For someone who's built an entire career around her exquisitely drawn-out, dulcet tones, jazz chanteuse Holly Cole sure talks a mile a minute.
Ask the Toronto diva about the perfect way to spend Christmas Day, for instance, and you're liable to get a completely improvised narrative that rivals even that Night Before Christmas rant in terms of sheer inventiveness and detail.
"I wake up in the morning, and somebody brings me eggs Benedict, then they wash the dishes, and I get to eat in bed while I watch episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and the British version of The Office," begins Cole, who brings her Night Before Christmas show to the Pantages Playhouse tomorrow night.
"Then they bring me orange juice and champagne, and after I drink that I slowly get up and get dressed, because I didn't wake up until about 11 a.m., and by 2 p.m. I hear a knock on the door, and it's my mom and my brother and his girlfriend and my nephew Dashiell."
Like the best jazz riffs, Cole's fantasy Christmas just keeps getting better and better, eventually including a turkey dinner with all the trimmings (made and cleaned up by a caterer, natch), a jam session of "funked-up Christmas carols" with friends, and her three-year-old nephew's infatuation with the styrofoam packing peanuts his present comes encased in.
A tall order, to say the least. But if there's anyone who knows how to do Christmas right, it's Cole, whose first EP (released all the way back in 1989) was a collection of holiday tunes, and who went on to release another full-length disc of winter standards plus a third that was only available in Japan.
Cole, who's lent her sultry, smoky pipes to compositions by everyone from Cole Porter to Tom Waits, promises tomorrow's set will be a fully secular affair and reminds fans she's not above poking fun of the holiday, given there are "so many things that are wonderful about Christmas but, at the same time, so many things that aren't."
She could do without the over-commercialization, for instance, and the guilt and stress involved with trying to keep everyone happy. But that doesn't mean she doesn't appreciate being on the receiving end of a well-thought-out gift or two, much like kindred spirit Eartha Kitt, whose Santa Baby is a fixture of Cole's show.
"Everyone's always saying how Christmas is about the spirit of giving," Cole quips. "But if there's no one around to be in the spirit of getting, then it doesn't really work, does it?"
Cole's biggest gift to her fans will be a few weeks late this year -- she's due to release her new album This House Is Haunted in mid-January. The record marks a bit of a departure, since in addition to marking the release of her first self-penned tune, it also finds her paired with a retro-sounding horn section arranged by frequent collaborator Greg Cohen (who happens to be Tom Waits' brother-in-law).
And that ideal Christmas Day we were talking about? Just how much of that does Cole expect to become a reality this year?
"Well, my boyfriend and my (family) will be there, and there will be a turkey," she says. "But best of all, I've already seen Dashiell playing with styrofoam and I know he loves it. So I'm looking forward to the styrofoam throwing the most."
Tickets to Cole's holiday extravaganza are available for $39.50 at Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.ca or 780-3333), or there's an $89.50 option that includes premium seats, an autographed CD and a post-concert reception.
