HARRY SHEARER & JUDITH OWEN’S ANNUAL CHRISTMAS WITHOUT TEARS BENEFIT CELEBRATES 20TH ANNIVERSARY

AT THE ORPHEUM THEATER IN NEW ORLEANS, TUESDAY DECEMBER 16TH, 2025 -

WITH HEADLINE ARTISTS IRMA THOMAS & JON CLEARY

PROCEEDS TO BENEFIT INNOCENCE & JUSTICE LOUISIANA

New Orleans, Louisiana. Get ready for the annual Christmas party of the year! For the 20th year in a row in an intimate evening full of music, laughter and special guests, critically-acclaimed Artist and consummate stage performer Judith Owen and her husband, actor and humorist Harry Shearer (The Simpsons, Spinal Tap, Derek Smalls), will once again spread their special brand of yuletide cheer for the 2025 Christmas Without Tears, at home in New Orleans! Festivities will take place Tuesday, December 16th at 8pm at the Orpheum Theater, with all proceeds benefitting Innocence & Justice Louisiana. The evening will feature legendary vocalist Irma Thomas and piano man Jon Cleary.

In tandem with the festivities will be the release of “Judith Owen Swings Christmas,” on vinyl, the “quintessential holiday album with a twist” from the lauded vocalist. Casting a unique, joyous and only-in-New Orleans spin on beloved holiday tuneage, “Judith Owen Swings Christmas” is set for a limited-edition Ice White-Numbered vinyl release in early November via Twanky Records. Recorded at Esplanade Studios in the Big Easy over the course of a week with the help of her J.O. Big Band along with her touring band The Gentlemen Callers, “Judith Owen Swings Christmas” gets you in the holiday mood with seven Big Band classics old and new and was produced by Judith Owen, Grammy-winner John Fischbach and Grammy Award-winning Artist/Drummer Jamison Ross.

A tradition that began in Shearer and Owen’s Santa Monica home, the annual Christmas Without Tears 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 & Justice Louisiana.

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 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, “Judith Owen Comes Alive,” has been released to widespread critical acclaim worldwide. Bold, beautiful, sexy, smart and fun - these words can be used to describe pioneering vocalist Judith Owen and her merry band of New Orleans-based musicians, The Gentlemen Callers. With an amazing blend of song delivery prowesses and personality delighting fans across the globe, Judith’s new live album “Comes Alive” follows on the heels of her hugely successful 2022 album “Come On & Get It” (over 4 Million album streams and more than a million YouTube views). “Judith Owen Comes Alive” was released worldwide in early spring, and features 16 tracks recorded live over a weeklong residency in Bern, Switzerland at the legendary Marian’s Jazzroom. Revisiting some of the jewels featured on “Come On & Get It” with brand new live interpretations of Lady Be Good, Teach Me Tonight, , Down With Love, Skylark, and Fever to name a few new tracks, Judith once again looks to the music of the unsung “badass” ladies of Jazz and Blues.

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 a most joyful, uplifting, and empowering project; 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!

Judith is currently in preparation for her upcoming 2026 as yet titled album.

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 This Is Spinal Tap (1984) and A Mighty Wind (2003), and has written and directed two films 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.

Innocence & Justice Louisiana Background

Based in New Orleans, Innocence & Justice Louisiana (formerly Innocence Project New Orleans) 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, Innocence & Justice Louisiana 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, Innocence & Justice Louisiana 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. https://justicelouisiana.org/

For media information please contact Alisse Kingsley at Muse Media, e: AlissetheMuse@aol.com.

Christmas Without Tears 2025

Team Members