Roland Gift, Old Crow Medicine Show, and The Klezmatics

We're in the last weeks before Christmas and I have more interviews than I can handle. This week starts with a version of " Wonderful Christmas Time " by Twanguero before we get to my interview with Roland Gift, ex of Fine Young Cannibals. He talks about the way a new Chanel ad campaign with Dua Lipa and Blackpink's Jennie has introduced a new generation to the Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy," and about FYC40 , an compilation of the band's hits with a second disc of dance remixes. Gift also mentions the video for "Everybody Knows it's Christmas." I follow that with Ketch Secor and Morgan Jahnig from Old Crow Medicine Show, who this year released OCMS Xmas , their first Christmas album. There's a lot of good stuff in that conversation, more than we have time for in this episode, so I'll revisit it in its entirety next season. Finally, I talk to Lorin Sklamberg of The Klezmatics about the reissue of their album, Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah , where they added music to lyrics written by Guthrie. Here too, there's more good stuff than we had time for, so I'll return to this next conversation next season as well. One mea culpa: The most embarrassing moment of the season comes in conjunction with this interview because on Apple Music, the song I lead into the conversation with appears as "Ny Psycho Freylekhs." I pronounced it that way, then realized when I downloaded the song after the introduction had been recorded that it was "NY" as in "New York," not "Ny" as in the end is nigh. I never feel smart staggering through other languages, but I haven't felt as dumb as I did when I saw the proper spelling. The episode ends with music by Haunted House Party from A Strange Daisy Christmas .

You can listen to Roland Gift, Old Crow Medicine Show, and The Klezmatics online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Roland Gift, Old Crow Medicine Show, and The Klezmatics is an episode from Twelve Songs of Christmas by Alex Rawls.

This episode is 96:38 long.

This episode was published on Dec 11, 2025.

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