DJ Robert Drake’s Christmas music marathon mix on WXPN turns 30

Every Christmas Eve, for the last three decades, DJ Robert Drake has delivered a marathon mix for the more daring of holiday heart — those adventurous music lovers who find yuletide joy in obscure big band Christmas numbers and spacey seasonal lounge music. Or anything other than endless Bing Crosby and Mariah Carey.

The Night Before on WXPN with Robert Drake — which runs every Dec. 24, from midnight to midnight — is an anticipation-fueled, wholly spontaneous, holiday music endurance test, and an ever-evolving assortment of rarely played chestnuts plucked from Drake’s collection of hard-to-find holiday music.

The show started on Christmas Eve 1993, when the station desperately needed a few hours of holiday filler, and has now become appointment holiday listening for tens of thousands of loyal listeners in Philly, and more who stream from far away. They come for a break from the usual holiday music fare and the comfort of Drake’s diverse and dependable aural holiday landscape. And with each passing year, more listeners tell Drake he has come to feel like just another member of the family.

This Christmas, to mark his 30th anniversary, Drake will play for 30 hours, starting Dec. 23 at 6 p.m., with a Holiday Cocktail Party Mix. The Inquirer recently spoke with Drake — a lifelong Philadelphian and longtime DJ, who also produces Kids Corner — about how a childhood obsession, and later grief, first fueled his holiday show, and what Christmas songs he’ll never play.

OK, it’s important to know that somewhere around 12 or 13 years of age, I started to have a weird obsession with Christmas music. While everyone else was running around collecting Top 40 songs, I was running around collecting Christmas music.

I became intrigued with digging through flea markets and old thrift shops to find unknown artists who, for some reason, decided it was important for them to do a holiday album, which I can’t imagine anybody bought except for their friends and family.

The genres they covered were all over the map. A lot of country and old-timey music, but also a lot of unknown R&B artists from the 1970s and 1980s. There was one artist called Esquivel, who performed space age lounge holiday music. There were blues Christmas albums from legendary artists to unknown studio musicians, who just decided to do a Christmas song.

Les Brown and his Band of Renown. His orchestra came out in the 1930s, and they did a version of The Nutcracker Suite, which is probably the best version.

My grandmother was in charge of the music, so it was Eugene Ormandy, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Kate Smith’s Christmas carols. But when I was about 10 years old, when it came time for the household to play Christmas music, all the adults would turn to me and make me decide because I was the one collecting.

(Laughs) No, that was eventually my own doing.

The thing that’s the biggest surprise for people, is I have absolutely no playlist. I have no preconceived notion as to what I’m going to do. I will pick a song from my library, and as soon as I hit play, I have three minutes to figure out what the next song is. This keeps me awake — and allows me to respond to the day. Like in 2020, when we were all first dealing with COVID, I was able to do a lot more music that was more inclusive and celebratory. I didn’t announce that I was doing that. I just do it internally.

People rarely request anything for my holiday show. I think they like the fact that I’m doing this sort of 24-hour radio creation and they’re just along for the ride.

I have one rule: no singing animals. I have no patience for them.

There’s actually a little bit more to that story than I don’t often tell. In 1993, my father, Robert Drake Sr., passed away suddenly. I was dreading the holidays, and at the same time, the management at XPN needed somebody to work Christmas Eve. It was pre-digital, so you needed to have a body in the studio. I wasn’t celebrating the season, I was depressed. So I volunteered. That first Christmas Eve, I brought in a good chunk of my collection — and it was just me playing music.

It was therapeutic for me, but it also connected me with a bunch of people who were dealing with their own frustrations over the season. So many people started calling to let me know they were having a blah holiday season, or were working late, but that they were really tuned in and enjoying what I was doing. That I was giving them a chance to celebrate the meaning of the holiday season. It wasn’t until I started doing the Christmas Eve shows that I really understood the power of radio.

Each year I encourage people to send me Christmas cards here at the station. I’ll use them as decoration, but what people don’t see is what people write inside the Christmas cards. They fill up a whole side talking about how important it is that I’m here every year. How I’ve literally become part of their decoration. How they put up their tree, and have XPN on. How they can count on me to be part of their family. They go out of their way to make sure I’m part of their holiday — and I find that very humbling.

No. (Laughs) They know they can go to any commercial station or Spotify and hear as many singing animals as they want.