Makenzie Phipps chatted with Digital Journal’s Markos Papadatos about her new single “Christmas Snow.”
Her holiday song earned a glowing review from Digital Journal. “Makenzie Phipps is able to put her listeners in the holiday spirit with the refreshing ‘Christmas Snow,’ where she displays her crisp, crystalline voice that is reminiscent of Sara Evans meets Ashley McBryde,” this journalist raved.
There are a million things that make the holiday times special, especially after a difficult year. What is your favorite thing about this time of year and Christmas specifically?
love the snow, as well as getting to spend time with my relatives that I don’t get to see often. I’m a very sentimental person when it comes to family, so getting to spend time with them during the holiday season is very important to me.
Do you and your family have any special traditions for Christmas? How have those traditions helped you connect to your family even when apart?
My family and I always bake yummy desserts every year. It’s always a fun time getting to share recipes with one another and to even try recreating them to see how close they are to the original ones!
What were you feeling when you wrote your song “Christmas Snow”? How was the writing of this song different from your other music like “Maybe”?
Writing “Christmas Snow” was a very interesting task for me because I had never really thought of writing my own Christmas song before, especially with just a short amount of time. I was very nervous when coming up with the storyline, just in making sure it was portrayed well, but I was very happy with the final product.
Writing this song was different from “Maybe” because my co-writer, Shane Begley, and I wrote it separately. He wrote the first verse and chorus and sent it to me, and I reworded some stuff and wrote the rest of it! We have a pretty interesting way of writing songs, so that was cool that we got to make a song come to life from separate places.
You have quite a few shows coming up this year and the next. Do you have anything exciting you can tease about what’s to come in these live performances? What should fans be excited for when they come to see you?
I am very excited to be launching a new original I wrote that I actually have been testing out at my shows. I won’t go into too many details, but this song is very, very close to my heart and just from the people who have gotten to hear it, I believe it will be very sentimental to others as well. The song will have a very dynamic music video that will differ from other songs that most have seen before. The most straightforward info I can give, at this point, is the title and it is called “Life’s Game”. So be on the lookout for that!
Many artists weren’t able to see their fans in person these past two years and they turned to social media to keep the connection with them strong. How did you continue to connect with your fans during that time? Has this changed how you will connect and engage with them moving forward?
During the beginning of the pandemic, I was able to get in contact with “Country Rebel” and I was able to send a video to them once a week to share with others. I love getting to do at-home videos just to show the rawness of my music and singing.
I feel very connected when it’s just me and a camera. I also tried to do some live shows on Facebook to get to stay in contact with my friends (followers).
They mean so much to me and I know some live very far away and can’t make it to in-person shows, even if they wanted to, so I try the best I can to perform for them virtually and to give them weekly updates of what I’ve been up to.
