Todd Snider, and How I Know Who He Is

Here's something that is NOT about Bono, but about Todd Snider. Who is Todd Snider? Well, 5 years ago I didn't know either, but here's how I found out:

Awhile back I went temporarily insane and listened to nothing but Country music...Yeah, yeah, shut up, I said temporarily. Anyway I got really into the local station KUPL and went to a lot of the listener parties, promos, etc. I realized how easy it was to win tickets and go to virtually all the shows for free, so I did. I ended up at the Brooks and Dunn Circus tour the year Gary Allan was with them. I didn't really know who Gary Allan was, but come on, he's HOT no matter what music genre you like, so I paid attention. He did a couple of songs off his new album, one that was about getting too drunk and alienating all your friends. A memorable line from that song is;

"I got so drunk I pissed my pants

Asked the bouncer for a dance,

Thanked him as he threw me out;

Woke up at a Waffle House

With a shiner and a wild brunette

She don't know my real name yet..."

How can you NOT like that? Another song he did was called Alright Guy, which also has great catchy lyrics. Well, I'm a lyric fiend so I bought the album and typed all the words out to put in my lyric folder. I sent the Alright Guy lyrics to a friend of mine who HATES Country...I don't just mean "dislikes strongly", I means HATES. Since I was vacationing in Nashville, learning how to line dance and constantly telling him about my latest brilliant discovery in Country music I'm sure I was putting him into a blind rage! So, I sent him the lyrics of Alright Guy, told him it was by Gary Allan and that I thought Country or not, cute lyrics.

Well, stupid me...I got a SCATHING reply back about "Who the f**k is Gary Allan?! That song is by a guy named Todd Snider and it's off an album called Songs for the Daily Planet which is actually a really good album. Can't these Country f**kers be original about anything???"

Side note: This same person and I had gone around and around about Garth Brooks for years...He is a Billy Joel fan (who isn't?) and I was an avid Garth fan. The fact that Garth took Shameless (a Billy Joel song that got lost on one of his albums and never released as a single) and made it a monster hit for some reason really pissed him off. I think that's where the exclaimation of lack of originality came from. This argument never made sense to me actually, because I'm sure Billy Joel is happy as hell to deposit the big fat royalty check every month...never could understand that point of view, but oh well. Back to the story.

So, I took my ass chewing with my tail between my legs and did what anybody would do; I bought the Todd Snider album and listened to it. Guess what? GREAT album! Not just good, but truly great. The thing I love the most about this guy is that he can flit back and forth between funny and sad as hell without making you wonder if he's manic. The best thing is that he can talk about the sad in such a way that you don't start thinking about buying the Boy Scouts Handbook so that you can learn how to tie one of those hangman's noose knots to hang yourself from the shower curtain. VERY talented writer.

From severe ass chewing I became a fan...worked out pretty well for me. Lucky for me, Todd tours a lot, so the first time he showed up in town I went. MAN was that a GREAT show! Todd doesn't just play his guitar and harmonica, but Todd tells a lot of stories; funny stories. The first time he popped off with the F word I literally jumped and looked around me to see how many people were offended. Nobody was. I realized from that maybe it was time for me to move away from Country a little and back into my own genre. Yes, I like a lot of the music, but the fashion is to be "real sweet" and "not make no bad cuss words, make sure you talk about God a lot". That's not me. Todd was a mix of the two; great lyrics and real people. I was hooked.

There was a rumor that Todd was going to be signing autographs in the theatre after the show. I ran upstairs to go to the bathroom really quickly before the line started. Much to my chagrin somebody apparrently couldn't hold their red wine and had puked in the sink....nice. I washed my hands in a different sink and ran back downstairs to line up.

I happened to be the first person in line and I was leaning against the wall next to the door Todd was allegedly going to pass thru. There was a security guy standing 20 feet in front of me or so and I was trying to tell him that he might want to get somebody to go clean the puke out of the upstairs sink. He proceeded to tell me he didn't think it was puke, and I told him I was pretty sure it was. I felt somebody lean up against the wall next to me and in my ear was whispered; "I think it's puke".

Todd Snider! Pleased to meet you! How's that for great opening conversation?

I got my autograph and spoke to him for a few minutes and went home, sort of embarrasingly giddy. The rest of my Todd Snider history is fairly uneventful: he comes to town, I go. The picture I have posted of us on here is from a Zoo concert in the Summer of 2004. I don't actually remember what I said to him that day because you can buy entire bottles of wine at those shows, I had, and my bottle was all gone. Whups! Good picture though! If you read my Bono story you will notice that I do mention that I gave Bono a copy of one of Todd's albums on a whim, made sense at the time. Even more odd? When U2 was in Seattle this Spring, Todd was playing in Seattle on the same night; what are the odds of that? Small world. Maybe the two will meet each other someday; I hope so, I think they'd get along.

Todd has a great website at www.toddsnider.com (this link is hot, so click on it and you'll go right to it) with all his touring schedules and albums listed. If you want to give him a try, start with Songs For The Daily Planet and stay with it for the hidden track at the end called Talkin' Seattle Grunge Rock Blues. Good song. Another way to go is to buy his Greatest Hits Live album since that has examples of a lot of his stories he tells. From there, the latest is another greatest hits package titled That Was Me named for one of the songs on the Daily Planet album. If you don't like him from one of those albums, then you aren't going to. Give him a try though. I'm not going to chew your ass into it, I'll just let you decide whether you want to give him a try or not on your own. If you don't, well, I won't hold it against you. :-)