Ball in the House's first album of Christmas music. We played with classic songs to come up with our own styles and arrangements to make something that was both fun and reverent, contemporary and classic. As on all our albums, 100% of the music is vocal, with Jon Ryan providing all the vocal percussion/beatbox, Ryan Chappelle dropping all the bass vocals, and Dan Szymczak, Dave Guisti, and Aaron Loveland wailing away on the upper voices. Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel was a song we initially thought we'd do as an intro piece and that's it, but as we recorded it and tried out different styles, we figured we'd put them all on there and break it up into various interludes throughout the album, giving everyone a chance to take the lead. Angels We Have Heard On High is one of those songs that always makes you sing along when that long "Glor-o-o-o-o-o-ria" comes in. All of us have sung this in one choir or another, so when we were recording the choruses, everyone sang various parts that they remembered from these choirs, and we added them in here and there throughout the song. Away in a Manger was a favorite of Aaron's youth in church choir. We had been doing this for a couple years around the holidays, typically a little faster, but when the time came to actually record this, we all agreed that the slow, gospel feel you hear here was better. We had the beautiful backgrounds all done when Aaron went in to record the lead by himself with Dan at the board. The next day, we were all mesmerized listening to how beautiful everything came out, til we got to the line "the cattle are lowing" and they had added a big loud "moo!" that caught us completely off guard and had us on the floor laughing. Of course, we took it out so as to not spoil the mood for all you out there, but it's still tough for us to get through that verse live without at least cracking a smile. What Child Is This always had a great minor feel to the verses, which always made the big major chord at the start of the chorus so great. We wanted to combine 3 part harmony, like you might hear on a traditional version, with a very contemporary R&B feel, while keeping the moodiness you naturally get from those great chords. Some Children See Him was a carol that Dave and Jon had sung in their days at the boys choir school. You don't hear this one much on the radio, yet there are tons of versions out there. We wanted to keep a more traditional feel to the arrangement, with a little reharmonization and very sparse use of the vocal drums. Jon actually sings on the background parts on this one. Little Drummer Boy is a live take of Jon and Ryan doing their beats and bass thing. We've had so many requests for a drum solo on one of our CDs, but instead of doing that straight up, we decided to make it a dual solo thing so we could work within the framework of the song to keep it interesting. We had very little idea what we were going to do going into it, so we did about 15 takes, evolving the parts and the form each time to evoke the original as well as give each part a chance to shine. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen is a song we've been doing for years now, and like Away in a Manger, it's evolved through different versions. Dan came up with the original idea for the arrangement, keeping it upbeat and contemporary (despite the old English sounding lyrics). It's always been fun to perform. Mary Did You Know was always a favorite of Aaron's, especially the gospel style versions out there. We listened to a few different versions out there to get a general idea of the song, then went from start to finish crafting our own ideas into an arrangement, much of it pieced together in the studio. We knew from the start that we wanted some sort of gospel choir idea to be in there for a big ending, but had to work around all these other ideas we had already incorporated in. Fun hearing the guys belt away in the studio, overdub after overdub, to get that part. Believe is the only original on the album. The intent was to write more, but we got so wrapped up in remaking all these other classics, that this was the only completed song done at the time. Sometimes you just go where your muse takes you. Turns out the lyrics fit really well with the overall choice of sacred-based Christmas songs, so it ended up being a great way to close the album. We set out to make a Christmas album, not just another holiday album. We picked songs that meant something to us, about what Christmas meant to us. We hope it means something to you too, and that you enjoy it just as much as we did making it.