Artists reflect on their favorite holiday moments

With the holiday season once upon us again, we asked some of our favorite artists to ponder the most memorable gift that they’ve ever given or received, the gift they want most this year and a notable holiday performance that they’ve attended or played. From the literal to the metaphysical, and the old to the new, their responses elicited a range of emotions that got us thinking about our own holiday highlights.

Here are our first four, with more on the way…_

MIKE GORDON
Bass
Phish, Mike Gordon Band

What is your favorite holiday gift that you’ve given or received?
A white, black and red RadioShack cassette recorder received when I was about five for Hanukkah.

What gift do you want most this year?
A small piece of petrified lava enhanced by the blessings of a Peruvian shaman so that it can help one to accurately predict the past.

What is your favorite holiday show as a fan or performer?
As a fan/performer, I caught the New Year’s ‘95 Phish show at B.B. King’s in New York City when they videoblasted it. I dug it much more than I had at the time, enough to text bandmates.

AL SCHNIER
Guitar/Vocals
moe.

What is your favorite holiday gift that you’ve given or received?
Over two years ago, my wife gave me a wallet made out of tyvek paper (same as express mailing envelope) and it’s still my only wallet.

What gift do you want most this year?
A 1959 Gibson Les Paul guitar.

What is your favorite holiday show as a fan or performer?
My wife surprised me and took me to see A Prairie Home Companion when they came to New York City about 15 years ago.

MICKEY HART
Drums/Percussion
Grateful Dead, Rhythm Devils

What is your favorite holiday gift that you’ve given or received?
I wrote my wife a love song for Valentine’s Day five years ago. It’s called “Endless Skies.” I just recorded it and the song will be on the next album I am working on now with my band.

What gift do you want most this year?
Forty more years of life.

What is your favorite holiday show as a fan or performer?
The Grateful Dead, New Year’s Eve, 1968/1969 New Year’s Eve. We had all the guitarists and drummers in San Francisco onstage and played “Midnight Hour” all night.

TOM BLANKENSHIP
Bass
My Morning Jacket

What is your favorite holiday gift that you’ve given or received?
Christmas, my freshman year of high school, when my dad put together a “super stereo” in my bedroom using his well-loved components of old. Uncountable mix tapes were crafted in the wee hours under the soft blue glow of that old Pioneer receiver that once created a low-fi light show in our smokey den two decades earlier. Staring into the face of the tuner now is like a daydream portal into 40 years of family adventures.

What gift do you want most this year?
A Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. I lost mine years ago.

What is your favorite holiday show as a fan or performer?
Our New Year’s Eve show at The Fillmore in San Francisco, 2006-2007. There’s no better way to celebrate the hope of another year than being murdered and eaten by your friends on the Oregon Trail, coming back as an angel to help said friends play a show to ring in the new year only to murder them in the finale and lead them up a white staircase to heaven. Happy endings still exist.

More to come. Stay tuned…