The Pistol Annies Hell of a Holiday Christmas Special did not disappoint.
Hosted by country radio personality Blair Garner, the trio made up of Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley talked a little bit about why they chose the Music Health Alliance (an organization for industry professionals that helps them find affordable health care) as the beneficiary for the event.
Miranda says they all have personal experience with the organization:
“Well, I think we all can agree on that we all have things that we support individually, but as a band, I think we’ve all had experiences with the health alliance.
As far as personally helping a musician in my band go through a lot of health issues, um, and he’d been with me for years and years. It was so great to have the support of the community and feel like you’re not alone.
Because, you know, you’re out there joining the circus like we all do, and you know when crisis hits, maybe some people aren’t financially ready for that. So this charity is such a great thing to lift up the music community.”
They sang a few songs from the record, too, including the title track, “Sleigh Ride,” and a stunning rendition of “Auld Lang Syne”.
Miranda also talked about their ability to go a little further with what they want to say as a group compared to some of their solo stuff, even on a Christmas album:
“Well first of all, there’s strength in numbers. We gotta give each other permission to be a little more bad than we would alone.”
And Ashley agrees:
“We’ve all been the worst one of the group at times, I guess, the baddest.”
Mainly, Angaleena says it all depends on this…
“Depends on the day and the substance.”
“Come On Christmas Time” is a perfect example of that, as it’s one of the sassier tracks on the record that’s all about their crush on Santa. It’s the classic Pistol Annies writing we all love, where they talk about riding his sleigh and ringing his bell.
Miranda said they wanted to get into the girly side of Christmas with it:
“Well that song is us doing our sultry side, I think. Havin’ a crush on Santa and sort of divin’ into the more flirty side of Christmas with adding the mistletoe touches and all of that, um, all that fun girly stuff.”
When pressed on whether or not Santa really does it for them, I laughed out loud at Miranda’s response:
“Depends on what he’s bringing.”
And if you think that’s the extent of some of their other ideas for the song, think again. Angaleena noted that there were quite a few scrapped lines in the process of writing this one,
“It would be funny to have an outtake reel of us writing this song because we got kinda nasty. There were a lot of times we said, we cannot say that about Santa.”
I can only imagine… I think we’re actually gonna need to see that now.
Here’s a little bit of “Come On Christmas Time”:
So far, they’ve already raised $7,120 for the organization. You can still watch the entire special and donate to the Music Health Alliance on the Annie’s Facebook page.
