Gunnar and Matthew Nelson share holiday songs, family Christmas stories in “Christmas with the Nelson Brothers”

Eleven months out of the year, Gunnar and Matthew Nelson can be found performing songs from their seven studio albums, most notably their 1990 debut album “After the Rain,” which featured the hit song “(Can’t Live Without Your) Love and Affection.”

The duo can also be found honoring their late father, actor and singer Ricky Nelson, in a show called “Ricky Nelson Remembered.”

But come December, the brothers are all about Christmas, performing Christmas carols and sharing stories from three generations of Nelson family Christmases: when their grandparents, the stars of “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” were young, Christmas with their father and celebrations with their own children.

The Nelsons bring “Christmas with the Nelson Brothers” to the Coeur d’Alene Casino on Friday.

“Christmas with the Nelson Brothers” came to be after Gunnar Nelson overheard a friend who owns a theater in Milwaukee speaking to someone about how he was disappointed that one of his favorite artist’s idea of a Christmas tour was a regular set with a few holiday songs thrown in.

Nelson asked his friend what he thought audiences wanted to see in a Christmas show, and that conversation quickly turned into a plan for a Christmas tour featuring the Nelsons.

But first, the duo wanted to have a clear idea of what the tour would sound like and set to work recording “This Christmas,” which was released in 2015.

The album features the Nelsons’ take on such Christmas classics as “Joy to the World,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” “Jingle Bells” and “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.”

“This Christmas” also features a cover of “Mele Kalikimaka,” which was written in 1949 by Robert Alex Anderson and recorded by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters the following year.

“This Christmas Too,” released in 2016, features two additional songs – “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Silent Night” – and a duet with Wilson Phillips singers Carnie and Wendy Wilson on the song “This Christmas.”

“What we kept in our mind was ‘If Crosby, Stills and Nash had made a Christmas album, what would it sound like?’” Gunnar Nelson said in a recent telephone interview. “That’s really how we approached the record, and that’s what comes across live.”

This marks the duo’s fourth year sharing Christmas memories. The first year, the pair performed as a duo, but over the years, they’ve added musicians, including violinist Molly Cherryholmes, who performed on “This Christmas,” guitarist Scotty Bratcher and a drummer, to fill out a live band.

The brothers didn’t have to do too much research when preparing stories. Most of them come from their memories of Christmases past when everyone in the family stopped what they were doing and gathered at 1822 Camino Palmero St. in Los Angeles, their grandparents’ home, to celebrate the holiday.

“We really did get it from the source,” Nelson said. “ ‘The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,’” there’s such a wealth of great information on those adventures themselves … It’s really a blessing to be able to take those episodes and take choice cuts from those scenes and put them in the show.”

During one of Nelson’s favorite bits from the show, he and his brother discuss the toys they received for Christmas in the ’70s, including Schwinn bicycles before helmets were widely used.

“It really seemed to be that the toys we saw on television in the ’70s, they all seemed to be designed to kill us,” Nelson said. “Childhood does really seem like an exercise in survival of the fittest if you really think about it.”

Taking that idea even further, the Nelsons also discuss toys from the ’50s, including a toy called “My Little Atomic Energy Lab Kit.”

“It used to come with real radioactive samples and a Geiger counter,” Nelson said. “This was for kids. Glowing in the dark apparently wasn’t a problem in the ’50s.”

Whether a story is silly or sweet, the Nelsons are excited to share those memories with the audience, building connections with those who have grown up with the Nelson family, just like their grandma taught them.

“Grandma Harriet always said ‘We’re never in the music business, we’re never in the entertainment business, that we were always in the connection business,’ ” Nelson said. “The nature of this show is to connect not only to our fans that come to the show, but us with what happened before with our ancestors and with the one time of year that they all stopped what they were doing and their busy schedules …

“It always made an impact to me that both Ozzie and my father, who were incredibly busy, that was really truly a sacred day. Everybody knew that my dad did not work on Christmas, my grandfather didn’t work on Christmas and I don’t either. I spend my Christmas with my family, and it’s such a wonderful, wonderful thing to tell stories like that with the people that come see us.”