Todd Snider walked out alone on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium in late September looking radiant. The guy has great teeth for one thing, along with the ease and confidence earned from more than 30 years on stage. He was bolstered and beloved by the loyalist lifer fans that hang on his every word, spoken or sung. He told the one about his first open mic and the one about East Nashville character Skip Litz who loved Train Songs. Todd’s mother was on hand and it was her birthday, so we all sang for her.
It was far from Snider’s first show at the Ryman and far from his last, fate allowing. The wicked smart and funny troubadour is 55 years old and in fighting shape. And two days later, we sat down together at his Purple Building club house/studio in the heart of East Nashville, where Snider has been a guiding light and quirky influence since about 2000. I ask him how he feels about the neighborhood’s evolution.
“I feel like it's gotten cooler,” he says. “I wish it hadn't gotten more expensive, because I liked it being the first place you could come if you moved here to sing. And I think that's probably Madison. But that's right next to East Nashville. I remember one guy one time who said to me ‘Don't you think there's too many hipsters here now?’ And I said, ‘One too many. You.’” I hope that wound didn’t get infected.
I profiled Snider in the spring of 2021 after he’d released the exceptional and very different album First Agnostic Church of Hope And Wonder. I tried to sum him up as well as I could, so I’ll quote myself here.
Snider, who embodies the contradictory yin-yang of John Prine and Jerry Jeff Walker energy, is one of the most enigmatic and brilliantly weird artists to ever call Nashville home. He’s a shambles and a sweetheart, a childlike 54-year-old who once called himself “a flamboyantly f****d up person”. That may have been true during some stretches of particularly hard substance abuse, but not to observers’ eyes recently. These days he seems to be riding gently on a diet of weed (so much weed) and love of his audience made fonder by 2020’s distance. Friends in the scene call him abundantly gentle and loyal. And he’s certainly among the most compelling solo acoustic performers to ever spend time on a stage, a hilarious barefoot raconteur of the first order and a singer of barbed truths that challenge his nation-spanning, class-spanning audience.
In the conversation for Episode 229 of The String, we spend a lot of time on Todd’s famous rapport with his audience and how he developed his approach to performing. That’s because it’s the heart and soul of his success and because he’s recently released his second major live album Return Of The Storyteller, featuring highlights from shows since he returned from the pandemic shutdown. We talk as well about the key influences, friends and mentors he’s lost in recent years, including Jerry Jeff Walker, John Prine and Col. Bruce Hampton. Hope you enjoy this exchange with one of Music City’s most fascinating people.
