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 NEWSONG
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"…It's Christmas Eve, and these shoes are just her size … And I want her to look beautiful--if Mama meets Jesus tonight…."
Few could have foreseen the widespread and poignant impact of these words, part of the lyrics of 2000's holiday hit, "The Christmas Shoes." The country's No. 1 song (topping Billboard 's January 6, 2001 Adult Contemporary Singles chart) recorded by Reunion Records artist NewSong brought tears to millions of listeners tuning into their local Christian and mainstream AC, pop and country radio stations.
"Everyone was calling in to their radio stations," recalls NewSong's Eddie Carswell. "They told stories of how their mothers had sacrificed their lives and had always made Christmas special with very little. Everyone seemed to make it their own."
St. Louis-based radio personality DC Chymes remembers the first time his nationally syndicated show, "Steve and DC in the Morning," played the song: "For six hours after the show, our switchboard was jammed with listeners calling in. They were openly weeping on the air, telling their own Christmas stories and what this song meant to them."
While extremely accessible on the radio dial, the song that espoused the true meaning of Christmas to the nation became hard to find in stores as demand for the recording grew. The surprise hit, written by Carswell and former group member Leonard Ahlstrom, and sung by veteran member Billy Goodwin, was a Christmas bonus track on NewSong's 2000 release, Sheltering Tree.
"The Christmas Shoes" is now also the title cut of NewSong's first Christmas album in the group's 20-year history. The song was inspired by a Christmas story Chymes found on the Internet. For the past few years, he and his on-air partner have read the tale during their show. Repeatedly, the switchboard lights up, and fills with listeners impacted by the story. A NewSong fan, Chymes forward the narrative to Carswell, who began writing a song with Ahlstrom based on the story and continued to work on it for four years.
"We would read this story, and we knew something was there," Carswell recalls, "so we kept stabbing at it, kept coming back to it."
When the band was recording Sheltering Tree, Carswell pitched the unfinished song, but the producer passed on the cut. With the Sheltering Tree album complete, Carswell played a rough version of "The Christmas Shoes" for Chymes. His enthusiastic response convinced the two writers to finish the song and the record label to add it. In a mere seven days, the second verse and bridge were complete, and "The Christmas Shoes" was on the album.
The song gave the five-member group its first No. 1 mainstream radio hit and, no doubt, the moving story will again be front and center on the airwaves this Christmas for the third consecutive year. The momentum continues to build every year and has triggered a chain reaction of related "Christmas Shoes" products.
The little song with the big message inspired a novella by Nashville-based author Donna VanLiere which was picked up by New York publishing powerhouse St. Martin's Press. The book landed on the New York Times Bestseller's Fiction list last year and proved so popular that St. Martin's has doubled its printing for this year and expects a major increase in sales. In addition, Integrity Publishers seized the opportunity to distribute the book in Christian retail, giving "The Christmas Shoes" high-profile availability across the nation.
The success of "The Christmas Shoes" book, in turn, has inspired the CBS TV movie of the same name starring Rob Lowe and Kimberly Williams. Those who look hard can see a couple of familiar NewSong faces singing in the caroling scene.
Capping off an already amazing year was an appearance by NewSong in a Christian music feature for "The Today Show," and a headlining stint for the 10-city Christmas Shoes tour featuring Mark Shultz and Ginny Owens.
Along with the initial recording of "The Christmas Shoes," NewSong--with members Carswell, Goodwin, Michael O'Brien and Steve Reischl--has piled its first holiday effort with 12 songs, including five originals and seven standards. Mixing jazz, pop and a tinge of big band, the group came together to record the album over a period of three months.
The album gives new life to NewSong's 1990 hit, "Light Your World." With the Symphony of London adding lush strings along with O'Brien's powerful vocals, the result, as Carswell describes it, is a "big sound."
Also on the album is another stirring story-song written by Carswell, "Christmas Carol," inspired by both imagination and real life. "I had an idea last year to write a song about a lady named Carol who lived in a nursing home and was known as 'Christmas Carol' because the thing that kept her alive was singing Christmas songs," Carswell explains. "While finishing the song, I attended the funeral of a family member. Talking to our family and friends, I discovered she loved to sing. Her nickname at the nursing home was 'Happy Singing Lady.'" The stories surrounding her life, Carswell says, provided further inspiration for finishing the song.
For the first time in his career, NewSong frontman Michael O'Brien recorded "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" the way the song's writer Hugh Martin originally wrote it before Judy Garland popularized it. As a young adult pastor in California in 1990, O'Brien met Martin, who explained that the song's original version said, "… through the years, we all will be together if the Lord allows…" But the words were changed to "…if the fates allow…" to avoid any religious language, O'Brien notes. "Hugh told me, 'That's the original way I wrote it, so I want you to sing it this way,'" O'Brien recalls. "So one Christmas in that little church, Hugh Martin played piano, and I sang 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,' and it was the thrill of my life. It's pretty incredible for me to get to record it this way on an album."
Both Butler and Reischl's favorite on the record is a melodic combination of "Away in a Manger" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." The track, arranged by former band member Matt Butler and produced by O'Brien, features both Butler and Reischl on vocals and Butler on cello.
Goodwin says he was most impacted by O'Brien's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," but is most excited about the project as a whole. "What I like is the fact that we're getting away from 'Season's Greetings' and 'Happy Holidays' and back to 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy Birthday Jesus.' It's more of a reality of what Christmas is all about.'"
Other holiday favorites chosen for The Christmas Shoes recording include "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," "What Child Is This" and even a whimsical "The Grinch." NewSong used a number of producers to bring the project together, including O'Brien, Don Koch (4HIM, Greg Long), Bill Baumgart (True Vibe, Crystal Lewis, 4HIM) and David T. Clydesdale (Placido Domingo, Kenny Rogers, Glenn Close).
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