He may identify with stoners, slackers and barflies but Todd Snider doesn’t seem to embody their lack of activity.
The singer-songwriter has released two albums this year. March’s Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables is filled with his acerbic observations of life in this century. His deepest lyrical jabs come at the expense of those in the cushy positions of power (“New York Banker” and a cover of Jimmy Buffett’s “West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown”). The subject matter easily aligns with the ongoing frustrations demonstrated by the Occupy Movement but even a cursory listen to Snider’s work throughout the years shows that it’s just his latest tales of everyday people. Musically, the songs have a loose, bash-it-out personality.
Then seven weeks later, he honored his original musical hero with the tribute album Time As We Know It: The Songs of Jerry Jeff Walker. Produced by Don Was (Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, the 14 tracks feature other admirers including Kix Brooks of platinum-selling country act Brooks & Dunn, Elizabeth Cook and Amy LaVere. Walker’s mix of humor and poignancy give a strong indication of where Snider received his musical education.
I catch Snider on an off day from his current tour. Driving through Los Alamos, California he balances conversation with sightseeing.
JPG: You’re a busy, busy man in 2012. Two albums have come out in a little over a month’s time. When we talked in the past, I know you mentioned John Prine and Billy Joe Shaver a lot. You may have mentioned Jerry Jeff Walker but I didn’t realize you were into him enough to put out a tribute album. How did that come about?
TS: I would say he was the one that led me to the others. So, I have a certain affinity for him. But also, when I saw him play alone when I was 19, and from that moment forward decided that I wanted to be like him. He was what I would call a Gypsy Songman. At the time, I was just a Gypsy and I thought adding ‘Songman’ to it would really be fuckin’ cool.
I followed him around and watched him play guitar and learned to play guitar from just sitting in the front of his concerts. One of the things he did, first concert I saw him do it, I noticed that the guitar work that he was doing didn’t look impossible. I heard people say that about R.E.M. I was in the front row watching him and thought, ‘That doesn’t look that hard. It looks more like he’s just putting himself out there not like he’s some virtuoso…’ So, I don’t know, maybe that was part of what inspired me, made me think, ‘Maybe I could be a singer.’ And then I followed him around and learned all his songs. And then John [Prine] was next and Billy Joe [Shaver] and Kris [Kristofferson]. I guess, that’s my main four.
For some reason I always considered Jerry Jeff as the free-spirit leader of his guise, and he created a lot of…he was such a great Gypsy Songman type. I think Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt knew each other because of him. I think Guy Clark started writing songs because of him. I know Keith Sykes got his break because of him. So many people’s first song was a Jerry Jeff song. He was always out there trying to find all the true troubadours. I just always thought he was a center there.
I could go on about him. Everyone thinks that [the Byrds’] Sweethearts of the Rodeo is supposedly the first Americana record but his first record – Jerry Jeff Walker which is out of print — really is if you listen to it. You can see that’s where the Outlaw [Country] thing comes from. And Willie [Nelson] and Waylon [Jennings] even acknowledge that. That record was a really important record that people have forgotten.
JPG: I read that you consider yourself an Evangelical Agnostic. In the story you said something about there’s not a church for that, where people get together and hit tambourines. But I was thinking that others, who are like yourself, actually do just by being a part of one of your concerts.
TS: (laughs) Right on. I oughtta get a church church like Al Green. That guy is a grifter extraordinaire. I think he has more fun taking quarters out of the pew than he does doing concerts. Maybe I should. Yeah, well, I appreciate that.
You got my mind thinking. I think I’m going to start an Agnostic Church and stay at home. Actually, I’d miss traveling. It’s tough on the knees but it’s a lot of fun.
JPG: I could imagine, just from my years of traveling. Now as far your latest album, Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables it pulls no punches. I mean, lines like “To think that we would still need religion/To keep the poor from killing the rich” on “In the Beginning” or “Good things happen to bad people” from “New York Banker” and “They say that living well is the best revenge/I say bullshit, the best revenge is to win” from “Too Soon to Tell.” Was a lot of it written in the past year or so when the frustration with economy and the system led to movements such as Occupy Wall Street?
TS: It took about two-and-a-half years. My songs are weird…once they get…well they’re not any weirder than anybody else’s, but for me once they get started, it seems like it takes a long time. So, it seems like over the course of a few years, 10 or 11 things will start to seem like they’re gonna get finished. They go through bouts of changes. I never really know how people are going to receive it. Sometimes, I don’t know what’s making me say the stuff I say. I think it’s a personal argument that I get in that usually…most of it feels real personal to me, like real personal arguments with different people in my life and things like that.
And then, it makes me happy when it comes out and someone says, ‘Oh, he’s mad at the economy.’ I don’t know if it’s all about the economy, man. I wish I knew more about it but I just never cared that much about money. I like stories and I like to be…I don’t know I like to go to bars and sing people songs about themselves. For real. I like it when there’s somebody I can sing it to later and go, ‘Listen to this song I made up about you.’
