Todd Snider – Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3
Thirty Tigers – 15 March 2019
“…Most people are pretty level headed. They just said, well: ‘this is the end… this is the end of the world.’ People ain’t been livin right. The human race just ain’t been treatin’ each other right. Been robbing each other in different ways with fountain pens and guns, and having wars and killing each other and shooting round. So the fella that made this world he’s worked up this dust storm”
During the first recording he’s ever cut, Woody Guthrie in his hard-learned, matter-of-fact manner relates this apocalyptic vision of biblical proportions – The Great Dust Storm – back to the man at the controls, folklorist Alan Lomax. Pressing for details, Lomax fields him another question, to which Guthrie responds in song. So Long, It’s Been Good To Know Yuh sums up Guthrie’s struggle and that of his fellow Okie neighbours in the straightest terms there are. As the reel, his West Texas tale and nightmarish images of those thick dust clouds roll on, Woody’s voice, style and legend are all immortalised in this historic 1935 performance.
Let’s lift the needle on that and skip forward eighty-four years to the release of Todd Snider’s Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3. With just under twenty solo records to his name, it’s been a long strange trip for the Alt-Country singer-songwriter so far. When he first hit the scene back in the mid-90s he was ushered in by John Prine and immediately stood out from his contemporaries for many of the same reasons he still does now.
Spitting blue-collar grit like Springsteen, careening with the same charm of Kristofferson and with the slick wit of Prine, Newman and Wainwright, there’s something of a bohemian slacker image to him, but be careful if you’re a critic set on typecasting, understand he’s a hippie with a hell of a work ethic. Naturally living on the road isn’t always gonna keep you free and clean, and Snider has spoken openly throughout his career about addiction, as well as his recent divorce.
The past few years have seen Snider branch out with Hard Working Americans, a ragtag supergroup comprising of guitarist Neal Casal, of Chris Robison Brotherhood and The Cardinals, drummer Duane Trucks & bassist Dave Schools of Widespread Panic, and keyboardist Chad Staehly of Great American Taxi. Their debut was recorded at Bob Weir’s TRI Studios and the Dead stand as just one of their many influences, as they stretch out across the United States soaking up the best in homegrown Garage, Psychedelia and Americana. Live they’re likely to shift from the shambling rock of the Stones to the pent aggression of the Sonics, before escalating into a Haight-Ashbury blessed wig-out, with Snider at the helm coming on like Leon Russell in a downward kaleidoscopic spiral. In 2016 he further exercised freedom and exorcised demons in the most hedonistic, cut-loose fashion he could muster on a solo release, Eastside Bulldog as alter-ego ‘Elmo Buzz’.
But given all that he has felt the tug, he’s hitching back to where it all began: as a folk singer, ready now to pay his dues to his heroes, whether that be Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Cowboy Jack Clement, J. R. Cash or in fact, Woody Guthrie. Snider’s returned to his dog-eared copy of Guthrie’s Library Of Congress Recording Sessions – from which we lifted our opening quote – and he’s not here to settle on mere pastiche either. He’s got a case of the Talkin’ Blues and like the radical balladeer before him, to Chris Bouchillon of the Greenville Trio who first sang them into life, down to the average Joe on the street: he’s fed up. On Cash Cabin Sessions, Snider takes aim at those peddling guns, pushing fountain pens and plugging agendas, being sure to throw his weight into celeb culture too. Back to call ‘bullshit’ on the entire affair, if you miss the message to begin with, you’ll understand by the closing choruses of A Timeless Response To Current Events.
Working On A Song opens with Snider’s first day in Nashville, chasing his dream and a tune called, “Where Do I Go Now That I’m Gone.” Like Kristofferson that went before him and somewhat recalling Bill Callahan’s Eid Ma Clack Shaw, in which Callahan wakes ‘having dreamt the perfect song’, Snider recounts the elusive pursuit of the artist forever trailing after that ‘secret chord’. A nostalgic, lone-acoustic ode on letting go it fades before the harmonica gallop of Talking Reality Television Blues.
The first of the three Talkin’ Blues numbers – think Bob Dylan’s eponymous debut (especially when Snider let’s out a ‘huheww!’ halfway through) – Snider breaks down the formula and demonstrates how effective it can be in all its caustic glory. “One fool made the decision to turn on the television”, so begins our two-and-a-half minute skit on the condensed history of TV. “Video killed the radio star,” sings Snider at one point, then Michael Jackson is shortly axed as he professes, “reality killed that video star”, before concluding with a wry jive at Mr President, “reality killed by a reality star”.
