Amanda Shires For Christmas

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey there, it's justin Richmond. Today we have a special Broken Record Holiday episode with Nashville singer songwriter Amanda Shires. We're gonna start things off with an exclusive acoustic performance of her new song home to Me, from the album for Christmas. You said there's a song the runway, I song the wings. I saved everywhere and nothing will bring you to me, to me, to me, adol wand it's new cold to walk. I keep looking for you, but I'm disfrosted. You should come home to me. Whoa to me? To me? Please come on, come on. I'm tired of the moon and keep in mind company. I'm tired of the dark and a night full of brittle stars. Should come home to me? Hoh to me, Ho to me, he please come home, come home. You wonder w gueed, I wonder what you see. I wonder what you're thinking, and if you'll ever be come in home to me, Home to me, Ho to me, come in home to me, Ho to me, to please come home come home. That was Amanda Shires singing home to Me. Shire's new holiday album for Christmas Isn't meant to make you feel merry and bright Instead, It's an acknowledgment of the complicated feelings that a lot of us have around the holidays, like disappointment, longing, and maybe even a little bit of lust. In addition to her solo career, Amanda Shire's plays fiddle and sings in her husband Jason Isabel's band, the four hundred Unit. She's also a founding member of the female country supergroup The High Woman with Brandy Carlisle. But wait before she hit a big and Nashville. With all of that, Shires played fiddle with the Texas Playboys, the legendary Western swing band started by Bob Wills that she joined when she was just twelve years old. On today's episode, Bruce Headlam talks to Amanda Shires about what inspired her to write a non traditional Christmas album. Shires also explains how finding out that her grandfather served decades in Alcatraz raised a ton of questions about her family's history, and she recalls what happened the time she discovered Jason Isabel ripped off one of her lyrics. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondon. Here's Bruce Headlam with Amanda Shires. First of all Nanda Shires. Thank you so much for doing this, for having me. People who know your music, which is moody and very evocative, might be surprised that you had a Christmas album out. I was surprised you had a Christmas album out. So tell me what the thinking was going into this. I'm surprised to have a Christmas record. Out of all the things I had never thought I would do, it was a Christmas record. But I think the catalyst for it all was just going into this year knowing that Christmas is going to probably resume to some sort of sense of normalcy as opposed to last year. Last year, I was really happy not hearing all the Christmas jams and going out shopping and all that. You know. That's not to say I didn't miss a lot of stuff about normal holidays. So that was what started at all, as like that that might be a good song idea in there, and I started writing one song, and then I wrote ten, and then I covered one. Now, when you were growing up, I think most people had like a favorite holiday album. Did you have a holiday album at home that you were thinking of when you did this? I really liked that. Vince Giraldi I really liked that one in Bura Lives, you know, and my mom listened to a lot of like Pavarotti and what are those folks names? Those Irish folks that sing Christmas songs? They're like operatic, Yes that you did it the chieftains, Yes, because she's you know, Irish and she was Irish. Your mom. Well, we just found out actually that we don't know what we are because my granddad turns out, was in Alcatraz and nobody knew it till after he died, so we don't really know where he was from. In the end, he was incarcerated in Alcatraz, yeah, for twenty five years, one of the first two hundred. But when he got out, this when he started a family with my grandmother. But nobody knew any of this, this stuff about Alcatraz and all this until our merchandise guy gave me a family tree, like a complete one because his uncle is what are those genealogists types, And I was looking through it and I was like, that can't be real. Is that real? And then we hired a private investigator and it turns out it's true. That's amazing. Can you tell us what he was in for Yeah, he was a young man that was a career criminal, car thiefs, and you know how the money used to be in the post offices. Yeah, so he held up a post office and he took the postmaster's child and why hostage, and nothing happened to them but except for obviously some kind of trauma. But yeah, when he got caught. After that, he went to Alcatraz. Did you know your grandfather when I was young. I did for a little while, and he passed away. He was he was quite old at that point. But yeah, I think that's gonna shed some light on a lot of different things in my life. Probably well when you do your Christmas and Alcatraz album exactly, So there's elements to that in my Christmas records. You know, people go to prison. You know John Prine had a Christmas in prison, that's right. Yeah, so you're gonna play some songs for us, So tell me first about Home to Me. Home to Me captures a feeling of wishing folks were around that aren't well at Christmas time or any other time, and I think that that's feelings we all have around the holiday season. In any season, it's kind of a desperate plea for reconciliation. I guess was that your feeling last year with Christmas when you were isolated. I feel that way about different people in it that come in and out of my life, and then