Vintage Review: Jason & the Scorchers’ Midnight Roads & Stages Seen (1988)

Nashville’s favorite sons knocked a local audience on their collective backsides last November with the two nights of performances that make up Midnight Roads & Stages Seen, the Scorchers’ first, and long overdue, live set. The band has long been a favorite in tape trader’s circles for years, with classic vintage shows from the eighties swapped on a regular basis among an international audience. With the release of this double-disc set, Scorchers’ fans across the globe finally have an authorized live set to whet their musical appetites.

Jason & the Scorchers’ Midnight Roads & Stages Seen

For most of their career, Jason & the Scorchers have delivered solid studio albums, but it’s been their live shows that have won them a hard-earned and well-deserved following among even the most hard-core rockers. Lead vocalist Jason Ringenberg’s country-inflected drawl, boundless energy and manic on-stage gyrations are matched only by guitarist supreme Warner Hodges’ razor-sharp riffs, instrumental acrobatics, and dizzying dervish pirouettes. Drummer Perry Baggs has always been a steady keeper of the beats while the latest addition to the line-up, bassist Kenny Ames, has meshed nicely with the founding members of the band. Over fifteen years of performing across the United States, Canada, Europe and even “down under” have made the Scorchers a powerful live band. The chemistry enjoyed by the guys is such that, on any given night, they’re the best rock ‘n’ roll outfit playing anywhere – a claim not many bands could make.

If you’ve seen the Scorchers play live anytime during the past couple of years – or even during the past 15 years – then you’re probably aware of what the band is capable of on-stage. If not, then Midnight Roads & Stages Seen is the album for you. Recorded at Nashville’s famous Exit/In, the 23 songs chosen from two nights of shows are a veritable catalog of the Scorchers’ “greatest hits.” Classic cuts like “White Lies,” “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” “If Money Talks” or “Broken Whisky Glass” are provided an appropriate rave-up treatment. Other more understated songs, like “Somewhere Within” (from the A Blazing Grace album) or Jason’s collaboration with Todd Snider, “This Town Isn’t Keeping You Down,” are performed live here for the first time. The energy level displayed here is astounding, with every cut carefully crafted with equal parts of loving workmanship and reckless abandon.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

If there was any justice in this world – which, as we all know, there’s not – Jason & the Scorchers would be superstars of the biggest kind. There’s seldom been a harder working group of guys in a band, nor an outfit that has managed to persevere through three record labels, bankruptcy, and a brief break-up to subsequently create some of the best music of their career, as have the Scorchers. The band’s influence on the current crop of alt-country hopefuls and young rockers is enormous. Midnight Roads & Stages Seen captures the band at the peak of their career, the Scorchers still making great rock ‘n’ roll almost two decades since the day they first played together. (Mammoth Records, released 1988)

Review originally published by Live! Music Review

Vintage Review: Todd Snider’s Step Right Up (1996)

Todd Snider hit a minor lick on the charts a year or so ago with his debut album, mostly on the strength of a single humorous cut that parodied the parody that the Seattle scene has become. Snider’s band, in the song, was so “hip” and “alternative” that they didn’t even play. It was a marvelous piece of work, hitting closer to the mark than many in the alt-rock world might like.

For Step Right Up, his sophomore effort, he’s put together a solid collection of songs, performed by a fine band that includes Nashville talent Will Kimbrough. I have to wonder aloud, however, if there’s anything here that is going to get heard above the din and hype of current releases by folks like Dave Matthews and that Hootie guy. Not that Step Right Up is a bad, or even mediocre disc. It’s a crackerjack collection, showcasing Snider’s incredible wit and impressive ability to turn a phrase. The music is a healthy mix of country and rock that may be just too much of each and not enough of either to receive significant radio airplay and promotion.

