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After 15 years, two months, and 30 days, Cross Canadian Ragweed’s hiatus is over.

The Oklahoma four-piece, whose mid-2000s heyday laid the groundwork for the current surge in popularity of Red Dirt music, reunited to play six songs late Thursday, closing down the main stage on a cold night at Mile 0 Fest in Key West, Florida.

“I was honestly nervous, and I didn’t think I was going to be,” frontman Cody Canada tells Rolling Stone of the set, “but, man, that felt great.”

Ragweed took the stage after a 14-song Ragweed tribute set,...

Todd Snider hunkered down during the first year or so of the pandemic, and like some musicians suddenly knocked off the road, he took to online music-making — but with a unique twist. Starting in October 2020, Snider devoted each Sunday to playing and live-streaming the entirety of one of his albums, start to finish, with just his voice and guitar. Along the way he’d talk about the origins of some of the songs and play ones that had been left off.

With the 30th anniversary of his first album, Songs for the Daily Planet,...

The only way to reach Todd Snider is to call his landline. He’s never had a cell phone. Never cared to own one, either. If you want to find him, hopefully he’s home when you ring or you’re lucky enough to run into him by happenstance.

“I’ve always been into being a troubadour. I love the chaos, that life of adventure — that’s what struck me. I had a predisposition for it,” the singer-songwriter tells Rolling Stone from his Nashville home. “I was [already] a hitchhike and sofa circuit person.

Exclusive: Freestyle Digital Media has picked up worldwide rights to the music documentary The Mojo Manifesto: The Life and Times of Mojo Nixon, slating it for release March 17 across VOD platforms.

The film written and directed by Matt Eskey, in his feature debut, tells the true story of Neill Kirby McMillan, Jr., who comes of age in Danville, Va, listening to records from his father’s soul radio station and plotting his escape from the confines of conservative small-town life.

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During an early 1980s cross-country bicycle trip, Kirby experiences The Mojo Revelation and becomes “Mojo Nixon” — a primitive, blues-inspired musician. Mojo then teams up with...

Todd Snider celebrates playing in front of an audience again and pays tribute to dearly departed friends on his new album Live: Return of the Storyteller, a collection of tracks recorded during the singer’s first post-pandemic shows in 2021.

Ahead of the live LP’s Sept. 23 release, Snider has shared the new video for a live rendition of his 2006 fan favorite “Just Like Old Times,” a track that inspired the film Hard Luck Love Song:

“This album is dedicated to all the people who come to these shows whether...

IFC presents Mia Hansen-Løve’s Cannes entry Bergman Island, Film Movement brings Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy to the arthouse this weekend, as A24’s surprise hit Lamb and Greenwich Entertainment’s The Rescue go wider week two after a strong open. It’s early days but a nascent specialty revival may be in the works ahead of a stream of potential hits from The French Dispatch to Spencer to Belfast.

Icelandic horror folktale Lamb moves from 500 to over 800 screens after viewers – can we say flocked? – to the Ari Aster-ish genre pic (Hereditary in 2018 was also from A24). Adventure documentary The Rescue, by the directors of Free Solo, where intrepid divers save a Thai boys soccer club trapped in a remote flooded cave, expands from five screens to 552.

“Is there hope? Yes” said Howard Cohen, co-president of Roadside Attractions, which is opening Hard Luck Love Song. “There have to...

since the old times ended, “Hard Luck Love Song” is the kind of movie that would sit right next to someone at the world’s saddest dive bar even if the place was full of nothing but empty seats. Justin Corsbie’s debut would buy you a drink if you couldn’t afford one, hustle you for a hundred bucks in the backroom if you could, and leave you with a big hug on the way out either way just cause it was so grateful not to spend the night alone.

This film has a story that it’s eager to share with anyone willing to listen, and while there isn’t a soul on Earth who hasn’t heard some rendition of “we found love in a hopeless place” a thousand times before, Michael Dorman’s charmingly tattered lead performance turns this into one of the most winsome cover...