different family members. And I kind of wrote it in a way where I was trying to apply it to different types of relationships that I've had, but mostly it's like a love relationship. When I think about it, pretty hard, I just like to mask all my true feelings with you know, other feelings. Feelings are complicated because to me, I thought it was a romantic song or a song about a romantic relationship, but really you were talking about something else. I'm talking about that. But I don't want the folks that feel moved by the song and wish that it was their own father or somebody to feel way laid in the outcome of finding out that it is like a wanting a love relationship. But I guess I should trust my audience. It reminded me this song that holiday songs can be actually the saddest songs. It seemed to me the flip side of that old song I'll be Home for Christmas right, which was a big wartime song. This seemed like from the other end, like come home. It is that for sure. I mean, I'll just start being honest about it. Who cares. It's like, you know, you want somebody in your life and it's just not going right, and it sucks worse around Christmas. Yeah, things suck words around Christmas. Yeah, let's go back a bit. You grew up in Texas and you grew up Is it true you grew up near Mineral Wells. I was born in Mineral Wells, population eight and my dad and my gran parents and stuff still live out there. And then when my dad and mom split up, I lived with my mom in Kansas City and then love it because where she finally settled down. I don't know Texas very well. I've been there a few times. I only knew Mineral Wells from the Tom Russell song. I didn't know it was a real place. It's a real place. I have a song called Mineral Wells too. Okay, this is embarrassing because I totally missed that. Listen. I have a little bit embarrassed that I tried to lie off my feelings on a Christmas song a minute ago. So even well, we're gonna get deeper into your feelings. Don't worry. Oh good, okay. I have to ask you because a lot of people compare your voice to Dolly Parton's voice, and that's of course a compliment. When did you first meet Dolly Parton? I met her at OURCA studio A for rehearsals for the Highwomen Newport Show. Now what was that like? I mean, I asked your assistant the day before, I said, what do you think Dolly Parton would like me to wear? Because I really want to make it good depression. She said probably leather and lace, and so at home and the next stay I put on leather and lace, and sure enough it worked. I waited. I got there early, and she came in and we talked about our leather and lace a lot, and it was magical and terrifying. I mean, watching her work is an incredible thing. We'll be right back with more from Amanda Shires. After a quick break. We're back with Bruce Hudlam and Amanda Shires. So was there music in your family growing up? Was there always music around the house. There was music in my mom's house and then at my granddad's and dads. They do wholesale greenhouse stuff. Where you grow plants and stuff for your nurseries. So there was music playing on the radio and stuff there, and then in the pecan orchards, it was just turning the tractor radio as loud as you could get it. But my grandfather that I was very close to Garland, he wasn't of the generation, and I don't think they thought that playing music was going to get you anywhere because he had a guitar, but it was just in his closet. And then you started with violin. Is that what's that your first? Yeah, violin? I got that violin and I started playing in school. And then I met Frankie McCord from the Texas Playboys and started to learning my ear from him on his porch and was going to quit violin, and then my mom said, how about you do violin and we could parallel that with the fiddle, And I said, that sounds like a sweet deal. What was it like to sit on his porch and learn those old Texas Playboy songs? Because that's some that's very high end fiddling. That's a lot of jazz, all that Western swing stuff is really it's pretty accomplished. I was what they call ate up with it. It was my joy not just to hang out with him and listen to him talk and sing, but to learn and then even go deeper like he learned fro him the first recorded fiddler Robertson, and learned songs that predate the Will's Band and stuff like that. I don't know if there's a lot of audio of them, but I've got tapes and CDs and stuff full of the stuff, and I just somehow I don't know why. Well, I do know why. I've always been good at making friends with old folks, and I really prefer it because they they're decisive and they're setting their ways and direct. You know. It's so I do well in that situation. And then the music, it just spoke to me. So I did that. And you know, instrumental music is the way I used to express myself back then, because I didn't really have a vocabulary for expression as a ten or twelve year old with very little frontal lobe development. Do you remember the first couple of songs you learned. The first Bob Wills song I ever learned was Spanish two step, and that is the day I was told my mom I was going to quit playing the violin. She's like, we're going to just do both. And then you joined the Texas Playboys for a while. How old were you? Twelve? I would go in and out in between school and when they needed me. You know, they didn't play a whole whole lot, but it was enough where I felt like a member of a band, and we had scheduling and logistics and stuff. It wasn't like when you think of touring artists now, but a lot of that was they needed somebody to play that low third part and I was willing to do it. And I