Cuts like “Elmo and Harry,” “Enough,” or the deceptively funny “T.V. Guide” remind me of nothing so much as a more countrified Elliott Murphy. Snider’s lyrics shoot from the hip, but are delivered from the heart and appeal to the intellect. A real talent, Snider has backed himself with an electric and energetic live band in the Nervous Wrecks. Hopefully Step Right Up will find a home somewhere in between the playlists of Triple-A and Americana formats, for it would appeal to fans of both. (Margaritaville Records/MCA, released 1996)

Review originally published by R Squared zine

Vintage Review: Todd Snider’s East Nashville Skyline (2004)

Todd Snider is one of Nashville’s best-kept secrets, our very own “cult artist” who may be too eccentric, too honest, and too talented to break through to a fickle mainstream weaned on boy bands, American “idols” and Music Row schlock. Snider is too often categorized as a “novelty” act because he infuses his folkish story-songs with humor and wit, reducing funny-cause-they-could-be-true songs like “Beer Run” or the satirical “Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues” to comedic status without recognizing the skill it took to weave these tales. The same critics cavalierly dismiss Snider’s more serious efforts without listening to the tears and pain behind such well-crafted tunes as “You Think You Know Somebody” or “Crooked Piece of Time.”

Todd Snider’s East Nashville Skyline

Considering Snider’s entire oeuvre (and I have heard it all), it’s time, perhaps, for a bit of rock critic heresy: Snider is this generation’s Dylan. Snider’s rootsy blend of rock, folk, blues, and country echoes that of rock’s greatest scribe. If Todd’s lyrics fall short of the weighty measure of “Spanish Boots of War” or “Blowin’ In the Wind,” well, those songs have been written. The Viet Nam War and the ‘60s are history (although Iraq may sadly provide inspiration for anti-war songs for years to come) and two generations have passed since Dylan spawned hordes of imitators. The “grunge” generation’s spokesman has attitude, wit and humor to go alongside the pathos and insight, Snider drawing inspiration from other such troubled wordsmiths as Billy Joe Shaver and Kris Kristofferson much as they did from Dylan.

It’s been ten years since the release of Snider’s excellent debut, Songs For the Daily Planet, which spawned a minor hit with the album’s hidden track, “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues.” During that time, Snider has suffered from problems with drugs and alcohol, spent a night or two in jail, and played hundreds of live shows. He’s suffered the deaths of friends and the whims of a (major) label’s attempts to turn him into a rocking, Paul Westerberg-styled singer-songwriter. It’s really after signing with John Prine’s Oh Boy Records that Snider has blossomed as an artist and performer. Even with an enthusiastic support system behind his work, personal demons have continued to plague Snider, landing him in rehab and struggling to overcome his addictions. East Nashville Skyline, Snider’s sixth studio album, reflects these trials and tribulations. It represents Snider’s finest musical effort yet and represents an exciting new chapter in the artist’s life.

As such “Age Like Wine” is an appropriate opening song for this new chapter. Snider pays homage to Billy Joe Shaver’s “old timer, five-and-dimer” while admitting to himself that “it’s too late to die young now.” It’s a reflective piece, the 37-year-old Snider now trying to “age like wine,” stating that “I thought I’d be dead by now,” perhaps sadly concluding “but I’m not.” The following tale of mistaken arrest is biographical, “Tillamook County Jail” recounting an unwanted stay at one of Oregon’s finest institutions. “Play A Train Song” is one of Snider’s best compositions, a tribute to a fallen friend, the kind of rowdy, charming East Nashville born-and-bred scoundrel that you’d have to have known at some time in your life to truly understand. The minimalist “Sunshine” is about suicide and redemption while “Incarcerated” is a Memphis-styled rocker that evokes Jerry Lee in a story of somebody done somebody wrong.

