The Story Behind the Song: "A Wintertime Feast"
- Kinnfolk
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Our newest song, "A Wintertime Feast," came out on Friday, November 21st! 🎉🎶❄️
Not only is this our first holiday recording EVER, but it's also a 100% Kinnfolk original! This cozy song tells the story of a group of woodland critters coming together for a Christmas Eve meal. From concept, to recording, to our first collaboration with an illustrator, there's plenty to share about this track. It's story time!
Based on a Scottish Waulking Song
🎶The mouse she awoke on a cold Christmas Eve
Hee-uh ro, hoo-uh ro, ho-ree oh ho
I'll host a feast such has never been seen
Hee-uh ro, hoo-uh ro, ho-ree oh ho 🎶
What are those strange words on the 2nd and 4th line? If it looks like nonsense to you, you'd be right. Julie based "A Wintertime Feast" on the Scottish waulking song, a type of work song traditionally sung by women while waulking wool.
The goal of any work song is to coordinate movement within a group of people. This "call and response" structure involves one person leading the song and everyone else jumping in on the refrain, all in service of performing a repetitive task. Waulking songs often involve a story (or local gossip) interspersed by a refrain made up of vocables (percussive nonsense words).
🎶Hee-uh ro, hoo-uh ro, ho-ree oh ho 🎶
And so we have a cute little song about woodland creatures showing up for a party! If this were a real waulking song, the singer might improvise additional verses with other animals and their potluck treats.
Who else may have shown up for the party, and what food did they bring? That's up to you!
Celtic "Peter and the Wolf"
Now that we'd written the song, we needed to record it. Julie made a suggestion on our first day in the studio: what if we added a new instrument each time an animal arrived for the party? It would be like a Celtic "Peter and the Wolf," with each animal represented by a unique musical sound.
And so we started matching animals to Irish traditional instruments. The sparrow? Obviously a tin whistle! The mole? Better be a bodhran with its deep, grounded voice. Josh's mandolin is always an anchor in Kinnfolk's sound, so we assigned that instrument to the mouse: the party's host!
We've experimented with a fuller sound before. Our third album, Star Above the Mountain, features five additional musicians who helped us capture the stories and sounds of Roanoke. Unlike that album, however, all of the instruments in "A Wintertime Feast" are performed by us! Julie played percussion and whistles, while Josh handled everything with strings.
We finish off the track with the traditional tune "The Humors of Glendart"--we like to pretend that the animals pulled out their instruments after the feast and enjoyed a home session to ring in the holiday!
Working with Illustrator Anna Lark
"A Wintertime Feast" has a distinct storybook feel, so we decided we wanted to collaborate with an illustrator to bring the characters to life. We found Anna Lark through her work for Cantrip Candles. Anna specializes in adorable rodents (she runs the annual #Rattober illustration challenge over on Instagram), so we knew she'd be a great fit.
We supplied Anna a copy of the lyrics and told her the general vibe we were looking for (words like "Wind in the Willows," "Redwall," and "Irish traditional session" definitely came up), and then she went to work! She supplied concept sketches all along the way, allowing us to tweak details as the art slowly developed.
She was especially focused on getting the Irish trad instruments right, which we truly appreciated! You can see how some of the details of the instruments (such as the mole's grip on the bodhran) evolved over time.
Not only did she design the colorful cover art for the track, but she also gave us her initial concept sketches to use in the music video. Layered onto paper along with the hand-written lyrics, the video captures the storybook vibe perfectly!
Listen Now!
“A Wintertime Feast” is officially available across all music platforms! We hope you enjoy the song--we certainly had a great time putting it together. And if you have any thoughts about the new song, we'd love to hear them!
Need a whole playlist of Celtic Christmas music to help you ring in the season? We've got you covered:
Wishing you a warm and cheerful holiday season,
~Julie & Josh