Photography by Jeff Fasano.

"I'm broke as the Ten Commandments and sometimes I'm harder to follow..."
-from “Money, Compliments, Publicity” by Todd Snider

Initially The Excitement Plan (June 9th on Yep Roc Records) wasn't supposed to be about anything. I was just trying to come up with the best... most open hearted ... well-thought-out lyrics I could come up with. I wanted every song to be sad and funny at the same time, vulnerable and entertaining at the same time, personal and universal at the same time. I wanted every song to be as uniquely written as possible and then I wanted to perform them in a studio loose and rugged and hopefully as uniquely as I could. My hope is to be hard to describe and/or new…I'm not saying I am. I'm just saying that's the hope.

My producer, Don Was thought the best way to go for what I was talking about was live and spontaneous. So we set up at Henson studios in Los Angeles with myself on guitar, harp and piano. Greg Liesz on steel guitar and dobro. Don on upright bass, Jim Keltner on drums and Krish Harma engineering.

Then, with Don being the only one who'd heard the songs and me being the only one who knew them, we recorded completely live for just two and a half days.

As God is my witness and whether you even like this music or not, it was the most exciting, most challenging, most uninhibited and funnest time I've ever had making music…
- Todd Snider