★★★★★
Hard Working Americans are a cover band fronted by idiosyncratic singer-songwriter Todd Snider and a group of musicians recruited from the rootsier side of the jam band scene. Guitarist Neal Casal has played with the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Dave Schools is the bassist of Widespread Panic, Chad Staehly plays keyboards in Great American Taxi, and Duane Trucks is the drumming nephew of Allman Brothers' drummer Butch...
- www.popmatters.com
2014-03-24
★★★★★
Take any foregone conclusions that you may have about a supergroup consisting of Todd Snider, Neal Casal, Widespread Panic's Dave Schools, Great American Taxi's Chad Staehly and Duane Trucks and toss them right out the window. As the Hard Working Americans, these gentlemen--who never worked alongside each other before and united Real World style in Bob Weir's TRI Studios with a preconceived list of great songs from the modern country-rock songbook--bring it as though they've been together for...
- www.relix.com
2014-02-15
★★★★★
www.thirtytigers.com
BY JOHN B. MOORE
In a BLURT interview recently, Todd Snider bemoaned the fact that he never had a full band to work with. Always a solo folk rocker, more often than not he's the only one on the stage night after night - with the rare exceptions when he can cajole a drummer and a few other to back him up. But even then, he was always calling the shots...
- blurtonline.com
2014-02-14
★★★★★
If that sounds dry or academic, one spin will leave the listener convinced that this is a gutsy, no frills band digging into some terrific songs they love, by writers whose vision and work ethic they evidently respect. The performances typically rock hard as on the grinding version of Will Kimbrough's "Another Train" that's not far from early Led Zeppelin and a rugged, swampy attack on "Blackland Farmer," grabbed from Elizabeth Cook...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2014-01-23
★★★★★
For 20 years now, Todd Snider has been one of America's most consistently entertaining singer-songwriters. A wise, funny, and endlessly endearing performer, Snider's playful, off-the-cuff affect and thick-tongued vocals mask a darkly aware sensibility. While his fans enjoy his drawling vocals and the homespun storytelling of songs like "Beer Run," they cheer for his 'aw shucks' anthems like "Alright Guy" and they drown in his tears on poignant tracks like "Rose City," Snider has always been at...
- exclaim.ca
2014-02-12
★★★★★
Melvin Records I bet I could make you smile just by listing off the members of the Hard Working Americans: Duane Trucks on drums, paired up with bass monster Dave Schools; Chad Staehly on keys laying it down alongside of Neal Casal on guitar; and Todd Snyder out front on vocals. (Oh - and toss in cameos by John Popper on harp, John Keane on some guitar and banjo, and Jason Crosby on fiddle and piano.) Does that sound like the makings of a smoky, smiling, killer jam session, or what...
- www.jambands.com
2014-01-22
★★★★★
Todd Snider specializes in bitingly funny, populist country-rock storytelling (his 2012 album Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables was a vivid Great Recession indictment). Here, he convenes a tough, versatile band for a set of rootsy, lefty covers like the Bottle Rockets' "Welfare Music" and Frankie Miller's desperate 1959 hit "Blackland Farmer," which is redone with taut New Orleans swing. The highlight is a country-blues take on Randy Newman's "Mr...
- www.rollingstone.com
2014-01-21
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