Article Contributed by Gratefulweb
Published on 2026-04-10
Photo credit: Jay Blakesberg
Desperate times call for desperate measures and the remaining members of Hard Working Americans saw the bat signal high above Gotham City and have sprung to action. They have recalled a song their brother Todd Snider had brought to them at the first recording sessions out in San Rafael, CA back in May of 2013 at Bob Weir's TRI Studios.
Fearless leader Dave Schools recently reminisced on how the band ended up recording the Gil Scott-Heron rap thirteen years ago.
"At first the idea of doing Gil Scott-Heron's "Work For Peace (The Military & The Monetary)" seemed almost incongruous to us. After all it was more of a rap/poem than the rest of the material that made up the first HWA record.
In the studio it quickly became apparent to those of us who had never worked with him before that Todd Snider could not only turn a phrase but also that he could imbue that phrase with a poet's innate rhythmic sensibility. And once there's an inherent rhythm that poem can be placed into any groove that fits. I think that's how this songwriting thing works or is supposed to work...LOL.
The question then became, "what kind of groove will fit?"
The process for creating the first HWA record was taking songs that Snider loved and deconstructing them down to just the lyrics and melody and then rebuilding them into what became our sound.
Will Kimbrough's "I DON'T HAVE A GUN" was reconfigured with a slinky smoky nightclub groove....and Todd discovered that the vibe and tempo felt right for him to deliver the Gil Scott-Heron piece...so when we recorded the master take for Kimbrough's tune we kept jamming for a while so that Snider would have enough runway to land THE MILITARY & THE MONETARY.
Those few days of recording that first HWA record were filled with the kind of lucky and fruitful misadventures that one would expect to occur in Bob Weir's amazing studio TRI. It all worked out "just exactly perfect" as Weir himself would have said."
In turbulent times, a band who showed up in 2013 as a super hero group to take back patriotism with the hippies, comprised of Todd Snider, Dave Schools, Neal Casal, Chad Staehly, Duane Trucks, and Jesse Aycock, has delivered a timely message from the past in 2026 amidst war and pestilence encouraging everyone to "work for peace" and to sing out, "I don't wanna hurt nobody!"
