Gothic Theatre
Todd Snider
If life is a circus, Todd Snider is an extraordinarily vivid side show act. At last, after five remarkable studio albums, Snider brings his animated spectacle to the living room with Todd Snider Live: Near Truths and Hotel Rooms.
“In my head, from the time I was 18, a live record was going to be the most unique thing I ever did,” Snider says. “But, I also believed that a live record wouldn’t be valid until I earned it with a body of work. I still don’t think I know how to make studio albums very well. I’m not very confident in the studio. But I know how to do this live thing, and this is the most fun I ever had making a record.”
Snider obviously does know a bit about recording in a studio. He released his first of five critically acclaimed albums, Songs For The Daily Planet, on MCA Records in 1994. Step Right Up followed in 1996. His final MCA project, Viva Satellite, was issued in 1998. By the time Snider left MCA, he had left an indelible mark on the hipster underground music world. 2000 brought Snider’s much-anticipated Oh Boy Records debut, Happy To Be Here. He released the incredible follow up, New Connection, in 2002. But Near Truths and Hotel Rooms does indeed take the listener to a different plane.
“I feel like I play better in a setting where I’ve been driving all day, the stage lights are in my eyes and I’ve got an audience stretched out in front of me,” Snider says. “I do my best work when I’m a little disheveled, disoriented and surrounded by complete chaos. That’s what I call fun.”
Near Truths and Hotel Rooms promises to be great fun for Snider’s fans as well. Sandwiched between unpretentious live arrangements of favorites like “Beer Run,” “Statistician’s Blues,” and “The Ballad Of The Devil’s Backbone Tavern,” Snider hilariously recounts the madcap stories that have inspired him through the years and miles.
“I’ve always told stories between songs,” Snider says. “I started off doing it to kill time when I didn’t have that many songs to sing. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott was my hero. Really, he was my heroes’ hero. Jerry Jeff Walker, John Prine, and Arlo Guthrie always talk about Ramblin’ Jack. That’s what I aspire to in my live shows.”
During one bit, Snider talks about the beginning of his life as a troubadour as he sets up “The Ballad Of The Devil’s Backbone Tavern.” He drifted to Texas shortly after high school. It was there, with the help of the characters in the song, that Snider discovered Jerry Jeff Walker and soaked up the music and lifestyles of Texas icons like Joe Ely, Kris Kristofferson and Guy Clark.
“Those Texas songwriters were playing hitchhiking music and I was a hitchhiker,” Snider recalls. “They were bumming around looking for guys like Bojangles. When they find ‘em, they whip up three chords and that’s their contribution to the world. I don’t think I’m as good as any of those guys. But, for better or worse, I’m a scamp traveling around looking for stories. That’s the job I have.”
Eventually Snider moved from Texas to Memphis, Tennessee-where he met another of his musical heroes, John Prine. Prine encouraged Snider to continue to write and perform. In more than a decade of playing the club circuit, Snider honed in on his favorite venues. These smoky slices of Americana are the backdrop for Near Truths and Hotel Rooms. “We recorded sixteen shows in venues from Santa Cruz to Boulder to Lexington to Ann Arbor,” Snider says. “Anytime I knew I was going to a club where the sound is good or the tickets were sold out I would call from the road and say, ’Let’s record this one.’ As we were recording the shows, I sort of had a set list in my head. I found myself repeating stories from city to city that I wanted to get on tape.”
From those live shows, Snider culled his ultimate set list.
“While I was listening to the tapes I asked myself what I would say and do if Guy Clark or John Prine were in the audience,” Snider says. “The list of songs and bits changed as I went through the process. Although I’ve had producer credit on albums before, this is the first time I’ve really been into the process of deciding how the album should sound. I wrote down all the stories I have-they’re all true and I’ve lived them all. But I wanted to work on how and where and in what order to tell them. Trimming them was hard. I learned a lot about this process by editing myself. The entire experience changed the way I feel about making records.”
The result is an engaging cabaret of sixteen songs and seven anecdotes-ranging from a nineteen second endearing introduction to a six-minute tale about a guy named Trog and Snider’s adventures in Texas.
The story “Typing Gibberish” sets up one of Snider’s favorite songs, an idea he got from a phone call with his mom called “Side Show Blues.”
“Absolutely true story,” Snider says. "I leave my apartment for a cup of coffee at a convenience store. But, the door is locked and the guy is standing there with a knife handle buried in his shoulder. When I got back to my apartment, my mom called and asked how things were going. I said, ‘Mom, it’s a circus.’ She said, ‘And you’re part of the sideshow.’ There was the song.
Party favorite “Beer Run” makes a double appearance on Near Truths and Hotel Rooms. The album ends with Snider singing amid a great deal of laughter on the Bob and Tom syndicated radio show.
“I really like the live version but I also love the version I did for Bob and Tom,” Snider says. “I love to play for them. If I can make them laugh it keeps me going for a few days. They are hysterical but they don’t laugh easily. I always feel like it’s an accomplishment to get them laughing.”
Snider wrote “Lonely Girl” about the first time he laid eyes on his wife, Melita.
“You know how some people say you have that ’I’m going to marry her’ thing? I really did that,” Snider says. “It wasn’t just that she was pretty, either. There was just this thing about her. I was trying to get the nerve to go talk to her. So I was trying to think about what I could say and I was writing things down and it became a song. It took me a few days to work up the courage to speak to her.”
The poignant isolation of “Waco Moon” was inspired by the untimely death of Snider’s friend Eddie Shaver.
“I was driving around Waco trying to find his grave because I didn’t go to the funeral,” Snider says. “I’m glad I wrote the song but I wish I hadn’t lived it. Eddie was a close friend.”
As many musicians do, Snider has collected people and places throughout his travels. Frazier, Tennessee, is one of those places and the inspiration for “Doublewide Blues.”
“There’s a 40 minute, 3 song EP that I may put out about the city of Frazier someday,” Snider says."It’s the poorest side of Memphis-the trailer park part of the city. This guy had opened a bar in his backyard. You could bring your own beer and he sold pot at the bar. It was like a speakeasy. I wrote the song “Moon Dawg’s Tavern” about it but he said I should sing about everyone at the bar. I worked on ‘Doublewide Blues’ for a long time before I finished it."
Snider amusingly changed the words to “Broke” after receiving a letter from a fan in Australia who thought he was advocating violence.
“I was glad I was taken to task about that song,” Snider says. “It made me sit down and look at it. The only point I meant to make was about people going to jail and learning how to steal. I hope he likes the new ending.”
Snider, who plays over 100 live shows a year, insists that the only reason he writes songs is to play them in front of an audience.
“The reason I come up with songs is to play shows. The reason I record albums is so I can play. The studio albums support the live show. It’s the only reason I ever made records — to have more cities to play in. Inside of my own little musical concert act is where I most like to be. And I stay in that place all the time. Not just during the show. And that’s part of it — that’s more than any of it to me. Living out these songs and stories. The songs and albums come when they want to but the show never has to stop.
