Americana singer-songwriter Todd Snider would be bemused by all the attention he’s getting. He’s the kind of artist that even if you know about him you assume other people don’t, so it’s surprising to see how widely mourned he’s been after his death Friday at age 59.
Snider was in the news a couple of weeks ago for a strange incident in Salt Lake City, where apparently he was assaulted outside his hotel. His show was cancelled and he was taken to a hospital, where he ended up arrested when they discharged him and he didn’t want to leave, saying he was in pain. When he made it back to Nashville he was hospitalized with pneumonia.
Snider considered himself a troubadour, and he was mentored by some legendary ones – Jimmy Buffett, Jerry Jeff Walker and John Prine all took a personal interest in his career. He sometimes fronted a band – the Nervous Wrecks in the ’90s, the Hard Working Americans in the ’10s – but he mostly worked with a guitar and a wealth of stories. Constant roadwork earned him a dedicated cult following. He told Rolling Stone, “Jerry Jeff made me see that the difference between a free spirit and a freeloader is three chords on the guitar.”
Snider almost broke through in 1994. His connection with Jimmy Buffett led to a contract with Geffen, and the tunes on “Songs for the Daily Planet” sounded enough like alt-country to get him some attention. “Alright Guy” sounds like it could have been a hit, except you’ll notice that they had to bleep out the lyrics a couple of times, because they wouldn’t air lines about smoking too much dope or calling cops dicks. The sardonic attitude and plainspoken lyrics became trademarks.
I learned about Snider late in the game, through his connection to Prine, whose Oh Boy label he recorded for early in the millennium. A prolific writer, he released 20 albums over the past 30 years. The most recent, “High, Lonesome and Then Some,” came out earlier just last month. This is the title track.
