So that's me on the left, a lifetime singer songwriter and Eurovision survivor. I've met a lot of very talented young writers along the way, none more so than Rebecca Jayne. She's a great songwriter and solo performer but we often write songs together which end up on our respective solo projects. We're both very sentimental about Christmas so in That's What Christmas Is Supposed to Be we tried to capture some yuletide hope and optimism. Songwriters often find it difficult to write songs with a positive message, it's easier to sound cool when you sing about the dark stuff and this is the complete opposite. It's maybe a bit old fashioned but I like it for that.
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KB Bayley
Born a Geordie and raised in the South, for many years his life in music was about making sounds and songs for other people but early in the last decade, roots songwriting began to push hard again. Armed with an open-tuned Taylor, a dobro, a Weissenborn and a self-built cigarbox guitar, KB turned on the vocal mic and went from sideman to soloist. I met KB just as he was emerging as a solo artist. I love his songs and his performances are electrifying. He wrote Plastic Angel specially for the project. He said this about it; "I wanted to write a Tom Waits-style piano bar ballad that captures those wistful feelings about how we used to feel about Xmas years ago, and how maybe life has battered that a bit. But much like Greg Lake (who gets an anonymous reference, along with George Bailey) those feelings are still just about alive and kicking. The production feel was super loose, the sound of a soft piano played live in a room with other instruments joining in… genuinely a one-take vocal! My thanks to the amazing Dean Parker for the electric guitar."
Ed Blunt
​Ed Blunt is a multi-instrumentalist storyteller whose songs will make you laugh and gently break your heart. Blending folk, jazz and roots with Randy Newman-esque humour, his lyrics hold a mirror to 21st-century life. Born in the Surrey Hills, Ed grew up surrounded by the sounds of Paul Simon, James Taylor, and Van Morrison. His talent for playing by ear led him to study jazz piano at the Guildhall School, but on graduation he was left with crippling stage fright. Stumbling on an online songwriting camp during the Covid lockdown proved to be a turning point. Mentor Chris Difford discovered his talent for the first time, calling him a “quiet genius.”
I first met Ed in 2023 via a charity called Help Musicians. I helped him get his second album (Grown Up) over the line and I agree with Chris Difford, Ed has a quiet charm about him that make is songs totally disarming and engaging. The Dome of St Paul's is not a new song, he released it in 2022 as part of his first album, Over the Moon but I love the song and it was so right for this project I persuaded him to record a new version for me. I don't know if it's a true story but it ought to be true and it definitely seems true so that's good enough for me.
The Martian Jets
The Martian Jets is a band created for this project comprising composers Mark Duffield, front man from the magnificent El Tel and Dave Chambers. Dave and Mark have been collaborating on musical projects as a duo for over 15yrs. They met in 1998 when Dave shot promotional photos for Mark’s then band, Oligopoli. They became good friends and one afternoon rather randomly wrote & recorded their first song together. ‘Quite Alright With Me’. Since that day they have met up on an ad hoc basis to write, record & make promo videos for the songs they like the most. Utilising Dave’s musicality & eye for great visuals and Mark’s vocal and lyrical skills, they have an ongoing fruitful project.
One October, over a cup of tea Dave piped up, hey let’s write a Christmas song. Over the next two weeks, ‘Dreams Come True’ was completed.
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Nora Anna
Nora Anna, originally from Latvia is a regular and welcome visitor to our local music scene with a beautiful, jazzy style and a heart breaking voice. She was in town a few months ago and ran into a mutual friend and lyricist, Peter Buckle. He said "Hey, did you know Jim is putting together this Christmas album?" and she immediately volunteered to write something. It was quite late in the schedule and was worried we wouldn't get the recording in time but I did, and it was well worth waiting for!
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I asked her what It Will Snow Again is about and she described it like this: "I suppose it just that simple, beautiful things still happen even if we forget they do and, when we forget the pain, we remember the beauty."
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Dragonfly Sky
Amy Whiter and Chris Lee-Delisle are cornerstones of the local singer songwriter scene, close friends and compatriots. They work hard, play constantly in clubs and pubs all over the South East of England and run a couple of showcase events that are a joy to perform. We spoke about the Christmas project early in 2024 and they were not only keen to contribute a song but also put me in touch with the Rhapsody Choir who added their special magic to several recordings on the album including Making Angels.
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"We were exploring the bitter-sweet side of Christmas - a kind of melancholic nostalgia for the Christmas of our childhood and how this contrasts with modern adult life with its pressures of work, responsibility and constant communication. In the end it's a celebration of Christmas which, even in adulthood seems able to engender a sense of stillness, peace and escape, if only for a short while."
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Nick Bardoni & Jim Cozens
Nick is one of the UK's most successful composers. You've probably heard his work even if you weren't aware because most of it hides in television shows, movies and adverts to heighten emotions or encourage you to buy something. His style is influenced by the likes of Hans Zimmer and Vangelis so I wasn't surprised when he offered me this piece for the Christmas project. Most of Nick's work is instrumental and this was no exception and he invited me to add a top line melody and a lyric. Vangelis had a very successful collaboration with Jon Anderson so this was the reference. The lyric for Anthem makes almost no literal sense but conjures an image, a feeling of a cold winter. You might think this is a bit of a stretch for a Christmas themed album but I love the music, the arrangement gave an excellent opportunity for the Rhapsody Choir to open the throttle and, in my defence, it includes the word "Christmas" so I think we can get away with it!
