Here's a hilarious article written by Jim Ridley for the Nashville Scene.
							Just three years ago, Alexander Snide was a Murfreesboro public-school kid named Alex Sniderman, who joined some like-minded delinquents in a demented acoustic folk quintet. Billed as the Whining Art Fags, Sniderman and his friends found themselves playing to weekly crowds at an underage Murfreesboro nightspot. Their conquest of the music world promptly ended when former Elliston Square guru Tommy Smith gave them the bum's rush, mistaking them for mere minors. After a stint at the University of Chicago, where he prowled the city's blues clubs and coffeehouses, the newly christened Snide followed his muse back home, hoping to toughen up his "bad teenage angst poetry." "It seemed like a silly thing to do at first," says the droll, angular Snide. "It just started out as trying to write whatever was in my head, mostly about my own experience–which isn't much. Joined by high-school friend and fellow Discovery House employee Josh "Thud" Reynolds, a hilariously deadpan bassist who sometimes plays while lying flat on his back, Snide enlisted drummer/matinee idol Durk Dangle ("belonging to no woman") to round out the rhythm section. Augmented occasionally by young Murfreesboro keyboard wizard Seth Timbs, the Tone Def White Boys never looked back, if only because their hair gets in the way.
		Step into Alexander Snide's room and you immediately know you're in the presence of either an emerging artist or a serial killer. Hundreds of cassettes and CD's ranging from ancient blues legend Blind Boy Fuller to current pop fave Matthew Sweet, teeter on cluttered shelves, surrounded by scraps of blurred notepaper and a bulging clothes rack that must be where paisley goes to die. And there, occupying a place of honor directly above Snide's bed, is a manifesto–four boldfaced words guaranteed to bring hope to every frustrated postadolescent: BARRY WHITE'S LOVE TIPS! Yes, this is the article that prompted one of the century's great love songs, "(Your Boy May Be A Lover, But) He's No Barry White," the tender story of a boy, a girl, and the world's most famous 300-pound Casanova. With the deathless couplet, "Strap me on and baby hold on tight/Your boy may be a lover but he's no Barry White," 19-year old Snide and his Tone Def White Boys may have become the most significant thinkers of their generation. Well, maybe not. But the Tone Def White Boys exciting, often revelatory songs are giving Nashville's club scene a welcome blast of rudeness. This surprisingly thoughtful, catchy power trio makes an endearing virtue of its undaunted amateurism.							While the band's riotous gigs unfold on the brink of chaos–a recent Taj Mahal set climaxed with a harmonica-driven rendition of Prince's "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man"– the Tone Def White Boys never slip into camp or facetiousness. Reynolds and Dangle play with conviction, and Snide's quavery voice rings true. So do his lyrics, ranging from the evocative ("I remember/The way the wind would catch your hair/How I wished then/That my fingers were the air") to the playfully astute ("My mouth was too big/And the town was too small"). The band's sharpest critic, however, will remain the perennially self-deprecating Snide, whose assessment of the band ("a work in progress") and his writing is typically blunt. "I don't understand a songwriter like Cole Porter because I'm a snotty 19-year-old punk without a whole lot of life experience, but I've learned that songwriting isn't just something you throw up all over a piece of paper. Considering all I ever heard was the Clancy Brothers and public radio, I guess I'm doing pretty well." Tone Def White Boys open for Collin Wade Monk at 12th & Porter Playroom on Jan. 17.
		Plus a music review by Michael McCall after we'd begun recording with Wayne Kramer.
					As his band's name insinuates, leader Alex Sniderman is a wily rock 'n' roll wise-ass who turns his self-consciousness in on itself with wicked humor and a clanging, crashing backbeat. His tendency toward self-derision–"I Need A Life," "I Wanna Be Loved" and "Paralyzed" are a few of his titles–is offset with a conspicuous tongue-in-cheek style, and he utilizes a muscular, raw roots-rock sound to pump up his slack-shouldered stance to good effect. As a vocalist, Sniderman scoffs his lyrics in a spoken-word tone that is partly musical and partly flat. His style is reminiscent of Cracker's David Lowery, only with more verve and less sarcasm. Beyond portraying himself as a screwed-up slacker in search of something or someone durable, he offers comical pop-culture tributes to Jodie Foster, Barry White, and a woman in cowboy boots. The whole business would be in danger of falling into arch college-age cuteness if not for the terseness of Sniderman's songcraft and the anxious live-wire precision of Wayne Kramer's production. The rhythm section has the accuracy of The Who, while Kramer's lead guitar slices like the stuttering fire of a fighter pilot on some songs and uplifts others with melodic grandeur.