Photo: Stacie Huckeba

In 2013, Todd Snider was at the height of his creative powers. His latest studio album, Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables, had appeared on multiple Best of 2012 lists. His solo acoustic performances, which drew on a deep catalog of original music going back to his 1994 debut, carried an emotional resonance that connected with audiences via his songcraft and storytelling.

Snider’s gift for conveying veracity via narrative embellishment and a dry wit had long been recognized by such mentors and collaborators as Jerry Jeff Walker, John Prine, Jimmy Buffett, Guy Clark and Kris Kristofferson. In 2013, he directed this imaginative flair into a new medium, as he delivered the manuscript for I Never Met A Story I Didn’t Like: Mostly True Tall Tales, which Da Capo Press would release to significant acclaim. As his editor Ben Schafer notes, “What was most striking about working with Todd, from a publishers point of view, is that the manuscript (co-written with the late, great Peter Cooper) arrived in perfect condition four months before deadline via an email accompanied by a three-word note: ‘That was easy.’ I’ve been in publishing for 31 years now and that is still the one and only time a book arrived four months before deadline. It’s also the only time I’ve heard an author describe writing a book as easy.”

The artist’s curiosity and commitment led him into new musical environs that same year. He entered Bob Weir’s TRI Studios with producer/bassist Dave Schools, guitarist Neal Casal, drummer Duane Trucks and keyboard player Chad Staehly to record the eponymous debut of Hard Working Americans. Lap-steel guitarist Jesse Aycock joined the collective before their initial performance in December 2013, which was recorded for the documentary film The First Waltz. A follow-up album, 2016’s Rest in Chaos, focused on Snider’s original material rather than the cover songs he honored via radical reinterpretation on Hard Working Americans. The group remained active through 2018, even recording a yet-to-be-released album with Daniel Sproul, who replaced Neal Casal after he left the group to focus on the Chris Robinson Brotherhood.

Snider passed away this past November due to pneumonia at age 59, ending any lingering hope that HWA might yet reform. The following oral history looks back on the personal impact and legacy of the group. In addition to bandmates Schools and Staehly, friends and musical cohorts Will Kimbrough, Elizabeth Cook and Aaron Lee Tasjan also share their memories of the artist who Bruce Hampton referred to as “The Last Troubadour.”

Schools: The thing about Todd that really shocked me is that early on, I was sitting in a hotel room somewhere on Panic tour, and Todd called me and he said, “I just want to thank you. I’m like, “For what? For blowing out your eardrums on nightly basis? For giving you a guy to come hug on when you’re a sweaty rail of a human being on stage? You’re even sweatier than me.”

He said, “No, I want to thank you for giving me permission,” which of course is the most important word in the world. It’s something Bruce Hampton doled out. He told me, “I want to thank you for giving me permission to improvise more.” I was like, “What do you mean?” Then he goes, “The stories I tell, they’re written in stone. Or they were. Now I feel like I don’t have to memorize them for maximum effect. I can just be me and tell the story and tell it however I want to tell it.”

I was like, “Wait, are you saying that you used to present your stories word for word as a shoeless, gypsy, hobo folk singer?” He was like, “Yeah, I worked hard on those.”

That’s when I began to realize how serious he was about his art. Over the course of the band, I saw the depth to which he tore himself apart to get this stuff out the way he wanted to have it heard.

Kimbrough: From the first time I ever saw him in 1993, he had the natural ability to tell a story and make it feel like he was making it up for that particular night on the spot, when in actuality he was working super hard and spending a lot of his energy at home too, working on the stories.

Schools: I’ve never seen anyone go through self-editing and self-testing and benchmarking of material like that. A lot of us work hard on our ideas, and then in this jamband world, we have to sort of give them up. It’s like Garcia would say, “Once you’ve written a song and given it to the band, you might as well forget about how you heard it in your head because everybody’s going to have some input.” That’s what makes it transportive.

But Todd was coming from a world of songwriting rules and poetic rules, so he did what he did until he realized that he could do more. There was a kernel of truth in everything though, even if it was a story he heard someone tell him, and he decided to put himself in it as the first-person plural.

