‘This is not Carols by Candlelight’: Darren Hanlon leaves out the tinsel for 20th anniversary Christmas shows
Gympie-born singer songwriter Darren Hanlon is hitting the road from November for his annual Christmas tour, which has developed a cult following over the past two decades.
Darren Hanlon can still remember the time he played a Christmas show at St Stephen’s Uniting Church in Sydney. It was the height of summer, sweltering hot, when a heavily pregnant fan in the front pew looked set to turn the concert into a nativity scene.
“That was quite memorable,” Hanlon tells InReview. “Lots of people were stressing out – she looked like she was having contractions.”
Then there was the show in Canberra, in the middle of bushfire season.
“Bushfire smoke enveloped the shearing shed we were playing in; there were holes in the corrugated iron, so you could see these kind of smoky beams of light coming through,” he tells InReview. “It looked like a Tarantino set,” he laughs.
For the past two decades Hanlon and his fans have braved natural disasters and third trimesters to mark this yuletide ritual in intimate venues around the country. Hitting the road with guitar in hand, Hanlon’s Christmas itineraries typically take him far off the beaten touring circuits to hit cafes, old cinemas, and town halls in regional centres and remote towns whose populations barely break into the hundreds.
Hanlon says it all started with a few solo sets inspired by the example of Mick Thomas, the Weddings Parties Anything frontman who had already been playing Christmas shows for a decade.
“Back then I was touring a lot more with the band – I hardly did anything solo, to do a solo show was a real novelty,” Hanlon recalls.
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“The first one, it was just Sydney and Melbourne and they were very low-key. The next year rolled around and people said, ‘Are you going to do that thing again?’ I said ‘Yeah, why not?’ By the second year it had just blown up, and now I’m chained to it in a way. It’s my bread and butter.
While regular touring has become harder across the music sector, these intimate shows have developed a cult following, with familiar faces turning up each year to hear fan favourites like ‘Falling Aeroplanes’ and ‘All These Things’.
“There’s always the people that come year after year, it’s become like almost a collector’s thing now – see how many you can get to. I’m getting the kids of the old fans coming through now.
“There was a little moment there where Paul Kelly was doing massive ones – if you booked the same night as Paul Kelly, you’re in trouble, so I have to do the rounds, email all the managers so I don’t double book.”
While Hanlon’s back catalogue is peppered with passing Christmas references – from 2021 single ‘Lapsed Catholic’ to crowd favourite ‘The Loaf’ – for many fans the shows offer a year-end ritual that doesn’t lean on the usual festive ropes.
“I don’t even have tinsel, like I go to no effort,” he says. “This is not Carols by Candelight.
“All kinds of denominations show up … I have a lot of Jehovah’s Witness fans, and some of these people have been coming for years here and in America. But because the Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Christmas – in fact, they really steer clear of it – they need to know if I’m going to do any Christmas songs!”
Hanlon’s life has changed in those 20 years, not least after becoming a parent to two young boys with American singer songwriter Shelley Short. He had hoped to play 20 shows for the 20th anniversary, but life got in the way.
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“I’ve tried to set up touring to drag them along as much as possible – Christmas is just too hectic,” he says. “It’s very different to how I used to do it, where I would drive, usually start in the south, drive all the way down putting up posters along the way and dropping off merch.
“Now I’ve got to try and get back as soon as I can – I’m just doing the meat and potatoes tour.”
He’s also in demand on another front after recording and producing Wirlmani, the debut album by Walmatjarri Elder Kankawa Nagarra. The folk and gospel album, which Hanlon recorded largely in the open air, in deep Country, saw the 80-year-old Nagarra win the $50,000 Australian Music Prize in 2024.
“We definitely tested the insurance Ts and Cs on the hire care getting to some of these places,” he says. “They were just special spiritual places she wanted to go to – one was a dry creek bed on the station near where she was born, another was on the banks of the Fitzroy River, and just outside her house.
“That was really fun, because we had all her great grandchildren running around while we were recording. The magic of the album is these special places.”
Wirlmani was released through Hanlon’s own DIY label Flippin’ Yeah Records and US-based Mississippi Records, and Hanlon says it was a struggle to get airplay before the album’s big win.
“Suddenly everyone took notice, and then everyone kind of wanted a piece of her.”
Adelaide fans will recall Nagarra joining Hanlon on his 2018 Christmas tour. He’ll be back next year to accompany Nagarra when she plays WOMADelaide in March.
As for his own career, he doesn’t mind playing to the same crowds year after year.
“It’s so strange, I mean, I still feel the same as I did when I started,” he says of the 20-year milestone. “I’m really happy with a career in constant plateau… you don’t slide off either way.”
And that pregnant fan in the church in Sydney?
“She returned the year after – with the child,” Hanlon laughs.
Darren Hanlon will play the Trinity Sessions in Adelaide on Saturday December 6, Hawthorne Theatre in Brisbane on Monday December 22, and the Majestic Theatre in Pomona on Tuesday December 23. Full tour dates here.