First, Dee Carstensen surprised us with a lovely version of this song for our first Ornaments and Icing. Then, the following year Livingston Taylor did the same, and we saw a tradition building. So each year this is the only instance in which we ask an artist to perform a specific song for us, rather than that performer choosing on their own. Like The Night Before Christmas, some things are traditions because they come to us treated with the respect and joy due them, and we look forward to hearing them again.



So, who? It didn’t take long for Vienna’s name to come up. She’d played a wonderful concert at The Kent State Folk Festival the year before, and everyone buzzed about her voice and her playing. A phone call was made, and a happy response was had.



The trick was that she was going to be playing Cleveland in 2 weeks, and if we were going to record it, she’d have to learn it pretty fast. She told us she had her manager send her the chords, which were apparently from the Internet. It was at that point that Vienna realized there are a lot of arrangements of this song. So, like any musician worth her salt (or her sharps and flats?), she ended up making her own arrangement. We recorded it during sound check at The Beachland Ballroom. The one or two lucky folks sitting hushed in the audience smiled broadly, even hearing in late summer. And for another year, we have the perfect Ornaments ending.