Hard Working Americans seeks to meld the best songs, musicians
What do John Prine, Jimmy Buffett, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Billy Joe Shaver have in common? They're all fans of Todd Snider, the folk-rock troubadour whose self-styled image as a lazy, dope-smoking hippie (to paraphrase one of his own songs) belies a sharp-witted and perceptive artist who sounds like a natural heir to those aforementioned singer-songwriter eminences.
What do John Prine, Jimmy Buffett, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Billy Joe Shaver have in common? They're all fans of Todd Snider, the folk-rock troubadour whose self-styled image as a lazy, dope-smoking hippie (to paraphrase one of his own songs) belies a sharp-witted and perceptive artist who sounds like a natural heir to those aforementioned singer-songwriter eminences.
Snider's latest project, however, has little to do with songwriting - at least his own. He's fronting the Hard Working Americans, a group he began with Dave Schools of Widespread Panic, Neal Casal of the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, and Duane Trucks and Chad Staehly of Great American Taxi. (Jesse Aycock has since been added.)
As Snider puts it in an opening manifesto in the band's press kit, his idea was to unite the songwriter/Americana worlds and the jam-band worlds, to meld the best songs and the best musicians.
"That might have been a little grandiose," the 47-year-old Snider admits over the phone from his home in East Nashville. But the songwriter and newly minted author (more on that later) does have friends in both worlds and there is something that had already united them: "The common denominator is weed."
The Hard Working Americans' self-titled debut album came out in January and features Snider-selected songs by such friends and contemporaries as Gillian Welch, Hayes Carll, Kieran Kane, and Tommy Womack, and one graybeard (Randy Newman). Suffice to say, Snider has excellent musical taste.
"It feels like it's working out real good in the fun department," he says of the group's experiences so far. Fans might be disappointed to hear that the master raconteur is not telling any between-songs stories in concert, but Snider promises that he's been collecting plenty of tales from the band's adventures and he'll be relating them the next time he goes out on his own.
Scruffy and long-haired as they are, the Hard Working Americans are also trying to make a point with their name, by offering a broader definition of who can consider themselves patriotic.
"I was trying to do what I think Woody Guthrie laid out in the instructions for this job, which is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," Snider explains, revealing his folkie roots. "And I think the comfortable like to wave flags a lot."
The Hard Working Americans have a new live album and documentary, The First Waltz, coming out Oct. 28. The live set improves on the studio debut by putting in sharper relief the musical marriage that Snider was shooting for. The songs - this time including some Snider originals - tend to stretch out longer, giving the musicians more space to shine, although they never succumb to momentum-killing self-indulgence. (There's also a new studio track with Rosanne Cash.)
Snider also says he has a new solo album ready to go. To hear him describe it is to get a firsthand taste of Snider the storyteller. It's a little piece of performance art: elaborate, off-the-wall, hilarious - and you're not sure where fact is giving way to fiction.
The album is called Stick It to the Man, he says, and he performs it as the mythical Mississippi bluesman Blind Lemon Pledge. The upshot seems to be the realization that "the only thing the world needs saving from is singers who think they can save the world."
(The next day his publicist e-mails to say: "Relaying a message from Todd that he says you'll understand. He's decided to NOT change his name.")
Besides singing with the Hard Working Americans and writing songs, Snider also found time to pen his first book. I Never Met a Story I Didn't Like: Mostly True Tall Tales is as entertaining, provocative, and candid - especially about his drug use - as Snider the performer.
Amid tales of encounters with heroes such as Prine, Buffett, Kristofferson, and Walker, he's thoughtful about his craft and willing to admit his own flaws. And for a guy who fosters such a counterculture image, he's an out-to-please performer who has a surprisingly traditional view of showbiz and what constitutes success and failure. One chapter is about how much he likes and admires Garth Brooks.
Talking about candid: The book ends with Snider in a hospital, where he'd been rushed after taking drugs from a fan. Whatever it was turned out to be laced with dangerous chemicals, and the doctor treating him tells him that he was "stupid" and that he should never ingest something given to him by a stranger.
Lesson learned?
"Absolutely not," Snider concludes emphatically over the phone. "I thought that was the dumbest idea I have ever heard. Quite frankly, I have not taken that advice with glorious results on many occasions since.
"And so one night it might go the other way, so what? I've had a good run."
CONCERT
The Hard Working Americans, with Todd Sheaffer
9 p.m. Friday at the Theater of Living Arts, 334 South St.
Tickets: $25, $35.
Information: 215-922-2599.
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@NickCristiano