I was listening to the Pulse of Americana playlist on Spotify.

I don’t do that on a regular basis, listen to playlists, it was a last resort, I wanted to hear new music and…

I’m reading the news, but at this point I almost shrug, I guess I feel powerless.

As for podcasts… True crime…kinda burned out on that. And the political ones…the speakers are self-satisfied and believe they make a difference and…

You know how it is when almost nothing feels right?

That’s why I ended up listening to the latest album by a classic act, and realizing it wasn’t really that good, that’s when I pulled up the Pulse of Americana playlist.

And…

It starts with the song. I know, I know, you’ve heard this over and over, but most people still don’t learn the lesson, they just don’t know what a song is. Listen to the Beatles’ catalog and then sit down and write a song. Start with verse/chorus/bridge… If you can master this, then you can jump off into uncharted territory. “Tomorrow Never Knows” was not on the Beatles’ first album…

And the form is important, the lyrics less so, but melody/changes always helps. It’s very rare that a droning sound sans differences embeds itself in the mind of the listener.

So, assuming you’ve got the song, which is a big if, A BIG IF!

Then it comes down to the performance/recording of said song.

I once got an e-mail from someone, back when I used to respond, asking me about their song. I was not positive about the vocal, and then he responded…WHAT ABOUT THE LYRICS? The lyrics were not fantastic, but this guy was indignant, saying WHAT ABOUT BOB DYLAN!

And I responded BOB DYLAN IS THE BEST LYRICIST OF ALL TIME!

If you’re in the league of Bob Dylan, and have a less than perfect voice, go for it, sing your own songs, but if you don’t…don’t put your music online and then bitch when no one wants to listen to it. Isn’t that part of music, having a good voice? When did we lose the thread here?

As for recording… That’s one thing we’ve lost with the major label/pre-internet era. Without a ton of money, recordings are not labored over (not that fast and cheap is always bad), and you end up with a lot of less than professional stuff. The internet is LADEN with less than professional stuff. To the point where it’s nearly impossible to find the needle in the haystack.

But I found one.

“Poison In My Well” by Maggie Rose and Grace Potter…

Everybody’s an armchair expert. I don’t need a plethora of e-mail telling me this song is not great, I KNOW IT! But in a world of crap, it’s pretty damn good, and it stood out.

First there was the groove, which got my head nodding… Too many people have not paid enough dues and don’t know how to swing… This is what you get with endless live appearances, you gain FEEL! Too many of today’s recording artists lack this.

And then when Maggie Rose comes in…SHE CAN SING! What a concept! Well, it is after listening to endless substandard vocals on the Americana playlist. Somehow people believe in this genre you can get away with imperfect vocals…believe me, the audience isn’t enamored.

And after a short verse, there’s a change, there’s a pre-chorus, a revelation in a world where acts drone endlessly with one chord verses…

But it’s better than that. This pre-chorus is not Ms. Rose alone, Grace Potter comes in singing along…which adds humanity and richness. Never mind Potter always bringing an element of swagger, the antithesis of the kewpie dolls like Ariana Grande.

And then these two women go into the chorus…

Now back when we used to go to bars to hear bands, this is what resonated, good singers wailing, going balls to the wall, giving it their all. We could FEEL IT in the audience.

And then there’s the post chorus singing about poisoning the well… There’s emphasis, attitude, but CONTROL! These women know what they’re singing, they’re feeling empowered.

And when Rose comes back in, she’s upped it up a notch, she’s got somewhat of a sneer.

And Grace Potter comes and doubles….

And listening on headphones I’m thinking of how we listened to this music back in the seventies, on the biggest rigs we could afford, LOUD! You can’t get that gut-punching bass with earbuds/headphones, you can’t feel the music, it’s not all encompassing, it appeals to your head before your heart, before your genitalia…and believe me, although this song is not about sex, you can feel the sex in the vocals.

And I wanted to hear “Poison In My Well” again. The music had gotten to me, that groove, that professionalism, this was not someone recording with their iPhone eager to post to Spotify.

So I look up the song…

“All my expectations

You go and shoot ’em down

All my birthday candles

You go and blow ’em out”

Okay, he’s a bad man. Not pedestrian, but not revelatory.

“‘Cause if you can’t have it

Then nobody can have it

Yeah, I know how it happens

You’re gonna smash and grab it all”

The music and singing of the pre-chorus is great, and that one line about smashing and grabbing it all…that’s a new way to put it, the image comes to mind…I know people like that, you do too…

But the best words are in the chorus:

“The only time you’re every sorry

Is when you’re sorry for yourself”

This is a cut above. I’ve never quite seen it put this way before.

