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Listen to Todd Snider's The Devil You Know on Rhapsody!
By Dennis Cook
Old times
Like old times
Screw off the top on a bottle of wine
Living out our own kind of American dream
Old times
Your goal was always the same as mine
You didn't want to throw a fishing line in that old main stream
Todd Snider by Senor McGuire |
Nashville jewel Todd Snider tells tales of folks on the edge – fringe dwellers, the unlucky and those who wear their scars with pride. A 12-year veteran of the Austin and Nashville singer-songwriter circuits, Snider is a beautifully rumpled chronicler of the battered but unbroken. "I think I am that kind of person. In fact, I know I am that kind of person actually," says Snider. "I'm the singer who went to rehab three times. I get a sense of my community sometimes. Most of my friends are fuck-ups, and I've always felt a little defensive of them. I love the phrase 'Try to make it real' - compared to what? My thought with the [new] record was to say your Thanksgiving isn't better than my Thanksgiving because you're rich or well-adjusted. I know this from experience."
Snider is the first guy to stand up for underdogs because he's been lying down with them for years. He's punk rock in the purest, best sense, but expressed in a voice that's garnered the praise of giants like John Prine and Kris Kristofferson. He redeems the phrase "working class," giving it dignity and removing the ugly taint our money-obsessed culture puts on it.
"I've been to dinner at Jimmy Buffet's house, and I've eaten it at a homeless shelter. And there's great joy and harrowing terror to be found in both places. And I'm being sincere about that," observes Snider. "I'm not trying to knock Jimmy Buffet 'cause he's a fun person to hang out with, but I distinctly remember being in Reno one time and I feel asleep on a rock. A chick found me and asked me if I needed food. I felt real funny telling her I didn't, so I went and ate at this place that was giving sandwiches away. I never asked her, but I think she thought I was a young homeless person. Or a not-so-young homeless person [laughs]. But I think I had a better time that day."
The Part Of Town You Leave
Todd Snider |
Snider lives in East Nashville, the less glamorous section of Music City, USA, where it's noisier, dirtier and tougher than the white-washed side that appears on the Country Music Channel. For a true blue song craftsman like Snider, it's a constant source of inspiration that's produced the two best records of his career: 2004's East Nashville Skyline (which has both the balls and the chops to reference Dylan's classic album) and the brand new The Devil You Know, which mixes up his funny, achingly true observational tunes with a bunch of rockers that shake it like Jerry Lee Lewis with a head full of hillbilly crank.
"At the very beginning, this one felt a little like part two to East Nashville Skyline. Then, it started to take on its own shape," comments Snider. "It takes me a few months of listening to really hear it, but I listened to them back-to-back. At the end of East Nashville, I'd say this guy got a break, but by the time the next record starts, it's like he doesn't want to take it. It's weird. What's wrong? Why is he still mad? Once all that drug stuff passed out of my life, I had a lot of complex feelings. They say people take drugs because they're pissed off. I was numb for about four years, and as soon as that ended, my first instinct was anger."
Todd Snider |
Total sobriety doesn't sit well with Snider. When we hung out recently at his beachfront hotel in Santa Cruz - a hidden, homey oasis for bohemians - the table outside his room had tasty red wine and tastier California reefer laid out alongside the chips and snack crackers. Snider, like many of us, understands that getting loaded is a natural human instinct. Stifling primal, reptile brain urges is always dangerous, even if indulging them too much can land us in the shit.
"It was like, 'Alright, I'll stay here but under protest.' I feel like I've done this dance a lot of times," Snider says. "One of the first things I wrote down for this album was 'Sometimes you rise above it. Sometimes you sneak below it. Somewhere in between believing in heaven and facing the devil you know.' That felt like the starting place." When I wishfully suggest it would be nice if our vices weren't our undoing, Snider responds, "Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if they were our 'doing'? It'd be great if all that shit you're compulsively drawn to just made your family tighter. 'You look a little sullen. Eat this! Smoke this!' Why doesn't it go like that?"
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I'm the singer who went to rehab three times. I get a sense of my community sometimes. Most of my friends are fuck-ups, and I've always felt a little defensive of them... My thought with the record was to say your Thanksgiving isn't better than my Thanksgiving because you're rich or well-adjusted.
-Todd Snider |
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Photo by Senor McGuire
Interlude 1
JamBase: I like that partying is a theme on The Devil You Know. I like getting loaded, and I'm not too embarrassed about it. But more and more, I'm made to feel ashamed of that by our increasingly uptight culture.
A young Todd Snider |
Todd Snider: I feel that way, too. I had just gone to the hospital for drugs, but I wanted to make sure I didn't come out saying things like 'I'm taking it one step at a time, and everybody else ought to, too.' I consciously decided that even if I didn't party like I used to, I didn't want to stop altogether. I tell my 18-year old nephew to go out there and roar. Don't get in a wreck. Don't drive like an ass. And, don't be mean to no chicks.
