The True Olympians bring their own humor to holiday tunes -- but they’ll do it in Tacoma
Though he’s not that big on the holiday, Tom Dyer of Olympia has been making Christmas music for more than 30 years.
Dyer and his merry band, the True Olympians, just released a Christmas compilation, and the self-described “above-average rock band” is playing a holiday-themed show Thursday, Dec. 23, in Tacoma.
How festive will things get at the show? The True Olympians, whom Dyer says got the gig because of their sheer volume of suitable tunes, are opening for Seattle’s Dancer and Prancer, which plays traditional holiday tunes in surf-rock style.
And the whole band — Dyer, Joe Cason, Lisa Ceazan, Michael Stein and Gen Tveden — will be decked out for the occasion in the same elf shirts they wear on the cover of the new album, a photo taken at the local JCPenney Photo Studio.
The shirts and the provenance of the photo give some idea of the humor that characterizes the band’s oeuvre. Another clue: The band’s bio notes that the Olympians “have not participated in any Olympic events.” (That said, all of the members do live in Olympia.)
The new compilation is Dyer’s third devoted to Dec. 25. The first, “Xmas — 30 Years in the Making,” came out in 2014, decades after Dyer began creating Christmas tunes both classic (“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”) and original (“No Lou This Christmas,” a tribute to Lou Reed).
Making holiday tunes “started out as a lark for me and then kind of snowballed,” Dyer told The Olympian. “My first two Christmas songs were released in 1984 on a cassette compilation, ‘He Knows When You’ve Been Sleeping,’ put out by some Evergreen students as a class project. …
“After that, I recorded the occasional Christmas song for fun, but it really got out of hand in 2009 when I restarted my Green Monkey Records label. That Christmas, we did our first Northwest Xmas compilation of music submitted by local musicians. … We have done compilations annually ever since, except two years when we did live Christmas shows.”
The True Olympians’ history with Christmas, though, goes back only a few years, and so does the band itself. Its 2017 debut single, “Christmas in Olympia,” mentions such local institutions as Encore Chocolates and Teas and Rainy Day Records, and is distinguished by the number of times the title is heard in the lyrics (30).
“It’s fun to actually play some original Christmas songs,” Stein told The Olympian. “My True Olympian favorites are ‘Christmas Train,’ which includes presents delivered to Martians by train, and ‘Lonely Little Christmas Tree,’ which has ’50s heartbreak-ballad vibe.”
Last year, the Olympians released “Pandemic Christmas,” a humbuggy offering that includes such lyrics as “The U.S.A. is number one/For infections and deaths.” (Ho-ho.)
Christmas isn’t the only holiday the band celebrates, either. Its last show, on Feb. 1, 2020, was a “(Nearly) Groundhog’s Day Spectacle” at Octapas Café’s original Fourth Avenue location. “We made groundhog masks for everyone who came to that show,” Dyer said.
The band has kept busy during the pandemic, though. Besides releasing the new compilation, described online as “the miracle of christmas, writ small,” the Olympians have been working on “Olympia: A True Story,” which will eventually include 35-40 songs on three CDs.
“It’s mostly historical songs, going back to before the arrival of white settlers,” said Dyer, who grew up in Olympia and moved back six years ago.
For a while, the band was recording everything remotely, but the members are now “triple-vaccinated,” as Dyer puts it, and back in the studio together.
“We’ve also been getting a few Olympia guest stars — Arrington de Dionyso from Old Time Relijun, Dave Harvey from Nudity and Bob Hart from the No Toy Boys, plus I cut a tune ‘Grandma Caught The Shark’ with Tye Menser’s bluegrass band, The Oly Mountain Boys. It’s the true story of my grandparents catching a 12-foot basking shark in Mud Bay, which made the front page of the Daily Olympian on July 30, 1957.”
Tom Dyer and the True Olympians
- What: Dyer and the True Olympians, who just released a new album of Christmas originals, are playing a holiday show with Seattle’s Dancer and Prancer.
- When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 23
- Where: The Spanish Ballroom at McMenamin’s, 565 Broadway, Tacoma
- Tickets: Free
- More information: https://www.mcmenamins.com/events/228485-dancer-prancer-tom-dyer-the-true-olympians
- Also: The venue requires proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test for those 12 and older.