And then there’s the piece-de-resistance:

“You can’t see what you can’t see

You don’t know how to be happy for somebody else”

On the page maybe not great…maybe not that great when looked at from a distance, but with the emphatic vocal the image is painted… Guys who are all about themselves, sharks, if they’re not winning they’re not interested, and any victories can’t be at their expense, they always must come out ahead.

So now I’m on about the third or fourth time through and I start to do a little research. And I find out online this track came out in JULY!

So am I out of the loop or did this song never really happen…

Well, Spotify tells me there are only 147,119 streams, so…

As for Maggie Rose, whose name I know, but not much more…

She’s been on a slew of labels, even made a record for Big Loud…

Close, but no cigar. In the old days, someone would have given up. Made it to the show but not the center ring.

But “Poison In My Well” is now on…One Riot?

Whatever that is.

But getting my info right, research tells me that “Poison In My Well” is nominated for a Best Americana Performance Grammy…which means I’m not the only person who is paying attention, who can see the merit in this track, but art is not about awards…the stars put theirs in their bathroom, if they display them at all… Most of the categories are for losers. No, the music game is about IMPACT! Which usually aligns with commercial success. Have people heard your music, did they like it and want to play it again, did they tell people about it?

That’s worth more than any award. That’s the game we’re all playing, don’t delude yourself otherwise. The committee is the public. What does the public have to say?

HAS THE PUBLIC EVEN HEARD IT?

Well, I’m not sure where “Poison In My Well” fits in today’s marketplace. It’s not Spotify Top 50 pop. Not mainstream country…you can’t hear a hat or references to beer/babies/church and there’s no banjo… Now Chris Stapleton broke through breaking all the rules, by just being great, so there is a lane…

Then again, Stapleton is fantastic. He supersedes the mainstream country crap, but if you’re in his lane and don’t have traction…

Americana encompasses too much dreck. To be a fan of this genre… Its fans don’t want you, they’re proud of their interests, and usually it’s about lyrics and struggle and if an act’s too polished, they’re not interested.

So…

In conclusion… “Poison In My Well” is the best thing I heard on the Pulse of Americana playlist. It was the only song I wanted to hear more than once. I could put it on at a party and people’s bodies would start to pulse along with the music, no one would say to take it off, but…

Most people have never even heard it.

This is the world we live in, if you do professional work that is a cut above the rest that still isn’t enough for notice.

But I noticed “Poison In My Well.” 

1

This is weird to me. For a journeyman singer, barely covered in the media, unknown to most, Todd Snider got some of the most glowing obituaries I’ve ever seen. Lengthy, with not only biographical information, but lyrical quotations…if one was not a fan a reader would think they’d missed out on something.

If only Todd Snider was alive to see them.

I was not the biggest Todd Snider fan. Actually, I was not that much of a fan at all. I was paying attention at the advent, when he released his first album on Jimmy Buffett’s label Mailboat, distributed and promoted by MCA.

You see there was a triumvirate of AOR promotion people at Atlantic. Dedicated, successful and fun, and one, David Fleischman left the New York office for L.A., to work for MCA. Supposedly a soul singer in Memphis before he switched sides (and subsequent histories of Memphis soul have confirmed this), Fleischman was called “Flash,” and he was anything but, flashy that it is. He sold the music in a low-key way. And the first project he worked for MCA was Todd Snider. Who had this track “Alright Guy.”

“You know just the other morning I was hanging around in my house

I had that new book with pictures of Madonna naked, I was checking it out

Just then a friend of mine came through the door

Said she’d never picked me for a scumbag before

She said she didn’t ever want to see me anymore

And I still don’t know why

I think I’m an alright guy

I think I’m an alright guy”

Now if that doesn’t bring you back… When Madonna was surfing the zeitgeist of popular stardom, testing limits all the while. Today pop stars bare their wares on OnlyFans, and Google will show you so much T&A you’ll end up bored.

But that’s kind of my point. Remember how big Madonna was back then?

Nobody’s that big anymore. Never mind today it’s more about money than pushing the envelope. Multiple copies of vinyl albums. Show grosses. What is being sold underneath has the nutritional value of cotton candy.

But not Todd Snider.

And just like Madonna, Snider was the beneficiary of the major label machine, but after a couple of albums that ended and he became indie before you wanted to be. And today EVERYBODY is indie. Seems like only the brain-dead want what the majors purvey, akin to the network television of yore, made for the most people and appealing directly to few.

So what is stardom today?

Now let’s be clear, most acts posting to Spotify don’t deserve stardom, never mind failing to achieve it. But there is a certain level of artist…

2

So it’s not only the over the top obituaries that is weird, but the way Snider passed. In that just before he was involved in this altercation in Salt Lake City… Outside a hotel he got into it…

Well, that was the original story. Which didn’t make complete sense, since the police ended up arresting Snider…

More details have now come out, and you can read them here:

https://tasteofcountry.com/todd-snider-arrest-body-cam-footage-salt-lake/

But the point is this is not the average behavior of a nearly sixty year old troubadour. Who then cancels his tour, goes back home, enters the hospital and promptly dies.