Snider’s last solo record in this vein, 2012’s Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables, pulled no punches either, although back then he was dealing in down-and-out Grunge with wayward fiddle accompaniment where the angst and bitterness come on strong. Whereas on Cash Cabin Sessions, the songs feel more succinct, they come across as bittersweet rather than sour and Snider’s sterling acoustic guitar work is arguably tighter than ever. Whether it’s due to the stripped back nature of the tracks, the production at John Carter Cash’s studio, or Snider’s breezy-yet-barbed delivery; it’s heard as if you are face-to-face with the man, sipping or smoking on something fine, reclining on his porch-side or slumped, quietly contemplating it all in some backroom bar.
“So zippity-doodah mother fucker”, the satire continues, “zippity-ayy”. Snider clamours through The Blues On Banjo landing punch lines with the same innate comic timing of current contemporary bluesman Jerron ‘Blind Boy’ Paxton. Before he minces no words on the uproarious Dr Hook-esque gang-vocal refrain of “they’re sending out their thoughts and their prayers”, Snider breaks like the Grand Coulee Dam, crying:
“The air in my motel has been conditioned in just such a way, that it seems like every single note I ask this priceless banjo of mine to play, takes the unmistakable sounds of my depths and my pains and my sorrow, and turns ’em into some kind of embarrassing sounding hope for tomorrow. And that’s not me, man. That’s not who I am!”
Like A Force Of Nature doesn’t entirely fit with that thinking. Sure you can hear the ache but it’s still got some hopeful clout to it, with Jason Isbell contributing harmony vocals. Later on, we hear Isbell and his partner Amanda Shires on backing duties, their presence on the album is, of course, welcome and unsurprising considering Snider’s involvement with Nashville’s current crop. As he pointed out in his recent Rolling Stone interview, the Alt-Country scene is alive and thrashing, with Sturgill Simpson, Justin Townes Earle and Elizabeth Cook leading the charge. On Cowboy Jack Clement’s Waltz, he pays tribute to both Cash’s close friend Clement and Nashville’s new vanguard, closing with “but there’s still a little bit of shaking going on”.
Just Like Overnight edges in like the early light of day, fighting its way through the cloud cover of a tender Saturday morning hangover. A slow burner and an earworm, it shares a likeness with the Elvis-inspired, lilting sentiment of Watering Flowers In The Rain. Elsewhere, Framed picks up where the Hard Working American’s Something Else left off, as Snider adapts the lyrics and writes from the perspective of the first framed dollar bill. It contains the glorious takedown:
“I took a better job pouring fluoride in the water, for the son of the Bilderberg’s only daughter. I said, “How do you know?” She said “You know how you just know somethin’ in your gut that you just gotta trust? Well, it’s nothin’ like that… we’s just a-rich as all fuck is all”
Inspired by a series of dreams and premonitions, The Ghost of Johnny Cash is the most stand-alone track on Cash Cabin Sessions. With it’s brooding minor-chord progression played on Cash’s century-old Martin acoustic if it was sung an octave (or so) lower you could be fooled into thinking that it was an unearthed outtake from Cash’s American Recordings series. That would be of course if its story didn’t centre on Loretta Lynn bucking and whirling with the apparition of the Man In Black himself:
“Father Time takes forever and makes it look like less than lightning flash. Violins bow into fiddles, two iconic symbols crash, when Loretta Lynn goes dancing with the ghost of Johnny Cash”
There’s something of Jim Morrison in there too, with its sinister mysticism as Snider pays homage. Apparently, Lynn swears the studio is haunted. If your daydreaming typically drifts towards the supernatural it isn’t hard to imagine Cash and Carter, arm around the other, peering over Snider’s shoulder. In the past he has chronicled the histories of The Kingsmen and the Seattle Grunge scene, often covering almost as many songs as he’s actually penned. Right now we may not be living in the shadow of a storm but in our climate, it can often feel we are at risk of being eclipsed by something or other. Snider’s gift is he comes across as a confidant, subversive but never smug, akin to Prine, Dylan or Guthrie. He has seen his fair share of toil and hard-tourin’ and it shows in his timeworn blues; a voice seized by the dust and ghosts of the United States. Gripping from start to finish, here is Another Side Of Todd Snider: piercing, precise, bare but still as eccentric as ever. Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3 earns its place right up there with the very best of Snider’s sprawling back catalogue.
Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3 is out now.
For his current tour dates visit: https://toddsnider.net/tour/
Photo Credit: Stacie Huckeba