Metro Pulse/Music/Todd Snider

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Not a Meek Voice
The Gossip's soulful punk comes from the heart

What:
Todd Snider with Mary Alice Wood

When:
Sunday, July 20, 8 p.m.

Where:
Blue Cats

Cost:
$8 adv./ $12 at the door

Todd Snider lives the stories worth telling

by Paige Travis

Todd Snider is up front about his musical influences. He tells a story on his live record, Near Truths and Hotel Rooms, about the epiphany he had the first time he heard Jerry Jeff Walker. He wanted to be a folk singer, and seeing Walker play live that same week cinched it. "He come out kinda like I am tonight with just a guitar and he sang some songs, and I thought, 'Shit, I can do that,'" Snider tells the audience in his lazy, Texas/Oregon drawl, getting a round of laughter. So he learned to play the guitar and sing. Before that time, Snider says, he didn't want to do much of anything.

"If you're bumming around from couch to couch, you feel bad about yourself," he says. "But if you're getting good stories out if it, then you're doing something."

Snider's first songs were about his parents' divorce, and he's been singing his life story ever since. He followed the example set by his folk singer heroes—Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Guy Clark, John Prine, Robert Earl Keen and Townes Van Zandt. They didn't have to make up outrageous stories about driving trucks, taking drugs and living hard, they experienced them daily. That tell-it-like-it-is songwriting spoke to Snider instantly.

"Those Texas songwriters were playing hitchhiking music, and I was a hitchhiker," he says. Authenticity isn't an issue with their music or Snider's. He writes because the stories or emotions are true, and they beg to be told.

"To me, it's a turn-off to think somebody wrote a song because they wanted me to buy it," he says. "I like to think the person wrote a song because they had to... because if he didn't write the song, he was going to break all the windows. Because that's how it started for me."

In 36 years, Snider has seen some tough times, but keeping his eyes open has made his songs stronger. "Things have gotten easier ever since I learned how to sing. But I still complain all the time. I still think the world's out to get me."

Folk singers are known to be tireless storytellers, and it's not always a compliment. Snider says he started telling tales on stage because he didn't have enough songs, but his unpredictable rambling is a charming, if messy, art. After five studio albums in eight years, he thought it was time to commit his live show to disc. They recorded 16 live shows across the country and pieced the best parts into Near Truths. Snider says it's the most fun he's ever had making a record.

"I'd like to do another one," he says. He'd also like to make a spoken word record, but that's as far as his idea has gotten for now.

As someone who always experiences stage fright ("I just drink right through that"), Snider has learned to approach every show as the unknown entity it is. "It's sort of like surfing," he says. "When I go up on stage, I don't have any

expectations. I've gotten in the habit. I'll see which way the wave goes. That's my knee-jerk reaction to the lights and faces. But [for the live record] it was fun to take out the places where I slurred and messed up."

If mining his life experience doesn't give Snider enough song material, he might start using his fans for inspiration. The mild-mannered singer, who admits on Near Truths that he doesn't know how to fight or even protect himself, got pulled down from the stage when he leaned over to break up a fight in the front row. And, one time in Indianapolis, he stopped a fight by playing the National Anthem. Most recently, Snider was

disarmed by an audience member in Madison, Wis., who stood up during his set to deliver a personal message.

"I played a couple of songs, and I started to say hello, but this guy stood up and had this thing prepared that he was going to say. It was real military. 'Please don't, don't yell at me,' I said, but I never could understand him. Then a few days later he wrote me a letter saying, 'I wish I could've been clearer. I really wanted you to hear me.'" The letter didn't explain what the man wanted to tell Snider. "I never got over it. I didn't know what he was saying. He looked like a member of a cult."

Apart from the occasional weird audience member, Snider hasn't had any problems from his fans, he says. But fans addressing him directly, yelling out song requests or various messages, can get him a bit out of sorts.

"That always makes me confused. Man, I shouldn't've done so many drugs in high school."

One theory about live records goes that they are one-time experiences that shouldn't be relived over and over. Once a show is recorded, it's no longer live, merely the same stories, same songs, same laughs again and again. But, as with any record, getting to know it backwards and forwards can be a real treat. Clocking in at 75 minutes, Near Truths is packed with the life of Snider—his encounters with natives of Luckenbach, Texas, his response to his friend Eddie Shaver's heroin overdose, the trailer park culture in Memphis and finding love in a mental hospital. Being a humble guy, Snider would never claim to be as good as his musical predecessors, and he's not doing anything original, but he's definitely doing it right. His approach to the genre is special in his ability to be charming, catchy, poignant and gut-busting hilarious, sometimes all in the same song.