BROOKINGS A Delaney Christmas Concert XV is again coming to Brookings: Friday, Dec. 15, at 7 p.m., at the Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center. Free for all ages.
Brothers Evan Delaney, 37, and Tristan Delaney, 40, will be joined by drummer Owen Parsley and base guitarist Rick Eggebrecht. Parsley has been part of the group for more than a decade. Evan will do vocal and guitar. Tristan will be rhythm and lead guitar and supporting vocal.
The most recent Delaney Christmas Holiday Concert was in December 2021 at Gracepoint Wesleyan Church.
Weve got a very eclectic assortment of Christmas songs, from contemporary to traditional, Evan explained. The approach for me when we first started doing this forever ago, now was that everybody knows the Christmas melodies. Theyre all familiar with O Holy Night and Silent Night and all the ones that are traditional.
For me it got to the point where people love these melodies but they hate Christmas music. Theyre sick of that schmaltzy stuff that you hear at the mall, radio, muzak instead of music.
I love these classic melodies, these traditional melodies that we all grew up with; but I wanted to take them and do something more exciting with them, something more upbeat. So what we did: we kept the melodies. We retained the things that people would recognize, so there was that through line that they could connect to and turned them mostly into rock songs.
Weve got a couple of songs that are just those fun, we-enjoy-the-Christmas-season type songs. We enjoy those, too. But primarily were doing what would be the sacred-type of Christ-child-birth type songs. We havent debased them by making them up-tempo.
New venue: Oscar Larson Theatre
The brothers recalled that in the earlier days of the Delaney concerts at smaller venues, the performances lasted maybe an hour and a half. This years concert will run close to two hours.
I dont think it started that way, Tristan said, looking back to the earlier days of the Delaney Christmas concerts. It was just Evan and I on acoustic guitars. They were just a little less intensive, time-wise.
I think ever since weve done the more upscale and bigger stuff, at the Performing Arts Center here, thats always been a couple hours, or so.
I havent been into the Performing Arts Center since its renovation and expansion, Evan explained. Weve historically played in the (Larson Memorial Concert Hall), which is the 1,000-seater concert hall on the left-hand side of the entry.
The challenge for that hall is, well the challenge for any proper rock band with acoustic drums and everything, that its a very reverberant hall. Its designed for orchestration, choirs, things like that.
So when you put loud, electrified, super-volume-type groups in that space, it can be very reflective; it can be very noisy, very hard to control. So thats what weve done. But I hadnt yet seen the new Oscar Larson Theatre (a proscenium theater) on the right-hand side, with its 850 seats for more proper stage production-type things.
We met with one of the directors there and walked into that space there. One of the first things I said was that the acoustics there were substantially more controlled and were taking this one this year.
The two brothers have been playing together for more than 20 years. No one better to play with than your family, your brother, Evan said. A third Delaney brother, Liam, was at one time part of the group; but he has since moved from Brookings. But I cant recall what brought us to the Christmas part of it. We used to play at the Wesleyan Church (Gracepoint). Theres a college ministry called Oasis, which we were part of. Thats grown exponentially since our departure from being part of that team.
Somewhere during that time, the brothers cobbled together a bunch of songs into their first show, two acoustics (guitars) and about 170 people came.
That was the beginning more than 15 years ago. Now theres more than music: Add some refreshments.
The reason its free is that this is our gift back to our community, Evan said. Were sons of Brookings. Weve lived here and grown up here. This is something we love to do. Its no small time commitment, the man-hours of rehearsal over several months.
One of the other things that we do, not doing just the music. We have an intermission where we have different people bring homemade baked goods, hot cocoa and cider. Its just a further treat between our blocks of music. We like to give the opportunity for anyone who wants to come in, make some baked goods, some snacks, some treats. Everybody gets to have some.
Contact John Kubal at [email protected].
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