We landed in the UK on the day that it was announced that Princess Diana passed away. It was one of the strangest days in my memory. August 31st, 1997. I remember murmurs in the plane as we landed in and started to come down the jet bridge. The whole world was trying to make sense of something senseless. Our whole family was with us and we were headed to spend a month in England to record a Christmas album at a world-famous studio in a town near Redding. Hook End Manor.

Not long after the Middle Of Nowhere album broke, we were approached by Steve Greenberg who had first signed us to Mercury Records, he had an idea, we should make a Christmas album. We were not sure it was something we wanted to do. Amidst such a breakout, we felt the perception from the world that we were a manufactured pop-band (always stressed about credibility) and the Christmas  album idea felt like it could only come across cheesy. To his credit, Steve sent a burned CD that has images of cheese, it said “no cheese” across the cover.

As we considered the possible songs and the idea of creating something timeless it began to set in that some of our favorite artists of all time had made great Christmas songs and records and we were glad they did. The Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, Bing Crosby, Mariah Carey, Dolly Parton, James Brown, Chuck Berry and the list goes on.  We came around to making it happen.  The next question was, how were we going to make an album, amidst worldwide tours and still get it made and get it released in time for the holidays.

In order to make that happen we would only have a short window to do it and we would need a great team. A year before we had co-written with outside songwriters for the first time and of all those collaborators our strongest connection was with the brilliant and charismatic Mark Hudson. We had a unique connection with Mark which is likely why the songs we had written together, Where’s The Love and Minute Without You have gone on to resonate with fans for decades. To pull off the record, it was suggested that Mark could produce and figure out co-writing whatever originals needed to happen as well, but we would have to be totally focused, and turn around the fastest record we had ever made.

Back at this time in our band’s history, we were used to a few months for a record to get done. That includes song writing, pre-production, recording session planning, and final production, mixing and mastering. To complete the record in four weeks from start to finish meant every day would have to be put to use. If you want that kind of focus, the best way to do it would be, a residential studio. One of the greatest in the world, was Hook End Manor.

Owned at the time by famous record producer Trevor Horn, this manor house was something of legend. The 16th century Elizabethan manor house was set in the countryside near Checkendon, Oxfordshire. Its wooden beams and beveled glass, with heavy ornate wood framed doors felt like something out of an English storybook. This epic home had been purchased with the original barn and stable converted into a modern recording studio so the artist and teams stay at the house, with meals provided and 100% focus could be given to making a record.

This really was an incredible gift to be able to do an album in a place like that, but it was still a daunting creative task.

The main song selection had been made with phone calls and song lists exchanged over the past couple months with Mark and Steve and the recording team had been selected along with the studio plan, and on that fateful day in August when we landed on British soil, we were headed into a time of excitement while still carrying a heavy load.

Our group with family and a couple friends left Heathrow airport and loaded up onto a private bus from London to drive the 40 or so miles to Hook End.

When we arrived at the studio it felt like we had entered another world. Every room in the house was wood paneled, with Persian rugs lining the floors. The walls were covered in period appropriate artwork, next to long wooden banisters of the central staircase, walls held tapestries and it felt like secret rooms were hiding under each corner. The feel of the place was intoxicating. Across an open green lawn was the former stable and inside a full studio.

Our team gathered together and made a plan with Mark for how we would attack the recording sessions. We knew the main tunes we would record many of which were leaning on the more Rock n Roll tunes we loved, plus we wanted to have a few originals. We still had writing to do.

It was still warm in August so we had to get our heads in the mood for Christmas. One of the ways was to get festive with visual art. When you record an album, especially back then before everything was more easily collected and edited and monitored on a computer screen, the practice of building a large tracking sheet which helped map the status of recording parts to complete each song was a common practice. We pulled together a robust art supply package, complete with glitter pens, stickers and poster board and began another creative project alongside the album which was an ornate recording sheet board that would take on a life of its own. We might not have had snow, but we were going to get in the Christmas spirit. It was time to get Snowed In at this country manor house one way or another.

