"Christmas for Cowboys" by The Vanguard Room ft. Dan Sharrett of nora's breakfast club (John Denver cover)
The Vanguard Room is a recording studio in Lakeland, Florida, run by Aaron Marsh, best known for his work with Copeland. Besides recording Copeland, Marsh has recorded and produced artists such as Anberlin, This Wild Life, Anchor & Braille, The Myriad, and many others. In 2019, The Vanguard Room released the album, A Lakeland Christmas, Vol. 1, a project funded by Kickstarter. The ten-track record features local artists from Lakeland covering Christmas tunes. None of the artists featured have a large streaming following, but the Aaron-Marsh-produced record is beautiful nonetheless. Today, we'll look at the John Denver song "Christmas for Cowboys" performed by Dan Sharrett of nora's breakfast club, originally from Denver's Rocky Mountain Christmas album.
BACK IN THE CITY, THEY’VE GOT DIFFERENT WAYS--FOOTBALL, EGGNOG, AND CHRISTMAS PARADES. Starting in about October, I started listening to Spotify’s country playlists. It’s a genre that I have to be in the mood for, and I have to be prepared to skip up to five songs in a row for annoying twangy voices or cringy lyrics. I started listening to the Decades section and found that especially for the artists featured in the ‘70s playlist I would more likely consider Folk, like Gordon Lightfoot and John Denver, or Southern Rock, like The Charlie Daniels Band, or even just light pop like Anne Murray or Olivia Newton-John. John Denver’s love for place--not just West Virginia but especially Colorado, for which the artist born Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. created his stage name after the state’s capital--and his themes in songs like “Thank God I’m a Country Boy,” group the singer with the country tradition. The title “Christmas for Cowboys” could center the singer in Country music, except he’s missing the signature twang to make him a real country star. I’d almost call the song a novelty holiday song, except the music is beautiful, and Denver’s vocal delivery of the tune is earnest. Rather than feeling the Country cliché, we empathize with the lonely cowboys in the song; their lonely existence on the plains become our own, especially for those of us who have ever had to spend a Christmas alone.
THE WIND SINGS A HYMN AS WE BOW DOWN AND PRAY. But again, we’re not listening to John Denver. Instead, we’re listening to Dan Sharrett of nora's breakfast club, a band with only 13 streams a month. The band released two albums, starting with Soliloquy in 1996. The band stayed local, but future members of Anberlin and Copeland heard the band in the small Central Florida scene. Briefly listening to the band’s 2015 EP Watch the Stars Burn feels like an elevated local band thanks to Aaron Marsh’s Vanguard Room recording and production. In fact, Marsh seems to put his touch on every song on A Lakeland Christmas, Vol. 1. I almost expect to hear Marsh himself singing in Emilie Weiss’s “Let It Snow.” The droning, melancholy “Little Drummer Boy” sounds like an out-of-control Copeland arrangement. But Marsh keeps the current Copeland sound of electronics at bay until the final track, “The Ice Storm,” his own song. While there’s much to love on this album, it was “Christmas for Cowboys” that first captured my attention when it came up on shuffle in my Apple Music library a few years ago. It’s not the most recognizable song on the album, but somehow the guitar riff is stronger than Tim Steiner’s “Santa Tell Me,” Van Plating’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” or even Dan and Nick Rivera’s “Last Christmas.” So, wherever you find yourself this Christmas, in the city, on the range, or anywhere between, I wish you a merry Christmas.
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