Article Contributed by Stephen Boyd
Published on February 5, 2014
Picking yourself up and dusting yourself off when you fall or continuing to keep getting it when times get hard, is the gist of this album from Todd Snider‘s newly formed band the Hard Working Americans. Whether it is the accomplished musicians in the Hard Working Americans or the lyrics, you can find a pinch of many great bands within this group. A little Neil Young. Check. A little Black Crowes. Check. A little Arlo Guthrie. Check. A little Widespread Panic. Check. The band covers 11 songs with each performance doing the original song writer’s efforts justice. In Snider’s words, “As Hard Working Americans, we like it when people listen to our words and when people use our music as a tool to get laid. We crave lyrics and hula-hoops. We rock balls, we don’t bust balls. We are on your side and at your service. We want epic songs and virtuoso musicianship to exist in a room together and we want you in the room. Door’s open.” The name that will be the focal point for publicity and the sound of the band is Dave Schools. Schools provides the bass we have come to love that spans the most spacey of jams to whiplashing bass lines that have kept people moving with a familiar grace for a few decades now. Filling out the rest of the band’s mosaic of musicians are guitarist Neal Casal, keyboardist Chad Staehly and drummer Duane Trucks. These fellows lived up to the band’s name by recording the album with the help of Bob Weir’s TRI studio in only five days.