We had a great rhythm from the start of the album. Recording classic songs instead of writing and recording every one from scratch changed the whole process. We leaned into building the arrangements and went about tracking.  One part at a time, we felt the album come together.

We were in our own world and our connection with Mark who had grown up in an actual three brother band (The Hudson Brothers) and is one of the funniest people on earth, developed an approach that made that album process possible. We were moving quickly to build an album. Laying down drums, guitar and keys, and then working on layered vocal harmonies, this was happening in one form or another every day. We were fueled by the urgency to complete the album, plus a lot of glue for the art board and classic English cuisine.

All around the property was rich green pasture and trimmed English hedges. It was not covered in snow, but it did feel like we were living in a storybook and that helped to keep our heads in the mindset of this holiday mission.

I can still see the walkway from the house to the studio on one of the many rainy days. The low pitched wooden shingle roofs would give a bit of cover but you had to run the twenty or so feat between the back kitchen door to get to the studio building. Many mornings you could see the dew coming off the lawn. The music never stopped.

The record was built one part at a time. We were not tight enough as players to rehearse an arrangement and play it off the floor yet without more time to rehearse so, we would settle on the overall arrangement ideas of the songs, set out a sequence and start to build it up. We moved quickly between a drum session to overdubbed keys, or a guitar solo, and then to vocal harmonies, and then back to another song to keep our ears fresh and then back to the song from the day before to complete layering in a new loop or edited effect. This was happening in different forms non-stop.

Run Rudolf Run was one of the most iconic songs for us, because it was Chuck Berry. This one excited us and felt like it was an ode to our origin. I remember sitting in the middle of the control room as Isaac worked to capture a guitar solo for the tune, with Mark barking ideas on the fly as he is known to do, Isaac biting his lower lip as he played, and the mix blasting through the large main speakers so loud we disturbed the delicate balance of the English countryside.

Every day we worked we cultivated a bit more of the feeling of Christmas, and a musical identity for ourselves and the album. This is the kind of Christmas party we would throw. We loved the tone of the record that was coming together. The album was of course intimate at times, but from note one it was an album of songs that made you want to throw a party.

One of the songs that balanced out the party feeling and brought us back to the spiritual and more traditional meaning of the Christmas holiday was our Silent Night medley. We knew we could not make a Christmas album without Silent Night, but we also did not want to just sing the church lady simple version, we wanted to find the soulful quality of the song and to reimagine it a bit with more harmony and gospel feel.

I loved where the arrangement landed. The swing of the songs open invites the listener in to this familiar song, but it feels like a band playing the song, not like a hymn. As we move from the intimate verse we amplified the iconic “fall on your knees…” section. This song came to life on the back of something we know well, Harmony.

Special guest instruments to give the record more of a throw-back feel like Saxophone solos on Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree and mellotron string and horn samples layered into Merry Christmas Baby helped to define the sound of the album kicking things off on the final track listing.

Classics helped to define the album included The Beach Boys Little Saint Nick, our rendition of Baby Please Come Home, Stevie Wonders What Christmas Means To Me and more.

Snowed In grew into one of our favorite albums we have ever made. The creative collaboration was uniquely fluid and the colorful ongoing project, the art board which we built during the recording session carried forward the crafting of the project. Christmas spirit and the memory of driving hard to get the project done just in the nick of time felt something like what the Christmas elves must experience as they race toward a joyous but seemingly impossible deadline.

Woven into all the creative work was a place. We could rarely venture out as there was little to venture to, outside of a small pizza shop in Redding or a re-stocking of our craft supplies at a hamlet nearby, so Hook End became our Christmas island. In what felt like a never-ending string of days woven together, we found ourselves at the end of the month with a complete album. It may not have been seen by others, but behind the warmth and love and celebration of this beautiful holiday record was a wood paneled, 16th century manor house that was our home for the holidays and I think that founds its way into the music we have been able to share for almost 30 Christmas’s.