A Junkman's Christmas Eve

This book came about because of my love for Christmas, its music, its celebration of some best of us that exists beyond the personal measuring tools we ve concocted to call our work-a-day world the good or successful life. I believe there s not one of us that don t get stopped in their tracks when a song that accompanied a formative story of our lives - love, adventure or sadness - plays out of the blue. Ever since I first walked into the living room where my dad would play his classical and popular LPs in India where I grew up, the melodies, harmonies, voices and lyrics of music made sense of the sentences that rattled out of a noisy world each day. A Junkman s Christmas Eve was inspired by a memory of my father who spent much of his life as a missionary with my mom in India where I, along with 6 of my 7 siblings, was born. He was an artful fix-it man with an amazing gift for repurposing any odd widget and whatchamacallit into a part for some injured car or household appliance. One Christmas, when I was just 4 years old, my parents made an error in the present count, leaving me short a few gifts as my brothers and sisters proceeded to unwrap their treasures. I burst into tears and he burst into action, retreating to his office, a menagerie of papers piled high, greasy gears, springs sprung, bolts and keys without a lock to open. He quickly grabbed 4 or 5 items, wrapped them in newspaper and brought them out to me as the forgotten gifts. My father was a hurricane of a man; spirited, inspired, tortured and funny, who finally passed away of cancer at the young age of 59. But he left me a Christmas memory as a reminder of what he lived for and believed...that one is never too far-gone to be loved, significant and useful. From that childhood memory came the song A Junkman s Christmas which we have performed for many years on Stars and Promises, our annual Christmas concert tour, which, in turn inspired the story of Ernie the Junkman. I was fortunate to work on this book with award-winning artist Phyllis London who, with her detailed, colorful and vibrant illustrations, brought the world and characters of A Junkman s Christmas Eve to life. Working primarily in watercolor, her work hangs in private, public and corporate collections across the country. She is also a Signature Artist Member of the Noyes Museum of Art. For over a year, Phyllis and I communicated between Nashville and New Jersey starting with sketches, editing each page down to the last detail, moving on to the watercolor painting and finally the finishing touches before printing the book. The last page contains a QR code that can be scanned to play the A Junkman s Christmas Eve song. Over the year it took to complete the book, Phyllis and I were struck by the many parallels between the worlds of music and painting; a character s movement, hue, light, shadow, saturation and focus coexisted with musical siblings; rhythmic feel, timbre, tone, musical rests, compression and the final mixing of the recorded song. It s been a joy to do this work and immensely satisfying to finally have the A Junkman s Christmas Eve available to all.