Holiday caroling was epic this year! I had a great group of brave and lively singers and three musicians who gave graciously of their free time to get together for six hours total and rehearse holiday music before the event. Brendan (banjo), Dylan (drums), and Micah (bass clarinet), you guys rock. No, really (haha!)

Everyone gradually made their way over to our house. We ate, drank, and enjoyed some festive holiday mixers.

Then we had a short rehearsal of a small repertoire of holiday songs:

1. Christmas is All Around (from Love Actually)

2. Deck the Halls

3. Féliz Navidad

4. Jingle Bells

5. Joy to the World (Three Dog Night)

6. Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah

7. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

8. Let It Snow

9. Walking in a Winter Wonderland

10. We Wish You a Merry Christmas

We were fortunate to avoid the rain the entire time while caroling and because the pellet stove made our house so hot, some people opted for scarves or just light jackets.  We hit the streets of Whiteaker and our first stop was PRI (Pizza Research Institute), but they already had a music act playing that evening.  We crossed the street to Olive Juice / El Pinche Taco / Eugene Glass Menagerie and sang to an appreciative group there.

(I’ll put a picture here when I get the pictures from Shinae, our photographer.)

Next we traveled on to Sam Bond’s Garage and fortunately the bands that night were between sets.  A heard a few people say: “Wow, that’s a lot of people” and “Oh, we have a real audience now”.  The crowd at Sam Bond’s loved us, especially our rendition of “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night (I have my uncle to thank for the inspiration of adding this song to holiday caroling!)

The next caroling recipients were the customers and wait staff at our beloved Papa’s Soul Food Kitchen and Blues Joint.  This was especially fun and meaningful, as Ted “Papa” Lee himself died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack just one month ago and the whole community has been saddened deeply by the loss of him.  We’ve been long time customers and it was fun to bring some holiday cheer to the familiar wait staff faces in his family run restaurant.  Papa himself was a prominent local musician and I think he would have loved our caroling so much.  He probably would have joined in too!

We walked across the street to Tiny’s Tavern.  We played it safe and stayed outside of the tavern, especially since we had adorable three year old Margo with us.  Here is a video of our funky performance of Deck the Halls outside of Tiny’s:

(For some reason, the videos won’t embed from YouTube, so click here on the link to view the video of Deck the Halls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wi6yJAXNYk

After saying no to many offers for hits of weed, we wandered our way up 4th Ave to a few houses.  By that time it was 9:15 p.m. and a few people had put their children to sleep, had gone to parties elsewhere and weren’t home, or just flat out turned us down for caroling.  We did get to sing for a few lucky residents and here is a video of us belting out Féliz Navidad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRBR01lz96w

Not long after that, we wandered home, festive, exhausted, and happy.   A few of us played Apples to Apples afterwards and munched on the leftover party snacks and sipped the leftover dranks.  I was so happy and pleased that so many people came and had such a good time caroling.  A big festive shout out to those who came, to the awesome caroling band, and to Shinae, for taking all of the pictures and videos and participating while jet lagged from a recent flight back from Korea.  This year’s holiday caroling was all I could ever hope for and more and I’m so glad that other people could enjoy and share the holiday cheer. 

One Response to “Fa-la-la-la-laaaa la-la-la-laaaa!”

1. erin says:

   December 22, 2009 at 8:28 pm

   so sorry we missed it. next year though!