Concert review: Todd Snider and the Cheatham St. Warehouse Band at The Granada (May 15)

by Mike Orren

DALLAS — My near-obsession with the music of Todd Snider is well-documented, so it will be little surprise that I enjoyed his show last night at The Granada. I've seen Todd a dozen or so times, but this was only the second with a full band. Since his original group, The Nervous Wrecks, is scattered to the winds, he brought a new group, The Cheatham St. Warehouse Band, featuring Austin-area musicians.

A Todd Snider gig is like a box of chocolates -- you never know what you're going to get. I've seen everything from no-shows, to abbreviated and disjointed, to mind-blowing greatness. This gig erred towards the latter with only minor hiccups caused by out-of-order verses on a couple tunes.

As a longtime fan, it was nice to see Todd and band stretch out a bit, delivering substantially reworked versions of some old favorites like "Tillamook County Jail," "Doublewide Blues" and "I Spoke as a Child." "Doublewide" had an uptempo blues/rock sound that tricked me into thinking we were getting a rare performance of the unreleased "Country When it Rocks."

The crowd was definitely into the show, often cheering mid-song on some of the more potent lines and treating the evening as an extended singalong. As I ambled back from a beer run, Granada owner Mike Schoder and I caught each other belting "Allright Guy" as we made our way through the audience.

The only hiccup for me was (and usually is) "CCRWRSWAM" -- Even though I've got some empathy for the point of the tune, it just lacks the subtle wit and creativity of the rest of Todd's stuff, and always sticks out like a sore thumb for me.

The band, featuring drums, upright bass and electric guitar really contributed without getting in Todd's way. There wasn't as much storytelling as you generally see in the solo gigs, and certainly nothing that "rambled on for eighteen minutes at a time." That just meant there was more time for the music to be front-and-center.

The encore was a cover of "Call Me The Breeze" that sounded like Skynrd if they'd recorded on Sun Records instead of MCA. And the show closed with a nice a capella rendition of "What Made Milwaukee Famous."

Local Tejano outfit The Tejas Brothers opened the show.