Craig Morgan photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

As a professional touring artist, Craig Morgan has seen a lot of hotel bathrooms. He never figured he’d record in one.

But that’s exactly what happened when he decided to adapt “Bonfire,” his current Top 5 hit, to Christmas.

“When you tour like I do, you spend a lot of hours on the bus, and one day I was just playing around with this song and also riffing on some Christmas stuff I was thinking about putting in the show, and then I started messing with the lyrics,” Craig says. “Within about ten minutes I had this new version, and everyone got a kick out of the idea — my band, family, even management and the label — so we decided to run with it.”

Oddly enough, they ran straight to the bathroom — in Room 418 at the Holiday Inn Express in Kennesaw, Ga., where Craig performed Nov. 20. The boys’ room became a makeshift vocal booth, and he put together a new take on the song, reciting the names of Santa’s reindeer and changing the “hold up your cup” line in the chorus to “hold up your eggnog.”

Producer Phil O’Donnell and engineer Mitch Malloy went back to Nashville and overdubbed some new backing vocals, percussion and jingle bells, and the seasonal version of “Bonfire” was on its way to radio stations within four days. You can get it through iTunes beginning Dec. 21.

And long after Christmas, you can expect to see Craig on tour next year as an opening act for Carrie Underwood. No bathroom recording sessions are slated.

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