Front Deck Boom Box Christmas Edition: Angus Gill

It’s that time of the year again where we come together to celebrate friends and family with of course, an abundance of festive tunes!

2022 Golden Guitar Winner, Angus Gill released his fifth studio album, The Gilly Season, last month featuring an exciting collection of fresh, original Christmas songs. From the wry and witty appeal of Cheapskate Christmas and Mistletoey, to the fun Present Time and Don't Get Your Tinsel in a Tangle (featuring Melinda Schneider), to the heartfelt ballad First Christmas Without You, Gill perfectly captures the gamut of emotions that accompany The Silly Season. Other rather, The Gilly Season!

Produced, engineered, and mixed by Gill at Hot Plate Studios and mastered by Jeff McCormack at The Music Cellar, Gill assembled an A-team of musicians including Stuie French (Guitars), Jeff Taylor and Russell Dick (Piano), Michel Rose (Pedal Steel), Glenn Wilson (Drums), McCormack (Bass), TC Cassidy and Templeton Thompson (Backing Vocals) and Pixie Jenkins providing character voices for the album.

We caught up with Angus Gill to find out what songs he’s listening to this December for this week’s Christmas edition of Front Deck Boom Box.

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1. Cuddle Up, Cozy Down Christmas – Dolly Parton & Michael Bublé 

You can’t not love Dolly Parton and Michael Bublé as artists, so when they both get together for a song, it’s a real treat! This is an original Christmas song written by Dolly, from her Holly Dolly Christmas album. It’s tongue in cheek (sometimes a little suggestive) and catchy! It’s everything I love in a Christmas song and Kent Wells’ production on this is fantastic. 

2. How To Make Gravy – Paul Kelly 

In my opinion, How To Make Gravy is an essential, Australian Christmas song. The lyric takes the form of a letter, written by the character Joe, a newly imprisoned man, to his brother Dan, expressing his regrets about missing the family Christmas celebrations. I recently learned that Paul Kelly was inspired by the sentiment of absence in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas and used this as a catalyst for How To Make Gravy. 

3. Christmas in Melbourne – Graeme Connors 

This is a Christmas song written by Broderick Smith and Nick Smith, recorded by my friend, the incomparable Graeme Connors. It’s poignant and wry, loaded with vivid imagery and truth bombs. It’s the antithesis of what a typical Christmas song is, written from the perspective of a drunk in the gutter on a bustling street in the heart of Melbourne. 

4. A Christmas Carol – Tom Lehrer 

I’m working on a project at the moment with Mondo Rock’s Eric McCusker and Eric put me onto a musical satirist by the name of Tom Lehrer. He was a mathematics lecturer at Harvard, turned songwriter and performer. He’s in his 90s now and has recently released all his material into public domain. A lot of his songs are still as funny today as the day that they were written, including this one called A Christmas Carol. I tipped my hat to Lehrer in my song Present Time, with the line “just the thing I need! How nice.”

5. Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer – Elmo & Patsy

Grandma was written by a friend of mine, Randy Brooks, who lives in Texas. I first heard this song as a kid growing up and loved the bent take on a typical Christmas song. Fast forward 15 years, Randy and I got together over Zoom last year and wrote a song for my Christmas project called Mistletoey. We had a blast rhyming that one and it gave us license to release our inner Roger Miller. 

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Keep up to date with Angus Gill, follow him on Facebook here.
And check out some more of our Front Deck Boom Box series here.