CHRISTMAS With The Devil might not be up there on many 'best festive songs’ lists, but it’s one of Spinal Tap’s many classics.
For the uninitiated, Spinal Tap are the fictional British heavy metal band – played by Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer – immortalised in the 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap.
Christmas With The Devil opens with the lines, “The elves are dressed in leather, And the angels are in chains/ The sugar plums are rancid, And the stockings are in flames” – and now Harry Shearer (aka The Tap’s Derek Smalls) has released a new Christmas EP with his wife, Welsh singer Judith Owen.
Shearer is also known to many as the voice of Mr Burns, Smithers, Ned Flanders, Skinner and Kent Brockman on The Simpsons and he has explained why he and his better half teamed up for The Best Things EP.
“We started staging Christmas parties in our home to try to comfort Judith – a Welsh woman prone to melancholia, who could not stand the fact that Christmas in southern California was about 78 degrees and sunny.”
Those 'Christmas Without Tears’ shows – featuring Shearer and Owen and other actors and singers and the rest of the Spinal Tap gang – became so popular that they moved from their house to a stage in Los Angeles to raise money for charities.
Judith Owen spoke to The Irish News while touring England ahead of her return to the US, where she and her husband and their high-profile friends have already staged Christmas Without Tears shows in New York and Illinois. They play gigs in LA on Saturday and Sunday and then New Orleans on Wednesday.
“A lot of people find Christmas a kind of difficult time. It can be fabulous and awful at the same time,” says Owen. “My mum died right before Christmas, so that changed what it means to me. There’s always that incredible loss. And even though I love dressing the tree and everything else, I’d go into a real funk.
“That’s why we started doing the shows. Thank God I’ve got my husband to make us all laugh.”
She admits that spending Christmas in sunny California made her pine for home even more. “We got our wonderful friends and got around the piano, had food and Champagne. And year by year it became the party that people wanted to go to. It was funny and joyful.
“Then in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina happened, we decided we’d do it as a charity fundraiser. Now we focus on other charities, for runaways in LA – kids who are living on the street – and the Elton John Aids Foundation.”
Guests appearing at the US shows include actors John Goodman, Jane Lynch, Fred Willard and Alan Cumming and singer Alfie Boe.
“When I’m on stage doing these shows, this is my Christmas,” says Owen. “The audience plays a part too. They dress up in costumes and sing and clap and they win crap prizes. It’s fun that adults are never really allowed to have. We all miss being kids at Christmas. It does the soul a lot of good.”
Owen wrote the title track on the EP – The Best Things – in honour of her late father.
“The last Christmas I spent with my dad was amazing. There’s this idea of `you can buy me every present under the sun but nothing means as much as you being here and us being together’. I think that’s really what all of us miss.
“Everybody thinks `What will I buy?’ but these shows are about people standing around the piano singing and entertaining each other and loving each other’s company.”
The third track on the EP, Too Many Notes, is Shearer’s take on over-the-top Christmas songs on which singers compete to embellish a simple seasonal song. One of the guests on it is the actress Jane Lynch (Best in Show, Glee).
“She is one of our great talents,” says Owen. “She’s just the biggest-hearted and funniest woman.” She says the Spinal Tap guys are geniuses and says, “I’m very glad to be Mrs Smalls”.
She is happy with how the eye-catching EP cover art turned out too.
“Do you not love my poor dog? Her name is Doris Day. She’s the star. And I love the smouldering Christmas tree in the background. If I only had the time, that picture would have been my Christmas card,” she laughs.
:: The Best Things EP is out now on iTunes, with all proceeds going to the Elton John Aids Foundation (www.judithowen.net / Facebook.com/officialjudithowen).
