Pages tagged “todd snider”

In the five years that Todd Snider was signed to Oh Boy Records, he made a name for himself as the heir apparent to the legacy of singer-songwriters in the vein of John Prine and Jerry Jeff Walker.

Though he’s now signed to Universal Records (on which he released 2006 LP, The Devil You Know), Oh Boy is set to drop a compilation of rare and unreleased tracks culled from Snider’s time with the Nashville-based imprint on April 3rd, 2007.

Peace, Love, and Anarchy (Rarities, B-sides and Demos, Vol. 1) will feature “Snider’s songs at first blush,” according to an Oh Boy press release. Some have been previously released in more polished form, others have made the rounds as bootlegs, and some will be new to even the most industrious fans, but in true Snider fashion, they will probably all be awesome.

Among other tracks, the compilation will include:

· "Nashville"
· "Feels Like I'm Falling In Love”
· "Deja Blues"
· "Feel Like Missing You"
· “East Nashville Skyline,” the title track of Snider’s album by the same name, which didn’t end up on the LP
· "Cheatham Street Warehouse," featuring Tommy Womack and Lloyd Green
· "Combover Blues"
· "I Will Not Go Hungry"
· "Dinner Plans"
· "Stoney," from Snider’s unreleased tribute to musical hero Jerry Jeff Walker, recorded as Snider performed Walker’s songs from memory
· “Some Things Are”
· "From A Rooftop”

Related Links:
Todd Snider’s official website
Oh Boy Records’ official website
Todd Snider: Getting Away With It (from issue 23 of Paste)

Mean-spirited letters arrived in Todd Snider’s mailbox months before the release of his eighth album, The Devil You Know. The song “You Got Away With It (A Tale of Two Fraternity Brothers)” has not only hit a nerve with a few defensive ex-frat boys, but also some listeners who picked up on Snider’s underlying political satire. The tale stars “a couple of rich kids,” one of which could ?nagle his way out of any situation, including an undisclosed “thing” with his brother “down there in Florida.” (“I worry forever, never for you,” he sings in character, with his slow Southern drawl).

But Snider isn’t worried about the hate mail. “I don’t expect everyone to like me,” he says from his East Nashville home. “The way I see it, my job is to open my heart and show people what’s in there, and then deal with what they think of that. For the most part, what they think of it is clapping.”

Snider’s latest certainly deserves the applause. From the rollicking title track to closer “Happy New Year,” in which he calls himself an “Evangelical Agnostic,” Snider’s colorful yarns are spun from America’s grittier side, mostly inspired by the characters who live in his diverse—but gradually gentrifying—neighborhood. A construction worker that won’t take any crap from his boss resides near a pool hustler “looking for some company.” Not far away, two thugs mugged a man but lost most of the stu? they stole.

Longtime friends/collaborators Tommy Womack and co-producer Will Kimbrough back Snider with their raw, sinewy guitar licks, joining fellow Nervous Wrecks bandmates and guests like steel guitarist Lloyd Green, ?ddler Molly Thomas and bassist/music journalist Peter Cooper, among others. Most of the band, as well as musician/engineer Eric McConnell, who owns the studio where they recorded The Devil You Know and Snider’s 2004 release, East Nashville Skyline, lives on the East side, too.

As the album surfaces and Snider continues his rigorous touring schedule to support it, he probably won’t peer much into his mailbox. Not that he’s going to worry, mind you, about what’s waiting inside. “Hey,” he says, “I got mean letters for putting horns on a record once.”

Those who’ve witnessed the harrowing train wreck a Todd Snider concert can be will know that the longtime folkie and roots rocker has also been involved in a continuous wrestling match with personal demons, coming up on the losing end more than once. Fresh out of rehab (again) and returning with his sixth studio album, Snider shows on East Nashville Skyline that he is still one of the finest songwriters and best-kept secrets in the musical world.

Musically, there’s nothing particularly new about the material on East Nashville Skyline, although there’s enough variety in the old—’50s rockabilly, ’60s-influenced topical and protest folk songs, ’70s country rock—to make the listening experience worthwhile. But the real reason to care, as always, is Snider’s quirky take on modern-day life. He may have cribbed his album title from The Voice of a Generation, but Snider has clearly developed his own voice, and it remains bitter, acerbic, pointed, poignant and devastatingly funny, often within the space of a single verse.

On the brilliant “The Ballad of the Kingsmen” Snider recalls the parental/establishment hysteria that surrounded the 1963 release of “Louie Louie” (occasioned, chiefly, because nobody could understand the lyrics), connecting the dots to similar contemporary backlashes against Marilyn Manson and Eminem. It’s an epic tour-de-force that showcases both Snider’s barbed political commentary and wicked sense of humor. On “Conservative Christian Right Wing Republican Straight White American Males” he marries a stoner cowboy anthem that would have fit seamlessly on a 1970 Country Joe and the Fish album to lyrics that skewer the pious moralism of the Bush administration, contrasting the current uptight moral climate with “tree huggin’ gay weddin’ pot smokin’ porn watchin’ lazy-ass hippies like me.” They’re big, outrageously provocative statements, to be sure, guaranteed to alienate as many people as they delight, but one suspects that Snider doesn’t particularly care.

He doesn’t venture far from the musical template he’s followed for a decade now, but the quality of the songwriting makes all the difference. This is his best, sharpest batch of tunes since his 1994 debut Songs for the Daily Planet, and he places his own idiosyncratic, crotchety stamp on every track, whether he’s doing his best John Prine gravel-voiced folkie impression (“Iron Mike’s Main Man’s Last Request” and “Age Like Wine”) or piledriving through piano-driven roadhouse rave-ups like a young Jerry Lee Lewis (“Incarcerated” and “Nashville”). Killer stuff indeed. Just don’t take it too literally. Todd, be well. Your country needs you.