Todd Snider - The Devil You Know

Todd Snider was born October 11th 1966 in Portland Oregon but he grew up in places such as Santa Rosa, Austin, Houston, and Atlanta. Since his debut album in 1994 (Songs for the Daily Planet) that featured “Talkin Seattle Grunge Rock Blues” he has continued to combine bluegrass, blues, folk-rock, and country-rock to forge his own distinctive sound. Multi Instrumentalist Will Kimbrough joined forces with Snider on his 1996 release & the two have been working together ever since

Snider signed with John Prine’s Oh Boy label in 2000 for four albums & has just released his latest on the Universal off shoot New Door. New Door’s assignment is to give artists a second chance at a major label. It seeks out artists once signed to labels it now controls & re-signs them!

The Devil you know is Snider’s eighth album. He writes songs in the great tradition of people that Snider would no doubt count as influences, if not heroes, people like Bob Dylan & Phil Ochs, both of whom he sings about on “Thin Wild Mercury” The song documents a rumoured argument between Dylan & Ochs & the song title takes its name from the description Dylan gave for the sound he was searching for on his album Blonde on Blonde. It goes without saying that Snider takes Ochs sides of the argument.

Snider is not afraid to take a political stance either & the song “You got away with it (A tale of two fraternity brothers)” leaves no doubt on his opinion is regard to the current POTUS. Snider has said that the record started out as a “reaction to living in a country at war” but he eventually steered clear of the more obvious Give Peace a Chance approach or even the in your face position of someone like Steve Earle. Snider has taken a more subtle approach, writing songs of a more personal nature, from the point of view of average person making their way in trouble times as in “Looking for a job”.

He ends the album with a type of sermon (“Happy New Year”) that carries a war-weary despondency coupled with a hope for a positive outcome.

Snider’s album is of the times, for the times.