We Three Queens
Some Christmas Songs

This entire album was my friend Kevin’s brainchild. I’d flown down from Guangzhou to spend Christmas with him (and unbeknownst to me at that time, my friend Hannah) in Pontianak, this backwater town in western Borneo where he’d been teaching English. We were playing tunes on guitar the afternoon I arrived when he informed me of this idea of working on an album as a Christmas gift to his parents. It must have been growing roots, tendrils, and flowers in his brain for months. Then, following Hannah’s surprise arrival (indeed, I screamed) a few days later, we had the added blessing of her talents. She’d brought her melodica.

For a trio of ardent liberal athiests, we made an album that would have made the most severe Jesus freak swoon. We worked pretty hard selecting the songs and fine-tuning the arrangements. With the help of our man Ogus at Maestro Records, we finished recording the whole thing in three hours for just under 17 bucks. An afternoon was spent making the album covers out of brown paper, ink, potato stamps, and the Pontianak Post, just in time for it to make our mothers cry when they heard it Christmas Eve.