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After this performance last week on the Brit Awards, “Someone Like You” shot to the #1 (live version) and #4 (album version) spots on the iTunes chart in UK. Adele’s label quickly made the song available as a single, and this week the song is #1. My first number one song in the United Kingdom.

The Dan and Matt Wilson show at the Pantages theater in Minneapolis was one of the highest high points of a very eventful year for me. Matt and I hadn’t planned to record the gig, probably thinking that a live recording might add stress to a potentially challenging show – just the number of lyrics to remember was slightly intimidating to us. (See the various false starts of “Hello Stranger,” for example.) But in the end the preparation was fun and lighthearted, though hard work, and at the last minute I called engineer John Rausch and asked him to haul his live rig to the gig. (Sorry for the complete lack of advance notice, John!) And the recording actually turned out beautifully, especially thanks to the mix by Brad Kern.

Dan Wilson plays an acoustic version of “Against History” from the album “Free Life” – the same version played at the ProVention Concert in St. Paul Sept. 2, 2008.

A week and a half before Christmas I was thinking about what to play in my guest appearance at the Watkins Family Hour Christmas show at Largo. In a sudden rush of holiday spirit, I wrote this song with my friend Craig Wright of the Tropicals. It went so well at the Largo gig that I decided to record the song and make a clip for it, & drew these pictures. Got it onto Youtube on the 21st. (All of my songwriter friends wisely write their Christmas songs in June when there’s time to get them into some kind of business pipeline. I just can’t seem to get the Christmas spirit going in the summertime. Is it snowy in Melbourne, Australia, in June?) Hardest part of the project: figuring out how to use iMovie.