Brett Eldredge Is Hitting the Road — So It Must Be Christmas! 'A Huge Part of Who I Am' (Exclusive)
The crooner's holiday shows have become a tradition, and this year, he'll be bringing along original songs from his brand-new album
Alysse Gafkjen
Brett EldredgeSo how excited is Brett Eldredge for Christmas? While the rest of us were handing out Halloween candy, the platinum-selling crooner already was enjoying his holiday tree at his Nashville home.
“I really like to soak it in,” the 38-year-old artist says merrily.
But then Eldredge has needed a head start on the holidays. He soon won’t have time to linger over all that greenery and tinsel: On Friday, Nov. 29 he launches his much-anticipated annual Christmas concert tour. This year, he’ll play a dozen shows in seven cities in a whirlwind three weeks, finishing with a bang on Dec. 20 before a hometown crowd at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.
And this year, Eldredge will not only be bringing the Christmas classics that fans have come to expect but also a selection of original songs from his recently released album, Merry Christmas (Welcome to the Family).
The new eight-track album — which features the luscious Big Band sounds of his previous two — is just the latest reason that Eldredge can make his claim to being "Mr. Christmas."
"I don’t take it lightly," he says about his holiday persona. "The world is really hard, and it’s really hard on all of us in so many different ways. But it’s also beautiful, and I really want to lean into those things that make it beautiful."
Related: Brett Eldredge Loves Turning into Mr. Christmas: 'This Is Who I Am, Too' (Exclusive)
Eldredge has already shown a deft touch at writing holiday music with three original songs among the 29 tracks of his previous Christmas albums. But this time around, he asked himself: Was he up for the challenge of creating an entire playlist that could live next to the classics?
"And I said, hell, yes, let’s go," says Eldredge. "I love Christmas music. It’s not a side project or some hobby. It’s completely from the heart, and it’s something that is just a huge part of who I am."
He began the writing task last January, still basking in the afterglow of the just-ended season. While he has mostly teamed with Nashville-based songwriters in the past, this time he paired up with a New Yorker, pop and jazz singer-songwriter Alexis Idarose Kesselman, who records as Idarose. Together they wrote four of the seven tracks, and Kesselman contributed her voice on one, "Who Will You Be Kissing on New Year’s Eve?"
The match, says Eldredge, helped lock him into what he calls "the imaginative places that my Christmas mind goes" — places that allowed the two to collaborate on a whimsical child-at-heart song like "The Night That St. Nick Got Sick."
"I can’t do that with just every songwriter," he says. "Some people just won’t go there with you."
Another one of their co-writes, "Season of Lights and Wonder," is an achingly tender ballad that has all the feels of a future classic.
"It’s a great in-the-moment kind of song of like, hold it in, soak it in, and just be here in it," he says. "It makes me feel like the warmth of a hug from my grandma when she was around — just those little things that aren’t there forever. When I wrote this song with Alexis, it just really flowed. I just felt all the lyrics coming."
Eldredge effortlessly quotes what he calls among his favorite lines: "Pull it in close and hold it real tight ’fore it’s over / ’Cause time is a gift / Let’s all be kids / grateful to have one another / Oh, welcome home to the season of lights and wonder."
"That is just everything to me," he says. "This is what I need to hear. This is what I need to feel."
Eldredge and Kesselman also tailored a song specifically to lure Kelly Clarkson into a duet. The superstar had previously tapped Eldredge to join her on "Under the Mistletoe," which she co-wrote for her 2021 holiday album. The two artists had never met when she extended the invite, and Eldredge says, he jumped at the chance. As a teenager, he’d rooted for Clarkson when she won the first American Idol in 2002, and he even made the trek from his hometown of Paris, Illinois, just to see her perform in Indianapolis on an Idol tour.
"When she reached out to do 'Under the Mistletoe,'" says Eldredge, "that was just mind-blowing. It was such a magical thing to get to sing with her. Our voices just meshed really well, and it was the kind of experience that I thought, what if we can do it again?"
Crossing his fingers, he sent her the demo of the new duet, "Sweet December."
"Within minutes — like, four minutes, probably whatever it takes to listen to the song — she hit me back, ‘I love this. I would love to sing it with you,'" he recalls. "And now it’s one of my favorite Christmas songs I’ve recorded."
Eldredge has even more collaborators on his title track: The background voices heard on the “la-da-da-da-da” chorus of "Merry Christmas (Welcome to the Family)" are actually the artist’s family.