The first 40 minutes of “Hard Luck Love Song” are so aggressively off-putting, even the unluckiest of audiences may be tempted to to walk out of the theater or turn off the TV. The arrantly contrived last 20 minutes are equally patience-testing — and borderline loony to boot. Everything in between is bearable, if only by comparison, but not particularly worth the bother.

Director Justin Corsbie and co-writer Ugoretz devote an inordinate amount of time to an interminable slog of a set-up, introducing their protagonist, Jesse (Michael Dorman of Apple TV’s “For All Mankind”), as a struggling country music singer-songwriter who, judging from what we hear of his songs, might do well to give up the struggle. When it comes to making money, he’s more successful as a pool hustler. But not always. When we first see him rolling into an unnamed small city in his battered Chevy Nova, he has his hand in a cast.

The Rescue, an arresting truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story of a Thai youth soccer team trapped in a remote flooded cave system opens on five screens in NY/LA/Chicago this weekend in a specialty market waiting “for audiences to wake up and see that they’re missing out,” according to Ed Arentz, co-president of the doc’s distributor Greenwich Entertainment. And sooner rather than later — he’s counting on strong word of mouth to expand to 350-400 screeens next weekend.

A triumph at Telluride and Toronto, The Rescue has the reach of National Geographic (it’s a Nat Geo film) and pedigreed filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the husband and wife team who won a Best Documentary Film Oscar for Free Solo in 2019.

That film followed a professional rock climber attempting the first free solo ascent of the famed El Capitan’s 900-meter vertical rock face at Yosemite National Park.

The best country songs are simple, direct and unpretentious. The same could be said of Justin Corsbie’s feature debut, based not on a book or a play but rather a song: Todd Snider’s “Just Like Old Times.” The tale of a wandering troubadour afflicted by addiction, gambling and romantic problems, Hard Luck Love Song comes across like, well, a movie based on a country song. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but don’t expect something particularly revelatory.

That the film proves engrossing throughout is due largely to Michael Dorman (For All Mankind), in the central ...

The best country songs are simple, direct and unpretentious. The same could be said of Justin Corsbie’s feature debut, based not on a book or a play but rather a song: Todd Snider’s “Just Like Old Times.” The tale of a wandering troubadour afflicted by addiction, gambling and romantic problems, Hard Luck Love Song comes across like, well, a movie based on a country song. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but don’t expect something particularly revelatory.

That the film proves engrossing throughout is due largely to Michael Dorman (For All Mankind), in the central ...

"It'll be just like old times." "That's scary..." Roadside Attractions has revealed the full official trailer for an indie romantic drama titled Hard Luck Love Song, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Justin Corsbie. This premiered at last year's Austin Film Festival, the perfect place for this kind of musician romance tale of ups and downs, and good and bad. At its core, the film is a modern day love story wrapped in a gritty, compelling character study. A love story about a charismatic but down-on-his-luck troubadour living out of cheap motels and making bad decisions. The film is actually based on the song "Just Like Old Times" by Todd Snider. This stars Michael Dorman and Sophia Bush as the two lovers, plus Dermot Mulroney, Eric Roberts, Brian Sacca, Melora Walters, & RZA. So this is a "haunting" love story and a neo-noir western? Well okay, sure why not. Looks...

Roadside Attractions to distribute in US.

Myriad Pictures has picked up international rights ahead of TIFF on crime thriller Hard Luck Love Song starring Sophia Bush from WB/CW drama series One Tree Hill, Eric Roberts and Dermot Mulroney.

Kirk D’Amico and his team will launch talks with buyers and screen the film at the virtual TIFF market and screen the film ahead of the US release via Roadside Attractions on October 15.

Writer-director Justin Corsbie makes his feature debut on the feature based on the song ‘Just Like Old Times’ by Todd Snider and centres on a down-on-his-luck troubadour (Michael Dorman...

