Todd Snider
Todd Daniel Snider was an American singer-songwriter whose music incorporated elements of folk, rock, blues, alt country and funk.
Early life and career
Snider was born on October 11, 1966, in Portland, Oregon, and grew up in nearby Beaverton, where he lived until he graduated from Beaverton High School in 1985. After high school, he moved to Santa Rosa, California, to attend Santa Rosa Junior College. He attended for a semester and while there, learned to play the harmonica.With help from his brother Mike who bought him a plane ticket, Snider moved northeast of San Antonio to San Marcos, Texas, after leaving SRJC in the late fall of 1985. Not long after arriving in San Marcos, Snider saw Jerry Jeff Walker perform solo at Gruene Hall, a legendary dance hall in New Braunfels, Texas which is northeast of San Antonio. When he saw Walker that night, he decided he wanted to become a songwriter and began writing songs the next day. He told Lone Star Music Magazine in 2004, "I didn't even know how to really play guitar yet, but I saw his show and went and got one."
Snider met Kent Finlay at his very first writer's night, which was at Finlay's San Marcos club, Cheatham Street Warehouse. Finlay, who was a songwriter in his own right, became an important mentor and introduced Snider to the songs of Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark, John Prine, and Shel Silverstein among others. Snider was soon packing small rooms in San Marcos and during the next few years, he began to draw enthusiastic crowds in Austin, as well.
Snider also discovered Memphis songwriter Keith Sykes while living in San Marcos when a friend at the local record store turned him on to a pair of albums Sykes made in the early ’70s. In 1989, Snider's father moved to Memphis and happened to meet Sykes’ sister-in-law. Through that connection, Snider sent Sykes a demo tape of some of his songs. Sykes thought one of the songs had potential, so Snider moved to Memphis to try to work with Sykes. Not long after he arrived in Memphis, Snider landed a weekly residency at a local club The Daily Planet. He not only was soon packing the room, the audience knew the words to the songs and would sing along. Through Sykes, Snider met Prine in 1991 while assisting on pre-production work Prine was doing with Sykes in Memphis for his album The Missing Years. It was the beginning of a friendship Snider and Prine had until Prine's death in 2020. In 1992, Sykes helped Snider land a development deal with Capitol Records. He recorded a number of sides in Nashville for the label, but they declined to pick up his option for a full album. Around the time of the Capitol deal, Snider began performing with a small band backing him which he dubbed the Bootleggers. The band's lineup fluctuated some over the first year or so, but by the end of 1994, the lineup was set with Will Kimbrough on guitar, Joe Mariencheck on bass, and Joe McLeary on drums. Snider also had changed the band's name to the Nervous Wrecks.
Sykes was a one-time member of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band and Buffett had recorded a few of his songs, so when the Capitol deal fell through, he reached out on Snider's behalf to Buffett's label, Margaritaville Records, which was distributed by MCA. Not long after label exec Bob Mercer saw Snider perform at an industry showcase in Memphis in April 1993, Snider flew to California to open a show for Buffett. After seeing his set, Buffett offered Snider a deal with Margaritaville.
Recordings
1990s
Margaritaville/MCA years
Snider's debut album for Margaritaville, Songs for the Daily Planet, was released in 1994 and reached number 23 on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart. Produced by Tony Brown and Mike Utley, the album was literally composed of songs he was playing at the Daily Planet nightclub in Memphis. Although there were a few guest musicians and singers on the record, the core lineup was Snider on acoustic guitar, Joe Mariencheck on bass, Joe McLeary on drums, Utley on keyboards, Eddie Shaver on electric guitar, and Peter Hyrka on mandolin, acoustic guitar, and violin. The record included a hidden track, "Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues," which became a minor radio hit, reaching No. 31 on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart. A talking blues for Gen-X, the song mocked the early ’90s grunge scene and featured a band that refused to play. The video for another single from the album, "Alright Guy," was in rotation on VH1.Snider's second album for Margaritaville/MCA, Step Right Up, was released on April 23, 1996, and Billboard proclaimed it to be "more stunning than his debut." Brown and Utley were coproducers with Snider, and Utley backed Snider and the Wrecks on keyboards.
Snider's third album, Viva Satellite, represented a turning point in his career. Prior to making the record, Margaritaville left MCA and signed with Island Records for distribution. But MCA retained rights to Snider's recordings, so they would release the album. No longer recording for Margaritaville or working with Brown and Utley, Snider produced some sides at engineer Justin Niebank's studio in Franklin, Tennessee, with mixed success. Only one of the tracks he cut there would make the album, the finale "Doublewide Blues." Snider recorded the rest of the album at Ardent Studios in Memphis with producer-engineer John Hampton. He was backed by Kimbrough on guitar, Mariencheck on bass, Paul Buchignani on drums, and Rick Steff playing keyboards, and the result was a more straight-ahead rock record than his first two. Shortly before the album was released in May 1998, there was trouble at a private performance in L.A. for MCA execs and their staffs. Snider, who was struggling with drugs at the time, insulted those in attendance early in the set and then left the stage. Not long thereafter, MCA released him from his contract.
