It finally hit me — the Christmas spirit — at the Local Honey show last Friday night. What is Local Honey? Well it’s a little tough to describe in a word or two — but you can read all about it here. Basically, it’s an ensemble of local musicians who get together and (from what I saw/heard) put on a heck of a show. This time, it was a “holiday mix” . I am admittedly unresponsive to most holiday music. It’s not that I’m a Scrooge. I just loathe the mindless rotation of pop songs on KISS FM as well as the unimaginative overplaying of good, catchy tunes — and nothing suffers more from this type of overexposure than the Christmas Carol.
That said, the talent and creativity brought forth during Local Honey’s Holiday Mix at the Lakewood Theater was refreshing. Kelly Brown started off with an adorable rendition of “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch” with sister Kim singing backups (the two once comprised the duo known as franklyScarlet, a popular 90s band). The vocally gifted woman had an incredible amount of instrumental talent backing them up: Polyphonic Spree drummer Bryan Wakeland, Doug Neil of Junky Southern on guitar, Reggie Rueffer of Charlie Pride and the Rueffer Brothers (fiddle/violin), and trumpeter Freddie Jones, to name a few.
Mac Price, the composer who arranged all the music for the mix, performed his own version of Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne”, a cheesy song that Mac somehow made cool. The same thing happened when Kelly put her soothing spin on Dolly Parton’s “Hard Candy Christmas” … and when her sister belted out a disco version of “Oh Night Divine”.
After the show I was able to push on and do some serious Christmas shopping the next day. Wish I had a CD of the show — maybe it would motivate me to wrap these presents.
