New Orleans, Louisiana.  Get ready for the annual Christmas party of the year! For the 19th year in a row, in an intimate evening full of music, laughter, and special guests, critically acclaimed vocalist Judith Owen and her husband, actor, and humorist  Harry Shearer (The Simpsons, Spinal Tap), will once again spread their special brand of yuletide cheer for the 2024 Christmas Without Tears, at home in New Orleans!  Festivities will take place Tuesday, December 17th at 8 pm at the Orpheum Theater, with all proceeds benefitting Innocence Project New Orleans.

A tradition that began in Shearer and  Owen’s Santa Monica home, these annual gatherings have grown into a heartwarming house party around the piano that involves and entertains fellow performers and audience members alike. Since 2005, when the first public performance was staged at the Walt Disney Concert Hall to aid the people of New Orleans after The flood, Christmas Without  Tears has been a guilt-free way of having fun and giving back:  ALL proceeds go to charities, with this year’s New Orleans performance benefiting Innocence Project New Orleans.

A reverent and irreverent antidote to the most stressful of seasons, the evening includes both invited performers and surprise guests who drop into Harry and Judith’s onstage living room and share a song or a joke to bring the holiday spirit to all. Song selections range from the sentimental (“Winter Wonderland” and  “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”) to the irreverent (“F&*k  Christmas” and “Jesus Was a Dreidel Spinner”). Comics, magicians, and even a somber clown have been welcome additions,  adding the perfect mix that makes this a true variety show.

Past revelers have included Brian Batt, Helen Gillet, Phil DeGruy, Samantha Fish, John Goodman, Sonny Landreth, Zachary Richard, Kermit Ruffins, Solid Harmony, Tonya Boyd-Cannon, Big Freedia, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Mario Cantone, Davell Crawford, Evan Christopher, Alan Cumming, Ani DiFranco, Donald Fagen,  Béla Fleck, Christopher Guest, John Goodman, Tom Hanks, John Michael  Higgins, Jane Lynch, Steve Martin, Tom McDermott, Stephen Merchant, Tim  Minchin, Trixie Minx, Catherine O’Hara, Paul Shaffer, Martin Short, Richard Thompson,  Fred Willard, and Weird Al Yankovic, to name but a few.

A throwback to simpler times, this homespun variety show is both a festive romp and salve for the soul,  serving as a reminder to all that Christmas is a time to be with the ones you love…and sometimes, even family!

Judith Owen’s latest album, “Come On & Get It,” has been released to widespread critical acclaim worldwide.  Delicious, delightful, bodacious, brave, insightful, seductive and fun – the many adjectives one might use to describe “Come On & Get It,”  released via London’s Twanky Records.  Recorded at Esplanade Studios in NOLA, Owen conceived of the project as a result of her childhood fascination with the Jazz music of some of the so-called “pioneering but oft forgotten women” of the Jazz and Blues world including Julia Lee, Blossom Dearie and Nellie Lutcher.  The result is “Come On & Get It,” the most joyful, uplifting, and empowering project to emerge out of Covid; a throw-back with a fresh feel complete with a look and style that speaks of all those delectable, hugely entertaining women who broke the glass ceiling with their stiletto heels and were ever so proud of it!  “Come On & Get It” has garnered close to 2 million listens via Spotify worldwide.

Actor, comedian, writer, musician, radio host, director, and producer Harry Shearer started at the top as a child actor on the Jack Benny Radio and TV shows, in the movie classic, “The Robe” and the ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show. Shearer was a cast member on Saturday Night Live between 1979 and 1980, and again in 1984 and 1985. Shearer co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in the films This Is Spinal Tap (1984), For Your Consideration, and A Mighty Wind (2003), and has written and directed two, Teddy Bears’ Picnic(2002) and The Big Uneasy (2010). Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program Le Show, incorporating satire, music, and sketch comedy. He has written three books.  Shearer has won a Primetime Emmy Award and has received several other Emmy and Grammy Award nominations. He has been married to singer-songwriter Judith Owen since 1993, and became an artist in residence at Loyola University, New Orleans in 2013.

IPNO Background

Based in New Orleans, Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) frees innocent people sentenced to life in prison and those serving unjust sentences. We recognize the root causes of wrongful convictions and unjust sentences as systemic racism and inequities. We work to expose and address these root causes by sharing our clients’ stories in court, the legislature, the community and the media. We support our clients living well and fully in the world after their release.

Our office is one of the most effective innocence projects in the world: we have an international reputation for winning exonerations, both in the minority of cases where DNA testing can prove innocence, and in more difficult cases where DNA does not exist or has been destroyed.

Since 2001, IPNO has freed or exonerated 43 innocent people from Louisiana and Mississippi’s prisons. We take their cases at no cost to them, or their loved ones. Of the 43 cases we have won to date, all but two of the defendants were young Black men, none of them were given a trial where the presentation of evidence lasted more than one day. All were innocent of the crimes with which they were charged. Collectively, these men spent over 1,034 years wrongly behind bars.

In 2019, IPNO launched the Unjust Punishment Project (UPP), which advocates for the release of people serving excessive life or near life sentences through thoughtful and creative litigation and advocacy. The UPP frees people who were given inhumane sentences under Louisiana’s draconian sentencing laws. In the past three years, we have freed 12 people through the UPP, who served 213 years in prison between them.  www.ip-no.org.

For additional information on Christmas Without Tears, please visit www.Christmaswithouttears.com.  For media information please contact Alisse Kingsley at Muse Media, e:  AlissetheMuse@aol.com.