2000s
Oh Boy years
After leaving MCA, Snider disbanded the Nervous Wrecks and signed with John Prine’s independent label, Oh Boy Records. Oh Boy released his fourth album, Happy To Be Here, on April 18, 2000. Working with producer Ray Kennedy, Snider recorded all the songs solo acoustic, then additional instrumentation was added to his guitar and vocal tracks. Besides Kennedy who played a variety of instruments on the record, guitarists Pat Buchanan and Will Kimbrough, bassists Joey Spampinato and Keith Christopher, keyboardist Johnny Neel, drummer Paul Buchignani, multi-instrumentalist Peter Holsapple, violinist Tammy Rogers, and horn players Jim Hoke and Wayne Jackson all contributed to the album.Oh Boy released Snider's second album for the label, New Connection, on May 14, 2002. Produced by R.S. Field, Billboard said of the album, "Snider has settled into a groove of consistent quality and potent observation." Snider's third Oh Boy release was a live album, Near Truths and Hotel Rooms, which was released on May 13, 2003. The record, which was recorded at half a dozen venues, captured Snider's live show post-Nervous Wrecks—just him solo with his acoustic guitar and harmonica. Robert Christgau gave the album an A− grade in his Consumer Guide.
Snider's final studio album for Oh Boy, East Nashville Skyline, was released on July 20, 2004. For the first time, Snider took full creative control of his record-making process, and the result was an album that was both a musical and cultural breakthrough. It introduced East Nashville to the larger world, and its influence reverberates to this day. Snider co-produced the record with his old Nervous Wrecks bandmate Will Kimbrough at engineer Eric McCullough's east Nashville studio. In addition to guitarist Kimbrough and multi-instrumentalist McCullough, he was backed on the sessions by a who's who of east Nashville musicians including guitarist Tim Carroll, bassists Dave Jacques and Dave Roe, drummers Paul Griffith and Craig Wright, and pianist John Deadrick. East Nashville Skyline included two iconic songs that added to the songwriting canon: "Play a Train Song" pushed the boundaries of "train" songs with the story of a man who was known for always requesting that kind of song, and "The Ballad of the Kingsmen" took the talking blues to a more contemporary place musically while connecting the censorship of "Louie Louie" culturally to the Columbine shootings. Pitchfork called the album "the wittiest and feistiest album of his career." Christgau gave it an A in his Consumer Guide and called it "a slacker wakeup call." PopMatters ranked it the seventh-best album of 2004. East Nashville Skyline reached No. 28 on the Billboard Independent Albums chart.
After East Nashville Skyline, Snider moved to Bob Mercer's New Door Records label which was distributed by Universal Music Group, but Oh Boy would issue one more album of his music. On April 3, 2007, the label released Peace, Love And Anarchy , a compilation of previously unreleased recordings. Notable among the collection's fourteen tracks is the song "East Nashville Skyline" which was intended to be the title track of the album of the same name but Snider did not finish it in time to make the album.
New Door years
While Snider was working on his first record for New Door, UMG released a selection of his Margaritaville and MCA back catalog. The collection, That Was Me: 1994-1998, was released on August 30, 2005, through their reissue arm, Hip-O Records. The compilation included seventeen tracks from all three of the albums distributed by MCA, including "Alright Guy" and "Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues," plus a previously unreleased cover of "Margaritaville, a breakneck rendition on which he was backed by the Nervous Wrecks.Snider's first release for New Door was The Devil You Know, the acclaimed follow-up to East Nashville Skyline released on August 8, 2006. Working again with co-producers Will Kimbrough and Eric McConnell, who both played multiple instruments on the album, Snider also was backed on the record by guitarist Tommy Womack, bassists Billy Mercer, Robert Kearns, and Dave Jacques, drummers Paul Griffith and Craig Wright, pianist Dave Zollo, violinist Molly Thomas, and legendary steel guitarist Lloyd Green. The record went to number four on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart. Christgau gave it an A in his Consumer Guide and called it "better" than its predecessor. The record was named to several critics' year-end "best" lists, including a number 33 ranking in Rolling Stone's top 50 albums of the year, a number 25 ranking by No Depression magazine, and number 14 by Blender magazine.
On October 20, 2006, Snider made a solo acoustic in-store appearance at Grimey's New and Preloved Records in Nashville, performing material from The Devil You Know. The performance was recorded and released by New Door on April 3, 2007, as Live With The Devil You Know At Grimey's Nashville 10.20.06. It was his final release on the New Door label.