todd snider.
"I'm broke as the Ten Commandments and sometimes I'm harder to
follow..."
-from “Money, Compliments, Publicity” by Todd Snider
Initially The Excitement Plan (June 9th on Yep Roc Records) wasn't
supposed to be about anything. I was just trying to come up with the
best... most open hearted ... well-thought-out lyrics I could come up
with. I wanted every song to be sad and funny at the same time,
vulnerable and entertaining at the same time, personal and universal at
the same time. todd snider wants every song to be as uniquely written as
possible and then I wanted to perform them in a studio loose and rugged
and hopefully as uniquely as I could. My hope is to be hard to describe
and/or new…I'm not saying I am. I'm just saying that's the hope.
todd sniders producer, Don Was thought
the best way to go for what I was talking about was live and
spontaneous. So we set up at Henson studios in Los Angeles with myself
on guitar, harp and piano. Greg Liesz on steel guitar and dobro. Don on
upright bass, Jim Keltner on drums and Krish Harma engineering.
Then, with Don being the only one who'd heard the songs and me being the
only one who knew them, we recorded completely live for just two and a
half days.
As God is my witness and whether you even like todd sniders music or
not, it was the most exciting, most challenging, most uninhibited and
funnest time I've ever had making music…
- Todd Snider
The Excitement Plan’s laid- back groove and top- shelf lyrics are being
called Snider's best work yet. "This music is sorta JJ Cale meets Jerry
Jeff Walker sounding with words that would hopefully impress Shel
Silverstein, Bobby Bare, Chuck Berry, Kris Kristofferson or Randy
Newman,” Snider said. With his contributions of stellar guitar, piano
and harmonica, his musicianship shares the spotlight as easily as his
treasured lyrics.
todd Snider is a vociferous musician whose fans know him to be quite the
workhorse. His acclaimed 2006 release, The Devil You Know found the
barefoot troubadour performing live on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
and Late Night with David Letterman and the CD appeared on numerous
year-end Top 10 lists including Spin, Blender and Rolling Stone. More
recently, last year’s Peace Queer EP--a concept record featuring all the
peace, love and anarchy Snider is known for--inspired Blender to say he
“morphed from a wisecracking country-ish journeyman to the sharpest and
funniest protest singer working today." The EP spent five weeks at
number one on the Americana chart and Spin Magazine dubbed todd snider,
"One of roots music's slyest, smartest songwriters."
In addition to the new album release, this year also finds Snider doing
what he does best: playing live. With a 30-date West Coast tour already
under his belt in early 2009, he will spend the spring and summer
criss-crossing the Midwest and East Coast with notable festival stops at
Bonnaroo (6.14)--where he will be joined by Don Was--Allgood (7.10) as
well as at 10,000 Lakes (7.25) with more to be announced.
On a final note, todd Snider adds: “To me, The Excitement Plan is about
the lap of poverty, being sung with authority and experience. Where
Peace Queer was speculation from afar, The Excitement Plan is certainty
from the heart of the story, i think anyway … It had lots of rewrites on
both words and music, lots of wondering what the point was and waiting
for it to show up. todd snider doesn't like to finish any song 'til todd
snider knows what the therapeutic part for todd snider is gonna be.”
News & Events
