Actress/musician Alicia Witt’s first and only visit to Pittsburgh came in 1986, yet the memories stand out almost 40 years later.
That’s because the then 10-year-old, who by then had appeared in “Dune” and won plenty of piano competitions, got to perform at Heinz Hall — with Liberace as her audience.
“My mother, I don’t know how she heard of it, but she did and she wasn’t in the entertainment business, but she certainly had a sense of savvy when it came to sometimes she just got these flashes of ideas. She somehow got Liberace’s manager on the phone — whose name was Harvey, I still remember — and got him on the phone, sent him some newspaper articles and stuff about me and said that she wondered if I could play for Liberace in between his two shows on this day that he was playing Heinz Hall, with the idea that possibly maybe he could have me open for him or come up and do a few songs at a future show, and he said yes,” Witt recalled with a laugh. “So my family and I were given tickets to see the matinee show, and then at the appointed time Liberace came out from backstage and he said hello to us. He sat in the audience and I took his piano and I sat down and I played him a bunch of songs.”
Witt will be making her second visit to the area Dec. 15 for a Christmas show at Jergel’s Rhythm Grille in Warrendale. She’ll also be doing an in-store performance/album signing at noon that day at Needle & Bean in Mt. Lebanon.
“Now this one has to live up to it,” she said. “I’ll have to come up with something pretty special to top that (first visit).”
Witt’s acting resume includes nine Hallmark Christmas movies, as well as big roles in movies like “Urban Legend” and “Longlegs,” in addition to TV appearances on “The Walking Dead,” “Cybill” and “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”
Her Christmas show draws from her 2024 album, “I Think I’m Spending Christmas With You,” which some whimsical takes with more nostalgic songs.
“I had some funny ideas, as well as some heartfelt ones, and I liked the thought that each song would tell its own story,” she said. “I wasn’t too concerned about the fact that genre-wise, it might be a little bit all over the place. I just really wanted to make each song what I thought the song needed to be, because I know that if people have a favorite tune, they’re going to pull it out and put it on their holiday playlist and maybe not worry so much about the other ones on my album.”
In a call from her Nashville home, Witt spoke with TribLive about her Christmas album, the holiday season and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.
When you come up to Pittsburgh, what can people expect out of your Christmas show?
What I’m hoping that everyone will experience is an hour and a half of just disappearing into some joy, some festive fun and some Christmas cheer. They can just leave behind whatever is stressing them out and all the stuff that fills our life and just connect with each other for that period of time.
Musically, is it a mix of originals and classics then?
My new Christmas album, “I Think I’m Spending Christmas With You,” is nine originals and three traditional songs. I’ll be playing all 12 of those songs at the show with my band. I’ve also released about five or six Christmas singles over the years, many of which have been used in my Hallmark Christmas movies. So those are perhaps already familiar to some listeners. I always throw in some surprises. I take audience requests. I play some songs of mine that are not strictly Christmas, that feel Christmasy to me as well. I always try to play what the audience wants to hear. If there’s a Christmas song that is a standard that I didn’t play, I’ll certainly do my best to play it. I did an a cappella version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” at my sold-out show in St. Louis the other night, which was really fun.
What prompted you to make a Christmas album last year?
I think because I love Christmas, first and foremost. I love Christmas music. I’m one of those people that kind of secretly listens to a few of my favorite Christmas songs all year round because they just make me happy. With all of the original Christmas songs I’ve written over the years and all the Christmas movies I’ve gotten to be a part of, it felt like an obvious next step, and it was something I’d wanted to do for so long. So I carved out the window and reserved my favorite musicians and the Sound Emporium here in Nashville and just set to work doing it. What I didn’t expect necessarily was that I was going to be producing it myself.
Originally, I had a co-producer lined up as well, and then he needed to pull out a month before we started because he realized he was taking on too much and didn’t feel he had the time the project needed. So I found myself in the position of wondering if I should try and reschedule it. I wasn’t coming up with co-producers that felt like the right fit who were available. The ones I asked weren’t available on that short notice, and a friend of mine who also appears on the album, Mandy Barnett who’s a Grand Ole Opry member, she said, “You know what, I think you could produce it yourself. You’re just so familiar with these songs and you know the sound you want.” I was already working with one of the greatest engineers in the business, and I felt like I would have the support I needed to go for it, so I did. I’m really glad that everything aligned the way that it did because I couldn’t be any happier with this album. I feel like I really created what I was intending.
