i can’t tell you how many times i have tried to sit still and write this pod.
i’ve been puttering and procrastinating and also doing some genuine life business in the last few days, since i got home from my most recent tour. i even tried while on tour, while sitting epic-ly still for HOURS in the van. but something in my mind would catch, and i would be off on a thought tangent. or else, i had just finished some more pressing busy-work and, on the edge of car-sickness, just needed to look out the window.
for months i had planned this episode to be an interview with someone rad who i hope will join us next season. so maybe that’s part of my difficulty. i wasn’t planning on opening up, writing, checking in emotionally. i was planning on listening to someone else, and doing what i love to do best: connecting awesome people whom i think should know each other, ie you listeners and my guest-to-be. stay tuned.
meanwhile there are just 3 episodes left in this 4th season of the pod, and to be honest i am dragging toward the finish line. i told myself i would do 5 years of this format, and i am proud of the archive and the writing. but girl, at this moment dad is burnt on assignments, even my own.
months ago, anticipating this malaise, i booked a fall full of my own shows. enough that i would have to tell my other projects that i was totally unavailable for the whole autumn. thus, i’ve just finished a run with my welcome to night vale family and am about to embark on a round of anti-holiday spectaculars on the west coast of the US. these shows enliven and thrill me, scratching my itch for mischief and musical play.
by the way, today’s audio is my anti-holiday song “beautiful & perfect”.
and yet, this will be the first year that i’ll be doing these shows with christian nationalists in power and more ascendant every day. i wrote and released F*CK THAT! in 2011. i toured it for a couple years, then let it go until last fall when, spurred on by my friend james’s delightful pun “kamala ye faithful”, i wrote another set of songs, F*CK U TOO!, and set off on a short set of shows.
while trump had been elected, he was not yet in office and doing exactly what he said he would do. at the shows in december 2024, we laughed because we were in anticipatory grief. but i can guarantee nobody could have known how scary and impactful everything would feel a year from then. it’s one thing to read Project 2025, it is wholly another to live within it, daily.
this year, the stakes and visibility of my very being, of what i say onstage or online, feel much different. i have an X passport, and while the state department currently says my passport is good for travel, this term the supreme court will hear a case that could render that document illegitimate.
the first time i flew under this regime, in february of 2025, i was extremely anxious. at the time my state ID was also an X gender-marker, and it was unclear if that would, ahem, fly with the TSA. in the short term i was able to fly, in the long-term i changed my state ID to F. with a lot of feelings attached, that i quickly squashed in the face of pragmatism.
i know my gender, i don’t care if the government recognizes it. or do i? because i certainly made the effort to change both license and passport to X when i could. frankly, i feel naive for even wanting my government ID to reflect my actual self. but there is the sliver of me, that has always been there, that is proud to be american. and by american, i mean the grand canyon and natural beauty and the possibilities of diverse communities working together. nothing yet has killed that part of me, though it is tired and scared.
hey yall! announcements are short and sweet this episode!
it’s time once again for my annual Anti-Holiday Spectacular, the world’s first anti-capitalist, pro-queer, suspicious of christmas-as-patriotism, sex-positive, not safe for work, multi-ethnic, radical leftist Anti-Holiday show.
there will be shows in: new york; hollywood, sacramento & bay area CA; olympia and seattle WA; and eugene and portland OR. if you’d like to be a cranky caroler at any of these shows please email me erin@erinmckeown.com. its super fun, easy, and you get to wear your worst holiday gear. as always tickets here.
if you can’t make these shows, please consider giving the gift of Anti-Holiday cheer via my online store where there’s a few CDs left and the revised 2nd edition Sacred Hymnal among other goodies.
and at the very least, i hope you’ll stream my albums F*CK THAT! and F*CK U TOO! as you cook or clean or gift or host or decorate. tis the season!
i recently went to canada and experienced the same anxiety crossing the border back to the US that i had when flying in early 2025. would everything be ok? everything was ok, and for that i am grateful. but i think the point of all this, from the people in power, is that i even have to think about it. that an already fraught experience- border-crossing as a working musician- is now stitched through with new threads of bodily fear.
for my own mental health, i have avoided internet outrage and using my online platforms to re-circulate, or even comment upon all the awfulness that’s happening. this essay feels like the most political thing i have done or said in the last year. i am grateful for my comrades who have more stamina for that sort of thing.
i have also noticed that i am watching what i say onstage. being less direct, less clearly political. i mean who am i kidding, my politics are literally on my body and in my songs. but maybe because of that, i have always let my stage persona be more sly and mischievous than overt with political rage. i have always believed whole heartedly in the radical work that laughter and old-school pleasurable entertainment can do on hearts and minds, no polemics necessary.
