On Friday December 6th, Aimee Mann and Ted Leo (a.k.a. Ted Leo and Aimee Mann) bestowed a holiday miracle upon the good people of Collingswood, New Jersey: they opened their set at the Scottish Rite Auditorium with what many have called the worst Christmas song of all time – Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” – and nailed it, leaving everyone in the room smiling with their mouths and their eyes.
Sidestepping whether McCartney’s tune is as bad as “they” say – if this piece were a conference call, I’d suggest we take that conversation offline – the more proximate origin story of the pair’s turn as troubadors-cum-Santa’s little helpers begins around 2006 with One More Drifter in the Snow, Mann’s album of holiday covers and two excellent originals: “Calling on Mary,” by Mann and longtime collaborator, Paul Bryan, and “Christmastime,” by Mann’s husband, Michael Penn. (You may not know the legendary musician with the familiar last name and face, but I assure you he’s no myth.) Soon after, Mann began an annual-ish tradition of touring around the holidays in a revue with artists whose performances fall somewhere in the middle of the music/acting/comedy Venn Diagram. (Past participants have included Jonathan Coulton, Fred Armisen, John C. Reilly, and Will Ferrell.)
Fast forward to the early 2010s, when Leo and Mann began to write, record, and perform together as “The Both.” (Their original moniker, “#both,” didn’t seem to last, despite their desire to call themselves something that begins with a hash tag. Look, it was a long time ago, and hash tags were just becoming a thing – perhaps another story for another day.) They released an LP and two original Christmas tunes over three years before commencing The Aimee Mann and Ted Leo Christmas Show around 2015. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Which brings us back to Collingswood. Mann donned a short sparkly dress and fishnets, in keeping with her sartorial approach since she began touring in hot pants around a decade ago, Leo wore all black – turtleneck, pants, and shoes – perhaps drawing inspiration from Steve Jobs…or Dieter. After the McCartney tune, they next led their core band, including Mann’s longtime sideman, multi-instrumentalist Jamie Edwards, through a cover of Slade’s “Merry Xmaƨ Everybody,” before bringing out their first guest, Philly’s own actor, podcaster, and all-around comedic polymath, Paul F. Tompkins.
In a completely “on brand” move, Tompkins laughed about the thing that everybody had noticed but nobody dared say, let alone mock: that Ted’s amp had begun to amplify a broadcast from somewhere in radio land. (Electric guitarists, we’ve all been there, amirite?) The performers riffed with one another before Tompkins and Mann sang a bit of “O Tannenbaum,” prompting Leo to wax philosophical about the role of the evergreen in pagan culture. So began the gag theme of the night that would resurface throughout the show, beginning with Leo’s leading the group through his own version of “Favorite Things,” listing the pagan totems he’d like to see this Christmas. (The rest of the show touched on goats, G.O.A.T.s, ritual sacrifice, and backstage sex parties.) Tompkins exited stage right to see if he could find a henge for Ted, returning periodically throughout the night – sometimes as himself, sometimes as Krampus, sometimes as an evergreen – to report on the backstage pagan shenanigans.
The night continued in this fashion: originals, covers, shtick, guest performers, costume changes, rinse, repeat. The other guest performers included comedian and writer Josh Gondelman, whose set covered the holiday basics – 95-year-olds, mistletoe, being Jewish around Christmas (I can relate), and of course, paganism – and the idiosyncratically charming Nellie McKay, longtime veteran of the Aimee Mann Christmas Show who performed in a variety of styles and attires, running the gamut from western European cabaret to Sinatra (on ukulele!) to Alvin and the Chipmunks. (Shout out to Gondelman for his spot-on impression of Simon Seville, the thinking man’s Chipmunk.)
The night’s many highlights included the duo’s holiday originals like “Nothing Left To Do (Let’s Make This Christmas Blue),” along with other re-workings of classic tunes, including “This is Gary,” a tongue-in-cheek yet somehow weirdly relatable re-working of Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry,” except about mistaking your new stepfather for Santa Claus. (Who among us hasn’t been there?) Mann shared that the erstwhile group will perform for the first time in almost 35 years at the May 2025 Cruel World festival.) And the group’s cover of “Stay,” by Lisa Loeb, an AM&TLCS alum, where they only sang backing vocals. (It was amazing!) The straight-ahead covers and the stories that accompanied them did not disappoint. They performed Ed Ames’ “The Ballad of the Christmas Donkey,” which Leo said would make dad weep every time he heard it, naturally prompting the Leo children to compete each year to see who could get their dad crying first. The group also played straight-ahead originals like Mann’s “Sugarcoated” and “Save Me” Leo’s “Bottled in Cork,” and the Both’s “Milwaukee.”
While it’s never a bad time to see Aimee Mann, Ted Leo, or any member of their ragtag holiday coterie, there’s something magical about seeing them together around the holidays.
Photo by Matt Hoffman @tonapdivine
