Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis bring their annual holiday show to the Paramount Theatre.
Photo courtesy of Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison
Sometimes the things we are most reluctant to do at the start turn into our most successful and enjoyable endeavors. Singer Kelly Willis isn’t shy to admit her husband, Bruce Robison, wasn’t always so keen on doing a holiday show.
“I’ve always loved holiday songs and Christmas music — the whole vibe of December — where Bruce — I don’t think really cared much about it,” explains Willis.
The annual gigs that started as an opportunity for Willis and Robison to jam with Robison’s brother, Charlie, have become a Texas tradition, and their Holiday Shindig Tour is now in its 19th year. The series of 10 dates wraps with the final stops at Gruene Hall Friday, December 16, and Paramount Theatre Saturday, December 17. “So Bruce is 19 years into a holiday show. He never would have imagined!”
With four kids, the holidays are hectic enough for the first couple of Texas country music. Add in rehearsing, gigging, and personal holiday prep, and it’s a full plate for both. “It is the most insane time of the year for me,” Willis says. “But it’s all worth it, as it’s a great time for us and we have a lot of fun.”
The show, which includes a mix of holiday songs and hits, became so popular the Austin stop was eventually moved to the Paramount. It always features a special guest too. This year, they’ve invited an old friend with an unmistakable voice to share the stage. “I’m so excited! I think she’s got one of the best voices in country music,” says Willis of Lee Ann Womack. "She’s been a friend of ours for a long time so it will be really fun to get to hang out.”
While the holiday shows have been a great chance for Willis and her husband to reconnect with old friends, they were also the impetus for the last several years of musical collaboration between the couple, which resulted in two acclaimed albums and lots of gigging as the Bruce and Kelly Show. “[The holiday shows were] the launching pad for us to do the duo records because we had so much fun playing together and it was different than what we would do solo,” explains Willis. “We just brought stuff to the table that wasn’t there when we played our solo gigs.”
As much fun as they’ve had working mostly as a duo over the last few years, in the new year Willis and Robison are going to refocus on their solo careers. He is planning to release a new record in March, and she’s planning to complete her own solo album in 2017.
If you want to see one last installment of the Bruce and Kelly Show, the Gruene Hall and Paramount Theatre dates may be your last chance for a while. One thing's for sure, their holiday tour is something special that’s become part of a lot of peoples’ traditions.
“It feels like old Austin when we get in there — sort of the spirit of the Austin music scene where it really feels like family and familiar and a party celebrating this great community,” she explains. “I really look forward to it!”
Only in Austin does recording in a tin can create excellent sound. Specifically, this "tin can" is a 1955 Spartan Imperial Mansion trailer, a spacious mobile home converted into a relatively cramped studio. But the unconventional setup is no match for producer and engineer James Westley Essary.
Essary and his videographer brother, Brantley, have been using the space to build up their inner circle of musicians, capturing intimate performances in professional recordings available on YouTube. Live From The Tin Can premiered its second season on April 15, 2024, and is looking forward to a long string of diverse performances to come. Right now listeners can enjoy Ron Gallo, David Ramirez, Vondré, John Calvin Abney, Angel White, and more on the YouTube channel.
First up this season was Worn-Tin (an amazing coincidence of a name), performing "Hard Ease," "Bitter," and "Kid Changed," a pleasantly lackadaisical series of alt-rock romps, somehow squeezing in two drum sets. Worn-Tin, like many other artists this season on the YouTube series, performed live at South by Southwest in March. The festival, along with the concurrent Luck Reunion, brought a wealth of artists to the Live Music Capital, so the Tin Can crew took advantage of the easy scheduling.
"South By's website is actually a great way to find out who was coming into town," says Brantley. "So we started thinking about things like, what is what is their sound like? What is their performance like, and will that translate into our space? ... [We] just started contacting managers: 'Hey, do you have a free morning, free afternoon? Want to come by?' The sessions only take about a couple of hours."
Although the Essarys are hoping to get more national acts into the Tin Can to boost views, their hope is that over time they can narrow their focus back to local artists. (The series premiere featured Austin band Kelly Doyle.) Beyond the view counts, these recordings are mutually beneficial; Artists don't just get exposure, but lasting high-quality recordings for free, and the brothers get to build a portfolio. Westley, who just goes by his second name in conversation, appreciates the stylistic challenge.
Producer and engineer James Westley Essary does the auditory impossible.Photo courtesy of Live From The Tin Can
"I get to create a little calling card, [and] they get a way to push their new record when they're rolling through town and on tour," says Westley. "As you put out records you get pigeonholed ... I want to make a punk record, and I want to make a metal record. I want to make a country record. So it allows me to be able to dabble in whatever I want — whatever we book in the studio."
Making these connections was Westley's main goal in creating the series during the pandemic. It'd been a loose idea at the producer's prior studio, with occasional shoots for social media. As we all remember, 2019 was not famous for its sense of urgency. But when the studio was "sold out from under" Westley in October, he got tired of hopping from one rental to another.
He bought the trailer in December 2019 and spent the following year working on it. The end of his work coincided with Brantley's desire to move back to Austin from Seattle, so the returning brother provided the property to park the trailer on. The rest was good, old-fashioned pandemic restlessness.
The Tin Can in all its metallic glory.Photo courtesy of Live From The Tin Can
"When you're on the road all the time, you're meeting new bands every day, because you have a different opener or something," says Westley. "And I was like, 'How can I bring that to me?' It's a lot of fun when there's not really any money involved. You're not dedicating a ton of time, necessarily, to it. Bands come here, they have a really great time, [and] it's really nice to be able to host them."
Of course, recording in such a small space has its challenges. Most of the solution was in arranging; not the music, but the musicians. Placing everyone just right minimizes the bleed of certain instruments into other microphones, and as long as the singer stays relatively still, the drums — the biggest culprit — mostly keep their sound to themselves.
Some issues are also fixed with slightly quieter playing, unintentionally creating a sort of sonic brand for the series. It's not all bedroom pop, but the combination of a cozy recording environment and slightly restrained volume makes for some homey performances. This also works nicely for Westley — isn't that happening a lot? — who says he usually prefers listening at home to watching in a crowd.
Still, live recordings add a certain spice to the music. Many music fans will attribute it to the organic mystery of musicians clicking together, but Westley thinks there's something else at play. There's no substitute for practice, and by the time musicians are making live recordings, they've probably played the song live dozens or even hundreds of times. That allows for improvements on the original ideas — sometimes ones that originated in the studio at the time of the first recording.
Ron Gallo squeezes into the Tin Can.Still from Live From The Tin Can
It's also an easy way to make additional income without writing more, he says. Brantley points out that live music has always been at the core of the business.
"Live music has been at the top for forever," says Brantley. "Now we've got artists selling out huge arenas. They're competing with the NFL; They're not competing with movies or TV as much anymore. ... So I love the opportunity to not just record live music, but also film it. You're getting a full experience of both the really compelling live recording [and] even more compelling video to watch them in their element — really playing it live rather than just in a box in the studio."
The next frontier for the Tin Can crew will be hosting live shows onsite. Westley will be in the trailer recording while the band plays outside, and eventually Brantley might start capturing video, too. Also down the pipeline are audio-only live recordings, so listeners can enjoy the tunes without relying on YouTube.
One episode featuring NOBRO from Montreal, Quebec, is out now, with more to come. Next up is Evangeline from Los Angeles. Follow along with Live From The Tin Can ("Like and subscribe," says Brantley with a smile) on YouTube.