It was not recorded live to tape, but Todd Snider’s High, Lonesome and Then Some sounds like it was recorded live to tape in a smoke-filled shanty where a bunch of friends were just hanging out and making up songs. These songs are heartfelt and funny the bluesy sound of a guy who started as a smart-ass punk settling into life as a smart-ass dude on the cusp on his seventh decade. 

This is a raw record full of relaxed female backgrounds, off-mic screams of elation, muted drums, the twisted tangles of electric steel and acoustic nylon guitar strings and Snider delivering his words in an exhausted, raspy drawl. 

“Ain’t nothin’ that a young girl/can do for me (him)/’cept show me where some older wimmins is/(yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah),” Snider and his co-vocalists sing on “Older Women.” 

These are numbers that namecheck Widespread Panic and Phish (“It’s Hard To Be Happy (Y Is For Redneck)”). Songs that tell tales about jokers who pull away handshakes with a psyche! as on “Unforgivable (The Worst Story Ever Told).” Snider laments losing his girlfriend, Willie Nelson’s granddaughter, to a dude in Gene Simmons’ side band on “Stoner Yodel #2 (Raelyn Nelson).”

Snider cops to being set in his ways on the title track, as he sings “All she wanted me to be/was a half/way decent person/but I/I’d always/ been afraid of change.” However, High, Lonesome And Then Some is proof of his ability evolve and to stay true to himself in the process.