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Yule love it: Ex-Brooklynites Emily Miller and Zara Bode
will return to the borough for the “10th Annual Sweetback
Sisters Country Christmas Sing-Along Spectacular,” which
will fill the Bell House with honky-tonk arrangements of
holiday favorites on Dec. 19. Anja Shutz
Honky-tonk holidays
Sweetback Sisters celebrate 10th sing-along spectacular
COURIER LIFE, D 24-7 EC. 14-20, 2018 41
By Kevin Duggan Call it the Jingle Bell House.
The Sweetback Sisters will
bring the gift of honky-tonk yuletide
tunes back to the Bell House on
Dec. 19, while celebrating the band’s
10th Annual Country Christmas Singalong
Spectacular. At the show, the
seven-piece will play holiday favorites
arranged for public participation and
performed in country, Americana, and
swing styles, in a red-and-green extravaganza
that has been growing for the
past decade, according to one of the two
titular singers.
“Our motto is that nothing is too much
trouble for Christmas, so we are definitely
pulling out everything we have,”
said Emily Miller, who forms the vocal
center of the band along with her friend
(and not relation) Zara Bode.
The Christmas spectacular started
with a modest show at Red Hook’s Jalopy
Theatre in 2009, but now includes several
stockings stuffed with songs to get
people in the holiday spirit, including
“Sleigh Ride,” “The Christmas Song,”
and the old-timey classic “Christmas
Island,” made famous by the Andrews
Sisters and Bing Crosby.
When the band formed around the two
singers in 2006, they drew inspiration
from the distinctive sound of early 20th
century family acts, like the Andrews
Sisters, the Louvin Brothers, and the
Carter Family, according to Miller.
“There were a lot of brother and sister
duets in country music, so we wanted to
do the same thing with our vocal harmonies,”
she said.
The band grew to include guitar, bass,
drums, and a fiddle, and this year will
debut as a seven-piece, introducing an
organ and a saxophone for the first time,
Miller said.
The band’s annual Christmas tour
is its most popular show, and each year
draws more people, said Miller. The holiday
spectacular moved to the Bell House
in 2015, where the crowds immediately
made use of the larger digs, Miller said.
“The first year at the Bell House we
had a spontaneous conga line during the
encore,” she said.
The show attracts new Christmas fans
each year, along with long-time carolers
who have made a tradition of attending
the show, Miller said.
“It’s a broad range of people coming,
everyone from people in their 20s, who
might’ve just moved to New York and
are enjoying their own new holiday traditions,
to older families,” she said.
Miller and Bode have each moved
out of Kings County, going from Carroll
Gardens to West Virginia and from
Downtown to Vermont, respectively, but
the borough remains the band’s spiritual
home.
“We still consider Brooklyn a home of
the band, because it started there,” Miller
said, and Bell House crowds consistently
give them a warm welcome.
“The crowd is equally a part of making
the show — the Brooklyn show
especially — and I always look forward
to singing really loudly with people in
Brooklyn,” she said.
“The Sweetback Sisters Country
Christmas Sing-along Spectacular” at
the Bell House 149 Seventh St., between
Second and Third avenues in Gowanus,
www.thebellhouseny.com. Dec. 19 at 7:30
pm. $20 ($15 in advance).
/www.thebellhouseny.com