Todd Snider Archives

Full Albums: The Rolling Stones’ ‘Some Girls’

Posted by Seuras Og at 1:30 pm No Responses »

Apr 232021

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

The later ’70s had seen the Rolling Stones, not for the first time or the last, written off and out of touch, booted out of the limelight by the twin prongs of disco and punk. They were just too old: Jagger and co. were mostly in their mid to late thirties, Bill Wyman soon to be an unbelievable 42. Exile on Main Street, from six years earlier, had seemed their last point of mass credibility, the interim recordings treading water. Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of January 2021

Posted by Ray Padgett at 7:00 am No Responses »

Feb 012021

Amanda Shires – That’s All (Genesis cover)

Our first song kicks off what will be a theme here. A lot of these came out at the very top of the year (or the very end of 2020) to kick a garbage year to the curb and hope for something better. Shires said: “’That’s All’ is a song that I have played a lot on tour. The song defines 2020 for me. It’s a true Covid anthem and I dare you to not dance to my version when you hear it!” Continue reading »

Tom Jones Sings (Sort of) the “Talking Reality Television Blues” on New Todd Snider Cover

Posted by Ray Padgett at 9:00 am No Responses »

Jan 272021

Tom Jones has covered some unexpected artists in his day. AC/DC. Arctic Monkeys. The Milk Carton Kids. And the latest in that lineage: supremely chill hippie songwriter Todd Snider. Previewing his upcoming covers album Surrounded by Time, Jones released his take on Todd Snider’s “Talking Reality Television Blues,” a song originally on Todd’s 2019 album Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3 (the fact that there never was a Vol. 1 or 2 tells you a lot about Todd Snider). Continue reading »

Five Good Covers: “Mr. Bojangles” (Jerry Jeff Walker)

Posted by Seuras Og at 3:00 pm 4 Responses »

Nov 272020

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

If you had to be best known for but one song, “Mr. Bojangles” can’t be a bad one to leave as a legacy, even if, strangely, it isn’t necessarily that characteristic of the rest of the author’s output. The author? Jerry Jeff Walker, a stalwart of the outlaw country movement, a contemporary of Waylon and Willie, Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, to name just a few. Walker wrote “Bojangles” in 1967 and released it a year later, early on in a career that would produce well over twenty subsequent long players before his death earlier this year, of throat cancer, aged 78.

“Mr. Bojangles” has often been thought to be in honor of Bill Robinson, a black vaudeville performer who used Mr. Bojangles as his stage name. Not so. Seems it’s really a song about a whole less celebrated performer who Walker had met in jail, when he had been locked up for public intoxication. This Bojangles was a homeless man, who had adopted the name to hide his true identity, but had a fund of stories relating to the life he shared with his dog. When an ugly moment arose in the communal cell, Mr. Bojangles had lightened the mood with a tap dance. As you do.
Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of October 2020

Posted by Ray Padgett at 10:30 am No Responses »

Nov 022020

Andrew Bird – Andalucia (John Cale cover)

Props to any musician who chooses some non-obvious tunes for their Christmas album. Even Joni Mitchell’s “River” has so often been served as the “surprise” holiday song by now that it feels pretty played out. Andrew Bird covers a few standards on his upcoming Hark! – “Oh Holy Night,” “White Christmas” (though weirdly not the hymn that gave the album its name) – but makes room for some seasonally-appropriate fare John Prine, Handsome Family, and, on the first single, John Cale. Continue reading »

Review: ‘On the Road: A Tribute to John Hartford’

Posted by Tom McDonald at 1:30 pm No Responses »

Jun 262020

Songwriter, banjo-picker, old-time fiddler, dancer, tv star, radio dj, and, perhaps most importantly, professional riverboat pilot. Welcome to the weird, wide world of John Hartford.

Hartford was a cross between Bill Monroe and Mark Twain—he titled one of his albums Mark Twang. He was among the first to join hippie sensibilities with hillbilly ways. During the late ’60s and early ’70s, Hartford was both a vivid reminder of America’s past musical heritage, and also a harbinger of things to come; he shaped contemporary music almost in spite of himself. “Newgrass,” which in turn fed into the jam band phenomena, is basically Hartford’s concoction (though mandolinist Sam Bush gets some credit too). Even Americana, as it is currently defined, is impossible to imagine without him—the blockbuster O Brother, Where Art Thou project has Hartford’s fingerprints and spirit all over it.

So a new John Hartford Tribute album is most welcomed, and now we have one in hand: On the Road, from LoHi Records. It’s a dang good tribute album, too, starting with the opening cut (by Hartford’s co-conspirator Sam Bush), and never letting up.
Continue reading »