Over the years, one of my favorite Christmas traditions has become Brendan & Jake’s acoustic holiday show. From my early days of mixing & recording these gigs, it’s a good annual reminder of how grateful I am to be surrounded by warm friends & family, both immediate and the extended UM clan. Saturday at Park West was no different as Brendan & Jake (with a little help from Farag on Drums, Cummins on Keys, & Mike Racky on Pedal Steel) cruised through a list of tunes spreading eggnog-spiked cheer. 

As has also become tradition, Jake has taken pen to paper to rework the lyrics of a classic tune with a Christmas bent. “The prep time between Holidaze was tight this year so I wasn’t sure what I was going to do until the night before,” Jake said when I asked him how he chose The Door’s “L.A. Woman.” “I opened iTunes and started scrolling for something very familiar while asking myself if it would translate to a Christmas atmosphere. I tried to use the same signature linguistics as Morrison, stressing his consonants and vowels but substituting holiday phrases. To be honest, once I got started it essentially wrote itself.” 

After “L.A. Santa” was still ear worming me on Monday morning, I figured we should  probably do something with it, and Jake & Brendan agreed. So now you have one more Christmas song for your holiday playlist. Enjoy! – Kevin Browning

Download the track exclusively on umlive.net or stream it using the nugs.net app. 

For those of you scoring at home….a peek inside Jake’s lyric notebook

Special thanks to Shane Hendricksen & John Engelman for letting me keep them up late to remix the multi-tracks and dial in the album cover.

Brendan Bayliss – Bass
Jake Cinninger – Guitar
Joel Cummins – Piano
Andy Farag – Drum Kit
Mike Racky – Pedal Steel

Shane Hendricksen – Recording & Mixing
John Engelman – Design
Tara Gracer – Photography