What happens when the past catches up with you? One man must confront his failures while facing a lifetime of mistakes in “Hard Luck Love Song.” The film takes its cues from a song by musician Todd Snider. “Just Like Old Times” traces the story of two people lost to their version of the American dream. For Snider, the material hit close to home.

Continue reading ‘Hard Luck Love Song’ Trailer: Sophia Bush, Michael Dorman & RZA Star In A Gritty Romance About A Fallen Songwriter at The Playlist.

"A little out of place, a little out of tune..." Roadside Attractions has unveiled a teaser trailer for a film titled Hard Luck Love Song, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Justin Corsbie. This premiered at last year's Austin Film Festival, which seems like the perfect place for this kind of musician romance tale of ups and downs, and good and bad. At its core, the film is a modern day love story wrapped in a gritty, compelling character study. A romance about a charismatic but down-on-his-luck troubadour living out of cheap motels and making bad decisions. Based on the song "Just Like Old Times" by Todd Snider. The film stars Michael Dorman and Sophia Bush as the two lovers, plus Dermot Mulroney, Eric Roberts, Brian Sacca, Melora Walters, & RZA. It's exactly as described - with only 45 seconds of footage so far. Here's the teaser trailer (+ poster) for Justin Corsbie's Hard Luck Love Song,...

“Just Like Old Times,” a fan favorite from singer-songwriter Todd Snider’s critically acclaimed 2006 album The Devil You Know, is not the most likely Hollywood source material.

But that’s exactly what happened with Hard Luck Love Song, the upcoming feature film starring Michael Dorman, Sophia Bush, RZA, Brian Sacca, Toni Robison-May, and Dermot Mulroney. The film features a script based on the Snider fan favorite.

Directed by Justin Corsbie, the film, which is distributed by Roadside Attractions (Manchester By the Sea, The Peanut Butter Falcon) will be released in theaters on October 15th.

Todd Snider has announced dates for an extensive fall tour. The Nashville singer-songwriter’s Return of the Storyteller Tour begins July 24th with a sold-out event at Tennessee’s the Caverns.

Spanning more than 50 dates from which audio will be compiled for a live album, the Return of the Storyteller Tour will keep Snider on the road through early December. Stops along the way include Atlanta’s Variety Playhouse, New York’s Gramercy Theatre, and Seattle’s Washington Hall, plus multiple nights in Felton, California; Des Moines, Iowa; and Tomball,...

Bob Weir, Steve Earle, Billy Strings and Marcus King are among those paying tribute to guitarist Neal Casal on an upcoming box set. Highway Butterfly: The Songs of Neal Casal, due November 12th, features a diverse lineup of musicians covering 41 songs by the late guitarist. Casal, who played with everyone from Willie Nelson and Shooter Jennings to Ryan Adams and Phil Lesh, took his own life in 2019.

A version of Casal’s “You Don’t See My Crying” performed by Beachwood Sparks and Gospelbeach premiered with Wednesday’s announcement.

The box set,...

Exclusive: Roadside Attractions has acquired Hard Luck Love Song, with plans to release the crime thriller exclusively in theaters on October 15.

Justin Corsbie’s debut feature was inspired by the song “Just Like Old Times” by acclaimed singer-songwriter Todd Snider.

The gritty modern-day love story follows Jesse (Michael Dorman), a charismatic but down-on-his-luck troubadour living out of cheap motels and making bad decisions. Jesse finds himself at an existential crossroads during a chance encounter with his old flame Carla (Sophia Bush), as their complicated past and current troubles threaten to destroy their blissful reunion.

The character-driven feature also stars Dermot Mulroney, Brian Sacca, Melora Walters, Eric Roberts and hip-hop icon RZA.

Corsbie penned the script with Craig Ugoretz. The pic’s producers are Allison R. Smith, Corsbie and Douglas Matejka for Smith & Corsbie’s Dime Box Entertainment.

