Hello again, and welcome, as I open the fifth door on my Advent Calendar. Behind this door I found three songs, but no adverts – maybe another day for them. Two of these are regular favourites of mine making return appearances, the third is one that I’m playing for the first time.

This is the first of those making a return:

For me, it wouldn’t be Christmas without this bunch of lovable idiots. As I’ve said before, Bellowhead are the band I’ve seen live most often, and they are my favourite live act. I’ve been to many of their shows, including a Christmas one, and they really are as anarchic as the video suggests. But if one of the purposes of music is to entertain, Bellowhead do it in huge amounts: no one ever leaves one of their shows feeling short-changed. If they were moving around too quickly for you to count, they have eleven members and describe themselves as a ‘folk big band.’ This was released as a non-album single in December 2013, with a re-recorded version of Jingle Bells on the B-side, but didn’t make the charts. This one is tinged with sadness this year, as Paul Sartin – the chap doing a spot of doctoring with a trombone around the 1’40” mark – passed away recently from a sudden heart attack, at the age of just 51. The band have just completed a reunion tour and by all accounts it was very poignant for them.

Today’s second returner is one that I’ve played a couple of times before and it has always gone down well:

Patricia Büchler, aka Patty Gurdy, is German, just like Fiddlers Green, the ‘Irish’ band accompanying her in this. Her command of English is excellent, and she frequently posts in English – both speaking and in writing – on her Facebook page. She is also one of those artists who responds to comments made by fans, rather than leaving it to her ‘team’ to do the work, which is always good for brownie points from me, and she is an absolute delight. Her commitment to supporting mental health issues is to be admired, too, especially after she lost just about everything in the floods that hit Europe a couple of summers ago. She has played in several bands and has had a number of musical collaborations, including one with Faun, another band who you may have noticed that I really like. This song is the opening track on Patty’s 2020 EP Frost & Faeries: she also has another EP (Shapes & Patterns), several singles and a full length album (Pest & Power) to her name. She took up the hurdy gurdy in 2014, and is making a mark for herself with it. It is an instrument that is clearly important to German folk bands: Faun also has a hurdy gurdy player. On top of all of that she has recently released a single which she is hoping will be chosen as Germany’s entry for next year’s Eurovision Song Contest. If it is selected that might even be enough to persuade me to watch! If you’d like to hear her song, you’ll find it here on YouTube. To my ears it is a good deal better than the dross that show usually serves up.

My third song for today is the one I haven’t played before. I’ve played a couple of Ingrid Michaelson songs, but not this one:

A charming little song and a gorgeous video. The animation is incredibly good, though I would always recommend taking the teabag out of the cup before drinking! Ingrid Michaelson is a singer-songwriter and actor, in that order. Zooey Deschanel, younger sister of Emily (the Bones lady), is primarily an actor but also has a long musical career to her name, both as part of the band She And Him and also on collaborations like this. I think this is lovely, and couldn’t resist adding it in as a third song for you today. If you want to hear more like this, it was a bonus track on the deluxe version of Ingrid’s album Songs For The Season, which was released in October 2018.

That concludes today’s videos. You want a picture too? OK, here goes:

Hope to see you again tomorrow 🪅