Paul Kelly Gathers His Friendly Elves For A Christmas Album

Paul Kelly has gathered by is friendly elves including Vika and Linda, Kate Miller-Heidke and Waleed Aly for his Christmas album ‘Christmas Train’ coming 19 November.

Kelly’s best known Christmas classic ‘How To Make Gravy’ has been a yule fav for decades.

Paul says, “Christmas has always “We had Advent, the month long build-up to Christmas. There was a small crib in one of the fireplaces with a pile of straw beside it. Every time you did something good or denied yourself something you would secretly put straw in the crib so it would be filled by Christmas, when a statuette of the baby Jesus would miraculously appear in the crib. The statues of the Three Wise Men started a long way off in another part of the house, secretly moving every night along mantelpieces so they would arrive at the crib for the Epiphany on January 6. That was all part of Christmas for us. It was fun and mysterious and magical.

Apparently Christmas is a big deal for the Kelly family. “Sometimes we do it all together, sometimes the Queensland gang do it separately from the Melbourne gang, and we have the tradition of singing carols on Christmas Eve, not very reverentially.”
“There were so many songs I wanted to have on there. Having the wider frame for this album allowed me to have the songs talking to each other, the way that Arthur McBride has echoes in the Brazilian song In the Hot Sun of a Christmas Day. There is a Hebrew hymn, an Arabic poem, folk songs, classical songs, rock songs. Then the fun, and the challenge, is to get all those elements to work together.”

PAUL KELLY’S CHRISTMAS TRAIN TRACKLISTING (1CD, 2LP)
1. Nativity
2. Silent Night w/ Alice Keath & Sime Nugent
3. Swing Around The Sun
4. Christmas
5. Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) w/ Linda Bull
6. Little Drummer Boy
7. Arthur McBride
8. The Virgin Mary Had One Son w/ Emma Donovan
9. Tapu te Pō (O Holy Night) w/ Marlon Williams & Dhungala Children’s Choir
10. Shalom Aleichem w/ Lior, Alice Keath, Emily Lubitz
11. The Oxen
12. The Friendly Beasts w/ Kasey Chambers & Dan Kelly
13. Three Drovers w/ Alice Keath & Sime Nugent
14. Christmas Must Be Tonight
15. Surah Maryam w/ Waleed Aly
16. Coventry Carol w/ Kate Miller-Heidke, Jess Hitchcock, Alice Keath & Marlon Williams
17. In The Hot Sun Of A Christmas Day
18. How To Make Gravy
19. Christmas Train w/ Vika Bull
20. Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing
21. Intonent Hodie w/ Alice Keath
22. What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? w/ Alma Zygier