don't think I really had an ego about any of the music or anything. I was just happy to be there. My stuff worked and I showed up on time and we all got along well. And eventually they started teaching me how to improvise, and that was a whole new bag of worms. How did they teach you that? In my mind, it's like throw your kid into the swimming pool. They'll eventually swim. They'd take their solos, you know, all night long, and they're like, at some point we're going to point out your're gonna do your solo. And I'm thinking, okay, well, this could go a lot of different ways. But they're my friends. They'll catch me if I fall, and I did. I fell, and I failed a whole whole lot. But they kept making me do it, not making me giving me the chance to do it. Like we play a song like old fashioned love, you know, some easy, easy changes and all right, a mandature turn and I'd have to go step up like I was taking a major solo. Then you learned really quickly that way, you know, were you listening to records as well of violin players to try and get ideas. I didn't think about getting ideas from anything as far as improvisation until later, because I didn't know that that was a way to do it. But during that time I was in order to go to school, high school and junior high and all that and be part of the kid culture I was in. I had to also maintain what was on the pop radio, rap radio, you know, the Tejato stations. But at home it was strictly Bob Will's Tiffany transcriptions. That I listened to a lot of the individual Texas Playboys is fiddle in records, and then my favorite was Louie Tierney who played with them a lot. So I'd go listen to that song just to hear that part again, and I liked all of them. And you're a very gritty violin player. It's sharp, You've got a lot of bite to when you're playing. Like I compare you to somebody like Alison Crows, who's a very famous fiddler, but she's got a much sweeter sound. You like that really is that kind of a Texas sound, that harder sound. I think that's a sound that I've kind of developed from listening to rock and roll in fighting with guitars, and it's also got a lot of what I have, which is an attitude. I also think that you can do a lot with the texture of sounds, because sometimes I do think it's appropriate to make your violin whistle or go harmonic scrapy for whatever effect you're trying to achieve. And then depending on who's producing those types of things can be you know, affected in a way that changes a complete landscape of a song. Sometimes, like in that song Adjacent's if We're Vampires, there's some of that going on. And then Traveling Alone was kind of when I started playing with that idea and when did the songwriting start? Because of the playboys, you were on a bunch of albums. You were fiddling for a lot of people. You're sort of a side player. When did you start songwriting? I started, you know, I have a little goofy poetry. But that would be after I sang for the first time lead song. The first time I sang a lead on a song was I had to hold Leon Rausch of the Texas Playboy's hand to sing that song. That sure would go good. That I have pictures and we're just holding hands. I was so scared. But then I started singing, and then started doing harmony and trying to, you know, be available when somebody might want harmony. Who were singing, you know, just expands your work a little bit more, I guess. And I was playing. I was playing fiddle playing with everybody singing. And I decided, you know what would supplement my own income. I'm gonna copy the Texas Playboys and I'm gonna make a little fiddle in record. And so I made a little fiddle in record, not an artist record. I just wanted to set up on the stage and get a couple of ten or fifteen dollars here and there got about nine eight or nine fiddle tunes in and I thought people might want to know like that I could sing in case theyver want me to sing with them too. You know, it's all very entrepreneurial in a way. Were you touring in Texas at this time or were you up in Nashville, Texas still, because I did just basically all my pre artist career was in Texas. So I thought, well, I'm gonna have to sing a song so people know I could sing harmony and stuff. And I started thinking about what song I was singing. Then I realized you had to pay royalties. And then I thought, well, self, what are we going to do? And so I've made up two songs and I put them on there. Well, turns out that record was done, and I found myself on the road with Billy Joe Shaver, and one night I decided, you know, there's enough room on that table. I'm gonna set my CDs right there. That's what I'm gonna do. And I set my CDs right there. I didn't ask anybody didn't know you had to ask. And after the show, he was signing some CDs and he said, is that your record sitting up there with mind? And I said, yep, and he said, I guess we'll have to listen to that tomorrow. Huh. And I said, oh, you don't have to listen to it. You could just have it and listen to it on your own time. He's like, Nope, we're gonna have to listen to it, and so he put it on in the car and then we're listening and there's no where. He's not saying anything, just got his radars for the cops, you know, driving real fast. And I'm worried. I'm like, WHOA, what have I done? And he heard one of the songs on there, and he said, you know what you need to do. You need to move to Nashville and become a songwriter. There's no loyalty in the side person world. And I thought I was being fired, like it was a polite way to fire me. So I said, no, Billy Joe, I love my job. I don't mind not settled the CDs if you don't want me to, I don't. I really