When it really comes down to these two or three weeks, you want the Nat King Cole of it all.
Christmas carolling is a tradition where groups of people bundle up and go door to door singing songs of the season: some religious, some secular, some joyful, some sad. It’s a way to share the spirit of Christmas with faithful friends and neighbours who are dear to us, gathering near to us and bringing tidings, if you will, of comfort and joy to everyone. No one gives a thought to race or gender or politics or any other box that separates us from one another. If not faith in God, it’s a celebration of faith in humanity and our capacity to care about people other than ourselves.
Music is one of the most effective ways for bringing people together. This connects us like storytellers in the oral tradition. Songs we heard growing up have that power. We hear ‘The First Noel,’ ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ or ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ and are instantly transported as if we stepped into a time machine, returning us back to a period of shared memories.
The Milk Carton Kids have reintroduced us to that time in our past on their new “Christmas In A Minor Key” album. As Joey Ryan put it, “We do sad,” but in this case sad actually feels good because the songs they chose go beyond sad to the realm of yearning, emotionally pulling us into the experiential, that which grounds us, a reminder that the world can be as harmonious as the melodies Joey and Kenneth Pattengale sing on their record. If only our part of the world could stay that way, stay Christmas every day, what a wonderful thing that would be.
The acoustic guitars accentuate the fragility of ‘The First Noel.’ Here and throughout the other songs, specific images create the feeling of the season: shepherds in the fields, a new-born baby on Mary’s lap, snow and mistletoe, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn, Herod the king raging, the dawn of redeeming grace, hang a shining star upon the highest bough. Wistful songs, like the sedate tone of ‘Coventry Carol,’ which sounds as if the Milk Carton Kids recorded it in an ancient church in the English countryside.
Kenneth was traveling in Europe at the time of this interview, but Joey Ryan carried on adeptly for the duo, talking about not only the album but what Christmas means to him. You’ll find out that in this regard, he’s just like the rest of us. It’s about family and tradition, whether that is exemplified by the religious relevance of the nativity scene or soaking up the warmth of home and hearth with presents under the tree. It’s a wish for joy to the world and to hear heaven and nature sing in harmony. So, let your heart be light, and for one day at least let your troubles be out of sight. Pretend you’re a passenger in Joey Ryan’s car on the L.A. Freeway and listen in to this interview.
Hi, Joey, where are you?
I’m in Los Angeles, driving, sometimes that’s the best time to talk to somebody. Both Kenneth and I were born and raised here.
Well, don’t wreck. At least the roads aren’t slippery with ice and snow.
The worst would be getting stuck in traffic. No snow. It’s 70 degrees and sunny. We’re expecting brush fires.
That’s sitting by the fireside, California style.
Exactly.
The Milk Carton Kids have just released “Christmas in A Minor Key.” Are any of the songs actually in A minor?
You know, I hadn’t thought of that. No. We play ‘What Child is This?’ That’s like in A minor position, but we tune our guitars down a whole step. So, I guess that’s probably in G minor, but that’s one of the only ones that’s even in a minor key at all. ‘Coventry Carol’ is in a minor key, but it’s got that big Picardy third major ending in a lot of the phrases. It’s a little bit of a misnomer, but it beat out the second place album title, which was “Sad Christmas.”
You probably made the better choice.
Yes, I agree. Really, we thought all it meant is that we chose the sad-sounding, pretty songs and not the celebratory triumphant ones. We didn’t do ‘Joy to the World’ or ‘Jingle Bells’ or any of the lighter fare as is our wont. We are drawn to the beauty of the melodies, the nostalgia and a little bit of melancholy.
It’s been done many times many ways, but what was your reason for making a Christmas record?
During the pandemic we started doing a live stream right around the holidays from Kenneth’s house. It was the first thing we did where we were even in the same room together. During that one we did ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ Actually, going back a bit further, and to name drop intentionally here, we played a concert in Chicago on New Year’s like seven years ago. And around that time, we were seeing Steve Martin a lot for various reasons. We had been on a festival that he was on, and he’s obviously a great banjo player. We told him that we were doing our New Year’s show and he goes, oh, you’ve got to do ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ but do the Mary Campbell version, the sad Irish version.
