It takes a very special gift to meld internal revelation with eternal truth and create songs that strike a universal chord with both enlightened scholars and struggling broken souls, but Jason Gray has that gift. Never afraid to look inward for inspiration and just as ready to analyze the world around him, Gray is called to create music that makes a difference.

Christmas is a special time for Gray, and on his first holiday album, Christmas Stories, Gray aims to produce not just another remake of well-tread standards, but art that reflects this special time of remembrance. 

Jason took some time to chat with NRT's Bill Lurwick about Christmas Stories.

How hard is it to talk about Christmas music on a Christmas project?  How different is it to talk about a Christmas project than a regular project?

 

It's probably the same at least with the way that we approached the Christmas record that I made because sometimes I experience Christmas albums as little extra type projects that an artist will do so that they'll have a holiday album.

 

Going into it we all wanted to approach it like it were a real record and something that was hopefully musically and lyrically relevant beyond the four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.

 

To me it's more like talking about a concept record actually, which is what this is.  We decided that we wanted to write songs either to or from all of the characters in the Christmas narrative and to tell their stories and hopefully do it in a way that seemed very human and honest and just genuine so that as people heard them they'd be like, "That's me too.  I've experienced that."

 

In that then they would discover themselves in the Christmas narrative along with all these other characters.

 

 

I've been a fan for years.  She's so great.  She had discovered my last two albums and had said very kind things about it.  Stuff like, "He was like a fan too.  I'm a fan and I wonder if there's a way we could collaborate."

 

We emailed back and forth.  We were going to collaborate for a song on a regular album and that just didn't work out schedule wise, but it did work around the time I was working on a Christmas song.  I called her up and said, "Here are some ideas I'm working on.  Are you interested?"

 

We hit it off great.  I was doing a show in Missouri and she was in Oklahoma.  She drove up to the show and we just spent the day working on songs on that day and then doing the remainder of the work over the phone or through Skype and that kind of thing.

 

It was a blast.  She's so great at what she does.  We just had a fun time for sure.  I hope to do more collaborations with her.

 

I love when I listen to it I can think, "There are people in my life who I know are believers who I think maybe hear some of these songs and also I think it's a project that someone who is not a follower of Christ, when they hear it, maybe they can say those words me too as well."

 

 

I think people respond to authenticity and humanity.  The author, whose work inspired the whole album.  His name is Frederick Buechner.  He has a book called "Peculiar Treasures," where he looks at all of these characters in the Bible that we think we know, but who have become so familiar to us because we've heard them in countless sermons and all that kind of stuff.

 

He restores their humanity to them.  In one of his memoires he says that he believes that if he tells his story as honestly and humanly as he knows how, that the other people who read it will respond with me too.

 

My whole goal, regardless of what you believe and stuff, that you will hear the song and be like, "Yeah.  Me too."  It will ring true very humanly.

 

That's a great question.  Let's see.  We made a lot of use of this rickety old pump organ that you pump with your feet.  That was great.  There's a lot of bazooka.  It was a lot of fun.

 

The guy who produced the record got a keyboardist and a lot of his albums he's not afraid at all of using '80s sounds and stuff, but he used them really interesting and in a very modern and joyful way.  There's a lot more synth on the record, but I think that when people hear it they aren't going to experience it as like, "There's all kinds of synthesizer on here."

 

He has a way of navigating all of that where it feels organic.

 

 

Thank you very much.  I'm grateful for it.