Todd Snider

"I'm broke as the Ten Commandments and sometimes I'm harder to follow..."
-from “Money, Compliments, Publicity” by Todd Snider

Initially The Excitement Plan (June 9th on Yep Roc Records) wasn't supposed to be about anything. I was just trying to come up with the best... most open hearted ... well-thought-out lyrics I could come up with. I wanted every song to be sad and funny at the same time, vulnerable and entertaining at the same time, personal and universal at the same time. I wanted every song to be as uniquely written as possible and then I wanted to perform them in a studio loose and rugged and hopefully as uniquely as I could. My hope is to be hard to describe and/or new…I'm not saying I am. I'm just saying that's the hope.

My producer, Don Was thought the best way to go for what I was talking about was live and spontaneous. So we set up at Henson studios in Los Angeles with myself on guitar, harp and piano. Greg Liesz on steel guitar and dobro. Don on upright bass, Jim Keltner on drums and Krish Harma engineering.

Then, with Don being the only one who'd heard the songs and me being the only one who knew them, we recorded completely live for just two and a half days.

As God is my witness and whether you even like this music or not, it was the most exciting, most challenging, most uninhibited and funnest time I've ever had making music…

- Todd Snider

The Excitement Plan’s laid- back groove and top- shelf lyrics are being called Snider's best work yet. "This music is sorta JJ Cale meets Jerry Jeff Walker sounding with words that would hopefully impress Shel Silverstein, Bobby Bare, Chuck Berry, Kris Kristofferson or Randy Newman,” Snider said. With his contributions of stellar guitar, piano and harmonica, his musicianship shares the spotlight as easily as his treasured lyrics.

Snider is a vociferous musician whose fans know him to be quite the workhorse. His acclaimed 2006 release, The Devil You Know found the barefoot troubadour performing live on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman and the CD appeared on numerous year-end Top 10 lists including Spin, Blender and Rolling Stone. More recently, last year’s Peace Queer EP--a concept record featuring all the peace, love and anarchy Snider is known for--inspired Blender to say he “morphed from a wisecracking country-ish journeyman to the sharpest and funniest protest singer working today." The EP spent five weeks at number one on the Americana chart and Spin Magazine dubbed him, "One of roots music's slyest, smartest songwriters."

In addition to the new album release, this year also finds Snider doing what he does best: playing live. With a 30-date West Coast tour already under his belt in early 2009, he will spend the spring and summer criss-crossing the Midwest and East Coast with notable festival stops at Bonnaroo (6.14)--where he will be joined by Don Was--Allgood (7.10) as well as at 10,000 Lakes (7.25) with more to be announced.

On a final note, Snider adds: “To me, The Excitement Plan is about the lap of poverty, being sung with authority and experience. Where Peace Queer was speculation from afar, The Excitement Plan is certainty from the heart of the story, i think anyway … It had lots of rewrites on both words and music, lots of wondering what the point was and waiting for it to show up. I don't like to finish any song 'til I know what the therapeutic part for me is gonna be.”





The Excitement Plan Liner Notes

this is
THE EXCITEMENT PLAN
(Your sure fire cure for the hard times)
i truly appreciate your investment in it
the excitement plan has been in my family for years
and only takes sixty to ninety days to work
after that we'll be layin'em in the sweet peas
trust me

SLIM CHANCE by Todd Snider
this is a song about some poor old guy
who is struggling in these hard times
but he's got a woman
and she still looks at him like she sees something in him
and when she does it makes him feel like he's about to get lucky.

GREENCASTLE BLUES by Todd Snider
ok I admit I am the poor old guy
i just mentioned before
and this song is about him too
in this song he's a little ashamed
and cant believe he's still getting arrested into his forties
in this moment he's sitting in a cell in greencastle, indiana
trying to think of how he'll explain this to the woman
that looks at him like she still sees so much in him
exhausted
he looks for a bright side
and finds one.

AMERICAS FAVORITE PASTIME by Todd Snider
this song is about another person
he's not poor or old
in fact i'd bet he's as young and rich as you get by now
but one afternoon be it ever so ungracefully
he showed up to work completely prepared for something else entirely
and yet, still did a great job at the job in front of him
giving ill prepared people everywhere someone to look up to.
sometimes people hear this song a
and ask me why'd you leave off the line that says "by looking at the cover?"
But i'm telling you
i never had it there to begin with.
i mean it like i'm saying it.
rest in peace doc.

DOLL FACE by Todd Snider
this song isn't about a person
but he feels pretty certain
that his fate isn't his fault
and he more than just feels like he's living in a dump
but rather than drown in anger
he chooses to comfort who he landed with....
constantly looking, almost foolishly,
for a bright side
and whose to say
he doesn't find one too.

BRING 'EM HOME by Todd Snider
this song used to be about a kid
who enlisted in the armed services
to make a better life for his family
just in time for a war to break out
but he's getting old now.

CORPUS CHRISTI BAY by Robert Earl Keen
me on vocals
molly thomas on fiddle
eric mcconnell on percussion

robert earl wrote this one
but i feel close to it because if you
substitute the music biz for the oil rig
and the road for corpus christi
you got the story of my brother and i.

THE LAST LAUGH Todd Snider and Peter Cooper
with thanks to dr. steven gold
with this song
i'm trying to explain myself
how i became a gypsy
and where it got me
and where i figure it'll take me
and what I've been bringing
am bringing
and will be bringing with me.

UNORGANIZED CRIME by Todd Snider
with thanks to ryan white
this is a song about an old friend of my father's from portland, oregon
named willie pendleton.
he ran the toughest joint in portland
it was called slick willies
i hated to see willie coming and i hated when my dad was with him but... i
must admit...
he did teach me a dirty old fist fight trick
then one night in the eighties it came on tv
that he'd been murdered in a gang related "killing for hire"
and that the police had so many different leads
they didn't know which way to turn
to this day they don't know who did it.

BAREFOOT CHAMPAGNE by Todd Snider
i believe it was willie nelson who i first heard say on some tv show "if id
a shot my old lady the first time i thought about it i'd be out of jail by
now"......

DON'T TEMPT ME by Todd Snider and Loretta Lynn
loretta and me on vocals
me on guitar
peter cooper on bass
paul griffith on drums
jen gunderman on piano

and if my old lady had shot me the first time she thought about it she'd be
out of jail by now too.

MONEY, COMPLIMENTS, PUBLICITY (SONG NUMBER TEN) by Todd Snider
with thanks to beth diveley
"You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested
in money, compliments and publicity." - Eddie Rickenbacker, World War II pilot

this was the tenth song i made up for this record
which was technically enough to turn it in
and call it a record
i have a lot of good people to thank for the life i lead
and for all of the kindness in it
but i'd rather thank clive davis and god and all my fans
at some kinda trophy award show
where i get to meet snoop dog and shit like that.

GOOD FORTUNE by Todd Snider
short story long
this is a song about me and melita and you
it spends a lot of time saying just two simple things
i love happy endings and i hope you have one.
and so that's THE EXCITEMENT PLAN
i hope it works for you
the objective of the excitement plan?
i don't know
i just remember what my father told HIS potential investors
"sometime here in the next sixty to ninety days, we'll be layin'em in the
sweet peas"
did these investors ever actually get to "layin'em in the sweet peas?"
oh dear god no.
i don't think my dad even knew what that meant.
i'm different though
you can trust me