The Ballad of the Kingsmen

Sometimes Snider’s best performances are with some other artist’s songs, such as Fred Eaglesmith’s haunting “Alcohol And Pills.” With guitarist Will Kimbrough’s relentless fretwork behind Snider’s mournful vocals, this tribute to music’s fallen heroes – from Hank and Elvis to Gram Parsons, Jimi and Janis – hits too close to home for Snider, who has barely escaped a similar fate. Eagelsmith’s chorus, “you’d think they might have been happy/with the glory and the fame/but fame don’t take away the pain/it just pays the bills/and you wind up on alcohol and pills” sums up rock music’s tragedies as well as could be done. A cover of Shaver’s “Good News Blues” is a rowdy, bluesy raver that, as Snider writes in his liner notes, should make Shaver “dozens of dollars” in royalties; the song’s true worth is as a tribute to one of country music’s overlooked songwriting geniuses.  

Snider’s “The Ballad of the Kingsmen” is a gem. It starts out with the story of “Louie, Louie” and evolves into an inspired rant on the religious right, Conservative politicians, Marilyn Manson and the doubtful effects of rock music and pop culture on young adults when war is broadcast on TV nightly. A hippie at heart, Snider’s hilariously satirical “Conservative, Christian, Right-Wing Republican, Straight, White, American Males” puts the artist directly at odds with the mainstream zeitgeist and our current, unelected leadership. While Snider pokes fun at both sides of the political equation, he admits that he is “so liberal, I have love for conservatives.”    

The most telling moments on East Nashville Skyline come near the end. “Nashville” is a love song, of sorts, to Snider’s adopted hometown, the “Nashville you don’t hear on the radio” as he says in the liner notes. After wandering the country, from Oregon to California to Texas to Tennessee, Snider landed on the other side of the Cumberland River in historic and often troubled East Nashville. Perhaps his wandering days have come to an end, Snider singing that “there ain’t nothing wrong with Nashville, nothing wrong with picking country songs down in Nashville, Tennessee.” Snider’s reading of the pop classic “Enjoy Yourself” closes the album, perhaps an affirmation of Snider’s own struggles, the singer reminding his listeners (and himself) to “enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.”

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Assisted by his long-time partner-in-crime, Will Kimbrough (another of Nashville’s criminally overlooked talents), Snider has produced the most solid and enduring album of his career. If fame and fortune haven’t necessarily followed his efforts during the past decade, Snider can take solace in the fact that he nevertheless has a loyal and growing audience.

Thanks to supporters like radio broadcasters Bob and Tom, who regularly feature Snider on their syndicated morning program, Snider also has a national forum for his lively music and a future that can only get better. East Nashville Skyline represents an important new chapter in Snider’s career that, with a little luck and the artist’s talents, will continue another decade and beyond… (Oh Boy Records, released 2004)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ zine

Vintage Review: Todd Snider's Peace, Love and Anarchy (2007)

Singer/songwriter, humorist, social commentator, and minor genius, Todd Snider is, perhaps, a man out of time. His effortless mix of rock, folk, country, and blues would not have sounded out of place, say, during the 1965-75 acoustic songwriter-oriented era. Much like his former label boss John Prine, Snider tends to mix words, emotions, and the occasional “big thought” all together on his lyrical palette, setting it all down on a musical canvas with broad strokes.

Unfortunately, while Snider’s approach might have worked during a time when Dylan-inspired wandering troubadours as musically diverse as Prine, Warren Zevon, Bob Frank, Jackson Browne, Arlo Guthrie, and Eric Anderson could successfully record for a major label, these days the bar is set a little higher. You have to move “product” to keep a deal, and Todd Snider is a little too original, a little too eclectic to stick around the majors for long.

Todd Snider’s Peace, Love and Anarchy

During the ‘90s, Snider recorded three albums for Jimmy Buffet’s MCA-distributed boutique label, Margaritaville. Although these albums displayed moments of staggering brilliance (songs like “You Think You No Somebody” or “Rocket Fuel”) and great humor (“Alright Guy,” “My Generation, Pt. 2”), when Snider’s sales failed to exceed his critical acclaim, he found himself out on the street. Those MCA-era albums have been distilled into That Was Me: The Best Of Todd Snider 1994-1998, a fine introduction for those unfamiliar with vintage Todd.

