Kelly Willis can be as cynical as the next person when it comes to the Christmas music that blares inside every retail store this time of year.
"It's the same six songs over and over and it drives you crazy," the Austin singer says. "It represents everything that's really annoying about Christmas."
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But as Willis and her husband, Bruce Robison, get ready for their annual Holiday Shindig tour, she also remembers the special place that Yuletide music has in her life.
"I have a specific memory of when I was in third grade and my dad was in the Army doing a stint in Korea. At Christmas, he would send us cassettes of him talking to us, and in one, he sang 'Silent Night,' and we all sang along," she says. "It was just a very moving, bonding kind of moment in my life that shows how Christmas music presents all things good and hopeful."
She and Robison hope to tap into that seasonal magic Dec. 18 at the Kessler Theater, where they'll carry on a tradition they began in 1999 at Fort Worth's Caravan of Dreams. That first show also featured Bruce's brother Charlie Robison and his then-wife Emily Robison and Martie Erwin (now Martie Maguire) of the Dixie Chicks.
While the Chicks' skyrocketing career kept them from doing future Christmas shows, Willis and Bruce Robison carried on every December and released Happy Holidays in 2003. They still perform many of the tunes from the album, with the notable exception of the Louvin Brothers' classic tear-jerker "Shut In at Christmas."
"We found out that one is really just a big bummer," she says with a laugh. "People really didn't like it. So we stopped doing it."
This year, Willis and Robison are singing two tunes associated with the late R&B singer Charles Brown -- "Please Come Home for Christmas" and "Bringing In a Brand New Year" -- along with their own songs and some well-known holiday standards. "There's a couple you can't not do because people really want to hear them," she says. "But we try to make it the best version you've ever heard."
In January, Willis celebrates the 25th anniversary of her debut album, Well Travelled Love, with a spate of concerts featuring her old band, Radio Ranch. The 1991 disc was very much a Radio Ranch project -- half the songs were written by its drummer, Mas Palermo, Willis' husband at the time -- but MCA Records only signed Willis, not the band. When the record came out, Radio Ranch's name was conspicuously missing from the album cover.
"There was plenty of conflict about that, and I wish I'd done things differently," she says. "You have to value musicians and understand that you're not alone."
But she says the biggest lesson she's learned in the last 25 years is simply to not give up. She retired from music in 2008 to focus on her and Robison's four children before it dawned on her she needed to sing professionally to be happy.
"I tried to stop, but it only lasted about six months, long enough for me to say 'This is too weird,'" she says.
Today, she limits her road trips to two to five days instead of touring for weeks at a time, as she did in the past.
"I had to keep going and find a balance," she says. "I realized that music was my greatest joy and I couldn't just shut it out of my life."
