Michael W. Smith On His EP ‘Christmas At Home’ & How It Became A Family Project

This was such a busy year, Michael W. Smith had no plans to record a Christmas EP. But then he came across a song called “Freeze the Frame.”

“There’s a great writer in town named Tony Wood, and I’d written another song with him a long time ago,” Smith says. “He sent me this song and I really liked the lyric. It reminded me so much of my family and spending time together during the holidays.”

The GRAMMY-winning singer/songwriter/composer sat down at the piano and wrote some music to go with it.

“This melody kind of fell out of the sky, I caught it, and thought oh my gosh, I like this song. I think maybe I’d like to do a single with it, that was all I was going to do.”

Others on his team suggested he go ahead and do an EP, but Smith had so much going on, he didn’t think he had the time.

“But then, over the next three days I wrote three songs,” he says. “So, it sort of lit a fire under me. I love Christmas music, but I didn’t know if I could pull it off because we had to do it quickly. We usually record Christmas records in the summer and here I am scrambling in September and October to get it done.”

He had a song he’d written five years ago that always had sort of a Christmas feel to it, so he pulled it up and asked his daughter, Anna Bovi, to write some lyrics to it.

“She’ writing musicals and she’s so talented, I thought, I’m just going to let her take a stab at it. She had a first draft back to me 24 hours later and it was awesome. We tuned it up, finished it up, and then I thought – this is a moment for the grandkids. So, I asked all of them if they wanted to sing on it and they flipped out like they’d died and gone to heaven.”

The song, “Christmas is Here” features 9 on his 17 grandkids. He says he got them all in the studio and they were wonderful.

“It was a challenge. You can’t put headphones on everybody, you have to get kind of creative on how to pull it off, but they did a great job!”

The grandkids aren’t the only other members featured on the EP. His daughter, Anna, sings harmony on “Freeze the Frame,” while daughter, Whitney, sings on “The Star” which is an instrumental trilogy. And Smith’s son, Tyler, lends his orchestrating talents to both “Christmas is Here,” and “The Star.”

“I just kind of pulled in the family and said let’s do this. I think we can all make it happen.”

The EP has a total of six songs, rounding things out with a hymn called “God with God.” It’s another song he and Wood wrote together, then turned it into a Christmas anthem of sorts with the added voices of the 200 member Brentwood Baptist Choir, orchestrated and arranged by David Hamilton.

Smith has been performing those songs and many others on his current Christmas tour. Close friend Amy Grant joined him for the first half of the tour before splitting off to do her annual shows at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium with husband Vince Gill. Smith continues his tour with singer/songwriter Michael Tait of the Newsboys. They have shows in Omaha, Sioux Falls, Minneapolis, and Des Moines, before wrapping things up.

Smith says he enjoys the Christmas shows because he loves the music.

“I’m such a fan of it and grew up on Barbra Streisand, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, and all of the old school Christmas music that’s still so amazing to me. So, when I write Christmas songs, I try to write something that feels like it could still be played maybe 50 years from now.”