I don't want to. I really love playing with you. I feel like I'm learning a lot. And he said, no, but you should. You could be a songwriter. If you want to go be a songwriter, you should be a songwriter, and I was like, I don't know, Billy Joe, I really like playing with you. And then a year later I told Billy Joe Shaver I was moving to Nashville to pursue my dreams of being a waitress. And then I started over and here we sit. Was there a song you heard? Was there something that inspired you that made you think I can do this? Who were your inspirations back then? I always heard Billy Joe Shaver and thought, I wonder if I could do that one day, and just the way he captured exactly what he was feeling in that way, and then I did I realize that, no, I can't. I have to do the ones that come from me. But the other people I were listening to were everybody from Cindy Walker all of her songs from the Playboys, I loved that, like that song you Don't Know Me, and then then of course all of the all of the Whale and Jennings and Dolly Parton I listened to, and I listened to acts like Jagged Edge and Destiny's Child and everything Elliott Smith and I had. Then I started working at a record store and it was just crazy. And then I fell in love with Leonard Cohen, and I was like, that's me. I'm Leonard Cohen, don't. I don't mean I'm Leonard Cohen, but that's I identify with that. You went and got your MFA, which not a lot of country writers do. What made you want to do that? My life philosophy is like, we're all here to learn, and you know, as nature does grow until we made our end. So I went to get my MFA like I did when I was learning the fiddle, like with everything I had. When I discovered my passion for writing in words, I wanted to do that and I wanted to know what I was doing, and I wanted to be able to make decisions and know the reason for the decisions I was making and not kind of just go on instinct. Like I wanted to know down to the preposition what the word choices could be and then how they would affect a liner and emotion depending on where and how you use them. And I just wanted to be kind of able to do it with purpose and intention and to not second guess myself, but also stay open to criticism should somebody notice something I forgot. But for me, I get passionate about something and I want to do it and I want to do it right, and I don't get very passionate about a lot of things, basically just music, writing and painting. Where does that come from? Was someone in your family that way about what they did? No, I think when I think about it historically, I think it's something that's been lost. Like, I don't know, I'm no historian, but I feel like people used to do a lot more things like read and be into arts and learning. And I'm not trying to sound like an old grand mob, but you know, there's a lot of TV watching going on when you could be exploring yourself in the world around you. You know, I always preferred being outside over being inside. Yeah, I mean, there's nobody else that I know that really. I mean, my mom was a single mother who eventually became a doctor, but that was also while she's while she was raising two kids and being a bail bonds lady and working at Price Chopper. Wow, Okay, I think we know where it comes from that. Yeah, Okay, they're right, So there we go. What was learning to write at an MFA? Like, what kind of things did you do and how did they help your music. I think the MFA was the hardest thing I've ever done. Like, I read everything James Joyce ever wrote. I suffered ocular migraines and my lost vision in one of my eyes from reading so much, but it came back, thank God. And you know, we'd do everything from workshops to study Middle English and Old English and you know where words came from and vowel shifts, and poets we'd study other poets in their works and yeah, that was that was really fun. Though it's a lot. Can you tell me a couple of examples in your songs where you can look at them and say, without that training, I wouldn't have written this song. Oh yeah, for sure. I wouldn't have written Parking Lot Pirouette without that training. And that's one of my favorite. If if I had to pick one of my favorite songs of my own, it would be that one. Then White Feather from to the Sunset. Also, that's when all that was kind of wrapping up and I wrote it separately. I have a record coming in the spring. None of the songs I would have written without this kind of training that I had, because they're going a little bit literary, I guess, But still accessible. And then with the Christmas record, I would say it'd be slowfall and snow and some of them would be a lot worse. If I hadn't had the training, is what it would be. It wouldn't be the same level of accuracy of words to feelings. Now, I am going to put you in the spot because your husband had an online conversation with George Saunders, and I think people can find it on YouTube. So now, who do you want to do that with? What writers would do you want to speak to? Well? I will say that Jason did do that, but he was never asked by George to write a song for his tenth of December, and I was and I did and it was awesome. I would think Barbara Kings Salver, I would like to talk to her. I'd like to talk to Ada lemone wonderful poet, and some of them I've already talked to. I mean Tom Robins would be fun, definitely, Larry David. We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be back with more from Amanda Shires. We're back with Amanda Shires singing her song always Christmas around Here from a new album for Christmas, It's Quiet right down, the skies gone dark, the sink full of