Macrobiotic Records/UMeThe Band‘s Robbie Robertson is celebrating the Christmas season with a new original tune titled “Happy Holidays” that offers up a bit of twisted, tongue-in-cheek yuletide cheer.
The atmospheric track is available now as a digital single and via streaming services, and you also can listen to it at Robertson’s YouTube channel.
The song begins with Robertson singing, “Please don’t leave Old Saint Nick too much milk and cookies/ ‘Cause by the time he gets ’round to us/ He won’t be able to get his fat a** down the chimney/ Happy, happy, happy holiday…to one and all!”
“We love Christmas and the holidays, it brings good cheer, and also stress and depression,” explains the singer, songwriter and guitarist, “so I wanted to do a song that celebrates both sides and have a little fun.”
The 76-year-old Rock & Roll Hall of Famer is donating proceeds from the song to the American Indian College Fund.
Robertson has had quite an eventful 2019. In September, he released Sinematic, his first new solo album since 2011. He also composed the score for director Martin Scorsese’s latest film, The Irishman, which gets its TV debut on Netflix this Wednesday, November 27. In addition, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, a documentary based on his 2016 memoir Testimony premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
Robbie also made his first concert appearance since 2013 this past Saturday when he was a special guest performer at a previously reported event dubbed “The Last Waltz Nashville: An All-Star Celebration of The Band’s Historic Farewell Concert,” held at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. Among the other artists on the bill were Michael McDonald, Warren Haynes, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Darius Rucker, Don Was and Cyril Neville.
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