Staehly: One time he said to me, “I don’t trust a lyric unless it’s been around for at least a year.” So it was never like, “OK, it’s time to make a record. I’m going to spend the next couple of months writing.” It was a continuous thing, and it would probably be a year or two of daily writing before he got to a point where he felt like he had an album’s worth of material. Then sometimes he’d get in the studio, start whacking away at a new album and be like, “Nope, this isn’t it. This isn’t good enough” Then he’d scrap the whole thing and start over.

It wasn’t like he just came up with that stuff just off the cuff. I mean, sure, sometimes it was “inspiration moved me brightly” but at Todd’s core, he was a writer’s writer, and he got to that by distilling things down religiously.

Being a musician on the road is vampire mode, but whether he was up until 11:00 PM or 3:00 AM, he was awake by 6:00 AM. Then he sat down with his coffee and a big joint and just would start going to town writing, trying to get these lines distilled down. He chipped away at it nonstop.

He’d assume his position on the bus, which was in the front lounge at one of the little dinette tables. He’d have his computer set up, he’d have his readers on and he’d be banging away. He liked to dump the lyrical stuff, the poetic stuff in the morning, then throughout the day, he’d revisit some of that.

He’d also be writing all these amazing emails in this very Todd way, which was all lower-case letters, no punctuation. He always wrote in this poetic kind of style, even in his emails. He didn’t have a cell phone, and he mostly communicated with his friends by email.

Kimbrough: He got up at the crack of dawn, and that’s when we did the most of our communicating over the last 20 years when we were not working as closely together, but we still worked on recordings or writing—or playing a live show from time to time.

Todd would either write you an email and it would be 6:00 in the morning, or he would reply to your previous message at 6:00 in the morning. He was a big emailer, not so much a talk on the phone kind of guy, and certainly not a text message guy, but he did his emailing at the crack of dawn, absolutely every time.

Cook: He and I both had AOL and still have AOL email addresses. So that became a big point of pride. It was like a badge of honor for us how we still managed to exist and communicate with the world, but we had this really OG handle in doing it. His emails read like poems—all lowercase, no punctuation—and mine to him tended to be all one long run-on sentence in a paragraph. He’d break up his in short little lines that true to any songwriter would almost dictate a phrasing, so it read like poetry.

Staehly: One of the most profound things he said to me was from artist to manager when I was working on the management team. Todd was known for canceling shows or walking out of shows, and he once said to me, “Chad, when I do the trick, some days I can’t control it”—by that, he meant when he was able to completely dissolve that wall between the audience and the artist. He said, “Once I open that doorway up and let that all out and try to connect with the audience on that very real level, I’m 100% vulnerable. Some days there’s some really dark shit in there, and it’ll throw everything out of whack. Then it turns into flight or fight, and a lot of times it’s got to be flight. I’ve got to leave because it’s too overwhelming.”

That really stuck with me, and I think anyone who listens to Todd’s music or has seen a Todd show feels that connection. I haven’t been around many artists who are able to do that in a way where, by the end of the song, you’re in tears along with them. He could be sensitive and vulnerable in front of a room full of people, which isn’t easy and it’s exhausting. But that was the only way he operated.

Schools: What he put himself through was so intense that sometimes it affected everyone. If he was jubilant, then it was, “Oh, my God!” There was one show in Wilmington, where we came out there, he had the audience in the palm of his hand, and the band was locked tight. Instantly, we were all like, “This is it! This is why we do this shit!” Then all of a sudden, five songs into the set, it was like someone turned on the refrigeration unit and everybody felt it. Todd just changed. It was like the air got let out of the tire. We finished up the show and he didn’t want to talk about it. Then the next day I asked him if he wanted to talk about it and he said no.

Later on, we found out he thought that Neal had looked at him funny and smirked, which Todd took to mean that Neal didn’t think he was a real front man. Whereas when we brought this out into the air and talked about it, Neal was like, “No, man. You’re the best front man I’ve ever worked with. I was smiling while I was watching you.”

