Holiday season is typically everyone’s favorite time of year, because it means presents and egg nog or reminding everyone in your families how much better you are since you moved to the other side of the country and/or planet. For celebrities that we don’t hear from that often, though, it’s a time to recapture some of their old mainstream magic by recording and releasing a Christmas album with all of the songs that people have been singing for billions of years. For example, did you know that 90s soft-rocker Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish and country music fame released an album entitled, “Home for the Holidays”? He did!
But Hootie has been doing his music thing for a long time, blowing the trucker hats with broken bills off the heads of frat boys all over the Southeast for years. Let’s get really obscure for the holidays by jamming out with John Schneider and Tom Wopat, also known as Bo and Luke Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard. It turns out that when they’re not taking up 30 seconds of ad time on our televisions for Autotrader, they’re out on the road performing for all of the ladies, whose engines they still rev.
Tomorrow, Schneider and Wopat will be blessing our ears and hearts with their very own Christmas album, “Home for Christmas.” It’s official – the easiest job in the world is naming holiday albums.
“I think this is a fresh take on the Christmas album,” says Tom. “Jazz fans and serious musicians will appreciate what we’ve done with theses tunes. Our arranger John Oddo has a true affinity for that classic 50s and 60s sound. He really nails it. Tedd Firth is a major talent and a creative voice. And, of course, I love singing with John Schneider. The timbre of our voices match, the harmonies blend so easily. Plus, he’s a barrel of laughs.” Schneider adds, “Tom and I really bring out the best in each other. We may not sound alike when we talk, but when we sing sometimes you can’t tell us apart. In the studio, I put him first and he puts me first. If that’s not friendship, I don’t know what is.”
Sounds like the original bromance.
Like most great creative endeavors, “Home for Christmas” was made possible by a successful Kickstarter campaign. Schneider and Wopat realized their dream back in August, after they raised $72,045 toward their $60,000 goal to produce this delightful celebration of all things yule and tide. Twenty backers who chipped in $200 or more also got their hands on this sweet General Lee toy that they can show to friends, who will reply things like, “Cool?” and “Congrats?”
But in the end, this is all about two best friends making sweet music, and it’s virtually impossible to listen to these men sing without immediately growing thick layers of flowing chest hair.
