Cody Wyoming’s Holly Holy Night brings the music of Neil Diamond to life Thanksgiving weekend

Just so you know, the upcoming Holly Holy Night: The Music of Neil Diamond will feature many of Neil Diamond’s finest songs as presented by musician Cody Wyoming and friends, but “Sweet Caroline” will not be one of them.

“We have a very carefully maintained setlist and ‘Sweet Caroline’ has grown its own identity that has nothing to do with Neil Diamond anymore,” explains Wyoming when we speak by phone. “It became something else. I don’t know how.”

Whether its due to the song’s prominent inclusion in Ted Demme’s 1996 film, Beautiful Girls or just the fact that drunk people really like to yell, “BAH BAH BAH,” Wyoming is very emphatic when he states that he’s not going to play it because it doesn’t belong really to Neil Diamond anymore. It belongs to people in a way that doesn’t really make sense to him, nor is it part of his mission.

That mission is to take something that the Kansas City musician has been doing for family and friends since his mother bought him his first guitar–an Epiphone acoustic–on the condition that Wyoming learn and play Neil Diamond songs whenever she wanted.

“I learned and played ‘Holly Holy,’ ‘I Am I Said,’ and a few other ones whenever whenever she wanted,” Wyoming recalls. “I’ve always sort of had a gift for mimicry and so, pretty quickly, it turned into a Neil Diamond impression that got scarily good really fast.”

As Wyoming continues, he admits he’s fairly good at impressions in general, but there’s something about Diamond’s range which sits very naturally within his own range. Thus, whenever his mother–and grandmother, as well–wanted, he’d bust out the acoustic and play some Neil Diamond. Wyoming’s grandmother has unfortunately passed, but his mother’s still there, so he wanted to make sure he could do this for her.

Wyoming’s mother isn’t the only one for whom this arrangement was made, however. Wyoming left Kansas City in 2001, because he got sick with Crohn’s disease for the second time and was too sick to work, so he had to move in with his parents and go to the Mayo Clinic.

“I got better,” explains Wyoming, saying things changed after he had a bunch of surgeries and then he decided I wanted to move back to Kansas City. “I was trying to couch surf because I didn’t have a place, and I didn’t have a job, and I didn’t have a plan.”

Wyoming didn’t know what he would do, but he knew he wanted to come back to Kansas City and start a band. That band ended up being the Golden Hearted Whores. A happenstance meeting wih two acquaintances, Lauren Harlan and Diana Forbes, one night at Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club ended up being the solution to a place to crash, and one with yet another connection to Neil Diamond.

“I was telling them what my situation was: that I wanted to come back, and I want to get back into music and really start playing,” Wyoming remembers. “’I’m healthy again. I got a new lease on life. I want to spend it making music.’”

Harlan and Forbes were big music supporters, and during the conversation, Wyoming told them the story of his mom buying him his guitar and the Neil Diamond arrangement while mentioning he was looking for a place to live. The pair walked off, had a short conference, and when they returned, let Wyoming know he could move in with them.

“We have a spare bedroom,” they said. “It’s called the Neil Diamond Suite, and there are pictures of Neil Diamond in it, and it’s just Neil Diamond themed.”

“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” responded Wyoming. “They’re like, ‘No, no, we’re not kidding you at all. It’s the Neil Diamond Suite, and you can stay there. But the condition is, you have to play Neil Diamond for us whenever we want you to.’ I was like, ‘Well, sold.’ I’ve always been happy to sing for my supper.”

Wyoming, Harlan, and Forbes go back to their place, he’s introduced to the Neil Diamond Suite, and it became yet another deal which he honored.

“So I’m kind of doing this for them as well, because I stayed there and that’s where I started all of my bands,” Wyoming explains. “That was the epicenter of the next 15 years of my life. Where I started, it all was right out of there, and I owe them a lot for that.”

Despite folks having begged Wyoming for years to do this as a proper tribute, he’s always turned it down, despite the potential for a decent living. As he puts it, he knows that he could, but he couldn’t do it night after night, explaining that it would not be good for his soul. But after pulling away and examining it, he realized he could do it once.

