The Ohio City Singers' Concerts Are a Cleveland Christmas Tradition

When December hits, The Ohio City Singers emerge onto local stages to share original festive tunes with an ever-growing fanbase. The supergroup features nine members of the local music scene, who dress up in their Christmas best for their high-energy shows that are just about as Cleveland as you can get.

This year, the band brings a few new tunes to its performances — which are just a taste of a possible album on the way next year. We caught up with band founder Chris Allen to hear more about what’s in store.

Cleveland Magazine: What Ohio City Singers shows are coming up?

Chris Allen: [Dec. 6] is the annual kickoff, and that is kind of the big, all-ages family show at the Music Box. That's the first time we've done that in a couple years there. Last year we did the Rock Hall, but they're going to be under construction. We're going to do Dec. 12 at the Winchester, and then we're doing a two-night thing, Dec. 19 and 20 at Forest City Brewery. It's kind of a limited ticket; we've always done one night, but we're going to do two this time. I'm not sure all the details yet, but we're playing the 21st at the Treelawn as well. It's our usual schedule. The only odd one is that we've been doing the Rock Hall every year, but it's not open to play the stage we were playing. We'll be rocking it all month long.

CM: How did the new songs come together? Where did the inspiration come from for them?

CA: We had worked on, all year, writing songs. We actually have written a whole record’s worth. And we thought this year it would be cool to just put out a couple singles, but the real kickstarter was the “Christmas Card From Heaven.” That was a song that came to me in a dream. The original inspiration for the band was my dad, in the early 2000s, had talked about, “You should write a Christmas song — a very Cleveland-centric one.” That's what we did; we did it as a house party and as a Christmas present surprise for my dad. We recorded “White Cleveland Christmas” and a couple of songs and gave it to him as a gift. He had gotten involved with helping us to put out our first album, Love And Hope, in 2008.

I had a dream about my dad, who has passed away, saying, “You know, you've been writing all these Ohio City Singers songs.” He said, “You need to get back to writing an actual, real, classic Christmas song.” In the dream, he had given me the title — and the chords and everything were, like, right there when I woke up. After that, it took me a month to figure out what the storyline would be, because that's the only information I got from the dream, or the chords in the title. 

The other song (“Santa Won’t You See Me Tonight?”) was one that Doug McKean, who's been my right-hand man songwriter in the band, had written. We kind of went through the whole album cycle and wrote a whole record’s worth, and that was one that we both really loved about the songs that we had come up with that we knew would play really well in the live setting, with the band, which is really kind of upbeat, very party-centric, and we wanted to release a couple songs we knew we could put right into the set. We’ve had a pretty good standard set for a while, and it felt good to put a few new things in. 

The singles are produced again by our band member and producer, Don Dixon, who's our glockenspiel player. Don’s produced lots of things — R.E.M. and the Smithereens and thousands of other things. I always feel like I'm cheapening him by saying just those two bands, because I know that's what a lot of people say, but he's produced so many great records. He did produce and record these two tracks as well.

We're going to shake the set up and do a couple new covers this year. We do mostly originals, but maybe pick a couple old songs from our catalog; we've got about 60 songs recorded at this point, so we're going to pick from some stuff in the past.

CM: Those two different sides of songwriting — the Cleveland-specific Christmas songs, and the more classic Christmas songs — can you explain that dynamic a bit more and how you represent both halves with The Ohio City Singers?

CA: The band is comprised of so many Cleveland and Northeast Ohio musicians, and part of what I wanted the band to be was the soundtrack for your favorite Christmas party in Cleveland. It was centered around that party vibe. 

But then, as a fan of Nat King Cole and a lot of the more classic Christmas kinds of things, we also came up with the songs that would be more universal and play to larger audiences outside of our family and friends in Cleveland. I think it's just always trying to capture that classic feeling of Christmas and also that kind of that vibe, that party. We never really wanted to lean into the “Blue Christmases” of the world. We want it to be more of the celebratory kinds of themes.

CM: What’s it like to see your music become a holiday tradition for some Clevelanders?

CA: It couldn't be a bigger thrill for me. I mean, I just get kind of choked up thinking about it, but I would love if my dad had been around to see it. He would have been over the moon about it. We get people that come up to the shows with young kids that have been coming to our show since they were really little, and that's their family's Christmas music. That’s just the biggest compliment you could get. It's fun because the shows have gotten crazier. The audience dresses up nicer and crazier than we do; people are dressed up like Christmas trees and have all sorts of crazy outfits and suits. 

I remember, right around 2012 we played at the Happy Dog, and I walked into the room and I thought I showed up to a Christmas party. And I was like, “Wait a minute, this is for us.” To see the crowd had gotten into the whole spirit of it — I was like, “All right, this thing's actually happening,” and it was so fun. Every year since then, the audience has gotten more and more involved in the whole vibe of it.

CM: You mentioned more new music. Can we expect those songs to trickle out in the future?

CA: For sure. My hope would be to do a full record for next year. Or we'll definitely be releasing music every year for the next few years. We've done that in the past where with, like A Town Called Christmas or Snow Days, where we released the single the year before and then put the whole record together. There will be lots, lots more music to come.

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