Skip to main content

CHRISTMAS IS SAVED! FOWLER VW’s ANNUAL CHRISTMAS ALBUM IS HERE

CHRISTMAS SONGS! They start playing too soon and there are only actually, like, four of them (think about it) and they’re all terrible. Until eight years ago, these claims were unassailably true. Unquestionably true. Boringly true, even. But now, there are great Christmas songs thanks to a VW dealership in Oklahoma and I’m angry at everyone reading this (especially you) for not telling me about this sooner.

Fowler Volkswagen of Norman, Oklahoma (just south of Oklahoma City) has been working with Blackwatch Studio to produce Christmas albums for the last eight years. The songs are all performed (and oftentimes written) by local, Oklahoma talent and the songs are, like, actually really good.

The project started way back when Jonathan Fowler, now President of Fowler VW, was just the General Manager. Fowler was looking for a way to promote the dealership and also happened to be a passionate fan of the local music scene.

“His marketing team came alongside and they came up with the idea to create a free vinyl record,” Kristen Vails, Fowler Automotive’s Director of Community Outreach tells us. “Blackwatch is the talented team who handles the selection, production, and creative behind the record each year, and now we at Fowler just get to make it happen by funding the project and distributing the records.”

Through the years, acts like Desi and Cody have produced the very good (and also very Patsy Cline-esque) “It Just Ain’t Christmas Without You.” Munch has given us the very dreamy “Kissmas.” And Boondice has a really retro techno cover of “Ave Maria” (performance of? When is a cover no longer a cover?).

These songs, all, are very good. But one song rises above that, into the realm of greatness. Of once in a lifetime genius. And that song is “Lights, Camera, Christmas.” Words and accolades will inevitably fail to do its genius justice, so just listen instead:

And this year, we get another nine songs to warm the cockles of our hearts! The songs come to us from great OK artists: Sports, Beau Jennings, Chair Model, Duke Luther, Swim Fan, Space Face, Hot Cider, Day Drinker, and James McAllister.

Want more good news? You got it! The album is free on Bandcamp. Want even more good news?! Sure thing! There’s a free vinyl LP available at the dealership! Even more gooder news? You’re asking for a lot, but whatever, fine. 100% OF DONATIONS GO TO THE NORMAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS ELEMENTARY MUSIC PROGRAM. They’re already planning for the next generation of independent Christmas music creators!

It’s good news on top of good news on top of even more good news and that’s something there’s been precious little of this year and I think we should all show Fowler VW a little more appreciation because they worked hard to give us this.

If you’re as surprised as I was to find out that Oklahoma not only has a vibrant music scene but a really good one, too, (sorry, Oklahoma) you clearly haven’t been reading Livability.com, which ranked Tulsa as the ninth best music city in America. Who knew? And now Blackwatch Studio wants to make Oklahoma the independent Christmas music capital of the world, which is adorable and wholesome and more states should follow its lead.

This year’s album will be handed out for free on black Friday and the songs, again, run the gamut of styles.

“I thought it would be awesome to do an 80s-feeling Christmas ballad,” Taylor Johnson, a member of the trio Chair Model, told the Norman Transcript. “The tubular bells and sleigh bells were enough to set the whole thing off for me.”

But again there will be some country on the album, too.

“I wrote this as if I knew Dwight Yoakam might sing it one day,” Beau Jennings told the paper. “There’s a kind of lonesome haunted cowboy spirit to Christmas that for some reason I always feel but that I don’t always hear in other songs. I was kind of trying to extract that feeling. There’s that feeling of, ‘I know there’s some magic to Christmas cause I’ve felt it before, but its sure gone now so I gotta go look for it again.'”

But you know what isn’t gone yet? This album. Because the vinyl pressings are being handed out–for free!!–tomorrow. And if you miss it, like we will because of the stupid thousands of miles between us and Oklahoma, it will be available on Blackwatch’s Bandcamp page, just like all of its other albums!

The post CHRISTMAS IS SAVED! FOWLER VW’s ANNUAL CHRISTMAS ALBUM IS HERE appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2PLmWFX
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

    When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier.  The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow.   While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something .  To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it.  Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait.  So with this in mind, we lined our G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project Golf SportWagen- Intro

I’ve never really been one for SUVs and crossovers.  The current offerings aren’t the body-on-frame, go-anywhere specialty tools I remember from my youth, and what they lack in capability, they also lack in on-road performance. The current crop isn’t terribly good at handling or being efficient, which in my opinion are major components of our ideal driving experience.  So when it comes to space or utility, I usually look for something of the wagon variety- and it seems that I’m not alone. We hit quite a few shows around the east coast each summer, and we see modified Jetta SportWagens at nearly every event. Even amongst common consumers, these cars are highly sought-after. They don’t depreciate much, making even early Mk 5 2.5 versions expensive in comparison to other Jettas or Golfs of the same vintage. This year, Volkswagen launched their latest SportWagen, which is now billed as a Golf.  In many ways, this latest SportWagen is the best yet and it has certai...
Post a Comment
Read more

Volkswagen Group Records Best Ever First-Half-of-Year Sales

With 5.5 million vehicles in customer hands after the first six months of 2018, the Volkswagen Group is seeing the best performance of its history. Group deliveries increased significantly in all core regions,” said Fred Kappler, head of sales for the Group. “Our core brands recorded strong growth in the first half year.” For the year-to-date, all of Volkswagen’s brands had sales bumps. MAN, SEAT, and Skoda led the sales charge with performances 24%, 17% and 11% better than the previous year. The big sellers, too, had strong sales periods, with Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Audi, and Volkswagen sales rising 3.5%, 4.5% and 6.3% respectively. That last figure is particularly good new for the board, since Volkswagen alone sold more than 3 million vehicles in the first half of 2018. As Kappler stated, the numbers are equally good when you break sales down by region. Brazil and Russia were the most improved markets (22% and 20%, respectively), while strong sales in Europe and China (u...
2 comments
Read more