Brian Wilson brings back Beach Boys Christmas album on live tour

It’s a phenomenon: a vintage band takes to the road to re-create one of its entire classic albums in a live concert. Roger Waters of Pink Floyd did it with “Dark Side of the Moon,” as did Jay Z with “Reasonable Doubt,” and Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson did it with his breakthrough experimental album “Pet Sounds” from 1966.

And now Wilson is at it again, coming Saturday to Santa Rosa’s Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, to perform all of the music from “The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album,” released in 1964, plus some other Beach Boys hits and classic holiday tunes.

“People love all the songs, and everybody has a good time,” Wilson said by phone on a break from the tour.

The song list also includes cuts from Wilson’s 2005 solo Christmas album, and some choice “Pet Sounds” selections, including “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “God Only Knows.”

With a touring company of 25 people - including a dozen musicians onstage and a lavish holiday set - the current format delivers a big show, said another original Beach Boy, Al Jardine, who is traveling and performing with Wilson and his longtime guitarist, Blondie Chapman, this time around.

“It’s the first time ever we’ve done this,” Jardine said of the Christmas album tour, even though he has been performing with Wilson again on and off since 2006. During the group’s heyday, the Beach Boys didn’t tour in December at all.

“We used to perform ‘Little St. Nick’ in the past during the holidays, over Thanksgiving, and that would be the last tour of the year, but we never did a Christmas tour,” Jardine said.

“Little St. Nick,” one of the highlights of “The Beach Boys Christmas Album,” was written by Wilson for the album and set to the tune of the Beach Boys hit “Little Deuce Coupe,” Jardine recalled, and it’s featured on the current tour.

“We also give people a good dose of classic Beach Boy hits in the encores,” Jardine said. “We do “Help Me, Rhonda” and “Surfin’ USA.’ And we come back with “White Christmas’ and a version of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ which is interesting. We gather around the piano. The show is a 60-40 mix of Christmas songs to hits.”

The program includes a couple of novel twists as well, including a reggae treatment of Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas,” Wilson said.

While Wilson has written many hits that became classics, he will confess to having a favorite: “I’ve always been proud of ‘California Girls,’” he said.

The faces onstage may have changed, but Jardine finds the arrangements and harmonies are remarkably faithful to the originals. “It’s verbatim,” he said. “It’s an evening full of harmony, and there’s some rockers. Blondie Chaplin does ‘Run, Run Rudolph.’” But the life of an ever-maturing surf rock star is not limited to nostalgia.

“Brian is working on a new project, and he invited me to be part of it,” Jardine said, “but I don’t know what it is yet.”

Wilson was laconic on the subject, but he did confirm Jardine’s report.

“I haven’t decided exactly when, but I am going record - (I’m) still standing after all these years,” Wilson said.

You can reach Staff Writer ?Dan Taylor at 707-521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @danarts.