RADIO REVIEW : ‘Christmas at McCabe’s’ Has Year-Round Potential

T-Bone Burnett doesn’t make a very likely Santa--too tall, too Texan, too clean-shaven and, above all, not nearly jolly enough for the job, with enough failed-love folk songs in his hefty bag to have the elves ordering out for Prozac.

Then again, he’s responsible for leaving the pop-fan intelligentsia as tasty a treat as either the naughty or nice are likely to find waiting for them Wednesday morn: “Christmas at McCabe’s With T-Bone Burnett and Friends,” a two-hour special airing at 9 a.m. Christmas Day on KCRW-FM (89.9).

(For those who plan to be dealing with the real Santa’s aftermath at that early hour, it also plays Christmas night at 8 p.m. on KPCC-FM (89.3).)

Culled from five live acoustic shows that Burnett and guests did in November at McCabe’s, the tiny concert hall/guitar shop in Santa Monica, the special is less a predominantly Christmas-themed show than it is an all-semi-star hootenanny with a few holiday perennials sprinkled in for good measure.

Besides Burnett’s low-key, often brilliantly arch take on folk-country-rock emotionalism, there are one- or two-song turns from Michael Penn, Leo Kottke, Sam Phillips, Booker T. Jones, Van Dyke Parks, Bob Neuwirth, Victoria Williams, Joe Henry, satirist Stan Freberg and even actor Jeff Bridges.

Burnett is accompanied on most of his selections by three phenomenal musicians from Nashville: fiddler Mark O’Connor, bassist Edgar Meyer and dobro player Jerry Douglas, who also contribute a few soothing or stunning instrumental pieces of their own.

Among the holiday-themed favorites:

* Burnett doing “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” and covering Bruce Cockburn’s Nativity retelling “Cry of a Tiny Babe,”

* Phillips’ spooky-yet-calming minor-key rendition of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,”

* “Swamp fairy” Williams’ jazzy Louisianian stabs at “The Christmas Song” and “O Holy Night,”

* Jones’ “Sweet Little Jesus Boy,” and the Nashville cats’ exquisite “Silent Night.”

With about two broken-hearted reveries for every one of the above Christmas chestnuts, this is a home-taping prospect with year-round potential--and, one would hope, a pilot of sorts for a more regular acoustic-rock series on National Public Radio.