Joe Christmas

1992–1997

originally published January 17, 2007

Joe Christmas remains an anomaly in the history of 1990s Athens music. Why? Because the members came to town as a fully formed band, enjoyed immediate success and garnered serious label interest at a time when local bands were, generally speaking, happy just to have cassette copies of a demo tape to sell at shows.

The infancy of the band took place in the Mableton and Austell areas of Cobb County. After playing together for a couple of years under various names (including Crayons and Subliminal Neckties), founding members Zachary Gresham and Russell Holbrook shared an English class and took the name Joe Christmas from the protagonist in William Faulkner's Light in August.

"Me and Russell became best friends as freshman in high school and started playing music. We read Faulkner and thought Joe Christmas would be a good name. This was like our junior year, or the summer between junior and senior year. We had already put out one tape called Oatmeal and it had seven songs on it," says Gresham. After high school, Gresham moved to Athens and Holbrook moved to Macon, GA to attend Mercer University, where he met future Joe Christmas drummer Philip Brown. After signing a deal with Nashville label Flying Tart Records, Joe Christmas found itself in need of a drummer after original beatkeeper Jason Dempsey's departure. "Their drummer kind a bailed on them. They got called to do the record in Nashville and since me and Russell had already been playing some music together, they asked me," says Brown.

At The Time

The band's relationship with Flying Tart would last for only one release: the "Coupleskate" 7" single. The band's debut album Upstairs; Overlooking would be sold by the label to then-fledgling Tooth and Nail, which has alternately promoted itself as both a secular label and a Christian rock label, and this relationship would confuse fans and confound the band for the rest of its existence. Gresham says, "Somehow the guy from Tooth and Nail got a copy of the record and wooed us. He bought the first album and we did a second one with them. I didn't know a whole lot about them. The guy that ran it said all the right things. But we had all these kids come out who thought we were a Christian rock band because we were on Tooth and Nail. And that's boring. No one who's in the rock and roll lifestyle wants to be called a Christian rock band. I mean, anyone who knew us knew that wasn't the case."

The band made immediate inroads into the Athens scene with its unassuming, and often sweetly delivered, brand of pure indie pop. It wasn't very twee and it was far from the psychedelic folk-rock being pursued by the then-newborn Elf Power, but they had a clear sense of pop structure and Gresham's lyrics were pretty honest and clearly delivered. It was also a case of being in the right place at the right time; as the Athens scene shifts every four years or so, the mid-'90s saw a seismic drift away from the old guard (then made up of Hayride, Harvey Milk, Magneto, etc.).

Gresham and Brown wound up living in the Reese Street house known as The Landfill - so christened by the father of a girlfriend of fellow resident Phil Waldorf - and Joe Christmas had a front-row seat at ground zero of the emerging mid-'90s scene. Particularly memorable was Neutral Milk Hotel's first Athens show, which saw that band opening for Joe Christmas. The heat inside the house reached more than 100 degrees, and Brown remembers partygoers being so heat-exhausted that precious few made it back inside for the second set.

He also recalls, "There's some good and some bad. One show that sticks out because it was so packed: us, Elf Power and [Teen Beat recording artists] Tuscadero at the 40 Watt. Tuscadero had this thing where they said, ‘You have to pay us 200 bucks and then we have to leave immediately after we play!' It was awesome, they left and we wound up splitting 1500 bucks! They should have stuck around and gotten an even split. We would've gladly given them so much more money, back then it was an unwritten rule that the touring bands got the money, we would take maybe 50 bucks."

In addition to the 40 Watt and The Landfill, the band also regularly played The Atomic Music Hall and did a decent amount of ill-fated touring. Brown says, "We did a good bit of touring, but it was in big chunks. We did this one tour that lasted three months. Whoever was doing the booking was new to booking - we'd have a show in Denver and then the next night in Seattle and then have two days to get to Texas! We'd have a show in Charlotte and then the booking agent told us we had to be in California the next day! It was crazy."

Why The Split?

After the band recorded its second album, North to the Future, Philip and Gresham were becoming increasingly frustrated by Holbrook and bass player Ryan Weaver's refusal to move to Athens and make Joe Christmas more of a brotherhood than a mere band. "We had, like, a 'meeting' at a Waffle House one day. It had been kinda coming. We had been asking Russell and Ryan to move to Athens and make it 100 percent," says Brown. "They didn't want to move to Athens. Ryan, I think, felt like Athens was kinda snobby. Even though people were coming to our shows, I don't think he felt really comfortable or included. Me and Zachary were seeing all these other bands who got to practice together all the time and, since we only got practice sporadically, we were getting sick of having to only play the same songs at every show."

Gresham says, "We never hit our full potential because we weren't playing together or living together."

Brown continues, "I think that's the story of most Athens bands. You either turn a corner or you don't. Another thing that happened was we went out to Chicago to record with Bob Weston [who produced North to the Future] and were really happy with it. I took a copy back to our house where Will Hart lived, also. We played our new record for him, and he said, 'That sounds pretty good,' and then he asked us to listen to his new record [Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk at Cubist Castle] and, of course, we were floored."

These Days…

In the aftermath of Joe Christmas, Gresham and Brown continued playing together and went on to form the popular and critically acclaimed Summer Hymns. Russell Holbrook plays in Atlanta-area band Choose Your Own Adventure. Unfortunately, Jason Dempsey and Ryan Weaver could not be tracked down for this article.

Gordon Lamb

That Beat in Time is a biweekly feature examining dearly departed local acts worth digging up.