Production Notes on Christmas in a Small Town
by Ricky Tims

This project began as a result of a combination of events all converging at the same time. The first factor was my moving to the tiny mountain town of La Veta, Colorado in December of 2003. Next, it was living in that small town and experiencing the "simple life" on a grand scale. My affection for the town led me to compose a Christmas song (Christmas in a Small Town) about living there and that led to doing a Christmas concert featuring that song. Doing a concert required me to begin working on new arrangements and over the past few years, the concerts combined with the new arrangements led to the logical conclusion to create a recording. 

For the Christmas concerts of 2007 I utilized a few arrangements from my Christmastime CD which had been recorded in 2002. I invited my good friend and talented vocalist Kat Bowser to participate in the production. I chose to utilize many of the songs from Christmastime and fleshed out the program with a few new arrangements. The 2007 concerts featured the premiere performances of Christmas in a Small Town, but it also included premieres of my new arrangements of Sugar Plum Fairy and Do You Hear What I Hear?.

The four 2007 concerts were so popular that the next year we scheduled six concerts over a three day period. I wanted to include new material so I arranged Fum Fum Fum, Pat-a-Pan/O Come, Emmanuel, The Huron Carol, Northern Lights, and All is Well. At this point it was evident that a new CD was brewing and I promised the 2008 audiences a new recording for the 2009 holiday season - and here it is.

In June 2009, I arranged The Holly and the Ivy, Personent Hodie/We Three Kings, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, and last, but not least, Here We Come a Wassailing. Most of the recording is done in my own studio in La Veta, Colorado, but critical parts like strings, drums, and piano were recorded at studios in Nashville, Tennessee. Although much of the project is performed by yours truly, it required a variety of fantastically talented musicians and supurb performances to put frosting on the cake and make this project all I envisioned it to be.