“I could do that comfortably and enjoy myself and make sure that I put on a really strong show with a really good band, I think,” Wyoming reflects. “We’re gonna do it three nights, but a one-time thing and then I can say, ‘Now I’ve done it.’”

He’s doing it for his mom and for his friends, dedicated to his grandmother, and he gets all of that out at once to exorcise the idea that has been running around it for most of his adult life. The band bringing it to life is a slightly more solid version of the Cody Wyoming Deal, which has played out the last few years whenever Wyoming gets the urge to get up on stage and features Wyoming as Neil Diamond on lead vocals and acoustic rhythm guitar, with Erik Voeks on lead guitar and backing vocals, Matt Richey on drums and percussion, Miko Spears on conga and percussion, and Michael Dulin on keyboards, organ and synth, with Rachel Christia on backing and lead vocals and percussion and Sara Dulin on backing vocals.

To get ready for this, Wyoming has basically been doing all of the research his entire life. With his mom, Wyoming had a deal when he was a kid where he wasn’t allowed to go to concerts by himself because of “drugs, all that stuff,” but they had a deal that he could go to pretty much any concert he wanted to, but his mother had to go with him.

“The turnaround of that was that I had to go with her to any of the concerts that she wanted to go to and that worked out great,” enthuses Wyoming, recalling a Tina Turner show at the Uptown in 1984 just a couple of weeks before Private Dancer would turn her into a superstar selling out Kemper Arena less than a year later. “I didn’t know from Tina Turner at all, but my mom says, ‘You’re going to love this,’ and I did.”

Wyoming’s mother also to him to see Neil Diamond twice in the early to mid ’80s.

“It was his full-on, big, showy performance,” explains Wyoming. “I learned a lot, not just about his mannerisms and all that stuff, but showbiz in general. The guy was a pro. Even though I was 13 and did not think that Neil Diamond was very cool at the time, those concerts knocked me out. I was really, really awestruck at what an incredible performer he was in the way that he had that crowd just eating out of his hand the whole time. It was kind of astounding.”

Because of that awestruck teenager who still resides within Cody Wyoming, the musician is quick to assure us that the point of Holly Holy Night is that they are having fun with this–not making fun of it.

“That’s a big difference,” Wyoming emphasizes. “I know I said a lot of stuff about his music being cheesy and melodramatic and that’s true and it’s also true that we are diving fully in on that and having fun with it. But, I think it must be said that we’re not making fun of it. We enjoy and respect this music. And we are doing everything can to give it the justice it deserves.”

Wyoming emphasizes that Neil Diamond is an amazing songwriter, singer, guitarist, and performer, and the band are all learning a lot from the process of bringing this show to life. However, while they doing this in a spirit of fun, they are taking the music and the performance incredibly seriously.

“I’d never invest this much heart into something that I wanted to make fun of,” Wyoming says. “The show has a lot of heart. A lot of pathos. The songs are incredibly fun to play. And the band makes them even more so. This is done with a great deal of affection.”

For instance, the band is playing “America,” from Diamond’s film The Jazz Singer, a song Wyoming describes as being about immigrating to this county with nothing, and making a life for yourself against the odds.

“We mean to deliver that message home,” Wyoming says. “America belongs to all of us and the huddled masses yearning to break free. I’m proud to sing about the hopeful vision of this country that he believed was real, or possible, even though it may not seem that way these days.”

If there are any songs you’d like to hear, they will likely be played, but going back to where we started, it remains important to note the set list is chosen, and there will be no requests. The show has a flow modeled after the two Diamond shows Wyoming’s mother to him to at Kemper, as well as the live album, Hot August Night.

“The show has a flow, and a story to tell,” concludes Wyoming. “There’s no chance that everybody will get to hear their favorite song. We’d be there all night. So please, no requests. The show runs in a very specific way to tell a bigger musical story.”

Holly Holy Night: The Music of Neil Diamond with special guests Daisy Bucket and Kimmie Queen takes place at the Black Box on Thursday, November 28, Friday, November 29, and Saturday, November 30. Details and tickets available here.