Big Iron’s Honkey-Tonk Holidays (1997)

This anthology from the Big Iron label offers a festive mess of Texas, Xmas, and booze. Original tunes are mixed with a motley of holiday chestnuts, usually of the more lighthearted variety: “Holly Jolly Christmas,” “Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy,” etc. Leading the way on the freewheeling irreverent front is “Alcoholidays” by the Sutcliffs, generally the first song that jumps out, with its memorable chorus of “Old Grand-Dad, Budweiser / It’s good to be drunk again.” True confession, they are sentiments I have lived in holiday seasons past. But the rollicking Honkey-Tonk Holidays is not all western swing mockery and drunkenness. The Sutcliffs may complain that “Little Drummer Boy” is giving them a headache, but Andy Owens & Druha Trava cover it later. There’s room for many points of view here, with sweet country (and/or “alt-country” if we must), a very nice blues or two, and traditional / religious stuff as well, driven by lovely arrangements with horns, a fiddle as needed, and lots of rockin’ good guitar. There’s even an Elvis impersonator to round things off. The Mutineers play “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” like a Halloween fright-fest, with the dark “oh-wee-oh wee-ohhh-oh” chant that signifies the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz at home in her castle safehold—it’s Santa Claus as Satan Claus. You better be good. Cowboys & Indians takes jolly St. Nick a more conventional way on “Santa, Santa,” pleading with him to bring his baby back. “I got cookies, milk, whatever you need.” “Christmas Made for Two” by Mark David Manders & Nuevo Tejas is just beautiful. And the Old 97’s—the only act here I even sort of know—demonstrate as countless others before them that it is virtually impossible to ruin the tender wartime ballad “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” It always sounds good. I suppose you could give it the Roseanne Barr treatment, but please don’t. Honkey-Tonk Holidays is a terrific little Christmas set. I don’t even remember now how I came to acquire it, but I happen to know my brother owns a copy too and I assumed it was in the generally wide currency of things these days. When I came to write it up, however, I discovered how obscure it has become. Apologies! But you really have to hear it once if you can. Happy holidays all!