Jon Pardi likes a good holiday movie. One of his favorite Christmas films is Bad Santa, starring Billy Bob Thornton, but for the PG crowd, it would have to be Elf.

“Bad Santa’s pretty good,” he says. “But I have to say if you’re gonna watch it with little cousins, I would have to say Elf is pretty much probably one of the funniest Christmas movies to ever be that new and beat out all of the old Christmas movies. It is definitely up there.”

Jon says getting a guitar for Christmas when he was a young boy — even though he didn’t take great care of it — probably sparked his interest in making music for a living. “One Christmas I got a guitar, but I was real young, so this guitar spent multiple nights in the backyard and probably got hit by a sprinkler. I was a kid. I didn’t know what to do with this thing. It was like I knew how to strum it, but I didn’t know how to take care of it. I must’ve been six or five, you know, I thought it was kind of a toy then, but it started the whole spark. So, I always kind of say, I always tell parents you just never know, if you get a little toy that’s a guitar or drum set, you never know what that’ll spark in a child’s mind. So, who would’ve know if I had never gotten that guitar.”

One of his favorite memories is of his grandmother’s Christmas tree, and he attributes that to his love for Elvis and the song, “Blue Christmas.” “One of my favorite memories of my grandmother’s tree, and I think …why I love Elvis so much, and she loved Elvis. She had an ornament and it was Elvis, and it was always on her tree. You’d go and you’d hit a button, and it’d sing ‘Blue Christmas.’ And it just went, ‘I’ll have a Blue Christmas without you.’ And I’d just always hit it, and he’d be doing like his pose with a microphone, so yeah, ‘Blue Christmas’ and that ornament, I think that’s probably why I like Elvis so much. Hey man, I’ll have a Blue Christmas…”