For most listeners, music is a year-round experience. Yet there’s an entire category of music that’s enjoyed during the holiday season, and created expressly for the period around Christmas. And while Chip Davis didn’t have that sort of music in mind when he launched his musical career, it’s certainly where he ended up.
By adulthood, the formally trained Ohio native had settled in Omaha, Nebraska, where he wrote advertising jingles and had a hand in composing the 1974 CB radio-themed novelty hit “Convoy.” But nothing in his work to that point hinted at the direction he’d soon pursue.
Originally conceived as a sort of proto-New Age musical endeavor, Mannheim Steamroller got off to a slow start but gathered commercial success with a series of albums under the Fresh Aire banner. A decade after Mannheim Steamroller’s recorded debut, Davis recorded and released Mannheim Steamroller Christmas on his own American Gramaphone label. A runaway success, that album landed both with critics and the listening public.
Mannheim Steamroller Christmas took on a life of its own: to date Davis has released 30 Christmas-themed albums, including compilations and titles under his own name. And his success has been consistent; more than a dozen of those albums soared into the Top Ten on the New Age and/or Holiday album charts; eight went platinum or multi-platinum.
The next logical step for Davis was to take the project on the road. This he did, eventually employing two complete musical casts, crisscrossing the country during the yuletide season.
Tom Sharpe was one of the kids who fell in love with the debut album back in 1984. “I was in my early teens, and I was on a music career path already,” he recalls. “And when I heard that album for the first time, I had to listen to it twice; I was blown away by it.”
As a drummer, multi-instrumentalist and composer, Sharpe would go on to a prestigious career of his own, leading the Sharpe World Music Ensemble. But through it all, Sharpe often found himself coming back to that album he first discovered as a teen.
Fast forward to 2024. Sharpe is currently the drummer for the touring ensemble of Chip Davis’ long-running project. “This is my 17th year with Mannheim Steamroller,” Sharpe says. The current tour celebrates the 40th anniversary of Mannheim Steamroller Christmas, and Sharpe says that the music continues to speak to him as a listener. “Each year when I come back to the music, it’s almost like listening to it for the first time,” he says.
Sharpe appreciates Davis’ composition not only from a listener’s perspective, but as a fellow musician as well. “There’s always something challenging about this music,” he says. “After 17 years of performing it, I still feel like it’s Year One as far as my excitement about it and what it’s going to bring to audiences.”
With such a deep catalog of holiday-themed music, Mannheim Steamroller has the latitude of presenting a completely different set of songs for each of its seasonal tours. “I think Chip does a great job of balance,” Sharpe says, noting that Davis—who does not perform with the ensemble—takes a very active role in programming the concerts. “There are people who are coming to hear ‘Carol of the Bells’ and ‘Deck the Halls.’ And we’re going to play those.” He notes that there are a number of pieces that figure into every single show, year after year. “But when I see the new tour’s set list, there are always new pieces,” Sharpe says. “Or older pieces, and I’ll say, ‘Wow, we haven’t done that one for ten years! And I’m glad it’s back.’”
Chip Davis got his start as a drummer, and he brings a percussionist’s sensibility to the Mannheim Steamroller material. And Sharpe shares that perspective. “When they first toured, Chip would be the drummer,” he explains. “So I have a very big responsibility to care for his music. I’m never going to be Chip, but I want people to walk out after the show and say, ‘That guy was great!’”
The groups gear up every year around September, honing the arrangements before setting out on a schedule that brings Mannheim Steamroller’s Christmas show to 85 cities in seven weeks. Sharpe appreciates that he’s sharing what he describes as “legacy music” with concert audiences. “People who came [in years past] were bringing their children, and now those children are bringing their children,” he says. “It’s more than simply playing some Christmas music, saying, ‘I hope you had fun’ and sending people on their way; we’re doing something special here.”
Mannheim Steamroller Christmas play at 7:30pm on Nov. 26 at the Center for the Performing Arts, 255 Almaden Blvd., San Jose. Tickets: $78.71+. broadwaysanjose.com