But this is a look into Todd and how hard he was on himself. It shows his basic insecurity, which was at the heart of a lot of his creativity. It’s why there was a braggadocio to some of his songwriting, and a guy in the shadows side to some of his songwriting.

Looking back, it’s a funny story, but I know how I felt on stage when it was amazing, and then the very same night, it turned into ice.

Staehly: There were a couple different moments where both HWA and Chris Robinson Brotherhood would be at the same festival, and Neal was literally moving his gear from one bus over to the other and ending one tour with one and starting on another with the other band. I think it got to a point where Neal was feeling like he was hanging both things up. So Neal bowed out of HWA and we weren’t ready to give it up, although we didn’t really like the idea of continuing on without Neal because he was such a big part of the records and how that band developed its sound.

Eventually, we started having auditions for guitar players. We were holed up in Nashville going through a bunch of guitar auditions, and one of the weekends when we were together for some auditions at Cash Cabin Studios, we ended up recording some tracks. Daniel Sproul, who ended up getting the guitar gig, wasn’t there but when he eventually did get the gig, we felt like we had already carved out some cool stuff at Cash Cabin. So we went back there and recorded a full album, two songs of which were Johnny Cash lyrics through his son John Carter Cash, who owns Cash Cabin Studios and lives there on this property that Johnny’s had since the sixties in Hendersonville.

We recorded this full album, and it’s an amazing album. When we arrived at the end of it though, maybe Todd got unsure about the record, then maybe Dave got unsure about it. That kind of went back and forth for a little bit. Then things just started to fizzle out and we weren’t collectively seeing the clear path forward. So it kind of just got shelved.

Then the band played a little bit more in 2017, and I think the summer of 2018 was the last of it. There was loose talk every once in a while about getting back to it, but we never did.

Tasjan: There came a time when Burt Stein emailed me and asked if I would like to play guitar in Hard Working Americans, but I had a bit too much happening with my solo career to be able to do that. There was also a sense that while Hard Working Americans had been a really great thing for Todd, something in the air suggested he was getting ready to go back to making Todd records again.

What was cool about his next record was hearing how he’d incorporated some of what he learned in Hard Working Americans. I thought that was really fascinating.

It might seem like Hard Working Americans kind of fizzled out, but it seemed like a natural conclusion to me.

People loved it, and like so many other things with Todd, he wasn’t going to commit to doing it forever. He was going to change again. I think that’s one of the most rewarding parts of being a Todd Snider fan and listening to his entire catalog. Every record is different, and every record is really, really good. I mean, the bar of quality that exists across all the albums is incredible. So for me, the end of the Hard Working Americans thing was just kind of a natural conclusion to yet another genius incarnation of this incredible artist’s work.

Staehly: So many conversations about Todd have come up lately and I tell people about his sensitivity. There are two sides to that. One is to describe the sensitivity he had, which allowed him to get to the core of the human condition. The other is to point out that his sensitivity was so great that if he shared ten new songs with you and you called out one in particular that you liked, immediately his mind went to, “Well, what’s wrong with the other nine songs?” That to me is Todd in a nutshell.

Schools: Thinking back to the first album, he would literally take a wrecking ball to the original arrangements of these songs. He was a wrecking ball, which is amazing because Bruce Hampton called himself a wrecking ball too

But the game changed from day to day, with the many shifting moods of Todd Snider. Comparing the first record with Rest in Chaos and having had many conversations with Todd, especially concerning the third record that was never released, he had a really hard time letting go when it became him writing the words. He just couldn’t get out of his own way.

Todd was Todd. That’s all you can say.

Did he break my heart more than anyone I’ve ever played with? Yes.

Did he make me laugh harder than anyone I’ve ever worked with? Yes.