And 59… If you think that’s old, you haven’t reached that threshold. That’s positively young, musicians don’t tend to die before that unless it’s a case of misadventure, and they said that Snider died of…PNEUMONIA?

So it was a double-whammy.

I mean I hadn’t seen a Todd Snider show recently… I’m trying to think, I definitely met him and we interacted momentarily back in the MCA days…but when you’re a singer-songwriter and you’ve never opened for Taylor Swift, you not only don’t play arenas, you end up in tertiary venues where your hard core supports you. Usually you’re not making much more than a living. And you have to work to get paid.

Now at this point…

Just because you had a major label deal once, that doesn’t mean you’re entitled to make a living from your music thereafter. But the more you read the obituaries, the more you read the lyrical quotes, you had to admit it to yourself, this guy was GOOD!

This was in the “New York Times,” from the song “Just In Case,” about a prenuptial agreement:

“I can’t love you enough

But I also can’t afford to lose half of my stuff.”

You have to be smart to be funny. A tradition back in the sixties, humor has been excised from today’s material, everything’s so damn SERIOUS! Albeit in many cases laughable.

From that same “Times” obituary:

“‘A lot of this record is about how poor people sometimes cope with pain and hardship,’ Mr. Snider told The Times. ‘A little drugs here, a little sex here, a little denial there.'”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/arts/music/todd-snider-dead.html

There’s more truth there than there is in a month of opinion pieces in major media.

And then, “Variety” quoted from Snider’s HQ Aimless’s post:

“May your hope always outweigh your doubt

Until this old world finally punches you out

May you always play your music

Loud enough to wake up all of your neighbors

Or may you play at least loud enough

To always wake yourself up”

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This is not the boomers who sold their souls for the almighty dollar in the eighties. This is not about gated communities and private jets. This is the rock and roll ethos, which has been snuffed out. The other, who doesn’t fit in and knows it, but is unwilling to compromise.

3

Where does Todd Snider end up in history? Will be be like Nick Drake, discovered and kept alive after he dies or…will he just fade away and not radiate.

But one thing is for sure, we live in a weird era… Where nobody gets universal purchase on the public’s attention, never mind the zeitgeist.

But, sans that major label push… You can live your whole live on the outskirts, as part of the sideshow.

Now Todd put out some records on John Prine’s label “Oh Boy,” but don’t confuse his status with that of the label owner. John Prine had SEVEN major label albums before he went independent. And he got a ton of ink when the rock press was alive and thriving. And Bonnie Raitt made one of his songs a standard. And then there’s “Hello In There” which Bette Midler amplified and..

Todd Snider had none of this mindshare.

So today the acts with mindshare are either old, riding on the coattails of their major success decades ago, or the few pushed by the major labels… As for the rest…

It’s the great unwashed. Good luck trying to get ahead.

And, once again, most don’t deserve the notice.

And you put out records and have fans but that does not mean you’re rich, that your problems are solved. Snider got addicted to Oxycontin…

So… Not only do the acts who deserve it not get attention, many acts don’t even get started, or give up early. The road is fraught with obstacles. And the fault is not streaming, that’s a bogeyman, it’s the impossibility of gaining attention, with not only musicians and influencers but news outlets and other sites competing for the eyes and ears of the audience.

Now if Todd Snider had just passed, and hadn’t gotten obituaries in  not only the big three, the NYT, WSJ and the WaPo, but elsewhere, it’d be no big deal. Sad for fans, not even a shrug from the mainstream. But these obits testified, AT LENGTH!

How come we can’t give some of these acts this attention when they’re still alive?

Then again a media push doesn’t mean what it used to. Most of the articles are placed, they read as promotion. But there’s only honesty in an obituary, where everybody agreed Todd Snider was a cut above.

I wish he’d known.

Because he was an ALRIGHT GUY!

Like so many of us… We’re misread, misunderstood, they want us to conform, but inside…

“I know I ain’t perfect, but God knows I try

I think I’m an alright guy!”

Tom has a new book, “Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu.” 

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tom-freston/id1316200737?i=1000738658172

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/cbd6f24f-9fb7-48c0-9c2e-aeeee9b684a8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-tom-freston

So I’m sitting here writing about Jimmy Cliff and in my mind I can hear the blowback.

Believe me, I’ve always gotten negative responses, but not with the vociferousness, the put-downs, the holier-than-thou attitudes of correspondents today. Is it about me or is it the nature of the world at large? Or maybe it’s just the nature of the internet.