JamBase: Good sound advice for an 18-year old. Tack on 'Don't kill anybody or yourself, and make sure you share whatever you've got.' That's the funny thing about all the major religions around the world. If you get away from the specifics, all the basic stuff resonates across the board. Don't kill, don't steal...
Todd Snider: ...forgive, love.
JamBase: If we focused on that stuff and got away from what Mohammad did at this mountain or what Confucius said was the proper way...
Todd Snider: ...we'd be 100-percent better. I was hoping to make that comment on Devil. Something good comes along that calms people and gives them hope. It's inevitable that if enough people are calmed and given hope, some asshole finds a way to pervert this good thing to control people and make money off them. It seems like every religion gets co-opted by some government. It ends up being poor, young people having religion shoved in their face so early they don't have time to ask themselves why they would die and kill for Jesus. They don't even know. They do it for the same reason they'd do things for Santa Claus. They're just not out there shooting people for Santa.
Workingman's Blues
Todd Snider by Jeff Fasno |
You can't talk to me like that boss
I don't care who you are
If you don't want to have to hang your own dry wall
Don't push me too far
After years of slugging away in bars and living rooms, Snider is starting to break through to a bigger audience. He recently performed his new tune "Looking For A Job" on The Tonight Show with lantern-jawed freak Jay Leno. It's a blue-collar anthem to rival David Allan Coe's "Take This Job and Shove It," and it culminates in this corker:
So you see, broke won't take much getting used to
Neither will a barb wire jail house wall
Watch what you say to someone with nothing
It's almost like having it all
Snider points out the hidden power in powerlessness – it's all in how you define it. It's his ability to shift our perspective from the usual cultural norms that makes Snider such a potent humdinger. Anytime an artist can rattle us out of our complacency and accepted truths, it's a good thing, even if the powers that be don't always appreciate it. Case in point, "You Got Away With It (A Tale Of Two Fraternity Brothers)," a thinly veiled swipe at George W. Bush on Devil.
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Our country stands next to Jesus like he's a Super Bowl trophy, but I ain't buying it. George Bush would give his left arm for that photo op.
-Todd Snider |
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Photo by Senor McGuire
"Our country stands next to Jesus like he's a Super Bowl trophy, but I ain't buying it. George Bush would give his left arm for that photo op [laughs]," says Snider.
Todd Snider |
Bush - a guy who drank too much, snorted too much and got by on lucky breaks and the kindness of family and strangers – has hounded recreational drug users, gays and anyone that doesn't look or act like him in a way we haven't seen since the '80s. Rather than really leading this country, he stands in judgment of it.
"And shaking his fist, telling us we've got to set goals and achieve, basically being all Republican and making punishments harder on people who get fucked up," continues Snider. "A guy who carried cocaine in his pocket for nine years wants to make it easier to put people doing it now in jail."
Snider isn't entirely comfortable with the spotlight that's swung his way. He thinks he looks like Charles Manson on television or video. And while it may seem like he's courting controversy, he's not. Truth just falls out of his mouth when he sings. When he talks about his Tonight Show appearance, he says, "I think I looked like a serial killer." And he seems far more excited about the after-show party on the roof of his hotel, where he and his friends caroused and played J.J. Cale's new album for hours until they'd cleared everyone else out of the pool area.
Todd Snider |
The afternoon before the Tonight Show taping, Snider and his quickly assembled pick-up band did a set for Rehearsals.com that also flipped his switch.
"It was real cool. They put us on a soundstage, and they recorded and filmed us for five hours. It's just a bunch of cover songs and a few of my songs. Now my manager wants to put it out. We did a few Billy Joe (Shaver) tunes. We did 'Two More Bottles of Wine.' We did 'Maureen' by John Prine. You know, kind of obscure stuff," enthuses Snider. "I didn't get to sing covers until I put out an album. Then, people would let me. If I was in some bar before I had a record deal and I did somebody else's songs, people hated it. I always figured it's because I can't sing. 'Do your own songs where you talk! Don't kill us trying to sing Sugar Mountain!' [laughs]. The talking blues, I do that a lot, but I like to sing too. And I never know if I'm in pitch, but everyone says I mostly am."
Interlude 2
Todd Snider |
JamBase: There's a general tendency to demonize what we regard as a personal weakness. I think Bush just hates himself so much, except now he's President and can project that self-hatred out on our whole culture.
Snider: I wonder what's gonna happen at the end of this, when he's gone. It's been an interesting six years, has it not?
