Paul Kelly isn’t just a fan of Christmas. Thanks to “How to Make Gravy”, you’re likely to hear Kelly at any Aussie family Chrissy, and the revered poet/singer/songwriter has performed festive concerts, created radio specials and more over the years. Taking his seasonal cheer even further, he’s now released his first-ever Christmas album. The 22-track collection has everything you’d expect, and then some, with classic carols, Irish ballads, hymns, poems set to music—a staple of any Kelly record—and collaborations with artists like Emma Donovan, Kasey Chambers, Vika and Linda Bull, and family members such as Dan Kelly. Culturally, it’s about as diverse as a Christmas album can get: a traditional Jewish song, “Shalom Aleichem” (“Peace be upon you”), is sung in Hebrew, a way for Kelly to reference Jesus being Jewish. On “Surah Maryam”, Waleed Aly recites a Quran passage honouring Jesus as a prophet. And New Zealand artist Marlon Williams sings on “Tapu Te Pō”, which is the carol “O Holy Night” sung in te reo Māori. Below, Kelly talks about the origin and recording of highlights from Paul Kelly’s Christmas Train. “Nativity” “I have loved this John Donne poem for a long time, with that beautiful opening line, ‘Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.’ This is a continuation of what I have been doing over the past 10 years, finding a poem and putting music to it. It took a while to get the timing of the words with the music, but it came together when I took it to the band. My daughters Maddy and Memphis sing the harmonies. That works out nicely, establishing the family theme that runs through the album.” “Swing Around the Sun” “I wanted songs that show the Australian experience of Christmas. This one is written by Casey Bennetto, who people would know from Keating! The Musical. Casey runs Christmas shows at the Bella Union in Melbourne, and that’s where I heard him sing it. I told him I’d like to have a go at it, and he sent over the words and a chart. There are about 19 chords in the song! We had to wrestle with this one a while to get all the gear changes working in it.” “Little Drummer Boy” “A bit of a rivalry has built up over the years between the Melbourne Kellys and the Queensland Kellys with ‘Little Drummer Boy’. We’d send a recording up to them and they would do the same for us, and we’d argue about which version was best. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the Queensland Kellys down for this recording, but there are a fair few Melbourne Kellys, and sister Mary Jo arranged the vocals.” “Arthur McBride” “This is a traditional Irish ballad. Arthur and his cousin run into some English soldiers on Christmas morning who try to enlist them. Arthur’s cousin tells the story: ‘We lathered them there like a pair of wet sacks/And left them for dead in the morning.’ We circled the song for a long time, trying to find our own way to play it, until the band worked out how to build it and when to bring it down.” “Tapu Te Pō (O Holy Night)” “I thought of Marlon Williams straight away for this. He came back and said, ‘That’s my favourite Christmas song. I’ve sung it since I was a kid.’ He’d sung it in te reo Māori, too. He sent a phone demo—it’s a cherished recording of mine. It has crackles and knocks and him singing an odd falsetto suggesting the choir parts. He recorded his vocal in Auckland and we had it set up so I could watch and hear the audio. It was Marlon’s idea to have the children’s choir. Jess Hitchcock works with the national Indigenous youth choir, Short Black Opera, and the Dhungala Children’s Choir is part of that.” “Shalom Aleichem” “Jesus was Jewish, and I wanted to find a song representing that in some way. Hanukkah is celebrated not long before Christmas, so I investigated, only to conclude that the cultural context wasn’t right. My partner, Siân, is Jewish, and she suggested this one. It’s sung all year round and has a carol-like feeling with a beautiful melody and lyrics that talk of peace, kings and angels. Perfect.” “The Oxen” “A poem by Thomas Hardy which I set to music. Many countries have a folk tradition going back many centuries of animals behaving in miraculous ways to honour the miracle of the birth of Jesus. There is the idea of the normal being suspended for a period of time, animals talking at the stroke of midnight, oxen kneeling. This is a really sweet Hardy poem—he as an adult knowing that the story of the oxen kneeling could not be true but, imagining himself a child again, ‘hoping it might be so’.” “Three Drovers” “I was on a mission to find an Australian carol. The composer William James and lyricist John Wheeler wrote 15 Australian carols in three songbooks in the ’40s and ’50s. They’ve been recorded often; you still hear them at Carols by Candlelight concerts. ‘Three Drovers’ is usually sung by a choir, so Alice, Sime and I had to find our own way to do it.” “Christmas Must Be Tonight” “A song by Robbie Robertson that appeared on Islands by The Band. This is a recording I did with Richard Pleasance in his backyard studio in 2003. Pete Luscombe on drums. Gerry Hale from Uncle Bill, who made the bluegrass album Smoke with me, plays fiddle. Richard plays everything else and sings the harmony.” “Surah Maryam” “I was aware that Jesus is honoured as a prophet in Islamic tradition and that there was a chapter in the Quran around the story. I was keen to have something representing that literature on the record. There is a rich tradition of the Quran being sung, but there are strict protocols around it. Waleed Aly reads the English translation in our version. It sounds like he’s reading a children’s bedtime story and I like that feeling.” “In the Hot Sun of a Christmas Day” “I wanted to make sure the southern hemisphere was well-represented. This is by Brazilian songwriter Caetano Veloso, who has been one of my favourite singers for many years. There are plenty of northern hemisphere songs on the record—I wanted to make sure we had the feeling of summer as well. There is summer in this song, though not in a festive sense. It’s a song written under military rule in Brazil and there is menace and fear in it: ‘Machine gun in the hot sun of a Christmas Day/They killed someone else in the hot sun of a Christmas Day.’” “How to Make Gravy” “I hadn’t even thought about putting it on the record, but when I talked to friends, they all said, ‘Really? You’re not? Just do another version.’ We’ve been doing it forever, so it was recorded in one or two takes. It’s 25 years since the song first came out, so that’s another reason to have it here. Note that Peter Luscombe played on the original, too.” “Intonent Hodie” “Toward the end of making the record, I realised I had this big, sprawling double album representing all these different things about Christmas but no Santa song. I talked to Alice about it, and she suggested this, a Latin hymn from the 14th century about Saint Nicholas. It’s usually performed by a choir, but Alice makes it sound like a folk song, a beautiful transformation. She did it all—the guitar, violin and vocal parts. Alice has been a secret weapon in the making of this album. She is this sprite who keeps popping up throughout, the spirit of the record.” “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve” “This one is sung by [jazz artist] Alma Zygier. She’s mesmerising to watch live. Rather than the usual arrangement, à la Nancy Wilson or Ella Fitzgerald, she did it at home with her father, Willy, on guitar, sweet and easy. A Christmas record ending with a New Year’s song felt right. The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album finishes with ‘Auld Lang Syne’, so there is precedent.”