At the dawn of the new century, Snider found a kindred spirit in John Prine and signed with Prine’s label, Oh Boy Records. During this decade, we’ve watched as Snider’s art has matured and deepened over the course of three solid studio albums for Oh Boy, and although the acclaim has gotten louder and Snider’s audience has gradually increased (albeit at a snail’s pace), the artist himself, maybe driven by ambition, decided to leave a comfortable indie home to once again climb onto the lower rungs of the major label game, releasing The Devil You Know in 2006 for Universal’s New Door Records imprint.

As such, Snider’s Peace, Love and Anarchy is the obligatory departing collection of “rarities, B-sides and demos,” culled from his time at Oh Boy Records. Although there are few revelations here – and sparse liner notes offer little in the way of documentation – there are a few gems hidden just beneath the surface. An acoustic version of “Nashville,” seemingly a demo from Snider’s East Nashville Skyline, works perfectly well without full instrumentation, while “Missing You,” a demo from 2000’s Happy To Be Here, is a little too rough around the edges to fit comfortably.

I Feel Like I’m Falling In Love

A talented songwriter with a penchant for clever phrasing, Snider has had several of his songs recorded by other singers, and a few of these are represented by Snider’s demo versions of the songs on Peace, Love and Anarchy. Personally, I’d like to see what Snider’s longtime musical foil Will Kimbrough could do in the studio with a full band version of “I Feel Like I’m Falling In Love,” originally recorded by Jack Ingram. Ingram also recorded Snider’s “Barbie Doll,” a bluesy song that displays Snider’s intelligent wordplay. The demo for “Deja Blues,” recorded by legendary country outlaw Billy Joe Shaver, is a twangy acoustic number that would also sound good with a full band behind it.  

As with any collection of this sort, Peace, Love and Anarchy includes a couple of clunkers in the mix. Snider’s cover of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Stoney” is so lifeless that it barely registers, and it sadly includes accompaniment by not one, but two local Nashville journalists – Peter Cooper and Nicole Keiper. Cooper’s fingerprints are also all over “Some Things Are,” a decent song and a better performance, but with listing vocals that range from a folkie whisper to a bluesy growl, it’s not one of Snider’s better moments. Now I don’t begrudge Cooper, the Nashville Tennessean newspaper’s frontline music journalist, his opportunities as a musician, but as the overall producer for Peace, Love and Anarchy, surely he could have found some Todd Snider songs in the vault that didn’t involve his own (unremarkable) performances?    

It is with the musical “rarities” and not with the demos, however, that the treasures of Peace, Love and Anarchy are revealed. “Old Friend” is a fine country-flavored duet, of sorts, between Snider and Jack Ingram, with traditional country instrumentation (dobro, mandolin, steel guitar) provided by Peter Holsapple (The dB’s). Holsapple also appears on “Combover Blues,” a humorous song that should become an anthem for middle aged rockers everywhere. “East Nashville Skyline” is a love letter to Snider’s adopted neighborhood that should have been included on the album of the same name, while the mostly spoken-word “From A Roof Top” offers non-natives a bird’s-eye view of historic East Nashville.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Closing the album, “Cheatham Street Warehouse” is a full-blown rocker, the kind of highly-personalized story-song that Snider does as well, if not better, than anybody. With a band featuring Tommy Womack on guitar, drummer Craig Wright, and pedal steel wizard Lloyd Green, the song is a lo-fi delight, Snider’s soulful vocals barely struggling above the mix while the band bashes and crashes with ramshackle delight. Overall, the good and grand here outweighs the simply mediocre, making Peace, Love and Anarchy a solid collection with many songs that will appeal to Snider’s loyal fans. For newcomers, however, I’d recommend any one of Snider’s Oh Boy albums as the place to start familiarizing yourself with this talented and underrated performer. (Oh Boy Records, released February 15, 2007)

Review originally published by the Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog, 2007