Jon Snodgrass once overheard a friend say he’d woke up with “one foot on the floor and one hand on the wall.” What? That was Snodgrass’ response, too. Luckily, his friend elaborated, saying “yeah, ya know when ya wake up w/ one foot on the floor & one hand on the wall?” Snodgrass didn’t understand—but maybe he did. “It’s about the day, after a night, where ya forget what ya did or didn’t do,” says Snodgrass, “[It’s] drunk guilt.”
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“Footage” is a moment in time, or forgetfulness and regret in Snodgrass’ brooding and guttaral refrain of his friend’s sage words of regret I dunno what I did last night at all / One foot on the floor, the other hand on the wall / There are things that I remember fine and things that I deny… I’m tired of this feeling.
Exploring drunken blazes, uncertainties and other complexities on his latest release Tace (A-F Records), out Oct. 9, Snodgrasss basically pulled three EPs into one, maneuvering through 13 soulful rock and Americana tracks.
On Tace, which means “shhh” in Latin, Snodgrass is nowhere near hush, pulling in Sugarcult’s John Moreland and Marko DeSantis, Stephen Egerton, Karl Alvarez, Bill Stevenson of the Descendents, The Lawrence Arms’ Neil Hennessey, Stacey Dee of Bad Cop Bad Cop, Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath, Joey Cape from Lagwagon, The Ergs’s Mikey Erg, and Derek Zanetti (The Homeless Gospel Choir), and more.
Following up his 2012 solo release Wolf & Cobra, Snodgrass delivers textured narratives throughout Tace, pulling from his ’90s alt roots in Drag The River, Armchair Martian in the heavier hitting “Renaissance Man” and “Don’t Read Her Heart” to the more folk-fused “BoyzIImen,” featuring country singer John Moreland.
In all, Tace sums up the past few years of Snodgrass’ life and revelations through his own mirage of storytelling.
“I think people need to listen more, including me,” says Snodgrass. “It’s my version of Mark Twain’s [saying] ‘Never miss a good chance to shut up.'”
