Christine Lavin Runaway Christmas Tree CD

& The Mistletones.
Recording information: Chelsea Studio, Manhattan; The Maid's Room, Manhattan.

One of the wittiest and most insightful contemporary singer-songwriters, Christine Lavin, sets aside her customary focus on interpersonal relationships in the bewildering modern era to create a characteristic mixture of irreverent and genuine winter holiday songs. Discovering that she "just couldn't find a good Christmas/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Chanukah/ Ramadan/Boxing Day album," she rounded up seven other vocalists, a sackful of humorous, offbeat and sometimes moving seasonal songs, a couple of original stories, and created this lighthearted a cappella alternative to the usual cloying Christmas-season songbook. Inspired by the vocal techniques of Sol "Roundman" Weber," Christine enlisted singer-songwriter Julie ("From a Distance") Gold, Emily Bindinger and Margaret Dorn from The Accidentals, the harmony octet that won the 2002 National A Cappella Competition, Ervin Drake (author of standards "Good Morning, Heartache" and "It Was a Very Good Year"), actor/director/singer David Lutken (a veteran of Broadway and Off-Broadway), R&B/gospel singer Gregory Clark, and artist/vocalist Andrea Vuocolo in this "all vocals/all ages" project (which Bindinger produced). This CD contains tales of Christmas wishes gone wrong ("Polkadot Pancakes"), choral complaints and celebrations regarding seasonal food ("Scalloped Potatoes" and "Tacobel Canon," respectively), and a snippet of what sounds like munchkins on helium ("Elves"). The title track is a bedtime story Lavin wrote to explain why people decorate their Christmas trees (to weight them down so they won't escape, of course). Interspersed with these unorthodox holiday excursions are a handful of more conventional hymns to the peace and joy of December - the lovely "Dona Nobis Pacem," "A New Year's Round," "Lamb and Lion," and "Allelujah/Amen." There's also the slightly twisted "A Christmas/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Chanukah/Ramadan/Boxing DaySong," an express-lane version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" (retitled "Th 12 Dys f Chrstms") and "The All-Purpose Carol" (which ends with a resounding "Oy, mon!"). "Try NOT to sing along," challenges Lavin. "That's the hard part." Bio: Christine Lavin's incisive and frequently hilarious songs (most often concerning relationships and modern life) and riotous on-stage presentation (twirling glowing batons, storytelling) have enlivened the folk scene for more than 20 years. During thattime, she has released more than a dozen albums of original material for a variety of labels, founded the ever-changing Four Bitchin' Babes singing and recording group, produced eight compilations showcasing the works of dozens of other singer-songwriters, and has become the wry voice of the post-Boomer, pre-Generation X crowd. Born in New York, Lavin worked her way up through the city's competitive club scene to become an internationally popular performer and recording artists who performs about 120 concerts annually in America, Canada, and Australia. She has won two New York Music Awards, a NAIRD award, four ASCAP composer awards, the Kate Wolf Memorial Award, and the 2001 Backstage Bistro Award as Outstanding New York Singer-Songwriter of the Year. In 1998, Lavin was honored (and shocked) by the release of "Big League Babe," a 2-CD tribute containing versions of her songs secretly recorded as a surprise for her by more than two dozen singer-songwriters. The New York Times has described her as "a garrulous comic observer of contemporary manners," the Boston Globe called her "the classic American troubadour," and she's been lauded as "captivating" (by Billboard) and "enchanting" (by Cosmopolitan). Her acuity in reflecting contemporary life, love and their pitfalls can be discerned even in the titles of her albums (i.e., "Beau Woes," "Getting in Touch with My Inner Bitch," "I Was in Love with a Difficult Man"), and her squirmingly funny song "Sensitive New Age Guys" has been used in the l