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Have Yourself a Merry Little X​-​mas

by Cedarwell

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about

Written by | Hugh Martin

Guitar | Jeff Patlingrao
Vocals | Erik G. Neave & Jared Beckman

Tracked at Honeytone Studio by Patrick Boland & Jeff Patlingrao
Vocals tracked at Future Fern by Charlie O'Connell

Mixed at Honeytone Studios by Patrick Boland and Jeff Patlingrao
Mastered by Mark Zbikowski

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Years ago, maybe a decade, I heard a radio segment tracking the origin story of Hugh Martin's Christmas classic, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." It was written for the film "Meet Me in St. Louis" with Judy Garland. Martin said he wrote the song to capture the "lugubrious" moment in the film. His word choice surprised me because so many versions I had heard seemed to whitewash the "lugubriousness" right out of the performance. I discovered that, over the years, multiple edits had been made to Hugh Martin's original vision; what remained was a merry little husk of the complexity in those first lyrics. We have tried to point back to that bittersweet, lugubrious original. Those lyrics are especially poignant during this strange era where so many of us are at a loss with how to understand a Christmas celebration in light of grief, relational closeness in the context of distance, and the overwhelming sense of uncertainty for what the future might hold. Will we live in a past that holds our brightest memories or will we muddle through somehow to an uncharted space in ourselves that makes sense of this confusion and noise?


"One must have a mind of winter . . .
To behold the junipers shagged with ice, / The spruces rough in the distant glitter / Of the January sun; and not to think / Of any misery in the sound of the wind, / In the sound of a few leaves . . . "

The winter season soaks up water from the past and holds it deep beneath the earth, motionless, without a desire for spring. The landscape is frozen for months, for years . . . not without hope, but without anxious expectation. This is the place where death and rebirth face each other wordlessly. (Regret is not present.) This is the place where one . . . "beholds /

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."

CEDARWELL


—excerpts from Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man"

lyrics

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
It may be your last
Next year
We'll all be living in the past.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on
Our troubles will be out of sight

Here we are as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us, once more

Through the years
We all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then
We'll have to muddle through somehow

So have yourself
a merry little Christmas now.

credits

released December 18, 2020

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Cedarwell Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Cedarwell is a song-centered, 3 piece rock band from the Midwest. Erik G. Neave writes intricate lyrics augmented by Jeff Patlingrao's space/time-bending electric guitar work and driven by Jared Beckman's distinctive stand-up drum style.

Their forthcoming album, Dia Luein, comes in April and includes 8 unreleased tracks recorded at Honeytone Studios in Neenah, WI. ... more

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