Chris Thile and Aoife O'Donovan take Wassail! out for nine December shows

Chris Thile and Aoife O'Donovan will spend December on the road together. The pair have announced Wassail!, a nine-show holiday tour that opens at Groton Hill Music Center in Groton, Massachusetts on December 2.

From there the run takes in Rochester, New York; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Fort Collins, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Charleston, South Carolina and High Point, North Carolina, wrapping on December 14.

The shows are not a straight seasonal covers set. Alongside new arrangements of holiday standards, the pair will play newly written original material that has never been released, and fill the space between with stories from a long shared history.

That history runs deep. Thile and O'Donovan worked together on The Goat Rodeo Sessions and on its 2020 follow-up, Not Our First Goat Rodeo, and the collaborative shorthand between them is the thing these shows are built on.

Wassail! itself is not new either. The two staged a Wassail holiday livestream in December 2020, with their families joining in on seasonal material including a version of The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York". This is the first time the idea has left the living room.

"One of the very few things I love more than Christmas is making music with Aoife O'Donovan," Thile wrote in announcing the run. Tickets are on sale for seven of the nine shows, with local presales running for Groton and Madison and general onsales opening on Friday September 4 at 10am local time. The dates sit at the country and bluegrass end of the December calendar and are logged on the tour guide.