When it comes to writing original Christmas songs, what’s your approach, just because there’s so many songs out there, it’s gotta be a little bit daunting maybe to try to add to that canon?
All I can do is come up with ideas and try them out and see if they make sense. And if they feel like a song that is both classic but also original, then I give it a go. There’s never been a time when I’ve sat down to write a Christmas song or had an idea for one that I think, oh, I’m burned out on this. I’m grateful I had some co-writers though, because certainly some of these original ideas would not exist without them. That’s what I love about not only writing by myself, as I did on the title track and a number of others on that album. But when I write with a co-writer, especially when you live in Nashville and you’re surrounded by some of these extraordinary writers, the song just takes off in a direction that it couldn’t possibly if you attempted to do it by yourself. And in some cases, like with “December 26th,” the song that finishes the album, John Paul White is the one who had the idea in the first place. So that song literally wouldn’t exist without him.
“Lonely Holy Christmas” seemed like more of a heartfelt song, so is there a story behind that one?
I wrote it with Matthew Perryman Jones, who is just a beautiful artist and songwriter. We had already written several songs together at this point, but I was getting ready to go into the studio and I wanted to have a few sessions with him and try and hone in on a Christmas song specifically. We discovered as we talked about what Christmas means to us, not only was Matthew born on Christmas — so he’s a Christmas baby — but also he had never written a Christmas song before. This was his first one, so he was excited by the idea. For our session that day, he came up with this gorgeous old church in East Nashville where he writes sometimes, so it literally felt holy.
Then it turned out that each of us had spent Christmas that year alone, not strictly through our intention, but we both had the same takeaway, which was we had a great Christmas, and it was lonely and holy. We enjoyed ourselves and celebrated the meaning of the day. It wasn’t filled with family and friends, but it was beautiful. And we were thinking of those who maybe Christmas can be a melancholy time as well, if you’re not surrounded by people, but we thought this could be an anthem for anyone who is spending Christmas alone, whether by choice or not. It’s one of my favorite songs on the album, and I’m hearing from a lot of people who do spend Christmas alone sometimes that it’s become a song that has great meaning to them.
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Does the Christmas season feel more special to you with all the Hallmark movies you’ve done in the past?
I would say the Christmas season always felt very special to me from the time I was a child. It was very important to me and my family, and my parents went out of their way to make that day of the year a standout for me. But what is incredibly special to me is that through these movies and now hopefully through my music as well, people come up to me, and I can always tell when someone is about to tell me that they’ve seen me in a Hallmark Christmas movie. If it’s something else, they just have a different energy about them. But there’s such a familiarity and a warmth and a sweetness, for lack of a better word.
I know what these movies mean to people. I know that they watch them with family and sometimes people gather at the holidays and they don’t agree on everything or necessarily get along that well. But families can watch these movies and feel like they can laugh together and do something where they’re all going to agree. It’s fun for them and meaningful, and people tell me, oh, I watched that movie of yours every year with my grandma and she died last year, and now I see the movie and it reminds me of her. It’s just really special, but I always loved Christmas. So if anything, I think maybe the Christmas movies found me at that time in my life because I loved Christmas so much and it was a natural fit. Maybe people watching them could tell I genuinely love Christmas. (laughs)
You’ve done a lot of Christmas movies, but you’ve also done a bunch of horror movies too like “Longlegs” and “Urban Legends,” so how do you balance the mindset for the differences between those type of movies?
I go into every movie that I make just focusing on the character. If I resonate with the writing to where I’ve agreed to play the role, then I go in excited to bring that character to life. And then I guess I feel like the approach is all in service to the character in much the same way that if I go into the studio to record a song, I’m only thinking of the song. I’m not thinking, what do I want the whole album to be like? At that point, I’ve already selected the songs for the album so that’s taken care of itself, and I’m just going in to tell the story. And it’s much the same playing a role because, unless I’m directing it or producing it, I really don’t have any control over a lot of the elements. I’m leaving that up to the rest of the creative team. My work is just be true to the character and figure out who she is so that I can bring her to life. But it’s the same if I’m playing a horror film character, she’s on her own journey. Even playing someone making as horrible of choices as Ruth was in “Longlegs,” at the core of her is still a woman who loves her daughter and is doing everything she can to keep her alive. I felt like the script begged the question, what would you do if you were in that situation? You would do anything you could as a mother. So that’s where the madness came in. I didn’t think of her as being mad. I thought of her as being laser focused, really. (laughs)