at this point, i try to let the audience know that i know we’re not living in normal times. it would be wierd and, frankly, untrustworthy of me to do otherwise. but then i try to move on and let the songs and my haircut speak for themselves. i know my audience, both online and in person. and i know that in general i am preaching to a progressive choir who shares my politics. it doesn’t take much guts to be political in that space, overtly or not.
but the anti-holiday spectacular, well that’s courting a whole other level of scrutiny. just last year, a reader wrote into a local paper with an op-ed chastising me for denigrating christmas and the paper for writing an arts section preview of my show. i had a laugh about it with my neighbor who brought it to my attention, and i went on doing my shows. again, it doesn’t take much guts to be progressive where i live, cranky op-eds not withstanding.
but this year, i feel a little ill when i think about promoting and advertising the anti-holiday shows, when i think about singing the songs i wrote in such whimsy and coyness. am i making myself a target? am i inviting a confrontation, or even a conversation, that i don’t want and is unwinnable anyway?
i don’t think my criticism of christmas is that dangerous. i have never advocated violence, or even made fun of it. my criticism of christmas is just true. it’s meant to be funny, and in our laughter provide some solidarity and community. i have always liked being clever and sly, but i have never liked being outright “bad” or figured as an unwelcome, or morally wrong person.
but now, in the current regime, i am suddenly persona-non-grata, non-persona with a gender that is unrecognized by the state, poking a christmas bear that is fat and ready for a fight. i wonder if i have the guts to pursue calendar listings, arts previews, online advertisements. do i have the guts to use the word “anti-holiday” in places where anyone might see, people outside of my bubble who are riled up and feeling empowered and violently righteous? in our current, heightened world, someone could see my playful, harmlessly progressive goof on christmas - i mean even a christian nationalist can guffaw about getting yet another candle, or finding it hard to visit disapproving parents- someone could see that i am performing an anti-holiday spectacular and do worse than write an op-ed.
do i have the guts to stand in a room of people, hopefully self-selected but you never know, and sing my little songy songs about ha ha christmas, knowing that in the current environment they are landing more like bombs then i ever intended them.
and for what? what good does it do for me to provoke people about christmas? even in great times, my anti-holiday shows have felt pleasantly juvenile. like throwing mashed potatoes in a school cafeteria.
yes, i have received many many messages over the years from people who have gotten a great laugh from the albums, or more seriously, felt their holiday family pain soothed by my winks and barbs. i do know that is important. but i am currently calculating, how important? and then i think, what a fucking shame this is where i’m at.
shortly before my friend jill sobule died, she was physically confronted by someone at a show of hers, over her genius song “JD Vance is a Cunt”. i have never had that experience, and when i heard it had happened to her, i wondered what i would do. would i keep singing the song? would i take measures to protect myself physically? would i choose to move on from the song in order to stay safe and alive and available to focus on other useful work? we don’t know what jill would have chosen to do, but my gut tells me i wouldn’t have an ounce of her courage.
but maybe you don’t know until the circumstances force you into action. maybe there will be a moment when all these thought exercises and essays and pods and gut pangs just will not matter. when the only choice is action, and i won’t think twice.
i suppose to my credit, i am going ahead with the anti-holiday shows. the first round of advertising went out this week. posters and press releases mail this weekend.
i am so far holding my nerve, and ignoring my gut. please come to these shows if you can, or let me know that you’ve streamed the music, and it helped you. i need us to be in this together.
x erin
¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS!
state rep. josh cole won another term representing my hometown of fredericksburg, va. congratulations josh!!!! keep fighting!!!
how do we even know what a note is, or even what it means to be in tune
no you definitely did not see me weeping over a hotel breakfast while watching this story on college game day. definitely wasn’t me!
rest in peace maria riva, the only child of marlene dietrich. her book about her mom is bonkers, riveting, and a triumph of recovery.
the story of how john tesh (yes that john tesh) wrote the theme to NBC’s NBA coverage is amazing, as is this SNL skit portraying it.
UPCOMING SHOWS
2025
now - June 2026 - Fredericksburg VA
Fredericksburg Area Museum
Out And About: The Walk-in Closet
VISIT
November 21, 2025 - Northampton MA
the snap dragons will open
TICKETS
November 29, 2025 - New York NY
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 5, 2025 - Los Angeles CA
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 6, 2025 - Sacramento CA
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 7, 2025 - Berkeley CA
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 10, 2025 - Olympia WA
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 11, 2025 - Eugene OR
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 12, 2025 - Seattle WA
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 13, 2025 - Portland OR
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
2026
April 10-May 10, 2026 - Chicago IL
World Premiere of OUT HERE @ Court Theatre
TICKETS & INFO
