Dude York are a trio of twentysomethings with service-industry jobs who call themselves America’s band. Obviously, America’s band needs to have a Christmas album. So several months ago, in the height of Seattle’s summer, they recorded a nine-track holiday record in a windowless basement decked out with a tree and Christmas decorations.
Realizing they needed to shoot some cover art, bassist Claire England called the JCPenney photo studio at a nearby mall to see if they had any Christmas backgrounds. Since it was summer, they didn’t. The closest they had were solid red and white backgrounds, but England, guitarist Peter Richards, and drummer Andrew Hall sat through an hour of traffic to do the photo shoot anyway.