Concerts

Celebrate the season with Aimee Mann & Ted Leo in Boston

The Aimee Mann & Ted Leo Christmas Show will arrive at its regular stomping ground, The Wilbur, on Dec. 27.

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While not exactly an odd couple, Aimee Mann and Ted Leo are a somewhat unlikely musical pair.

However, it didn’t take too long for them to connect when their paths eventually crossed.

Commenting on when he served as Mann’s opening act in 2012, Leo said in a 2015 Vanyaland interview, “Within two weeks of getting home she had sent me the first verse and chorus of a new song. We just started working together and it took off from there.”

The result was their releasing an album together as The Both in April 2014.

Later that year, they recorded the song “Nothing Left to Do (Let’s Make This Christmas Blue)” and did their first Christmas gigs together. Another holiday tour and song, “You’re A Gift,” followed in 2015.

Mann had begun performing her own Christmas shows in 2006, shortly after she released “One More Drifter in the Snow,” which consisted mostly of songs to which pretty much all who observe Dec. 25 – and many of those who don’t – know every single word.

The Wilbur’s event page (click on “read more” under BIO) for the Dec. 27 event offers a comically long list of movie, TV, and music stars who have appeared as guests at various Aimee Mann and Ted Leo Christmas Shows.

From what I can gather, the 2014 Boston performance featured Jonathan Coulton (with whom Mann frequently tours and collaborates), Buffalo Tom’s Bill Janvoitz, and Susanna Hoffs, who – according to Brett Milano’s Arts Fuse review – “delivered a parody of her Bangles hit ‘Walk Like an Egyptian,’ with part-Hebrew lyrics about Hanukkah.”

In 2015, the guests were Coulton, John Roderick of Seattle’s The Long Winters, and Liz Phair, who – according to setlists from other gigs – changed her lyric “why can’t I breathe” to “why can’t I wreath.”

In addition to better and lesser-known holiday favorites, the concerts have included both obscure (“It’s Christmas Time” by Status Quo) and instantly recognizable (“Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues) season-appropriate rock songs and non-yuletide solo material by each of the artists who occupy the stage throughout the course of the evening.

With the participants performing in various combinations and contributing other bits of holiday-related entertainment, these concerts are by no means gimmicks. Rather, they are a fun and unique way to relax before or — in this case — unwind after what for many is one of the most significant days of the year.