He's fucked up a lot of things that are gonna take a lot longer to fix. I'm guardedly hopeful there won't be the same kind of administration after the next presidential election. There's a part of me that's scared to say it out loud but I hope we won't be dealing with the same kind of assholes in a few years.
You know Inside The Actors Studio? They always ask, "What do you hope God says to you when you get to Heaven?" If they asked me that, my hope is God would be saying, "Hold on! Hold on! Calm down. I can explain." Because that would mean there is an explanation AND I had the balls to demand it.
Higher Powers
Todd Snider by Senor McGuire |
For many, Heaven is portrayed with hard, inflexible words like "justice" and "power" and "vengeance," rather than ultimate compassion, which is even more important in a way than love because you can't get to love without compassion. One of the things that most appeals to me about Snider is how he's a skeptic who still believes. Snider comments, "There's something undeniably there. You can name it or don't name it. You can call it 'The Unknown.' It's what we don't know. We know that it's bigger than us. That's all."
Bigger things and immediate things – that's the swirl in Snider's music. He doesn't lose the day-to-day stuff when he looks heavenward. Snider understands that the pearly gates don't open for those who don't get a little dirt under their nails. When we talk about spiritual matters, his faith is expressed in simple, almost innocent ways, like when he remarks, "Jesus had some really great shit to say" or "When I pray it's 'Let us all in, Man.' That's enough."
He continues his hypothetical conversation with The Creator saying, "I was clinging to life. I'm not gonna tell you I wasn't clinging to that thing. I was. I kept going to doctors. Even when I wasn't sick, I went a million times. I wanted to stay, Man. Swimming is unbelievable. That shit, I can't believe it! But cancer? Come on, Man, let's talk. Let's sit down. Do you have a lot of people to greet today?"
When I point out that the Bible suggests God's day is a thousand years, Todd barks, "Give me five minutes! I just want to know the whole deal with war!"
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I've been to dinner at Jimmy Buffet's house, and I've eaten it at a homeless shelter. And there's great joy and harrowing terror to be found in both places.
-Todd Snider |
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Photo by Senor McGuire
Nashville
Todd Snider & John Prine by John Carrico |
There is no worse music today than the simple-minded, jingoistic, pandering stuff being put out by mainstream country industry in Nashville. Snider couldn't agree more.
"You go into studios there, and I've seen it many times, especially songwriting ones, where they have a sign on the door that says 'Fuck Art,' and they mean it, man," comments Snider. "And, they're sick of people telling 'em they're not artistic too! I don't know why they do that. I don't see Tin Pan Alley dying in my lifetime if there's Nashville. They don't want it to be about anything anybody is too emotionally attached to."
Unfortunately, that corporate taint extends to most mainstream fare. Snider says, "The Stones are my favorite band. They could change their name to Disney, and I'd still love them. But they're pretty goddamn close to changing their name to Disney [laughs]. There's Coke, the Stones, Rolling Stone, McDonald's, Walt Disney, and the New York Yankees."
Todd Snider |
"I saw one of the guys from Big & Rich – it was Rich I think – saying he was going to write 250 songs this year. And I thought, 'Somebody shoot that motherfucker.' Ah, just kidding [laughs]. I actually know him and like him a lot. Who am I to say that 'Me And Bobby McGee' ain't gonna fall out of that 250? It's just a different side of the street than I live on."
His side of the street has critics putting him in the same line as supporters Kristofferson, Prine and Shaver.
"It makes me feel good when people say that, but I don't guess I'll ever be able to see it like that," offers Snider. "It's flattering, but I'm mostly with this Elvis guy (his straight-shooting tour manager and right-hand man) who's cruel like the devil to me. Those guys are my heroes, and I don't know how I lucked into it. I've never really calmed down around them. The one thing Kristofferson, Billy Joe Shaver and John Prine do know is I can beat them in a trivia contest about themselves (slight pause) by a mile!"
Familiar Misery
Todd Snider by Senor McGuire |
Studies have shown people often stay with bad situations simply because the pain is familiar and the unknown, even if it might be better, is scary. The Devil You Know touches upon this dynamic, exposing the wound inside us that only scars over but never really leaves. The smell of it attracts wolves and vultures, but Snider gives us something to sing.
"I always have someone in my life who thinks I'm an idiot but wants to hang around me anyway," says Snider. "And every time I fuckin' get rid of this person, I replace them with someone exactly like them! I sometimes think that since my dad's dead now, I keep this person around that says, 'That wasn't so great, you dick!' As soon as the guy who does that quits, I run out and get another one."
That's human nature in a nutshell, and if Todd Snider is anything, he's gloriously, brokenly, beautifully human. That's something to toast, and I know whose songs I'll be singing when I raise my glass.
JamBase | East Nashville
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