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.”