Mikel Erentxun: “I can say that I have been with Santa Claus himself in his house in Lapland”

Although they were born to celebrate these dates, the songs from his album ‘Navidad’ will be able to be played live in the concerts that Mikel gives from now on, because they have the ingredients of any good composition from San Sebastián, and furthermore, their route has no Why be so short because every time Christmas comes, you can set your own Mariah Carey: that is, bill streaming views because your fans will surely continue listening to them on these dates throughout their lives. «At first it was going to be a covers album -the author points out-, but in the end, with one exception, it became an album of own songs that They don’t have to be Christmas carols.but simply Christmas songs. It is a very homemade album, very homely and familiar, very acoustic and simple, very folkie, very intimate and wintery.

Creating new Christmas songs is quite a challenge, because deep down, Christmas offers a very limited lyrical terrain. “Totally,” Erentxun agrees. «You can talk about the snow, the reindeer, Santa Claus… and you can stretch the gum little else (laughs). But I have treated it in a conceptual way, so that the songs are stories that happen at Christmas. Some are in the form of a Christmas carol, but others could go on a normal record. “Christmas is the axis of the stories, and there are happy ones and also sad ones, because it is still a time of very strong contrasts depending on the moment in your life.”

Another important challenge was getting into the Christmas skin to record the songs… in the middle of June. “We decorated the studio as if it were Christmas, with its tree and everything, while it was really hot outside,” says Mikel, laughing. “You had to get into the role, and in fact I was already quite involved because I wrote the songs during the previous months, and my daily conversations were like: “Hey, what was the name of Santa’s reindeer?” (laughs). The photo on the cover, which is very wintery, was also taken in the middle of summer. “So I had to put on a coat and everything, to pose in artificial snow at forty degrees.”

Mikel Erentxun’s favorite Christmas albums are “Bob Dylan’s, which is covers and quite recent, the ‘Christmas’ that Elvis Presley recorded in the fiftiesthat of the Beach Boys, that of Nick Lowe with his own songs, in Spain those of Raphael…”. You will hear all of them this Christmas as a family, “some days with mine, others with my wife’s,” like every year except the one they traveled to Minneapolis to spend “at twenty degrees below zero and six feet of snow” with a daughter. that they had there studying. Also He was once in Lapland, “and we went to Santa’s house”he assures. “I can say that we were with him in person, surrounded by small children, a very beautiful and endearing thing.”

At his parents’ house, Mikel has put up an artificial Christmas tree that he has had for a long time, and that he always says he is going to throw away even though every year he regrets it at the last minute. «He’s huge, man, he’s like four meters tall! (laughs). It takes a day to set it up, and another to take it down. And then it gets lazy… But in the end every year we dust it off from the garage, it’s like another tradition.” What is not tradition is that he cooks: «We always go to my parents’ house or my wife’s house and what we bring is wine. The only time I have made dinner was during the pandemic and well, it turned out more or less well (laughs).”