“Where You Going Mary?”

Where you going Mary
With your little baby?
Where you going to sleep
On this cold winter’s night?


Where You Going Mary?

"A Christmas For The Ages"

When a babe is born they say
An angel rings a bell away
So everyone in Heaven
Will know the babe is born.

Two thousand years ago they say
A babe was born in Bethlehem
The Son of God they tell us
Who came to save this world.

And ever since that babe was born
We celebrate on Christmas morn
The possibility that He
Might really save our world.

	[bridge]

Baby Jesus
In a manger
Safe and warm--asleep
How could you even know back then
We’d always share your dream?

Merry Christmas--
As now we say it--
Two words we love to sing
That one day everyone will know
The hope one child can bring.


[optional brief interlude]

][refrain]

So here’s to Mother Mary
And to Father Joseph
And the lamb and Wise Men
And the Kings that came there too.

They all heard the angels
Rejoicing in their choirs
That a star was rising in the East
To guide them through the night.
	
[fortissimo]
That’s how it was the first time--
The first time there was Christmas--
And for all the years that followed
We’ll do the same tonight.

	[mucho fortissimo]
So have a Merry Christmas
A gift for all the ages
With holly, wreaths, and Christmas trees
We celebrate tonight. (2X)

* * * * *


[brief Interlude]

Two thousand years ago they say
A babe was born in Bethlehem
The Son of God they tell us
Who came to save this world.


A Christmas For The Ages

Bringing Home The Christmas Tree

A Gathering of the Clan

As a native Californian, I have been writing and performing since the late 1960s. My pursuits have not been limited solely to music, however. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1979 with a major in Intellectual History, I became involved in professional photography, the design and marketing of "Victorian Wallpaper Bordered Mirrors" (including sales to Neiman Marcus and Museum Collections catalogues), and the wholesale national distribution of exotic "Crimson Red" pears and apple pears harvested by Central California growers.

Nevertheless, during this period of varied enterprise, I have also managed to perform at the following California venues: in Newport Beach, the 1970 Sparrow Road Show and Reubens Lounge; in San Francisco, the Wine Cellar, the Owl and Monkey Caf, and the Bazaar Caf; in Berkeley, The 7th Seal, Cal's Bear's Lair, and the International House. On the East Coast, I have performed as T. Fredric Jones at the following venues: in Vermont, the Guilford Fair, the Marlboro Fair, and Brattleboro's Pliny Park Summer Concert Series; in Massachusetts, Burrito Rojo and the Rendezvous in Turners Falls, and Sam's in Northampton. In some of these engagements in both the East and the West, I have played alongside my daughters Francie and Lillian (both songwriters and solo performers in their own right) under the band name The Outlandish Landsharks. In spring 2013, I was also featured in rounds at the Hotel Indigo and the Commodore Grill in Nashville, TN. At this time, I also enjoyed an hour-long, impromptu, solo (gratis) engagement at the renowned Richard's Caf in White's Creek, just north of Nashville.

Finally, I should mention that I am also an essayist, a fiction writer, and a poet and have had my articles printed (as Thomas F. Jones) in the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. Further, I have written numerous short stories; one-act plays; two screenplays; and a full-length, four-act play titled Rabbits. Two of my poems were recently featured in the spring 2009 issue of Tangent Literary Arts Magazine, based out of Buffalo-Cheektowaga, NY.    

[Note: the watercolor of my brother Dan and I singing Christmas carols in the 1950s was painted by our mother, Marcia Hope Jones. My younger brother (Daniel C. Jones) is on the right.]

T Fredric Jones Christmas