I mean on one hand I’m cracking up. Wondering who these people think I am. Like I’m some god who must be torn down. No, I’m just a guy with education and opinions who has built an audience based thereon. It’s totally an opt-in list, you’d think I was pushing myself and my pronouncements down their throat, that there was no way to avoid me/sign off from the mailing list. But this is patently untrue.

Now most people don’t respond at all. But today, a bunch of responses bothered me…

If I get one more e-mail hipping me to the fact that Desmond Dekker’s 1969 smash “Israelites” was the first reggae hit, I’m going to tear what little hair I have left out of my head.

No, “Israelites” is SKA!

Listen to the track, does it sound like anything from the Wailers’ Island repertoire? The other icons of reggae?

Ska predated reggae in Jamaica. Furthermore, at the end of the seventies there was a ska renaissance in the U.K., which bled all over the world. With acts like the Specials, Selecter, The “English” Beat… Would you call “Mirror in the Bathroom” reggae? No. I’d say I’m splitting hairs here, but really I am not. Because the evolution from ska into reggae is historically very important.

As for places online where you see “Israelites” labeled reggae… What you’ve got here is self-anointed experts half a century after the fact, oftentimes people who weren’t even alive in 1969, weighing in. What was that cliché you learned in elementary school? “Don’t believe everything you read”? Or “Everything in the newspaper isn’t true”?

Once again, all you’ve got to do is listen and you can hear the difference, and the difference is important.

And believe me, when I was writing the piece, I THOUGHT about “Israelites,” how it was ska and people would e-mail me that it was reggae, and voila! My dreams came true, ha!

One other pet peeve…

I constantly get e-mail from people tapping me on the shoulder, making me aware of some fact that is evidenced in what I wrote IF ONLY THEY’D READ IT! Did you know that “The Harder They Come” played at the Orson Welles in Boston for years? Yes, I WROTE THAT! But that’s not enough. If you’re going to take the time to correct me, wouldn’t you make sure you’re correct first yourself? No.

And then there are those who wonder why I no longer spell out swear words, i.e. f*ck and sh*t… BECAUSE IF YOU DO YOU CAN’T GET THROUGH SPAM FILTERS!

Once again, people don’t ask, they just put me down, laughingly correct me in their holier-than-thou fashion…if you sent e-mail for a living you would know that it’s almost impossible to reach people. These corporations have triggers that bounce e-mail and…

Then there are the people who castigated me for saying that the American Dream was now more achievable in Canada and parts of the EU.

These honkies who can’t believe the U.S. is not perfect, who are oblivious to facts… Believe me, I knew I’d hear from them when I was writing too.

But of course what I was saying was right.

I can be wrong, of course… But I am reading ALL DAY LONG! I subscribe to four newspapers. I read three of them cover to cover each and every day. You’d be stunned what you learn. And over time there is context. Whereas those blowing back are running on emotion, not facts. As for saying you don’t trust mainstream media, which as I stated above can be wrong, then who can you trust? Nobody?

So I’m reading all day long and I learned the power of analysis at an elite institution but when I say something that doesn’t feel right to you, if I don’t hew to conventional wisdom, rather than checking the facts before you blow back, you fire up your keyboard and insult me and…

Believe me, I can take it. But in this case, I want to set the record straight.

I’ll quote from last week’s “Wall Street Journal.” LAST WEEK! If you were following the news instead of bloviating, if you were willing to pay for news, you might have read it:

“The Economics of Income Mobility – I believe in the American dream, but the data show that some people have an advantage in realizing it.”

Free link: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-economics-of-income-mobility-c0a5bd3e?st=Es5FyA&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Here’s the money quote: 

“Although economic mobility is a core American ideal, the U.S. now ranks below the Nordic countries, Canada and much of Europe in overall mobility, including the classic rags-to-riches story of starting in the bottom and working your way to the top.”

BINGO!

I could cite the numerous articles that state this point that come up in a casual Google search, but to satisfy those who only believe in AI, this is what Google’s AI response is:

“The ‘American Dream’ is often seen as more achievable in Canada and parts of Europe due to greater social mobility, a stronger social safety net, and better access to education and healthcare compared to the United States. 

“While America may offer a more dynamic startup scene and top-tier universities, Canada and European nations are frequently cited for their lower economic inequality and higher rates of upward mobility, where it’s more likely for individuals to improve their economic standing regardless of their background.”

I love a good debate, I love to analyze, argue the nuances, but I HATE, HATE HATE arguing over facts. I mean if we can’t agree on the same facts, how can we have a discussion at all?

And the irony of everything I said above is I’ll still get e-mail from people saying that “Israelites” is reggae and that the American Dream is achievable foremost in America, but both of those are UNTRUE!

Welcome to my world.