“Like our previous films The Peanut Butter Falcon, Winter’s Bone and Mud,...

Two years ago, Todd Snider returned to his troubadour ways on Cash Cabin Sessions Vol. 3. It was his first album full of the type of sardonic Nashville hippie storytelling Snider’s best known for (and has long mastered) since 2012’s post-Occupy opus Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables. After a year of isolation, devastation and loss of close friends, Snider is back with First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder, an outgrowth of the loose livestream performances he’s has been offering in quarantine over the past year.

Snider spends much of...

Todd Snider’s live shows are unparalleled experiences. The folk singer delivers hilarious, heartbreaking songs about his life, punctuating them with stories that can stretch as long as 18 minutes — about everything from the time he joined a Memphis cover band called K.K. Rider to the time he took mushrooms and immediately quit his high-school football team. “When people on the plane ask me what I do,” says Snider, “I say, ‘Pretty much just like “Alice’s Restaurant.”‘ I just talk. It’s a nervous tick.”

When the pandemic hit, the crowds went away,...

In 1981, John Prine and his manager launched their own record label to directly serve Prine’s fans. Forty years later, Oh Boy Records is still in business, carrying on the musical legacy of Prine, who died last year due to Covid-19, and the artists he inspired.

Oh Boy Records marks its anniversary in 2021 with a series of new projects, including a centerpiece documentary about the label’s origin and history. Via candid archival footage, Prine himself appears in the trailer for the film, talking about how he came up with the name.

After coming to prominence as a sardonic folkie in the tradition of Todd Snider on albums like 2015’s In the Blazes and 2016’s Silver Tears (see that LP’s “12 Bar Blues”), Aaron Lee Tasjan, like many of his East Nashville contemporaries, has in recent years moved away from country-roots music and toward a more expansive pop-rock. 2018’s Karma For Cheap was a transitional record, swapping in electric guitars for acoustic, and folkie stoner wisdom for a more open-hearted curiosity.

Enter Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!, the singer-songwriter’s latest album, and his most compelling to date.

On Saturday, Todd Snider used his regular quarantine livestream session to pay tribute to his foremost mentor and influence, Jerry Jeff Walker, who died Friday at 78 after a battle with cancer. For more than two hours, Snider told stories of the Texas country legend and played a deep variety of his songs, from his most famous tune “Mr. Bojangles” to classics like “The Stranger (He Was the Kind),” “Charlie Dunn,” and “Leavin’ Texas.”

“What a year we’re having,” an emotional Snider said toward the beginning of the show, which...

Now in its 27th year, Austin Film Festival continues to champion independent filmmaking and, for this year’s edition, a notable world premiere has its roots in the Texas town. Having grown up in Austin, Justin Corsbie will bow his feature debut, Hard Luck Love Song, at the festival later this month and today brings the first look.

The story follows Jesse, a charismatic but down on his luck troubadour who finds himself at an existential crossroads as bad choices catch up with him during an unexpected reunion with Carla (Sophia Bush), an old flame. Also starring RZA, Dermot Mulroney, Brian Sacca, Melora Walters, and Eric Roberts, we’re pleased to exclusively premiere the first images from the film, courtesy of Synthetic Pictures.

“I spent my childhood in Austin, TX singer/songwriter bars owned by family friends watching performers like Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Steve Earle, Billy Joe Shaver,...

Guitarist Neal Casal was known for his thoughtful, patient playing style with groups like Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Ryan Adams’ Cardinals, and his own Circles Around the Sun. When he died in 2019, he left behind a meticulously organized creative archive. In addition to his work in bands and as a session musician, the New Jersey native released 12 solo albums and curated a collection of more than 25,000 photos.

Both artistic outlets figure prominently into the newly created Neal Casal Music Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit that aims to put musical instruments, with lessons on how to play them,...

