A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE XMAS EP I MADE WITH MIKEY ERG

Here is a music video for a new Holiday Anthem written and recorded by me & Mikey Erg. It’s called “XMAS is the BEST” and it’s part of an 8-song soundtrack EP that we made for an upcoming Holiday Special called THE SPIRIT OF RATLIFF.

Longtime fans of The Chris Gethard Show know that during its MNN run, Keith Haskel & Rob Malone would make hour-long Christmas episodes called “The Spirit Of Gethard.” They created a trilogy of these (all available online) and this year decided to spin off this series to feature me, the guy who does the livestream warm-up for TCGS.

Keith asked me if I was interested in doing a Holiday Special, not knowing that I LOVE this time of year, and get real excited about the cold weather, the decorations and the customs surrounding secular Xmas. I immediately said, “I wanna write songs with Mikey Erg for this! Secular XMAS songs!”

So I met up with Mikey Erg one Saturday morning and over the course of a couple of hours, we came up with 8 or so songs and recorded his guitar parts and a few rough vocals. (We accidentally spent our first 40 minutes talking about Elvis Costello, so we had to hurry and get as much done as we could before Mikey had to leave for a gig.) I then went home and finished writing the lyrics for a few songs, then recorded most of the main vocals and vocal harmonies. The entire EP was finished less than 12 hours after we started, and at first, I looked at the track listing and thought, “EIGHT SONGS? Did we make an ALBUM?”



Then I looked at the running times and realized the whole thing was only 12 minutes long.

Each song makes its point and doesn’t overstay its welcome. I’m really proud of the entire EP and I hope if you like XMAS songs that you will add some of these to your annual listening. I think there is at least one song among the bunch that has the potential to become a stone cold XMAS CLASSIC, and it’s the song about Pizza. (There is also an alternate version of this that we did for fun as a punk song. But I think version #1 can hold its head up high against any other Xmas song, or at least certainly any “novelty” Xmas song. Also, it fulfills my promise to write a song with Mikey Erg about pizza, since I had earlier claimed that it was baffling that such a popular food item didn’t have more songs written about it. I actually wrote this song before I remembered that I had earlier quite publicly made this claim on a podcast, promising to write a “pizza song” with Mikey Erg.)

The Spirit Of Ratliff Holiday Soundtrack EP can be heard HERE.

Please spread it around if you think you know someone who would like it! It also makes an excellent “gift” if you can’t think of anything else to give someone.