dishes, the mondree a start, the best saying in the living room, there's wine all over the couch, the sisters art speaking. Who's crying now? It's allays Christmas round here. It's allays Christmas round here, compounded interest, no sleeping in. Dad's asking for money. He's in a bad waykin keep pushing down the trash to keep from taking it out. The bread always earns. Think we'd use a tier by now. It's alllways Christmas around here. It's always Christmas around here, solways, always always the same. It's always Christmas around here here my house. Lots of questionable tattoos, silent fights and holy fights. Dave's bassack word views, look forward to a new a new Saturdays, hoping for change. Baby win the lottery one day. It's so's Christmas around here. It's Allays Christmas around Here's allays always a saying. It's all Lays Christmas around here. Happy in the year. This brings us around too. I think just one of the most sharply observed songs on your album, which is always Christmas around here. Can you tell me about that song? You know? How folks say every day's Christmas. It's like when it comes down to it and you're sitting there thinking after you know, everything's cleaned up, and you're looking around just kind of noticing the conversations and enjoying the company with all of its positive and negatives, just like in the moment, like it's just it's just true because you it together just one time a year with folks that you don't see every day, and you're expected to hang out and agree on all things because you're related. And then you cook a turkey, and like who cooks the turkey in the year outside of Christmas or Thanksgiving? Like why are we going to have the thing we're the worst at making. That's a thing that always bothers me. You think about it and you're like, Christmas, it's just you drag all this stuff out and you decorate your house with it. But also at the same time, you're still doing the same things you do every every day, Like every day Jason and I are trying to see who's gonna push the trash down the furthest or for the last time and who has to take it out. You know that happens to our Christmas it's all just the way life just is all the time. But it's just happens to be Christmas. That's what that song is. But it's full of sort of beautiful line. It just kind of sum up that experiences. I don't remember the precise words, but there's wine stains on the carpet and someone says we'll win the lottery. Yeah, it's this incredible kind of slice of life. I think that that true experiences to me are the ways that you can describe the feelings the best in a song. How do you go about writing lyrics? Then do you start with the melody and then add the lyrics? Sometimes I'm like all of all of the writers, you could start with the melody and add lyrics, or maybe you start with the piece of an idea. I'm not one of those that writes to a title. I've never been able to figure that out. You know a lot of people like read the title and they write to that. But throughout the year I take lots of notes, and then the notes I put little like a couple literal and or something on an index card, and a storm in my index card bins. And then when I feel like the well is full, I start taping them around my house. Like I can't tell right now, but a lot of the walls are white. So all the index cards go up and the painter's tape goes up, and then I just kind of synthesize all that and pull out my little voice memo recorder to see what melodies I have, and then you start ratting one or two and then it just pours out of you. Well, so you tape them all over the house. I used to only do it in the closet because I was afraid of judgment with it within my family, and then I realized that that was silly. Then I started. They started coming out of the little closet into the bathroom, into the master bedroom, and it only got tricky once when Jason ripped a line from me and I had to tell them that that wasn't how this was going to work. Did you just say, like, just tape up your own damn cards, Jason, I said, I realized what's happened here that you know, it's impossible to not read the words that are on the wall, but it infiltrated your unconscious and that's my line, and we have to be careful about that. But I Also I don't mind sharing. You know, I always tell them that I've got lines for days. Are you one of those people for it just comes easily, that lines come. I mean, I don't know what it's like to be a different type of person, but I think that I stay in a particular mindset so that way I can always find it. You know, I don't shut I don't shut it down that part. I write a little every day and I still find beautiful lines and books and poems and room to get better. And I don't shut the part of my mind off that also shuts down imagination. So like I guess you could call it a little bit of your silly like itself. You've got to keep some kind of like part of you that's open and spontaneous and can find magic. And like, I don't know, looking at rocks, that's interesting because for so many people you mentioned worrying about your family's judgment, that fear of judgment is what keeps them from being able to write. You don't feel that. I used to feel that a whole lot. And I don't know if it's age and going to school and studying under Andrew Hudgins, but I don't feel that way, because it's impossible to, based on some words, get a whole clear picture of what is in anybody's mind, because you know, truly, like if any other songwriter took one of my little index cards words and it wasn't Jason, probably wouldn't even be very good. This is positive self talk with Avanda Shires. This is how you