Day 9 of my Advent Calendar is the one where I’m sharing two songs which will no doubt get the reaction ‘Who?’ They are both lovely, so I think the fact that the two singers will probably be unknown to you – unless you have a good memory for last year – doesn’t really matter. One of these songs has been in my set every year I’ve done this, including making an appearance in the blog last year. The other has only ever featured once before, back in 2015 in the Twitter days, though the singer does always appear later in the month. She will be doing so this year, too.

Looking back over previous years, I found that I had featured this song no fewer than six times previously, going all the way back to 2013, i.e. in the days before I really got into becoming your blog DJ. This is an edited version of what I said about it last year:

“A singer-songwriter in her own right, she has also made what I think is the best version of a seasonal favourite and the video is a perfect fit:

Brynn Andre released two albums, in 2009 and 2011, but then went rather silent. She got married and developed a couple of freelance careers, as a copywriter and a life coach, which you can find under her married name of Brynn Johnson or the company name – Swandive –  if you are in need of either service! I had rather assumed that she had left the music business completely, but then she popped up in a collaboration in 2018 and dipped her own toe in the water again in 2019 with a single called Pools (see what I did there?). Her social media accounts have been equally quiet, though she did thank me on Facebook when I commented how much I enjoyed Pools, but I’m still hopeful that she may one day make a return to music. On her company website there’s a questionnaire to which she answers ‘If I could do one thing for the rest of my life….’ with ‘songwriting.’ Fingers crossed!”

A year on, has anything changed? On the music front: nothing new to report, sadly. On the company front, the only difference I could see on her website was that she is the mother of twins, which I don’t recall from before. She has such a lovely voice and I wish she would release more music, but I guess life is keeping her pretty busy! For the record, this song doesn’t appear on either of the albums Brynn released – it is very much a one off!

I’m keeping to the ‘snow’ theme for today with my second song. As I said, this is another singer-songwriter who appears here each year, but not with this song, so you’ll be getting a double dose this year: trust me, she’s worth it! When I shared this in 2015 it came with a lyric video, but a new video was released for it just three days ago:

You may be having vague recollections of the name Mindy Smith after seeing that – go back as far as Tuesday Tunes 80 and you’ll find her providing the harmony vocals for the lovely John Prine song I gave you that week, Long Monday. Like Brynn, Mindy has also been elusive in recent years in musical terms, but I follow her on Facebook so I know that she has been more active this past year, and I’m hopeful that new music might be in the offing – her equally lovely voice also needs to be heard again. The presence of this new video gives me hope of that, even if it doesn’t yet appear on her website, which doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2019! This song was the title track of a five song EP that Mindy released in 2013, comprising a couple of self-penned songs and some Christmas/New Year standards. They are all great, and you’ll be hearing another later in Advent – the other that she wrote, as she did this one.

That’s it for today’s songs, which I hope have put you into a mellow mood. I’ll try not to spoil that with the image of the day:

Until tomorrow 🎅