The Holiday Show

I’m sitting here, mid-December, feeling like I must be forgetting something. 

Now that Bruce Robison and I are divorced, what used to be the craziest, most chaotic month of the year is now only stressful.

He and I inadvertently had an annual holiday show that ran for 23 years. (We took one year off when I was hugely pregnant with our youngest.) We’d squeeze in about 16 shows all over Texas – and at a few of our favorite haunts outside of Texas – between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

That holiday show was actually the impetus for our decision to go all in and record as a duo, eventually. We kept that temptation at arms length as long as we could. We liked being solo artists. 

But we had so much fun in those early years, playing each others songs and singing harmonies for each other. We divided up the song selection to one third mine, one third Bruce’s and one third holiday songs. The show grew into a lovely tradition for us. People came back every year and we made it into as big a party as we could with special guests and new obscure songs each year. 

My favorite segment was a home video I persuaded Bruce to put together of some hilarious scenes from our kids in Christmas pageants when they were so little. Having had four kids in five years, we had plenty of tearful scenes to choose from. 

But the whole thing got started in 1999 as an excuse to hang out and play music with the family. 

Bruce and his brother Charlie Robison were both having a big busy year as emerging artists. What I Deserve was keeping me on the road fairly constantly. And Charlie was freshly married to Emily Strayer, who was quickly becoming a massive superstar in the Dixie Chicks. 

So to make time to see each other, we booked a few shows billed as “The Robison Family Christmas.” Me, Bruce and Charlie. Emily and her sis Martie Maguire would join us, but their names were too big to advertise for something like this. And we rounded out the band with our brother-in-law, John Ludwick, on bass. 

We didn’t play any actual Christmas songs that year. Just old spirituals, and some of our own tunes. I recall being very happy to be singing “Those Memories” with Emily and Martie. I used to have a recording somewhere. Someone taped it from the audience. It’s long gone now.

Of course, no family gathering is complete without a stupid fight. I put my foot it in at soundcheck one of the nights when Charlie told Bruce he was playing Wrapped wrong. They argued back and forth about it for a while. Usually I observed their brotherly bickering quietly, but what can I say? I wanted to defend my man. 

“He wrote the song, Charlie. I think he knows how to play it.” 

The three of us didn’t speak again until showtime. And then the magic of making music healed all wounds. 

But the reason Bruce and I continued the show the next year was because of one song in particular – Baby, It's Cold Outside. And we almost didn’t play it. Keep in mind, in 1999 there were not yet a thousand versions of this song. It was obscure enough that, to my surprise, lots of folks would ask if we wrote it.

We got an encore that first night at the Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth. Charlie and Bruce and I stood backstage deciding what to do. We had played the tune for Charlie earlier and he said we should try it. It is a beautiful flirty duet (which I have always heard as between two consenting adults) and was written by Frank Loesser in 1944 for he and his wife to sing at parties. 

Charlie came out with us and played some soft, swishy snare drum sweeps. When I say the song brought the house down, I mean it was electric.

I looked forward to it at the end of every holiday show we played over the next 23 years. 

The last year we did the holiday show, we were split, but had not yet announced it. We had a hard time on some songs – it’s country music after all. 

But this one was brutal. We could not even make eye contact. And we did not kiss at the end, which had become a tradition. We felt good just to be getting through it. And we did. You know what, folks? It was a great run. 

All great successes must come to an end, but they are still worth celebrating. Our traditions continue. Some faces are missing this year. That’s impossibly hard. But there are new faces, too. New traditions. And we will never stop showing up for the chaos. I wonder who is gonna throw down this year?! God, I hope it isn't me. 

Thank you for coming to those shows all those years! We cherish the memories. 

I hope you and yours are embracing whatever changes have come your way this year.

Just be careful who you ask to pass the “God damn sweet potato pie!”

xoxoxo,
Kelly