In Todd Snider’s mind, the most unusual aspect of Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires’ wedding in 2013 wasn’t that Snider was asked to marry them or that he wasn’t legally ordained to do so until that day. It was what Snider was asked to recite: “Prayer,” an obscure song by the late John Hartford. “Every morning I wake up,” it begins, “Saying in the back of my mind/’This could be my last day on Earth/This could be the last time/I’ll ever feel … the warmth...

Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile, Eric Church, Kacey Musgraves, and Bill Murray will remember the life and music of John Prine during an all-star online special on Thursday. Picture Show: A Tribute Celebrating John Prine streams June 11th at 7:30 p.m. Et via Prine’s YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch.

Prine’s family, including his widow Fiona Whelan Prine, and his Oh Boy Records label produced the tribute, which assembles musical performances, first-person accounts of those who knew Prine, and unseen footage of the songwriter, who died in April after contracting Covid-19.

Along with Isbell,...

Roots-rock group the Band of Heathens are among the country, folk, jam, and Americana artists paying homage to bluegrass Renaissance man John Hartford on the new album On the Road: A Tribute to John Hartford. The Austin band tackle “Up on the Hill Where They Do the Boogie,” a freewheeling track off Hartford’s 1971 album Aereo-Plain.

While Hartford’s recording is breakneck and loose, the Band of Heathens slow theirs down into something deliberate and even mournful. Heathens singer-guitarist Ed Jurdi calls the song “a campfire cult classic.”

“It’s...

In the course of his 50-year career, John Prine influenced everyone from Bob Dylan to Bon Iver, Kacey Musgraves, Swamp Dogg, and others.

The influence of Prine, who died last week from complications related to Covid-19, is clear in the latest installment of our In My Room series. We asked some of our favorite artists (and some of Prine’s) to play one of his classics. They didn’t disappoint. Fellow Chicagoan Jeff Tweedy plays “Donald and Lydia,” the 1971 ballad Prine wrote on his mail route, about two people that “made love from 10 miles away.

“We lost one of my all-time favorites…a man that taught me how to write songs,” Eric Church says in a new video tribute to John Prine, who died Tuesday at 73 from complications related to Covid-19. With that brief introduction, he plays a minute-and-a-half or so of Prine’s song “Long Monday,” a track off Prine’s 1991 album Fair & Square.

“You and me sitting in the back of my memory, like a honeybee buzzing round a glass of sweet Chablis,” Church sings, wrapping his high-register country voice around Prine’s...

In the 24 hours since John Prine died of complications from Covid-19 on Tuesday, countless musicians and artists have paid tribute to the Nashville legend. Here, singer-songwriter Todd Snider remembers his hero, mentor, and friend.

The first time I heard about John Prine, I was about 19 and I was playing an open mic, and this guy named Kent Finlay, who was my mentor, told me, “You’re like John Prine.” I didn’t know who he was, so I just went home and devoured his music. It became something I obsessed over.

John Prine, who for five decades wrote rich, plain-spoken songs that chronicled the struggles and stories of everyday working people and changed the face of modern American roots music, died Tuesday at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He was 73. The cause was complications related to Covid-19, his family confirmed to Rolling Stone.

Prine, who left behind an extraordinary body of folk-country classics, was hospitalized last month after the sudden onset of Covid-19 symptoms, and was placed in intensive care for 13 days. Prine’s wife and manager,...

Todd Snider has said that he wouldn’t have a career without John Prine. In his early days as an open-mic singer, Snider studied Prine’s songwriting constantly, and he met his hero and worked for him as a runner while Prine was recording 1991’s The Missing Years. Prine soon signed Snider to his label, Oh Boy Records, and took him on the road. The two performed together as recently as last year. “He created the job that I have,” says Snider.

Snider has been staging livestream solo concerts from...

John Prine is reviving his All the Best Fest for a second year, in late 2020. The four-day musical event, which the Grammy Lifetime Achievement recipient launched in 2019, will again partner with Sixthman when it sets up at the Breathless and Now Onyx resorts in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, from November 16th to 20th.

