Reggie Watts Unwraps Holiday EP, ‘Reggie Sings: Your Favorite Christmas Classic, Vol. 1’

Photo Credit: Katherine McCollough

Reggie Watts is offering a candy cane-coated entry just in time for the holiday season, a three-track EP titled Reggie Sings: Your Favorite Christmas Classics, Vol. 1. The set is available now via Brainfeeder and on all major streaming outlets.

Watt’s latest entry offers listeners a stirring melody positioned with classical displays of instrumentation that adequately serve the cover songs: Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown favorite, “Christmas Time Is Here,” the traditional English carol “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” and Big Crosby-associated “White Christmas.”

The set was created with guitarist Tim Young, who played alongside the funnyman as part of The Late, Late Show’s in-house band. Reflecting on the process, Watts recalled, “I said ‘Hey Tim, I have this idea. Maybe you could help me with. I want to put together a small band or maybe it doesn’t have to be a band, but I wanna do a Christmas album that doesn’t have to be the full songs necessarily, but possibly the idea is to do traditional Christmas songs, but I’m just improvising the lyrics and it feels kind of classic in some way.’ Tim replied: ‘Christmas is only a few weeks away… this is crazy…but LET’S GO FOR IT!!’”

Watts continues, “So Tim made a couple of calls. The incomparable Larry Goldings kindly agreed to play piano and Scott Seiver shared his sublime musicality on the drums. Tim played bass and engineered it in his studio. They met at 11 am. The three songs were all recorded live, in one or two takes. The session ended at 11:37 am. This lovely little collection of new Christmas classics was created in 37 min, making it not only one of the most beautiful Christmas eps ever, but one of the most rapidly made!”

Purchase or stream Reggie Sings: Your Favorite Christmas Classics, Vol. 1. 

Scroll down to view the cover art and the official tracking list.

Reggie Watts Reggie Watts: Sings Your Favorite Christmas Classics, Volume 1

Tracklist:

1. Christmas Time Is Here

2. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

3. White Christmas