Holiday Voices: Pam Tillis

Pam Tillis has always been both a maverick and a traditionalist in country music. She brings that trademark insight and diversity to her holiday album, Just in Time for Christmas.

There's classic country on the album, there's torch, there's jazz, there's twang and there are thoughtful and thought provoking newer songs. "I love finding new songs. That's part of the thrill," Tillis said. Beautiful Night, which gracefully evokes both the connection and celebration of the holidays as well as the thoughtful and reflective aspects of the season, was the one which caught her attention "and sent me flying me into my manager's office saying, okay, we have to do a Christmas album!" Tillis said. It is by Nashville writer Julie Lee, whose songs have been recorded by Alison Krauss and others.

"That was definitely what started it," Tillis said. "It became -- it's almost like a center piece for a table you are setting. Once you get that idea for the center piece, everything kind of emanates from that. That kind of propelled me to say, okay, let's roll up our sleeves and get in there now."

One of the things she got into was thinking about her experience playing holiday concerts. "I"ve been doing Christmas shows for the last ten years or so, either with my family or with my own band," she said, "so I had gone through this world of Christmas music for those, finding things that fit me as a singer and finding songs that I love." It then became a process of narrowing things down, and of expanding them -- finding things that worked and finding the story, the melody, and the connection that made them all work together. "I wanted the classic country element. Pretty Paper is one of the first songs we started with. I wanted some torchy, jazzy stuff, then I love just beautiful organic acoustic music," Tillis explained, "and I wanted to make sure I had some classics, because people never get tired of them, and they just kind of anchor the album in a way. And I wanted some new songs."

The result includes a medley of varied takes on the carol Silent Night, a timeless sounding song that's actually a recently composed one, called Light of the World, a torchy New Year's Eve, Beautiful Night, The Rockin' Christmas Medley (with dad Mel as guest) and including Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, and a song about love both enduring and changing, called Seasons. Tillis opens the album with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and finishes it with I'll Be Home for Christmas. It's a warm and inviting collection, one that Tillis envisions people will have playing in the background while they're decorating the tree or making a holiday dinner. It will find a place there, certainly, but it's also well worth listening too in the foreground, as Tillis offers a fresh and inviting take on familiar holiday songs along with three new songs which stand a good chance of becoming classics in their own right.

You'll find music content from many genres and plenty of other music fans at Gather Essentials: Music. For more of Kerry Dexter's Voices columns, look here. It's published on Thursdays.

Kerry Dexter, Music Correspondent Kerry's credits include VH1, CMT, the folk music magazine Dirty Linen, Strings, The Encyclopedia of Ireland and the Americas, and The MusicHound Guides. She also writes about the arts and creative practice at Music Road and contributes to Fred Bals' Series of Tubes.