The Ghost of Johnny Cash: Part 2

Transcendent unreleased recording of 'Just Like Overnight'

Still from a short video featuring Todd Snider posted on the Hard Working Americans Facebook page on March 16, 2016, in which Snider joked, “We’re just out here tryin’ to find some hooks for our songs. I ain’t seen any yet, but — .”

By Daryl Sanders

Due to other commitments, guitarist Neal Casal had departed Hard Working Americans by the time the band gathered at Cash Cabin in mid-March 2016. So it was vocalist Todd Snider, bassist/producer Dave Schools, keyboardist Chad Staehly, drummer Duane Trucks and guitarist Jesse Aycock who were on hand for a weekend of jamming and recording. They also hoped to make sense of Snider’s recurring dream about Johnny Cash and what Cash meant when he said in the most recent dream that Snider was “missing it.”

The weekend of sessions was fueled by a batch of LSD-infused water — they called it “sock water” because they kept a sock on the bottle to differentiate it from the regular bottled water — and everyone in the band imbibed liberally. At some point after the water took effect, Schools sent Snider outside to finish a lyric the bassist had heard him working on that included the line, “day after day, it feels like it’s never gonna change.” With the help of the sock water, Schools thought Snider would return with a finished lyric and melody that the band would then record.