do it. You'd be confident in yourself, you know what the hell you're doing, and then if anybody has questions, you can choose to answer them or not. And as far as judgment, that all kind of comes after the records out, so you have time to fix it in between now and then. How many drafts you typically do of songs lots like a song on this album? How many? How many would you have done? I have forty seven verses to Gone for Christmas. Oh you're kidding, no, no, And I have have pages on pages of always Christmas around here. Recently, my producer Laurd Trothman is insisting that I don't shred them for six months, just so I could look at the process on my own better. This is going to sound like a silly question, but a lot of people I ask this question to have very specific answers. Is there a kind of notebook you write in? Yeah, I like the I like a specific notebook, but I don't keep them, like, I shred them. After I put the notes onto the cards and they go into my little index card bins, they all go in the shredder, and the shredded paper goes into the compost and then I use it in my garden. Why do you shred them because the whole place would be a tinderbox. Okay, this is just a storage issue, it's not you hate them well and honestly, like it's a little bit like that that idea of if some they saw my Google search history, they would really think something was wrong with me. But sometimes you have to know the details about you know, turquoise mines, and then simultaneously you need to know the exact weight of a sash weight to use a particular fight that some characters might have, and exactly what is strychnine and stuff like that. Would stryc nine just be after the Google search? My husband stole my lyrics? Yes, yes, definitely after I Amazon ordered a knife sharpener jokes. But there's there, there is that thing where like you have all these pieces of paper everywhere and then been there left to interpretation kind of like like I kind of think, I feel like it's shitty that they released Marilyn Monroe's diary, But I guess that's the risk you run if you leave your diary. So you wrote forty seven verses, and then do you try and put some together or you just like you stroke off, like you get rid of forty four of them, or I can't remember how many verses are in the song. Some people say way too many and some people say not enough. The way I do it is I try some out in the studio, like I bring my favorite, like with that when I brought my favorite twenty in and then I tried some out, and then as you go and you follow the thing that makes it the most, fits the best, and then the other ones could be another version if they wanted to be, if you know, they decide to be for Christmas number two. So you are Leonard Cohen because that's how he wrote. He wrote hundreds of verses for songs. Well, I don't always do that, because home to me, I just wrote that in one go tell me about the last song you're doing for us, which is a real tree. This one's a funny song. I always always liked the idea of things that happen around the holidays, you know, like new love interests or well, really, I think we know what I'm talking about here. It's a it's a instead of a fake tree, this lady's found herself a real tree. And I guess it's a euphemism. Christmas is a time for romance and booty calls and sadness and nostalgia and all the things, right, Like it'd be like just trying to that's the point of the record. You can listen to a lot of Christmas records and it's it's either hymns, which are great, or everything's really happy and snowing, right, And this is all the rest of that stuff. That's what so great about this album. This is all the rest of the stuff you're forgetting about. Yeah, you're forgetting about the part where you could find love or or divorce. Should I check in with you again after Christmas just to make sure you're I mean, why not that, I mean you might as well, Okay, I just want to know which way it goes this year, right, right, let's dress you to be seen. I've been looking forward to this for fifty two weeks. I got feathers, gold and silver beads, garling and up to cover all six glorious fee of you. I got a real tree this year. Smells like mentholes and old spice. A real tree this year, took my fake one to the roadside tonight, putting you in bows, a red velvet skirt, dripping you in gold. I'm gonna take my time and for someone get the lights on. You'll in just right. I'll flock the hell out of you. I got out a real tree. This you smells like menthols and old spice. A real tree this you took my fake one to the roadside. I haven't decided if you wear the crown of the big bright star. Oh how you shine for me through the dark, your reflection in the window, you beautiful thing. I'll take what I want. Candy came from my real Christmas tree. I got a real tree. This you. I catch myself staring a real tree this year. There's just no comparing. No, it's been just delightful talking to you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks to Amanda Shires for singing some songs from our new holiday album For Christmas. You can hear it and check out the playlist of our favorite Amanda Shire songs at broken record podcast dot com. We'll also post a holiday playlist curated by our Broken Record team. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is producer with help from Alia Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Neil Lavelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nineam. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and please remember to share, rate, or review us on your podcast. Are the Musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond, h