So, he turned us on to that version and that kind of started the idea for us that each year during our holiday live stream, we would do a different holiday song. We did ‘Silent Night’ the next year, and ‘O Holy Night’ the year after that. And we realized that we have nostalgia for the same batch of traditional hymn sounding Christmas songs, despite the fact that I’m Jewish and Kenneth’s not religious. We both celebrated Christmas and just were really fond of Christmas with Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby’s Christmas album and Judy Garland doing ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,’ any Ray Charles Christmas song. At some point, we knew that we would make a Christmas album.
And this turned out to be the year?
I’ll admit out of a bit of procrastination because we got together to write our next Milk Carton Kids album, and the first day we went in the studio and wrote a song, which we both really loved. And then the second day we got there and had no more ideas, so we said, hey, I bet there’s time to get a Christmas album done before the holiday season. We set our mind to doing that and it was one of the most unexpectedly fun and rewarding and also kind of experimental, exploratory processes we’ve been through in the studio.
All the songs on the album are traditional. Did you ever consider or attempt writing an original Christmas song?
Kenneth has a Christmas song that he wrote 15 years ago, and we played around with it a little bit. We specifically decided not to do any originals or any contemporary Christmas songs. We wanted to go full trad, just earnest Christmas, nothing ironic or subversive. Mostly an indie folk band does something a little left of centre on their Christmas albums. We just thought, these melodies are so, so gorgeous that like the most radical thing we could do is just play the traditional Christmas songs that hit the deepest for us.
Rodney Crowell did one a couple of years ago (“Christmas Everywhere”) that was kind of almost anti- Christmas in a way. It had well-written songs, but it was nothing that I would listen to at Christmas time. Some other time of year, sure. There’s so much in the world to gripe about and 364 other days to do it. Why not leave Christmas alone?
Yeah, that’s an interesting way of looking at it. I think I agree. When it really comes down to these two or three weeks, you want the Nat King Cole of it all.
Do you have a favourite contemporary Christmas song or album?
I really love Phoebe Bridgers quote unquote Christmas album, that EP she made. Her cover of Tom Waits’ ‘Day After Tomorrow’ is unbelievably gorgeous and sad. The title of the album is “So Much Wine.”
Are you going to perform these songs at all besides the live stream?
We are actually. We’re doing the live stream this time at a little venue that our friend runs in this church basement studio. There are just 70 seats. Then we’re going this weekend to DC to do a benefit show with Emmylou Harris. We’ll play some of the Christmas songs there, but we don’t have any touring set up around it because once the 25th has passed, people don’t want to hear this anymore until next year.
As a kid, what was your favourite Christmas song?
That’s a good question. We did Christmas and Hanukkah in my house every year, and now that you mention it, I don’t remember what Christmas music we used to listen to at the time.
What was Christmas like in your house back then? Did your family light the menorah then light the Advent candles?
We’d get a tree in the living room and Hanukkah would overlap usually with Christmas. So, we’d get all the crappy presents for Hanukkah and then all the big presents under the tree on Christmas morning. Usually, the aunts and uncles and cousins would come over and we’d just spend the day playing with whatever toys we got for Christmas. Big family time and getting together with extended family, which we still do.
Since I’ve been an adult for the last 20 or so years, the main thing that happens in our house around Christmas is I’ve got a good collection of Christmas vinyl, and we just go exclusively vinyl in the house. Like I said, it’s mostly Nat King Cole, but also Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Burl Ives. I have this one record that’s called “A Very Nashville Christmas,” very country versions of all the classic Christmas songs, which is fun. My kids like that. They like that acapella version of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ that Pentatonix did for one of the big animated movies.
How many kids do you have?
I’ve got two boys, 11 and 7. Very into Christmas, very into Santa Claus. The 7-year-old is obsessed, so we watch two to three Christmas movies a week through December, the great ones and the crappy ones.
Do you watch “Christmas Vacation”? That’s been an annual must in our house forever.
We watched it two nights ago.
You don’t have any characters like Randy Quaid’s Cousin Eddie or Clark Griswold’s Uncle Lewis in the extended family, do you?
