The 2024 Christmas and Holiday New Music (and 2009 Radio Nostalgia) Special

After surveying all of the available new Christmas and holiday themed music that I could find, I came up with a tidy playlist of nine noteworthy songs to share here in an episode that departs from our usual artist interview format. Here, we play full songs in several sets, with some back stories on each artist and song. Ranging from the elegant, folky take on “Coventry Carol” by The Milk Carton Kids to country leaning Americana in “Layaway Momma” from Adam Chaffins, to previous Southern Songs and Stories guest The Get Right Band and other fellow western NC artists, this episode celebrates an array of styles and perspectives on the season.

With list in hand, little Joey Kendrick sits happily on Santa’s lap across from sister Leigh, who ponders the validity of the this oddly formal and forced tradition. Circa 1976.

Included here is a special from Christmas past, from my days producing the radio show What It Is on public radio WNCW, with founding panelists Jeff Eason and Fred Mills. We celebrated Jeff’s life and many contributions to music and journalism after his passing in 2018 on this podcast, in the episode “Remembering Jeff Eason”. Following the music portion of this episode, we take you back fifteen years, to a time when What It Is was just two years old. You will hear a younger version of me (with a cold) talking by phone with Jeff and Fred in two short episodes, detailing some of our favorite holiday music as well as the Christmas and holiday music we would love to do without.

Songs heard in this episode:

Dulci Ellenberger “Colorful Christmas”

Ana Egge “Silver Bells Ring”

John Doyle and Mick McAuley “Gleann na-Ean”

The Get Right Band “Christmas As A Kid”

The Pinkerton Raid, “Happy XMas (War Is Over)”, from Winter Songs By Other People

Adam Chaffins “Layaway Momma”

JD Clayton “Your Favorite Christmas Song”

The Milk Carton Kids “Coventry Carol”, from Christmas In A Minor Key

Jenn Grant “Bells Are Ringing”

Thanks for listening! We hope you can help spread awareness of what we are doing. It is as easy as telling a friend and following this podcast on your platform of choice, so easy! You can find us on Apple here, and Spotify here — hundreds more episodes and many hundreds more artists await you.

From there it takes just a moment to give us a top rating, and where it is an option, a review! It makes a great difference because the more top reviews and ratings we get, the more visible we become to everyone on those platforms, which means that more people just like you connect with artists like The Get Right Band, Dulci Ellenberger, John Doyle, and literally hundreds more we have profiled that are at your fingertips. Speaking of Silas Durocher and The Get Right Band, their episode from 2023 stands the test of time, and you can find that by looking up “Psychedelia in the Carolinas Then and Now With The Get Right Band and Ken Friedman” on southernsongsandstories.com, as well as the search feature on your podcast platform of choice.   

This series is a part of the lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available here. You can also hear new episodes on Bluegrass Planet Radio here. Thanks also to Jaclyn Anthony for producing the radio adaptations of this series on WNCW, where we worked with Joshua Meng, who wrote and performed our theme songs — you can link to his music here. This is Southern Songs and Stories: the music of the South and the artists who make it. - Joe Kendrick

Science Fiction Themes in Music on What It Is with Jeff Eason, Fred Mills and Carol Rifkin

Credit Halloween coming up for this.

You probably know that this podcast has a direct tie to public radio station WNCW — it is produced in studio there where I am program director — but its origin can be traced all the way back to the 2006 Podcaster Con in Chapel Hill, NC, where I witnessed an event reflecting and directing the medium at its inception point, and gathered ideas for my own eventual foray into long form audio. The idea that first came to life was the music talk show What It Is, which aired weekday mornings on WNCW beginning in September 2007 and running until April 2012. Starting with music writers/editors Jeff Eason and Fred Mills, we added writer, musician and WNCW old-time music host Carol Rifkin to the music roundtable before bringing in many more voices over the series’ nearly five year run. In 2009 I began my first blog site for What It Is and started podcasting in earnest — you can reference those archives here.

On What It Is, we had wide latitude and an almost infinite supply of material to work with — after all, most everyone on the show (and especially the late Jeff Eason, Fred Mills and Carol Rifkin) was a music nerd of the highest order, and could talk about their love of it for hours if you let them. One of the themes we explored more than once was science fiction themes in music, first in May 2009 and then again that July. Carol Rifkin was along for the first conversation, which was longer than when Jeff, Fred and I revisited the topic that summer.

Almost fifteen years later, I am digging around for ideas to round out my Halloween themed radio show, and thought back to my days producing What It Is, wondering if we made any episodes touching on the holiday. While we did not make an explicitly Halloween-centered episode, we got a good bit of the way there with these conversations which will give you plenty of ideas for a space-age playlist as we travel back in time for this special holiday podcast of Southern Songs and Stories.

Songs heard in this episode:

“Forbidden Planet” film score opening theme, by Bebe and Louis Barron

“Creature With The Atom Brain” by Roky Erikson, excerpt

“Rock Steady” by Aretha Franklin, excerpt

“The X Files” by Mark Snow

Thank you for visiting us and giving this podcast a listen! This series is a part of the lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available here. You can also hear new episodes on Bluegrass Planet Radio here. Thanks to Corrie Askew for producing the radio adaptations of this series on public radio WNCW.

Southern Songs and Stories was recently ranked in the top 20 Southern podcasts here on feedspot.com, which is worth a look.

This is Southern Songs and Stories: the music of the South and the artists who make it. - Joe Kendrick

Remembering Jeff Eason

Welcome to a special edition of Southern Songs and Stories, where we pay respects to Jeff Eason by sharing some of his work on air at WNCW, where I am program director. Back in 2007, I was the morning music host on WNCW, mixing the tunes from 6 to 10 AM weekdays. I came up with the idea to make a daily music talk segment, with myself as host, joined by guest panelists conversing about everything from record reviews, to moments in history, to editorials and think pieces. If you’re like me, you can talk about music for hours without really even trying, and that sort of spontaneous water cooler talk about artists, songs and such was already a real boost to my workday. So, I gave it a platform, called the show What It Is, and brought in fellow music heads Jeff Eason, who was then a newspaper editor at the Mountain Times in Boone, NC, and Fred Mills, who was then the managing editor for Harp magazine.

(L to R) Jeff Eason and Fred Mills in studio to record What It Is on 2-24-12. This was the last time Jeff, Fred and Joe Kendrick were on the show together.

Here is a wonderful tribute to Jeff from the Watauga Democrat.

We miss you very much, Jeff. You can find more of Jeff's work on What Is Is (244 episodes to be exact, which isn’t all of them, but is still a lot), here: https://www.southernsongsandstories.com/whatitis/