A crystal dish of chicken bone candies, a wooden bowl of nuts with a silver nutcracker and a tree so heavy with tinsel it sparkled even with the lights off. That’s the Christmas Ollee Owens remembers at her grandparents’ house, with Willie Nelson’s “Pretty Paper” playing in the background. Now the Calgary soul and blues powerhouse is sharing that warmth with the world again. She’s reissuing two holiday singles this season: her heartfelt take on “Pretty Paper” and “Kris Kringle Jingle,” a brassy, sassy original made for turning up loud.
“Pretty Paper” Spotify and YouTube
“Kris Kringle Jingle” Spotify and YouTube
“Pretty Paper is a Holiday classic that most of you will know and love,” Owens says. “Ollee’s version pays homage to the original version that Willie Nelson penned so many years ago. I remember this song playing at my grandparents’ house as a child during the holidays.”
“I can still smell Christmas dinner in the air and see the chicken bone candies in a crystal dish beside the wooden bowl of nuts with a silver nutcracker near it on the coffee table. Their Christmas tree was covered with so much tinsel it still sparkled without the lights on!”
For Owens, the song’s tender sadness makes it especially meaningful. “This song for me evokes a contrast between the superficial expectations of the holidays and the gritty reality that many people experience at this time of year,” she says. “It serves as a reminder to cherish my loved ones and not forget to support my local community – especially during this busy season.”
She recorded “Pretty Paper” with the Nashville team behind her award-winning album ‘Nowhere to Hide.’ Producer Bobby Blazier plays drums and percussion, Tommy Sims covers bass and piano, Chris Rodriguez plays guitar and Gary Mores adds steel guitar. Mike Kyle engineered and mixed it.
“Kris Kringle Jingle” flips the mood into pure holiday swing. From its opening notes to its big finish, the original is loaded with infectious horns, clever lyrical hooks and the full force of the voice that has earned her comparisons to the warmth of Mavis Staples and the intensity of Etta James.
It’s been a huge year for Owens. She won the inaugural Canadian Blues Music Award for Emerging Blues Artist or Group of the Year for ‘Nowhere to Hide.’ The album spent more than 35 weeks in the Roots Music Report’s Canadian Top 10, including five weeks at #1, and earned praise from Blues Matters, Blues Music Magazine and Americana Highways, which called it one of the strongest surprises of 2024. She racked up more than 2.5 million social media views in 2025, and her video for “Shivers and Butterflies” drew nearly 800,000 views in a single month.
Next up, she’s set to release her new album ‘Common Ground’ with Colin Linden. He’s a Grammy winning producer and nine-time JUNO winner whose guitar can be heard on the soundtracks of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Inside Llewyn Davis, and who has played alongside Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, and Emmylou Harris.
Owens grew up in a musical family in a small Manitoba farming community, where she was the go-to singer for local weddings, funerals, and fairs. Her dad’s stereo filled the house with southern rock, country, and gospel, and as a teenager she fell for Delta blues and voices like Etta James, Mavis Staples, Mahalia Jackson, and Janis Joplin. She wrote her first songs at eight and picked up the guitar at 12, then stepped away from music to raise her three daughters. She returned in 2022 with ‘Cannot Be Unheard,’ and since then she has shared festival stages with Matt Andersen and Dawn Tyler Watson and played B.B. King’s Blues Club in Memphis.
This holiday season, Ollee Owens is bringing a little of her grandparents’ living room to everyone who presses play…chicken bone candies, sparkling tinsel and all.
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