There are some characters in the movie that are only slight exaggerations. That movie is the one I crave the most, but I also definitely like “Elf.” It’s one of Will Ferrell’s great performances, and then we usually watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
We were talking about the types of Christmas songs that some of the indie and folk artists do. It seems like certain artists have a hard time singing about faith, but you don’t seem to have that.
Yeah, we did choose a lot of Jesus-y songs. it crossed my mind as it was happening. We had a big list of songs that we toyed around with, and the ones that we ended up really gravitating to, they appealed to us based on the ways that the melodies could be arranged with different chord orchestrations and carry interesting harmonies because the thing that we love is writing fun and interesting harmony parts. As we were getting five or six songs in, I realized that we were really singing Christ the Lord quite a bit and I wondered how it would strike people. As I said, for me growing up Jewish and Kenneth growing up basically non-religious, the lyrics in a lot of these more religious, churchy songs don’t have a lot of weight for us one way or the other. I’m not sure, but I wonder if other people will have a similar experience where these songs are so ingrained and so nostalgic and just so part of the background of our memories that for me, the lyrics disappear a little bit. In ‘The First Noel,’ the whole second verse is about sheep, and I never knew that until we looked it up. All right, I guess I’m singing about sheep here, but it’s still one of the most iconic melodies.
What’s on your Christmas list?
Besides Joy to the world? Unfortunately, it’s akin to that. I am very focused on the idea currently of connection between people and nurturing the relationships that are important to me. I notice that we’re at a time when we’re at risk of allowing connections to sort of fade away, spending a lot of time in solitary environments. There are a lot of circumstances that make it easy for us to be alone and feel alone. So, I’m trying to push back against the tide pulling in that direction. I guess that’s what I want for myself and probably what I want for everybody else.
The pandemic may have exacerbated the tendency for people to retreat into their own world.
Yeah, Covid taught us that it was possible to be alone so much with our devices and our connected technologies. You can survive for quite a long time just being alone and using your phone and computer to get what you need. But that turns out to not be all you need. It’s sad people being alone at Christmas time, either literally or psychically.
What’s the strangest Christmas gift you’ve ever received?
I got a coupon book once, and that was sort of nice. This is not going to sound that weird, but I don’t really drink anymore. Not in a sober kind of a way but just don’t enjoy it the way I used to. It was just bad timing for the nicest bottle of whiskey I’ve ever received as a gift. And I was like, is this a sign? Someone trying to send me a message? So that’s been sitting on the shelf for quite a while. Maybe I’ll get around to it one day.
Are you a re-gifter?
Yes, especially with kids’ stuff. They get it and are done with it so quickly. It’s still perfectly good so we give it to the younger cousins. There’s a nice little secondhand eco-system going on in our kid community.
What about Kenneth? Does he have a family?
He’s married but no kids. They have a dog. She has a big family and they get together, and Kenneth has two brothers. I’d say he loves Christmas. We learned about each other in the process of making this album. Around 10 years ago, Kenneth had a bunch over to his house. Joe Henry was there and Evan, a great piano player. We all gathered around the piano singing Christmas carols. That was one of the most memorable nights of my life.
You know, the bluegrass kids that we’re friends with now through our musical scene know a hundred old-time, traditional songs. It’s what binds them. These Christmas songs serve a similar purpose for us as a common vocabulary in a deeply emotional way.
What is one of the traditions you like best about Christmas?
Besides the music, for me it’s cooking because there is down time and you are all together. I love really big meals.
Is there a traditional meal for your family?
In my wife’s family house, they have either turkey or ham. It’s like Thanksgiving, Part II. My role is making the eggnog, a big batch or multiple batches.
Now there’s a use for that bottle of whiskey on the shelf.
That’s true. It’s one of the only times I have alcohol nowadays, spike the eggnog. And you need it, for the flavour and to thin out the cream.
We haven’t really talked about the individual songs on the album in depth, more in general. Is there anything else you’d like to say about the album?
No, I’m flattered hearing that people enjoy it. We felt a big responsibility to these songs and this endeavour. It’s a little like who are we, who are any of us to do versions of these iconic songs when so many great versions have already been done of them? If we are able to do justice to them in our style, that’s what we were going for.