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Peter Crutchfield
Peter writes wickedly funny songs but he didn't feel inspired to write one about Christmas. I suspect he thought it was too easy. It is a soft target for humour but the past few years has seen a procession of humorous Christmas songs in the Yuletide charts so I don't blame him for steering clear. His musical influences come from the folk tradition and he also writes beautiful guitar instrumental pieces in that style which are a big hit in the world of streaming playlists so this is how he decided to respond. The absence of lyrics leaves the association with Christmas to the listeners imagination. The beautifully sparse composition paints a picture of a bleak landscape on the year's shortest day so it became Winter Solstice.
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21st Centry Scrooge & Lucy Tunstall
It's Christmas SO WOT!! is the brain child of veteran sound engineer and all-round sonic guru Si Honywill, he says this about it: "It’s a modern traditional Christmas pop song. It could have been written by The Darkness, Mud, Sweet or any other pop/rock band, but the fact that it is a product of the 2020’s is redolent in the grumpiness of the main protagonist, who is decidedly against the whole idea until his friends show up."
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I just thought it was funny and a great pop song. For a long time the song simply faded over the outro choruses so I was surprised when the final version included a beautiful coda sung by Si's niece, Katie Tunstall. It seems the grumpy main protagonist has a soft spot for the season after all!
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Briggs & Stark
Briggs (who won't admit to having a first name) and Claudia Stark had been following independent paths as writers and performers until recently when their paths crossed. Claudia has that indie/folk vibe, Briggs more the country thing. New Year Sunrise is certainly a little more Briggs than Stark but I love the way their voices wrap around each other without losing their individuality. We started recording the song in May before the song was really finished so I enjoyed the collaboration in both the writing process and the record production.
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New Year Sunrise is written from the perspective of people at the stroke of midnight on December 31st, it's about looking back with nostalgia and looking forward with hope.
Tomorrow Bird
There's a little known tradition with Christmas songs, they're almost always written in the summer. White Christmas has a rarely sung intro about the sunshine and palm trees and Simon and Jen's song, December's Grace is no exception, written on a sweltering summer's day. They said this about it: "A lot of Christmas songs are what you might call extroverts. They are joyous, fun, and festive (and there ain’t nothing wrong with that!) but we wanted our song to be more of an introvert. Inviting stillness and reflection rather than dancing. December is a time of togetherness and tradition but also the closing chapter of every year, nestled in the very heart of winter’s ageless beauty, paving the way for New Year’s promise."
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Vic Cracknell
Vic is a legend in our local music scene. An award winning performer, musician, singer songwriter there's almost no pub in Surrey that he hasn't hosted an open mic or played a gig and the only performer I know that makes it a priority to play regularly at the many care homes in the area.
This is how he described his inspiration for his song, Peace Is Not Just For Christmas: "During the First World War, in the midst of all that barbarity, there was a spontaneous and completely unsanctioned Christmas truce . It began on Christmas Eve 1914 when British soldiers heard German troops singing seasonal songs, on Christmas morning carols were sung together, rations exchanged and they even played football. I believe there is more that unites us than divides us and, naive though it may be, if we could only focus on this, it might bring about an end to war."
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Jim Cozens & Peter Buckle
Peter organises a songwriting forum for a bunch of us every month and every month we get together in various combinations, drink coffee, eat cheese and talk earnestly about writing songs. I think we'd all admit that actual songwriting is a rarity but that's not the point, it's about developing trust and feeding our cheese dependency. When I spoke about writing a song for this project, Peter jumped with the lyric for this song, Welcome to Stay, a modern take on the Joseph and Mary nativity story, strangers in a foreign land seeking sanctuary, and asked me if could write a melody and record it for the album.
My approach was to reflect the bleak nature of the topic in the simplicity of the melody and the arrangement and then to sing it without frills. It think it works.
More information about Peter Buckle and the Nefarious Picaroons
Gavin Thomas and the Spirit of Christmas Choir
I confess, The Spirit of Christmas is not a new song although, unless you inhabit our particular corner of the music world, I doubt you would know it. I started writing the song on a sun drenched Catalonian mountainside in the summer of 2015 and I was trying to capture that joyful Christmas experience without the overtones of any particular religion or faith. I was struggling to finish it when I got home to England so I enlisted the help of my old friend and local music hero, Gavin Thomas. When it was finished we agreed Gavin would sing the lead accompanied by as many musical friends as we could fit in the studio. So before the summer was over we trouped into a local studio to record it and released it in time for Christmas 2015. It made some waves on local radio and that was about it, Christmas passed, the memory faded and there it remained for all these years. When I was putting this project together it seemed to fit right in so, with your indulgence, here is the remixed reprise. One more song to finish the album on a truly joyful note!
The Rhapsody Choir
One last credit for the Rhapsody Choir. When I was recording songs for the album, I wanted a choir to add some vocal excitement and depth to the arrangements but I struggled to find one until Chris and Amy (Dragonfly Sky) mentioned a friend who was part of an organisation called Rhapsody Artist Development based in Seaford, East Sussex. So after sending them demos of three songs and some vague directions as to what I wanted them to sing I headed to Seaford with a few microphones and a laptop.
They were spectacularly good. Well rehearsed, they sang beautifully and delivered all three songs in less than an hour. So a massive thank you to the Rhapsody Choir; Amanda Shaw (their coach) Rylee Thomsett, Eleanor O'Donoghue, Amelia O'Donoghue, Ella Yule, Kaitlyn Cook, Maddie Parshalton, Sapphire Young and Isla Smith.
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