” he said. “So any money we raise can either help enhance the program or [enable us to] add an additional student. It’s been tougher the last couple of years with all the [city] budget cuts... so some of these fundraisers are becoming really important for us.”
The bands involved took a variety of different approaches to the challenge of writing a Christmas-themed kids’ song for a charity compilation. The Rosebuds’ participation goes all the way back to the first Have a Holly Raleigh Christmas compilation, and band member Ivan Howard wrote in an e-mail that Carroll approached them again this year to write a song for the children’s version.
The song is called “I Hear (Click Click Click),” taking a novel approach to the concept of Santa’s nighttime visit.
“It’s basically the chorus of the song,” Howard said. “It’s about that excitement you get as a kid when you are laying in bed listening for Santa on your tin roof. I think this really captures my idea of what Christmas felt like.”
The Beast’s contribution came about in a very different manner. Rapper-frontman Pierce Freelon said it was taken from the soundtrack of a documentary made by his brother-in-law, filmmaker M.K. Asante, Jr., about Kwanzaa, which is the subject of the song as well. Both pieces share the title “The Black Candle.”
“The idea behind [Kwanzaa], the reason for the season, is based upon seven principles... Swahili words that mean things like faith, cooperative economics, collective work and responsibilitiy,” Freelon said. “I basically take each of those words [in the song] and define them lyrically... I think the song really explains the meaning behind the holiday in a really comprehensive way.”
Freelon said though the song wasn’t written originally for kids, they are the audience that understands it best.
“[Kids] listen, and they can interpret, and they can recite verses that our parents would hear and would never be able to understand what the people are saying,” Freelon said. “So, while I guess you could say it wasn’t written for kids, hip-hop music and culture is of young people.”
And then there’s just general Christmas excitement, as exemplified by the Proclivities frontman Matt Douglas. The band’s contribution is originally from a Christmas EP, Yule Love It, that the band released last holiday season to raise money for buying presents for poor children. It’s a “fun, pop version” of standard “Carol of the Bells,” and the group will be playing that, as well as other Christmas and non-Christmas selections from their back catalogue, at the CD release show.
Douglas affirmed the good cause, the sense of community and the spirit of the season, but he had a more unique reason for the Proclivities involvement with the compilation as well.
“With a very very mild sprinkling of sarcasm, I think that I’ve been dreaming about being on the Holly Raleigh Christmas for years now,” he said. “I feel like you’ve only really made it when you’re on a Christmas album.”
The adult-oriented CD release party begins at 7 p.m. tonight at Tir Na Nog, 218 S. Blount Street, in Raleigh. A more child-friendly release party will be held Saturday at noon at Raleigh’s Marbles Kids Museum, 201 E. Hargett Street.
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