It will be a significantly different Christmas time this year and one local musician has recently created a holiday-pandemic inspirited tune to help people through the season.

Swift Current's Dillon Currie released his solo last Thursday dubbed 'Staying Home This Christmas', an idea that sprung to him on November 20 after he'd heard the news of more COVID-19 restrictions being announced by the provincial government on the radio during his lunch break.

"When I got home for lunch I just sat down at the piano, this song, the first line, just kind of fell out immediately," he said. "It reminded me of when all of this whole COVID-19 kind of shut down first happened in March... Then all of a sudden, it kind of felt like we'd come full circle here and we're starting over. So I had this inspiration and it came out right away, and as soon as it did I thought, this is something that I think might be able to help people this season to deal with the challenges we're facing that are so unusual to all of us."

According to the lead vocalist for League of Wolves, normally it takes several months to properly record and produce a song but this project ended up being accelerated rather quickly due to Christmas being just over a month away from when the thought was first formed.

"The thing about this was it had to be recorded from home," he said. "It was such short notice and I really didn't want to leave to go to Saskatoon... I wanted to stay home and keep my family safe and other people safe that are in the community."

Currie was able to work alongside one of his bandmates in Aspen Beverage who was able to mix and master the track from Skullcreek Studios.

"He has his own studio in Saskatoon and I recorded the vocals from my basement bedroom and sent them to him," he said.

The Moon Runner's Stacy Tinant was instrumental in helping set up Currie's recording studio at home, but the tune needed some outside help from others in the industry as well.

"He (Beverage) had another fellow record keys and organs from his home studio in Saskatoon and sent them to Aspen and then Aspen did the rest of the instruments from his studio. It was this very cool experience that we've never really done before."

Ross Folkerson played the keys and organ for the song, while Beverage chipped in by performing backing vocals, guitar, drums, and percussion.

While the music aspect was being taken care of, Kayla Christofferson created the artwork for the single and also the watercolours in the lyric video.

"It was a collective DIY scenario," he said. "You don't expect the quality to end up being something that's reminiscent of an actual in-house studio quality."

The song has only been online for around 100 hours and it's already reached 15,000 views, something that's caught Currie by surprise.

"It's just been great to hear the reception and it's been primarily through my social media platforms, which I only really made for my solo project at the start of the month as well," he said. "The traction's been unbelievable, but the messages I'm hearing back from people. That's what really has made it all worth it."

It's been a tough year for most musicians with COVID-19 pandemic halting concerts, but on the flip-side, it's given the former Alberta Junior Hockey League player more time to work on his songwriting, a skill he believes he's more prolific at now.

"I was able to play a few solo shows this summer at Railway North Social House on the patio twice where I tried some new material for a solo album I will be working on in the New Year," he said. "All the songs were written during the pandemic and are fully ready to be recorded. This timely song took precedent over those when it came because I thought it was more important, but I will be working on recording my solo album in the New Year."

Currently, the song is only available on Bandcamp for downloads but as of Wednesday, it will also appear on Spotify, Apple Music, and any other streaming service.