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Courtesy of Warner Music Nashville
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Charlie Worsham hosted the inaugural Every Damn Holiday Show on Monday December 17, continuing the third year of his Every Damn Monday concert series. The event took place at an-capacity Basement East, where an all-star assemblage of Nashville acts joined the onstage fun.
All proceeds from ticket and merchandise sales, as well as tips, are going to Worsham’s Follow Your Heart nonprofit in the tradition of past EDM shows. Follow Your Heart, in partnership with The Community Foundation of Middle TN, raises annual scholarship funds for select students in Mississippi (Worsham’s home state) who aspire to be in show business, but EDM events subsidize the organization’s art program, which educates children in music and music history.
Nashville Lifestyles caught up with Worsham, whose critically-acclaimed sophomore LP Beginning of Things arrived April 2017, before the set to talk about his work with Follow Your Heart and the EDM tradition.
“What I love about it is that I get to make music with my friends,” Worsham said, “and call in favors for a good cause. And then when I see the kids, it’s a very inspiring connection. It reminds me of why I fell in love with music in the first place.”
A jingle bell sweater-clad Worsham and his five-piece band kicked off the show with a rockabilly instrumental of “Santa Clause Is Comin’ To Town,” with Worsham’s western swing-style guitar picking leading the charge. Buck Owen’s puckish holiday bop “Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy” came next, before the first of many “Linus and Lucy” piano transitions bought the band just enough time to switch gears for a cheeky tune about turning up the AC in the dead of winter.
Songwriter Matt Warren (Gary Allan’s “Every Storm (Runs Out Of Rain)”) came onstage to sing a soulful reworking of Otis Redding’s “Merry Christmas Baby,” and then departed to another “Linus and Lucy” theme.
Country singer Rebecca Lynn Howard, whose single “Forgive” peaked at No. 12 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in 2002, took center stage at this point for a high-octane rendering of Dolly Parton’s “Hard Candy Christmas.” Steel guitar player (and long-ago Worsham roommate) Josh Matheny joined the crew to sing a fairly identical cover of Sammy Kershaw’s “Christmas Time’s A Comin’,” with Worsham jauntily strumming a mandolin for the bluegrass tune. Howard stayed aboard for one more song about awkward family gatherings.
The band covered Roger Miller’s heartwarming “Old Little Trains” next, prompting yet another “Linus and Lucy” transition before they played a “Jingle Bells” instrumental with Worsham on banjo. Matheny then left the stage, and Worsham introduced young bassist/vocalist Scott Mulvahill, who played at Worsham’s wedding. Mulvahill arrested the heretofore spirited room with his plaintive original “The Lord Is Coming,” which he performed solo before the band joined him for a holistic version of “Little Drummer Boy,” to which many attendees sang along.
“When people share their strengths,” Worsham told Nashville Lifestyles before the show, “they create competition, which is what we do in the industry. When they share their weaknesses, like a kid learning a new chord in a guitar class, you create community. And that’s what heals us. We’re wounded in private and we’re healed in community.”
The audience diminuendoed when the song devolved into a long, slow blues jam, and then Mulvahill departed. Worsham’s friend and Warner Music Nashville label-mate Hunter Hayes hopped onstage to play lead guitar on anthemic versions of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and another “Santa Clause Is Comin’ to Town” before Vince Gill-championed vocalist Wendy Moten sang “The Christmas Song” accompanied only by the keys player, who supplied piano and synth strings. The night ended with a powerhouse musical denouement—the band rejoined Moten to sing Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”
All in all, it was a marvelous demonstration of artists using their gifts for a charitable cause in the spirit of the holidays.
Catch Charlie's next performance live at the historic Franklin Theatre on Saturday, January 12. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit nashvillelifestyles.com.