Scott Weiland Delivering “A Merry Christmas” For STP Fans

Posted in News, Song of the Week. Written by Albert Costill on December 17th, 2009

I’ll be completely honest here, I’m a sucker for this time of year. Especially, when it comes to holiday music.

If you’ve been a regular visitor around here, then you’re already well aware of my affinity towards 90′s bands, and their take on the whole December 25 shin ding.

For the last couple of years I’ve been raving about Scott Weiland’s rendition of the classic “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” which he performed on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on December 18, 2007.

To make my spirit bright, the track has finally been officially recorded and put up for sale at iTunes.

You want some more festive cheer?

Here’s a short clip of Scott discussing the track, like why he chose this particular yuletide tune and how he recorded it. It’s nothing Earth-shattering, but it’s very cool to get a small glimpse into the whole process.

But, it get’s even juicer for STP fans.

Scott recently dropped some info about the upcoming STP album to Spinner, which will be the band’s first since 2001′s Shangri-La Dee Da.

First things first, “We’re almost finished,” Scotty boy revealed.

He went on to add:

“There will probably be 11 songs on the record and we have nine completed already. Then you have to have B-sides for Japan, the UK and the rest of Europe, so we’ll probably record 14 songs total.”

But that’s not all, he even described the song writing method, which leans more towards the days of Core and Purple.

“It’s always been easy. We have a method that we use and it’s pretty basic. For the most part, Robert and Dean [DeLeo] write the instrumental riffs and then amongst the three of us we arrange the songs and then I write all the melodies and the lyrics.”

Weiland also went on to say that he’s looking forward to playing the new tracks live for the band’s upcoming, and what has been described as lengthy, tour to support the new album sometime next year.

The only hiccup, albeit a pretty major one, is the thing with Atlantic Records.

Initially, STP had something like an eight album contract with Atlantic. The band released five studio albums and a greatest hits collection, which if my math is correct, would be six albums.

Once the band called it a day, and dropping album sales probably had a role, everything seemed to be settled. That was until the guys reunited and started talking about a new album in 2008.

The label went on to sue Weiland and drummer Eric Kretz for attempting to leave the label. The DeLeo Brothers had already been dropped by Atlantic in 2003.

The legal battle, as of now, is the band claiming that they are free agents, while Atlantic wants one more STP album and the option for another two.

Hopefully, STP and Atlantic will part ways. The label did an awful job promoting the band’s last album, and I really want to see what the guys can do promotion wise if they were free from the clutches of a major label contract.

Regardless, it’s been a great couple of weeks for us STP fans.

The untitled sixth STP album should hit shelves sometime in Spring 2010, and you better bet that we’ll be keeping you updated.

So, to keep up the holiday cheer, here’s STP’s take on “Christmas Time is Here,” which is one of my all time favorite X-mas songs.