Joining Prine, who will give multiple performances during the festival — including one classic album start to finish, will be Bonnie Raitt (who sang a brief tribute to Prine at the 2020 Grammys), John Hiatt, Steve Earle, Iris Dement,...

Miranda Lambert’s mud-soaked romp in “It All Comes Out in the Wash,” Tyler Childers’ psychedelic reverie in “All Your’n,” and Lil Nas X’s delightful Wild West-goes-to-Cali saga for “Old Town Road” are among the clips that stood out in a year full of great visuals. Here are the 10 best country videos of 2019.

The Cadillac Three, “Slow Rollin'”

This ain’t no Fast & Furious soundtrack. “Slow Rollin'” preaches the fuzz-guitar gospel of inching down the asphalt at a cool, confident crawl, with Foghat on the radio and...

No one ever knew what to call Mumford & Sons. The Guardian had already described them as “Coldplay reincarnated as hillbillies” by the time the group released their debut album in the U.S. in February 2010, a moment that garnered a slurry of descriptors: “foot-stomping British folk;” “skiffled Frames (nice banjo);” or, as this magazine wrote, “if Dexys Midnight Runners aged into boozy-pub session romantics.”

One word eventually stuck: Americana. The New York Times would describe the group as “Britons touched by Americana” later that year; a Spin cover story would...

In celebration of the new YouTube Originals documentary The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash, the streaming company has announced plans for the first Cash Fest in Nashville. Scheduled for November 10th at War Memorial Auditorium, the event will include performances of Cash’s songs by a wide-ranging group of artists, including Little Big Town, Elle King, Cage the Elephant’s Matt Shultz, and Midland.

Additional artists participating in the revue-style show, presented in partnership with the Johnny Cash Trust and the Best Fest, include Perry & Etty Farrell, Judah & the Lion,...

The lines outside Nashville’s biggest music venues ballooned last week, thanks to the influx of fans, bands, and music-industry personnel attending the 20th annual AmericanaFest. It was the festival’s biggest year to date, and Nashville — a city that’s grown exponentially, with more than a half million people moving to town during the last decade — was primed for the chaos. If visitors looked hard enough, they might’ve even seen the humorous advertisements promoting longtime East Nashvillian Todd Snider, who shelled out enough cash to fill his own page in a local magazine.

The 30A Songwriters Festival will return to the panhandle of Florida January 17th, 2020, with an all-star group of artists set to perform. Among them are formidable tunesmiths who represent a range of genres, including John Prine, Brian Wilson, Indigo Girls, and Tanya Tucker.

With 200-plus artists on tap to perform during the four-day festival, the 30A Songwriters Festival will be spread across 30 venues bordering the Gulf of Mexico before it wraps on January 20th. Wilson will bring his nine-piece band to perform some of his Beach Boys classics, and Prine...

Related: Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta: What the Hell Happened?

Details are still emerging about what precisely went down between Taylor Swift and Big Machine president/CEO Scott Borchetta prior to news of the label group’s sale to manager Scooter Braun going public on June 30th, but the ownership of Swift’s master recordings is a crucial component. The superstar entertainer’s catalog, six multi-platinum albums packed to the gills with hit singles spanning country and pop, is clearly a huge asset that helped the label’s valuation.

Kelsey Waldon, the singer-songwriter from Monkey’s Eyebrow, Kentucky, first caught the ear of John Prine with her sharp songwriting and lilting voice. On Tuesday night at the Grand Ole Opry, the seminal songwriter announced that Waldon would be recording her next album for Prine’s Oh Boy Records. The addition of Waldon to the label, which in its 38-year history has released projects by Kris Kristofferson and Todd Snider, marks Oh Boy’s first artist signing in 15 years.

Following the onstage announcement, Prine invited Waldon, who had just performed on the Opry,...

