Announcing Rodeo Reverb Records Holiday Mixtape
Six Tracks, Four Personas, One Desert Christmas
It’s 2 AM at a Christmas tree lot in the high desert. String lights cast long shadows across empty parking spaces. Somewhere a transistor radio crackles with a song that sounds like it’s been playing since 1973, even though you know it hasn’t.
That’s the texture I’m after with this year’s Holiday Mixtape for Rodeo Reverb Records.
Six tracks spanning decades of sound—early-70s Vegas crooning to 90s boom-bap to modern indie-folk intimacy. Each one channels a different aspect of how the season actually feels when you strip away the commercial shine and get to the specific, lived-in moments that make December matter.
This is what a compilation does that individual releases can’t: it lets all the Rodeo Reverb personas occupy the same space, the same December, the same stretch of desert highway decorated with lights. Different eras and styles coexisting in the high desert air, the way they always have out here.
The Tracks
Comfort and aftermath: Mariachi Sleepover opens with “The Night After Thanksgiving”—that quiet moment when extended family has left and you’re sitting with the people who know you best. Gentle acoustic guitar, room-tone warmth, the particular comfort of annual traditions.
Grit and honesty: Ranchos Crucifixion brings “Children of Meager Beginnings,” because not every holiday memory is wrapped in abundance. Raw grunge approach for the truth that Christmas isn’t universal joy for everyone.
Strange magic: Great Western Groove Collective (their Solid Soul Wrestling era) contributes “Where the Snowflakes Start,” about those temporary installations with their strung lights transforming parking lots into something almost sacred.
Pure nostalgia: Breeze Bros. delivers “Tree Cakes,” a love letter to Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes. Crunchy 90s boom-bap drums and vinyl crackle, celebrating the absurdly sweet snacks that somehow taste like childhood.
Drunk gratitude: Great Western and Eddie Lamont give us “Hold Me Close (This Christmas Night)”—early-70s Vegas sound in full effect. Casino lounges at 2 AM when everyone’s a little drunk and grateful for whoever’s nearby.
Desert sunset: The mixtape closes with Mariachi Sleepover’s “We Wish You A Mariachi Christmas”—dusty, tape-warm, like it’s playing from an old transistor radio. Lo-fi psychedelic folk meeting mariachi brass, wishing everyone warmth through winter.
What Makes It Work
The tracks were created with AI-assisted composition that lets me channel these different eras and styles without pretending I’m physically in a 1973 recording studio or a 1995 home setup. The technology becomes another instrument for capturing the specific texture of how these moments in music history feel.
The whole mixtape has that texture of something made for the label family first. No commercial polish, no attempt to sound like modern holiday radio. Just six perspectives on what December feels like when you’re building your own traditions, remembering childhood, or finding warmth in unexpected places.
Sometimes the best way to celebrate a season is to acknowledge all its textures: the comfort and the loneliness, the abundance and the scarcity, the traditions worth keeping and the new ones worth building.
You can stream the full Holiday Mixtape on all platforms now. Search for ‘Holiday Mixtape Rodeo Reverb Records’. Each track channels a different corner of the Rodeo Reverb universe, but they all share that desert quality—sun-bleached, time-shifted, honest about sentiment without drowning in it.
Stay warm out there.
—Josh / Rodeo Reverb Records
Listen: Holiday Mixtape on all platforms
More: rodeoreverbrecords.com