Holiday Shows I'm Playing, plus a free MP3 to celebrate Chicago being 1 degree today

I have two holiday-themed gigs coming up that may be of interest to you if, like me, have an aversion to saccharine, candy-cane Christmas carols and prefer campy, serious, hipstery, or obliquely-related seasonal tunes.

Under the campy and also serious columns, I'm playing with the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus once again. In addition to the tongue-in-cheek antics you know and love from CGMC, the chorus is also doing some musically more sophisticated pieces (a rendition of Deck the Halls in a 7/8 time signature, for instance). Shows are Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 3pm and 8pm at the Athenaeum (on Southport). The link above will get you tickets.

Under the hipstery and obliquely-related category, I'm doing a little holiday shindig at Wild Pug on Tuesday, December 15th with a few other Unpugged alumni: Stephen Leonard, Manny Capozzi, and Rachel Katzman. I'll be doing a bunch of covers and collaborations that aren't your typical set of songs about Christmas but do in some way relate to December or Christmas or seasonal affective disorder. (Yay!) Plus, it's free, and I've come to love the Pug like my own home, if they didn't kick me out at 2. (Dammit!) Music starts at 9pm.

Bonus: I may even pull together a Christmas song that I wrote a couple years ago for a contest that Sufjan Stevens held. I've never actually played it live because I'm not sure how to stack the loops on this one, but you can download it here if you need a new song about how discordant it is to hear cheery goofy Christmas songs while the world gets dark and cold and wet and miserable, which is appropos of today's weather.