Blog Todd Snider is an alright guy

People who write about music for a living tend to talk incessantly about that one favorite artist who, really, deserves a larger audience. For me, that artist is Todd Snider, who performs on Friday at the South Milwaukee Performing Arts Center. So, if we ever run into each other late at night after I’ve had a few too many, please forgive me in advance for chewing your ear off about this guy.

Here’s the thing: I never expect people to like Snider as much as I do. And, sure enough, they never do. I don’t fault them for this. While there are several Snider records I’d make a case for being great—particularly his last three full-lengths, 2004’s East Nashville Skyline, 2006’s The Devil You Know, and 2007’s odds and ends compilation Peace, Love And Anarchy—I understand they aren’t packaged for mass appeal.

I don't mean that in the hipster asshole sense. Snider just doesn’t fit in anywhere right now. He’s a singer-songwriter who’s more of a smart-ass romantic than sensitive balladeer. He’s a bleeding heart liberal who plays country music in East Nashville, also known as the "wrong" Nashville. He’s a self-described “tree-huggin’, peace-lovin’, pot smokin’, porn watchin’ lazy ass hippie,” which is a convoluted way of saying “not very cool.” He’s a reject by design, a contrarian stoner moralist, the kind of stubborn individualist I have a hard time explaining and an even harder time not loving. Good luck trying to fit him into most people’s comfort zones.

Snider released his debut album, Songs For The Daily Planet, in 1994, but I didn’t become a fan until a decade later—after he took too many painkillers, shipped off to rehab, and emerged with the funny, ravaged, and thrillingly alive East Nashville Skyline. Up until then, Snider had been a journeyman folkie perhaps best known for the novelty song “Beer Run,” which was popularized on the guffaw-happy “Bob And Tom Show” morning radio program. Not exactly the makings of musical greatness, but Snider wasn’t really that guy by the time of East Nashville Skyline. On the first song, “Age Like Wine,” Snider sang candidly about his amazement over not being dead; the rest of the record followed suit, presenting a man clearly rejuvenated by his unlikely perseverance and stumbled-upon wisdom. (Snider later described East Nashville Skyline as “a comedy record about a guy who can’t even kill himself.”)

If East Nashville Skyline was a personal statement, The Devil You Know was its angry, politically aware, and more hilarious sequel. Neil Young made headlines the same year Devil was released for his lyrically bombastic and musically blah anti-Bush record Living With War, but Snider's scream of outrage rings truer and louder three years later. Instead of simplistic broadsides, Snider expressed his righteous indignation via a series of darkly comic vignettes about broken-down losers navigating the seedy underbelly of 21st century America. The characters in his songs—including hapless armed robbers, construction workers on parole, and coke-sniffing pool hustlers—were vividly and indelibly drawn, and together they formed a hard, cold narrative that, sadly, seems even more relatable now than it did then.

The centerpiece of The Devil You Know is one of best protest songs of recent years, “You Got Away With It (A Tale Of Two Fraternity Brothers).” Snider takes on the voice of a backslapping good ol’ boy swapping college stories with an anonymous friend. Let’s just say it doesn’t take long to figure out who the “friend” is; while the conceit of our former president being an overgrown frat boy isn’t exactly new, “You Got Away With It” is remarkable for how it stares down the corruption and immorality of our times with a crooked grin, a sly one-liner, and a dash of hope that these things might be enough to carry us through. God, let's hope he's right. 

When I interviewed Snider a couple of years ago, he made a point of defending the indefensible: Hootie & The Blowfish, Kenny Chesney, and The Backstreet Boys were among the luminaries he stood up for. “Almost every station I turn on I like,” he told me. “I really like music, you know? Almost all of it.” An outsider who can find something to like in almost anything, and a populist who can't or won't conform to any scene, Snider deserves his own kind of open-armed embrace. I hope he gets it, even if he won't accept it.