The renowned country music singer-songwriter also is celebrating the digital reissue of two albums.
Country star John Berry is on the road again for his 27th annual Christmas tour. And if that weren’t enough good news for his many fans, consider: In partnership with StarVista Music, he is digitally reissuing two of his finest albums, Thomas Road and Christmas.
Thomas Road contains the title track, “Why Didn’t I,” “Beautifully Broken,” “The Richest Man,” and more, while Christmas includes timeless classics such as “Blue Christmas,” “Mary Did You Know,” and “O Holy Night.”
“Both of these albums mean a lot to me,” Berry said, “and I hope they will mean a lot to you, too. If you have never heard either of them, I hope you will check them out now.”
We had the pleasure of chatting with John Berry in Nashville before he set out on his Christmas tour. Here are some highlights from our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.
Cowboys & Indians: What can one expect from one of your Christmas tour concerts? Do you, like, come down a chimney onstage?
John Berry: [Laughs] No. We open with songs that we’ve had on the radio and whatever our current project is. Like our most recent record, Find My Joy came out last year, and so we’ll do songs off that album again. We’ll do some we didn’t do last year, and then we do the hits we had on the radio. Then I like to do songs that were album cut favorites that we know people enjoy.
C&I: You know the people have bought their tickets, and yes, they’d like you to share some music. But are there some cuts you figure they don’t want to hear in a Christmas concert?
Berry: Well, they don’t want to hear “Your Love Amazes Me” and “Standing on the Edge of Goodbye” and that kind of thing. In recent years I’ve been wanting to go back and pull songs off of albums that I really love that no one has really heard us play live. Like, there’s a song called “Love is Everything,” a great song. We started playing that a year and a half ago, and it’s just awesome. It could have been a single. Should’ve been.
C&I: How difficult is it, even when you’re performing your non-Christmas concerts, to balance what you know you absolutely must play for the audience, and newer or less familiar songs?
Berry: You just have to pay attention to what you’ve done. We keep set lists on file, all my set lists by dates, and we can look through and see what songs to perform. We know there’s X number of songs we’ve got to put in there, and then we just try to look through and say, “We’ve done this song, when’s the last time we did that song?” We'll put a set together that will be pretty much the set for that year, and it won’t change much for that year — and then we’ll do the next series. Or like after Christmas this year, by the end of January, we’ll a set for 2024.
C&I: Are you ever mistaken for anyone else? Or thanked for a song you didn’t record?
Berry: [Laughs] Yeah, every now and then. One time, somebody asked, “Remember that song ‘Keeper of the Stars?’ I liked that one.’’ And I said, “Me, too. Tracy Byrd did a great job on that.”
C&I: You ever get stage fright anymore?
Berry: No, that’s never been an issue. My only fright is, “Is anybody going to show up?” That’s my greatest fear: When I walk out on stage, is there going to be anybody there? A room full of people doesn’t bother me one bit.
C&I: They’re still are showing up, aren’t they?
Berry: Yeah, they do. We’re blessed to have good audiences. We’ve got a great fan base.