John Prine and Margo Price have joined the chorus of voices coming out in opposition of Alabama’s abortion ban, which was signed into law by Governor Kay Ivey on Wednesday.

Prine and Price will collaborate on a new recording of Prine’s “Unwed Fathers,” a representative for Prine confirmed to Rolling Stone. The song, from Prine’s 1989 album Aimless Love, takes a caustic look at the way men get to navigate unplanned pregnancies and the consequences (or lack thereof) they face as a result. “They run like water, through a mountain stream,...

John Prine surprised Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium this past weekend when he showed up during the encore of Todd Snider’s concert for a rousing 4/20-performance of “Illegal Smile.”

The longtime friends traded verses on the 1971 classic, with Snider, grinning ear-to-ear, ceding the stage to his songwriting hero and mentor before eventually singing the second verse himself.

“John’s been really good to me my whole life,” Snider, who recorded several albums for Prine’s Oh Boy Records label earlier this century, told Rolling Stone in the spring. “He’s a really altruistic person.

Solange, When I Get Home

Solange carries her history like a talisman. It’s there to remind her — and us — how to remain grounded while moving forward. With When I Get Home, she pays tribute to her roots in Houston by presenting a therapeutic and transfixing scrapbook that seamlessly brings together the past and the future of her home. With 19 songs the clock in at under 40 minutes total, Solange’s tribute takes an unusual form. She offers brief but potent statements; over half the tracks are under three minutes and...

Todd Snider has been staying at his Airbnb in downtown New York for less than 24 hours, but the apartment is already filled with the 52-year-old singer-songwriter’s personal touches: weed, an acoustic guitar, a loose wad of cash on the coffee table, and a laptop opened to a YouTube search of “Sylvester Stallone country singer.”

Snider has entered this particular string of words to show his road manager a clip of “Drinkin’ Stein,” a song from Stallone and Dolly Parton’s 1984 country-music comedy Rhinestone.

“Budweiser, you created a monster,” Snider,...

Todd Snider’s an ace word guy — his lyrics are razor sharp, unsparing, hilarious, and surprisingly tender — so this bare-bones acoustic LP is a fine idea. Punchlines fly from the get-go (there’s no Vol. 1 or 2), with humanity the usual butt of the jokes, though Trump’s a target, too. Take “Talking Reality Television Blues,” a tribute to Dylan (see “Talking John Birch Society Blues,” “Talking World War III Blues,” etc.) and Woody Guthrie before him that draws a line from Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theatre through MTV, Fox News and The Apprentice,...

Todd Snider recounts the history of television in just under three minutes in his new video for “Talking Reality Television Blues.” A colorful, animated clip featuring a cartoon Snider and a harmonica-playing squirrel, the video traces the birth of the medium from the first TV set to MTV and, ultimately, to the advent of the first reality-television president.

“One after the other we pretended not to act as we hurtled ever forward to alternative facts,” sing-speaks Snider in the imagery-rich song, which repeatedly nods to the Buggles’ one-hit wonder “Video...

Johnny Cash would have turned 87 this week. To honor the Man in Black on his birthday, folk singer Todd Snider unveiled the new single “The Ghost of Johnny Cash” from his forthcoming album Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3, which will be released March 15th via Aimless Records/Thirty Tigers.

The dark ballad was co-written by Snider and John Carter Cash, the son of Johnny Cash, who died on September 12th, 2003, and June Carter Cash, who passed away just months before her husband in May of the same year.

Snider recorded his...

Nashville singer-guitarist Will Kimbrough has announced plans to release his new album I Like It Down Here on April 19th, his first solo LP since 2014’s Sideshow Love. Today, the Americana Award-winning performer is previewing the release with a pair of new songs: the haunting “Alabama (for Michael Donald),” which features blues singer Shemekia Copeland, and the melodic rocker “Hey Trouble.”

In “Alabama (for Michael Donald),” the Mobile native — a longtime Nashville resident and former sideman with Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell and Todd Snider — sings about the horrific murder of...