Titus Andronicus Slide Down Your Chimney with Festive Offering "Drummer Boy" Interpolating Billy Joel's "Piano Man" (Merge Records)
Not entirely unlike Bob Dylan and/or Bing Crosby & David Bowie long before them, New Jersey's own Heartland Rock stalwarts Titus Andronicus are cranking up the festive mood yet another notch with the release of their first-ever stand-alone holiday single, "Drummer Boy." Having released one of the year's most celebrated Rock albums with The Will to Live and dazzled ecstatic fans across America, Titus Andronicus have much to celebrate. Plus, they're sharing plans to ring in The New Year with additional tour dates across The United States, Canada, The United Kingdom, and Ireland. "Drummer Boy" lifts the musical components from Billy Joel's timeless 1973 anthem, "Piano Man," and retrofits it to tell The Nativity Story from the perspective of "The Little Drummer Boy."
It was first made famous by way of the 1958 Christmas classic of the same name from The Harry Simeone Chorale. The result is an instantly memorable new addition to your festive holiday canon, sure to please not only fans of Titus Andronicus & Billy Joel, but, also, "Weird Al" Yankovic and even The Peanuts Gang; herein, bassist R.J. Gordon delivers an empassioned reading from The Gospel of Luke, which was immortalized by Linus Van Pelt within A Charlie Brown Christmas to stirring effect. "I first connected the dots between the great Billy Joel song and the beloved Christmas standard several years ago, but it got tossed onto the pile with so many of my other crazy ideas," singer/song-writer Patrick Stickles explains.
"Things being how they are, though, I may not have the luxury of time to execute all those crazy ideas, so when we had two days off in Montreal on our recent tour, we figured we'd grab the reindeer by the antlers and cross this one off the list, so as to avoid the pain of eternal regret. Also, I've noticed a lot of discourse recently about what constitutes a legitimate "parody" lately and I'd like to get a piece of that action." To create this first-rate new addition to the annual Christmas canon, Titus Andronicus reunited with The Will to Live producer Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Leonard Cohen) at his Hotel 2 Tango Recording Studio in Montreal, Québec, Canada, adding a dash of holiday cheer to the "Ultimate Rock" sound, which earned The Will to Live such wide-spread acclaim. Also, contributing to the wholesome fun are members of Canadian Indie Rock band Partner, as well as once-and-future Titus Andronicus tourmates, Country Westerns.
To make things even cozier and seasonally-appropriate, "Drummer Boy" comes festively wrapped along with an official lyric video that doubles as a D.I.Y. "Yule Log," ensuring not one Scroogy listener will go without a proper hearth this holiday season; the celebration doesn't end once the wrapping paper and pine needles are swept away, however, as Titus Andronicus will resume their rigorous touring schedule in February, undertaking an already-announced run of concerts in The UK & Ireland kicking off on February 2, 2023 in Limerick with a brand new batch of North American dates, which will carry the beloved Rock fan's Rock band "from sea to shining sea" starting February 28, 2023 in Pittsburgh. Concert tickets are the perfect gift for that special Titus Andronicus die-hard in your life, but if you're feeling particularly generous, there are plenty more options to be found over at Merge Records and/or the official Titus Andronicus web-store.