The last memory some fans have of the late Todd Snider is his singing and dancing with Margo Price on the Ryman stage at last year's John Prine "You Got Gold" celebration in Nashville. Snider had a unique stage presence — usually barefoot, his face lit by his big goofy smile. Listening to his new album My Second Rodeo conjures images of the live show that could have supported the project.
Preparing to release the album Snider was working on in his last few months, producer and engineer Joe Bisirri and co-producer Robbie Crowell took the material Snider had gotten to “the 70 percent mark” and “follow[ed] his road map of voice memos and emails” and, as they say in the record's press materials, “Todd showed us where to go.” The goal, according to Snider himself, was to get to “the sound of country music 10 years from now.”
The opening track “Freewheelin’” sets the stage for the posthumous album: simple guitar licks and Snider’s weary voice and street sounds in the background. Horns are added — at first mournful, then fuller — with background vocal harmonies that grow to sound like a full choir by the song’s end. It has an autobiographical feel as Snider describes how “it all began way about once upon a time [and the] plot thinned right away.”
