Jenny Owen Youngs, Tancred & John Mark Nelson Collaborate on Holiday Singles

Good friends Jenny Owen Youngs, John Mark Nelson and Tancred a.k.a. Jess Abbott are getting into the holiday spirit with two new recordings to warm your own cozy evening in or festive get together.

The three musicians teamed up to write and record the new original "Fireside" as well as their own take on the perennial Jay Livingston/Ray Evans classic "Silver Bells", first popularized in recorded form by Bing Crosby and Carol Richards. From their homes to yours, they wish everyone very happy holidays. If you're in NYC don't miss Youngs and Tancred's show December 14th at Mercury Lounge.

"Jess, John Mark, and I came together to make two holiday recordings," says Youngs, "inspired largely by an arrangement of "Silver Bells" Jess had come up with last Christmas. She flipped the chords in the final chorus to make the refrain wrap around itself, leaning minor, in a way that made the song somber without feeling sad.

We decided to accompany this take on Silver Bells with an original holiday song in similar emotional territory: joyful, but contemplative; secular, but reverent. What we found while writing Fireside together was a crisp homage to indoor rumination in December, and keeping warm with loved ones when daylight is brief and winter nights are long.

Jenny Owen Youngs has been busy in 2021 writing and playing in the band L.A. Exes, co-hosting the popular Buffering The Vampire podcast, and earlier in the year releasing the "soft and meditative and warm (Stereogum)" Echo Mountain EP. Keep an eye out for new solo songs and material coming from her in the coming months.

Tancred, a.k.a. Jess Abbott, recently released Nightstand Acoustic (Polyvinyl Record Co.), a collection of intimate demo recordings for Tancred's beloved 2018 album, which NPR Music originally praised for its "resplendent pop shine." Earlier this year she also celebrated the 10 year anniversary of her debut album Capes.

John Mark Nelson's just released Signa One is a collection of instrumental compositions inspired by the natural world. Each piece attempts to preserve a memory of a geographical location or moment in time. Over the years Nelson's music has been applauded by and featured on NPR, World Cafe, American Songwriter and Citypages, to name a few. Listen to Nelson's 2020 holiday single "Good To Be Home" via YouTube. Nelson will release new music in early 2022.

Listen to the new singles here:

To post a comment, you must register and login.