“A Charlie Brown Christmas” has become a U.S. holiday tradition since 1965, but in the D.C. metro area, an accompanying tradition jazzes up the nation’s capital.
The Eric Byrd Trio performs the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s iconic “A Charlie Brown Christmas” Friday at the Weinberg Center in Frederick, Maryland, Saturday at The Soundry in Columbia, Maryland and Sunday at The Hamilton in D.C.
“It’s just classic,” pianist and vocalist Eric Byrd told WTOP. “You’re aware of it, you know it, you know some of the lines, you maybe know some of the songs, it’s just classic. I’m sure Mr. Schultz and that team didn’t even recognize that it was going to be as classic as it was, and yet it just is. … It’s magical and it’s classic. It’s ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ‘Gone with the Wind,’ ‘Star Wars’ and ‘The Godfather.'”
The event begins by screening Charles Schultz’s classic “Peanuts” animation.
“The classic television show is about 22 minutes long, then without any break in the action or any kind of intermission or anything like that, the band comes right up on stage,” Byrd said. “We play the entire soundtrack live right afterward.”
That includes the main jazz theme and “Christmas Time is Here” vocals.
“My oldest kid was 7 when he sang ‘Christmas Time Is Here’ on the record we did,” Byrd said. “Now, I have my 13-year-old and my 11-year-old performing with the band. My 11-year-old sings ‘Christmas Time Is Here’ and my 13-year-old takes the acoustic guitar solo. … This guy thinks he is Slash. He is got chops. He is in the Frederick School of Rock. … So it’s turned into this whole family thing.”
It’s always been a family thing for Byrd, who watched the TV special growing up.
“When I was a kid we didn’t have a tremendous amount of competition, so when it came to cartoons and the holidays … you only saw those things once a year,” Byrd said. “Animation is much more advanced now and you have more options where you can pull up this stuff on Netflix or YouTube whenever you want, but there is just something about the simplicity of the story and characters.”
It was also a formative moment for him musically.
“It was one of my very first introductions into jazz,” Byrd said. “The music is somewhat simple, but there is a lot of depth and beauty to the simplicity of the music. As I got older and became a pianist on my own, you go back to the things that resonated with you as a kid [with] the interplay of all three of the musicians in that band. … My family still does that hokey thing where we decorate the tree listening to ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas.’ I have it on vinyl and on my iPod.”
So while the band has performed with all the greats from Wynton Marsalis to Yolanda Adams to Jon Secada, it keeps coming back to Charlie Brown.
“We would play Christmas concerts [and] every once in a while I’d thrown in a song from ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,'” Byrd said. “A very good friend, Sandy Oxx, [said], ‘Wow, that’s great. You oughta do more of that music and put it on stage.’ I was like, ‘Nobody’s gonna come hear me play ‘Charlie Brown Christmas,’ and she came up with the whole show and said, ‘We’ll play the movie first.'”
The performance keeps the spirit of Guaraldi but with their own spin on it.
“When we started playing the music, it became a challenge to see if we could articulate that same level of mastery and artistry with just three instruments and breathe a little bit of new life into it,” Byrd said. “I think humbly we’ve been able to do that to a certain degree, and the music we add to the overall lexicon holds up. It’s nowhere near as classic as what the Guaraldi Trio did, but it stands on its own and my band’s got two of the greatest musicians I could possibly play with.”
That includes Alphonso Young Jr. on drums and Bhagwan Khalsa on bass.
“If Bruce Lee the martial artist was a drummer, he’d probably be Alphonso Young,” Byrd said. “He is poetry in motion. He is like water moving. He is a ferocious drummer that can play aggressive and really kick you in the butt, then play beautifully and supportively as well. … He is as much of a master of a musician as one can be, I think, and he continues to get better.”
“Then Bhagwan Khalsa [nicknamed] ‘B,’ we call him duct tape,” Byrd said. “He is the gorilla glue. He keeps it all together, so no matter how far off the rails Al and I go, if he didn’t stay at home, it would just sound like a chaotic mess. He has the incredible musical discipline to stay rooted. He doesn’t speed up or slow down, he keeps excellent time, he is harmonically precise and he is rhythmically perfect.”
Together, the trio is approaching 20 years performing across the region, as Byrd hails from Maryland, Young lives in Virginia and Khalsa represents Virginia.
“Everywhere we go, we sell this thing out,” Byrd said. “It is a sellout show every time we do it. We run into people who say, ‘I come every year. I’ve been coming for 15 years. I bring my grandchildren, my neighbors, my friends, people from my church, people I play cards with.’ It’s a thing that seniors love, there are high schoolers who do a retro back-in-the-day thing. … It stands the test of time.”
That’s because all ages can relate to Charlie Brown as a lovable klutz.
“Everybody relates to Charlie Brown in some way, this poor, well-meaning good kid who just doesn’t quite seem to get what everybody else seems to get,” Byrd said. “He is trying to fit in with his peers, but he doesn’t seem to make it into the inner circle. Then you get to the climax where he is like, ‘What is this thing all about?’ then you have [[Linus] read the Christmas story from The Bible, then it has the happy ending. It’s just that warm and fuzzy thing that this season brings.”
Why watch the cartoon at home when you can see it live in concert?
“If you love getting all the feels from this season, this is the show to see,” Byrd said. “It’s family friendly, little kids dig it, senior adults dig it, and everybody in between. It unites us around this idea that it is Christmastime, it is something we can all celebrate and enjoy. … We’d love to have everybody come out to the Weinberg to see it [as] the first show of this December tour.”
Find more information on the band website. Hear our full conversation below:
