The thing I like about these songs

That conversation prompted Snider to reach out to Dave Schools, bassist of Widespread Panic, where they started discussing plans to record together. They enlisted guitarist Neal Casal (Chris Robinson Brotherhood), keyboardist Chad Staehly (Great American Taxi) and Duane Trucks (King Lincoln) on drums to form a new group they're calling Hard Working Americans. It is dangerous not just for us Their self-titled debut was recorded at Bob Weir's TRI Studios and will be released on January 21st."When I speak of hard working Americans, I'm talking about Tonya Harding, Courtney Love, Mike Tyson, Marilyn Manson, and myself," Snider says. "I think we work harder than a lot of people, people who wave flags a lot. I wanted to find a name that would poke fun at the people who think that the phrase 'hard working Americans' applies to them and only them. It's what Woody Guthrie said: music should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. "Far from being a one-off super-group session, Hard Working Americans is full of the themes that surround class consciousness and economic despair, which echo Snider's most recent album of original material, 2012's Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables. The songs are covers written in the past decade by the likes of Gillian Welch, Hayes Carll, the Bottle Rockets and Randy Newman. "I've always collected songs on the folk circuit that I felt spoke to me or moved me," Snider says. "The thing I like about these songs is that the people who wrote them wrote them for themselves to sing, not for me. I really feel like I've lived these songs, even though my friends wrote them."In a confounding night of "shaking things up," the coaches' strengths and weaknesses were on display just as much as the contestants'. They were all focused on taking their singers out of their comfort zones and switching things up – but what they don't get is that just being able to finally vote is exciting enough for viewers.