José James, Bruce Cockburn, and The Twangtown Paramours

This episode drops on Thanksgiving, and if you're listening on
Thursday, Happy Thanksgiving.


Friday is Black Friday, the official, incontrovertible start to
the Christmas season, and just in time for it, Twelve Songs has
created an alternative to the all-Christmas radio station, Twelve
Songs of Christmas Radio on Spotify. It's a 20-plus hour playlist
of songs that are or should be Christmas favorites, and all you
have to do is click Shuffle to get the radio effect, minus the
commercials and station breaks. 


If that sounds a little daunting, you can also email me at
alex@myspiltmilk.com to get a copy of this year's 90-minute
listeners-only Christmas mix. It covers a lot of ground and
offers some new takes on Christmas classics, and it will almost
certainly introduce you to some Christmas songs you haven't heard
before.


For those looking for a more irreverent, indie-oriented Christmas
collection, I recommend XO for the Holidays Vol. 10, which
fits the bill nicely.


In this week's episode, I'm again featuring excerpts from
interviews I conducted this fall. José James presents himself as
a jazz vocalist for the hip-hop era, but that's only occasionally
obvious on his new Merry Christmas from José James. On it, he and
a traditional jazz trio give us a beautiful, timeless Christmas
album that sounds like what might happen if a Sinatra-like singer
fronted a Bill Evans-led band.


I also talk to Canadian folk artist Bruce Cockburn, who is
starting his tour celebrating 50 years in the business in
December. The tour should have started last December, but, you
know, COVID. We talk about the tour and his 1993 Christmas
album, Christmas, including one of the less likely songs on
the album and where it came from.


Finally, I talk to Nashville's Twangtown Paramours, who have a
new album, Double Down on a Bad Thing, due out in February.
We talk a little about that, about how its recording was affected
by COVID, and how they used a new Christmas song, "My Gingerbread
Man," as a marketing tool.


This episode of Twelve Songs is sponsored by Car-Floats.com,
which makes reusable fabric stickers for your car. 


If you haven't already done so, please do what you have to do to
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