CODA

Here is an email that Todd Snider sent to Chad Staehly, around the release of Rest In Chaos. Staehly recalls, “Todd would incorporate versions of this into his ad lib at the end of us playing ‘Is This Thing Working’ when he’d introduce the band. This would also become the foundation for the first-ever HWA comic book.”

where are we headed boys?

to the top

which top?

the toppermost of the poppermost

beatles, 1964

rock and roll is here to stay

once upon a time

long ago

far away etc.

in a place called you name it

there was this folk singer

who couldn’t dance

but wanted to

and so he’d spend his off nights

traveling

to see widespread panic

the chris robinson brotherhood

the great american taxi

col. bruce hampton

etc.

where he could dance freely

among others

like himself

who couldn’t

but did anyway

one night he snuck backstage

at a widespread panic show

and met the bass player

slash

force of nature

that is david schools

david intuitively knew the folk singer’s problem

and said take me with you

to this place

where people don’t dance

simply because they don’t know how to

soon they were jamming together

in a hushed folk house

that they both recognized as an asylum

david pulled a washing machine

from the wall ala one flew over the cuckoo’s nest

smashed it into the window

and together they fled

toward joy

on their way they stopped to see

the great american taxi in boulder colorado

where they sat with pianist chad staehly

for an hour discussing the possibilities

of the alphabet being a hoax

when an axe split thru a door

spilling in a wave of fire men

who had been called by a neighbor

who had noticed the smoke

coming from the windows of chad’s home

and assumed it was on fire

when the firemen arrived and surveyed the scene

one of them was heard to radio back to dispatch

that it was not a fire

it was a band

and with that the idea was hatched

should we be a band? they asked each other

fuck yeah man

they all three said at the same time

so who else do we get chad asked

david and todd spoke at the same time

duane trucks

neal casal

fuck yeah man

calls where made

duane trucks was in atlanta attending a zambi college under

the tutelage of col. bruce hampton

and was considering the natural laws of absurdity

as they related to this eternal quesion

"if you could only have one thing. food, air or glue"

which would you have

so it was only natural that when david asked duane

if he would like to join a band with him

and todd and chad

he answered simply

glue

and with that he became a zambi.

and the drummer for the hard working americans

the next call came to neal casal who was on the road

with the chris robinson brotherhood which meant

that he was also hallucinating when he recieved the call

from david about joining another band

in his mind he was surfing

while playing guitar but in reality he was in a green room

never the less

he agreed that as long as we never set a goal

he would be ok to join

and so he did

with a simple

fuck yeah man

soon it became clear that another guitar player would be needed

jesse aycock

was backstage at cains ballroom in oklahoma

seconds from going on

a well wisher back stage yelled at him

to

"smoke that dope, ride that rope and eat that nay nay"

he was saying to himself

"what the fuck does that even mean?"

when the phone rang

it was neal

he said hey man i’m in a band

were a super hero group

and we need you

jesse said

dont you mean super group

and neal said

no i mean super hero group

to which jesse asked

you mean we jam and we solve crimes?

to which neal responded

that is exactly what i mean

and with that

jesses loaded his weird hippie car

and spit red dirt all the way to boulder

for the very first meeting

of the band that would become

hard working americans

at the meeting

it was the inventor of crocs

and owner of melvin records

a slightly way fucking waisted

george boedecker

who stood to make this glorious toast

to the band on the eve

of their very first performance

"you know’ he said "you guys sit in your rooms with your dopes and ideas and shit

but it aint shit til we all get together and fucking....you know...

fuck you guys...you know what i mean...shit...here’s to all kinds a shit"

the band did know what he meant

and so they toasted

to all kinds of shit

and with that

the world’s first super hero group

spun into action

they must have solved a hundred crimes that first night alone

and then

the next night

before the first gig

leader and force of nature

david schools

gathered his band and asked

where are where headed fellas ?

to which the fellas responded

to our rooms with our dopes and our ideas and shit?

which rooms he asked

to which the band responded

uh.... the roomermosts with the doppermosts ?

to which david responded

yeah...i guess...

right?

to which they all said at the same time

fuck yeah man

and then...

it was like

fucking

no way man

i mean seriously

everybody was like

these guys

fucking jam

jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam

and everybody else was like

no doubt

and with that

the world was saved

or something

etc.