"I was at my cousin’s wedding in June," Eldredge explains, "and I brought a microphone and all the recording stuff. I went in my uncle’s garage, and I hung the microphone from the ceiling and gathered a bunch of my family, and that’s what’s on the record."
In fact, the entire album glistens with a family spirit — the same spirit that Eldredge has worked to inject into his holiday shows.
"We’ve done at least seven years of touring now," he says, "so it’s got a lot of history to it, and it’s becoming like a family experience. That’s where the Welcome to the Family album came from. It has a sense of community and a sense of feeling the things that matter in life."
Courtesy
Brett Eldredge's Marry Christmas (Welcome to the Family)Eldredge strives to bring something new to every edition of the Christmas tour, though by now, he says, it’s become a challenge when so many in his audiences are returning to hear their favorites.
This year, he promises to keep what fans have come to expect, but he’s also excited to incorporate the new album. The standards and the originals, he says, each offer him a different experience as a performer.
"When I’m singing a classic, I feel like I’m kind of in the audience with everybody," he explains. "These songs are just so beloved, and there’s so much history to them that I kind of feel like part of the whole room with everyone. And then when I get to go into the original songs that I’ve written, I get to tell my story. I’m making new traditions, and I’m making them with the audience."
Related: Why Brett Eldredge Says He's 'Most Myself' on Stage: 'I Get Up There and Feel That Connection'
All but the final show will be in large theaters. The tour capstone will be Eldredge’s debut at Bridgestone Arena. Previously, he’s performed a series of smaller concerts in Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium.
"I cherish the Ryman," he says, "and I cherish the years there, but to know there’s the chance to bring this kind of Christmas spirit to just a giant level is such a fun challenge to me. Being a kid dreaming of something like this and getting to do it is insane."
After that, Eldredge says, he’ll be ready for the annual holiday gathering of his large extended family. He says: "They’re already asking, 'How do we get a ‘Welcome to the Family' shirt for everybody to match for Christmas?"
And then, he vows, he’s not going to recede until next Christmas, as he has the past couple of years.
Indeed, the holiday tours have proven to be among the few career constants in a time of dramatic transition for Eldredge. After an era of performing up to 100 shows a year, he says he’s finally allowed himself the luxury of enjoying what he calls "the normal parts of my life": working out at the neighborhood gym, hiking Tennessee’s hilly trails, sipping coffee and listening to backyard birds, working in the garden, playing pickleball, Sunday dinners with family. He hasn’t toured his country catalogue since fall 2022 or added to it since summer 2023.
"Music was always my first love, and it still is in some ways, but there’s so much more about life to love," he explains. "I’ve gotten to this place of balance, of really enjoying my private life and leaning into family. The music is so important to me in such a massive way, but every bit as important, if not more, is family and friendship and community and working on my mental health."
Eldredge has long been open about his struggles with anxiety — a particularly troublesome condition for a live performer — but he reports, "that’s something I’ve really been focusing on, and it’s put me in the best place that I’ve ever been."
The famously private artist allows that place may or may not include a romantic component. "I’m always a dodger on this," Eldredge says with a sly grin. "I won’t confirm or deny, but I will say that I am the happiest I’ve ever been, and I’ve opened my heart to love in so many ways, and I’m in a very good place with that."
Eldredge also reports that all these life changes have also refreshed him musically, "affecting the way I’m writing songs now, too." Of course, that’s good news for fans, and perhaps the best news of all is that he has more new music coming after the Christmas season.
It’s arriving, Eldredge says, with a new sense of freedom. After years with Warner Music Nashville, he’s amicably parted ways with the label recently in favor of his own independent imprint, and though he’s racked up five No. 1s on the country chart, he’s now "taking the genre idea out" of his artistic identity — perhaps no surprise, given the Sinatra-esque sounds of his Christmas music and the outside-the-box creativity of his last two country albums. But then, with Eldredge’s singularly supple and soulful voice, he could draw a crowd singing a grocery list.
Eldredge teases about the new music, offering a few hints. He reveals he’s been writing with Latin artists, bringing in sounds of the Caribbean. No doubt the Christmas albums have also drawn his interest to New York jazz and "more piano-driven" music, and he’s been dabbling in what he calls a "more romantic Americana sound."
"There’re so many different aspects of who I am," he says, "and I don’t want to leave that in the background. I want to put it up in the forefront."
No longer preoccupied with chasing radio hits and yet still trusting he will find his audience, he’s now simply chasing his boundless musical interests — "not having to answer to anything," he says, "but just my heart." And, he adds, “I love it all."
