Singer Andrew Martin will bring his Winter Wonderland Christmas Tour to Penhold Community Church Nov. 29th.
And Christmas time is his favourite time of year.
“I love it, I can never get sick of it. I’m the guy that in February will be like ‘Okay I’m bored,’ so I’ll start singing Winter Wonderland or something,” said Martin.
He also loves the Christmas music, especially the more jazzy standards that Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra used to sing.
“Those influences are heavy in my show,” he said, later breaking into song, singing the lyrics of The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.)
Martin has been touring for a long time out west and was part of the singing Christmas tree that’s in Red Deer every year at Deer Park Alliance Church.
At this year’s concerts, he’ll be performing songs off his album Christmas Traditions as well as another album called Roots, which is a more gospel inspirational album.
“The majority of it will be our Christmas album Christmas Traditions, which has songs like Mary Did you Know, O Holy Night, Silent Night, Winter Wonderland, White Christmas, The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), and the list goes on and on,” he said.
Doing a Christmas tour is something Martin usually does, but this is the first time in six years he’s brought it to Alberta, as lots of his performances have been back home in Ontario.
Martin caught the singing bug when he was just four-years-old. There was a local church in town where his grandfather attended, and he decided to put on a Christmas pageant, asking Martin to sing a song.
“I walked to the stage and sang my song and my toes were just hanging over the edge of the stage the whole time, and as soon as I was done people applauded, and I just kept bowing and bowing, and he had to come up and take me off the stage,” said Martin.
He later began playing drums, and was on the road from 14-years-old until he was 22 as a drummer and background vocalist with lots of different groups. He later moved from being the drummer to the frontman.
“As they say the rest is history and here we are today.”
Martin is currently working on a new album, with the release date still to be determined. It will be based off their 70’s Revolution show.
Martin has decided to haul back his tour dates a bit so that he can spend more time with family, and is now doing 30 to 40 concerts a year as opposed to the 190 dates he did through 2004 and 2008.
Tickets to Martin’s Penhold show are available at the door.
