Gonzo troubadour Todd Snider is the de facto leader of Hard Working Americans, a band that evolved out of his friendship with Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools. The group’s self-titled debut began as a collection of Snider’s favorite songs, many from past tourmates like country traditionalist Kieran Kane (“The Mountain Song”) and the Bottle Rockets’ Brian Henneman (“Welfare Music”). Two of the album’s most memorable tracks (“Another Train” and “I Don’t Have A Gun”) are credited to Will Kimbrough, who played in Snider’s ’90s backup band, the Nervous Wrecks. Snider and Schools will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on them.
Schools: Seattle-based crate digger label Light In The Attic wins the most surprisingly great listen award with this three-LP box of music curated by Yoga Records founder Douglas McGowan. This is not your Shirley MacLaine-loving mother’s listening choice for watching quartz crystals clear up by the light of the full moon. This is ethereal, heady and sometimes challenging music composed by, and in some cases, channeled through the earliest progenitors of the music of the cosmos: Iasos, Gurdjieff, (Brain Eno discovery) Laraaji and a host of other mysterious composers who wished to create the soundtrack to enlightenment. Much of it self-released on cassette tapes, the music is often ambient and darkly spiritual while never devolving into the mind-numbing synth-laden pablum that the term “new age” came to mean by the mid-’90s. This beautifully packaged and annotated set has been on my turntable since it’s release in November, and frankly, my crystals couldn’t be happier.
Video after the jump.