*JPG: Speaking of personal stories, when I saw you in 2009, you had this lengthy intro about waiting at a fast-food drive-thru and watching some businessman-looking guy going off on the kid working there. And the thing was at first you felt bad for the kid, but then you felt bad for the guy because he had that much of a screwed up life that he would flip out on someone at a drive-thru. At this point, after listening to the songs on “Agnostic Hymns,” have your sympathies shifted back to the kid? *
TS: I guess I still feel bad for both of them because the bummer is we’re dying. I wonder if that is why everybody’s pretending other things matter. I don’t know if my sympathies have shifted. I like to think I’m for everybody or I’m on everybody’s side. To a degree there’s that…we’re afraid to die, we all get worse than we deserve. That’s something I said in there, too. I don’t know though. I like, what do they call it? Throwing the goat (term for heavy metal devil horns). We’re talking about just a kid that works for a store. I was thinking also just about kids in general. I tend to be on everybody’s side if I can, to make a short story long.
JPG: I listen to something like “New York Banker” and that’s why I thought maybe your sympathies shifted, as in the anger from that song would relate to the anger at the businessman-looking guy.
TS: Yeah, it’s hard to root for that guy in “New York Banker.” His name is John Paulson and he’s just running around free, which is scary, I guess. (from Wikipedia — Paulson’s a hedge fund manager who became a billionaire by short-selling subprime mortgages five years ago, and then made $5 billion in 2010.).
Kurt Vonnegut in his last book talked about how if every amoral person in the world just turns pink all of a sudden it would astonish you. And then, it would also astonish you how well they do and how upsetting that is. I thought it was an interesting thing.
I can’t be on that guy’s side, but I thought, ‘I betcha if I worked at it just for the sake and time to make up a cool song I could find a way to empathize with that guy.
JPG: What was that Vonnegut line?
TS: I don’t even know if that’s how he said it. but he said something to the effect of, he said it, I think the way he said it, if he had one piece of wisdom to pass on to young people, you would be astonished if you knew how many of the people among you in your daily life were completely amoral people that will do whatever they got to do to get what they want. He was saying that he thought the president at the time, George W, was one of those people. So I was saying, compared to what they used to say about gay people, if they all turned pink, you’d probably be freaked out; people that pretend to be religious just so they can be part of something. You know, that kind of person.
JPG: Another thing I want to bring up about the album, the “Stoner Fables,” songs like “Brenda” and the Jimmy Buffet cover (“West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown”). Politics is a big thing right now but some people hate politics in their music. Are you now dealing with that attitude?
TS: I kinda don’t like it in music but it’s in mine. It’s not necessarily in the music I listen to. And I don’t argue with the people that say it doesn’t belong in music. I don’t know that I think it does. I don’t know how it became this thing I did, but I don’t know why that was inside of me for some reason. I just sing what comes out, and I’m thankful that something’s going out. Sometimes I sing about love and that kind of stuff. For some reason I’m always looking for story songs and stuff like that. I’m a pretty bad stoner, too, like a stoner liberal. And that comes out, too.
*JPG: The song that you worked on with Loretta Lynn. You said Elvis Costello sang it with her. Any update on that ever coming out? *
TS: I don’t know. I hope it does. I wonder what’s going on with that. I haven’t talked to her in awhile. I heard the song and I don’t know that she’s put out a record. I talked to her son-in-law not long ago, that’s how I know her. I’ll check on that. I don’t know. I imagine it’ll come out some day.
JPG: Last thing, you told the musicians that played on “Agnostic Fables” that you wanted them to make a mess. That was the goal of the record. Why did you want something so loose sounding and was it meant to correlate with the lyrics?
TS: I thought it did and also it’s the kind of stuff I like. It took me a long time to learn that that’s what it was I liked. Even when I listened to my first couple of records it took me forever to figure out, ‘I just don’t know…they bug me.’ And then my friend Eric helped me to learn right around the time I was making “East Nashville Skyline,” I didn’t like stuff that was in perfect time or perfect pitch. It just doesn’t scratch my music itch. So, I try to make stuff I would like to listen to.
JPG: The lack of perfection gives it a sense of swing.
TS: I hope it does. I listen to old records that I like and I don’t think they’re so meticulously created as some are today. We try to make what, I guess, we would call old-fashioned sounding stuff, like Tonight’s the Night by Neil Young. And there’s just some records, [Dylan’s] Desire, as being one we copied. Sloppy records, that’s what I like. Exile [on Main Street]. Shit like that. I wanted to make sure I found a group of people that wasn’t gonna freak out if we didn’t sit there and work on something until it was in perfect time.
