Todd Snider Rules
I’m not a music writer, so forgive me for all that follows.
Todd Snider died. He just released a new album, and went on tour in support of the record. He was supposed to play at the Commonwealth Room in Salt Lake City; I didn’t buy tickets because…well, as a working musician myself, my Saturday nights usually have other things going on.
I downloaded the new record and listened to it on an unexpected plane trip at the end of October. I remember thinking that wow, this record had a SOUND. His voice was so low, gravelly, and dark. That microphone placement was like, in his throat. It’s so, so loose, in a beautiful way. Smokey and bluesy. It’s a color, all by itself. Like bong hits in a dark room with the cathode rays of the TV as the only light. You are sunk deep in the couch with your friend Natalie and it’s 3 am on a Thursday night. Someone passes the bong again and the boys start talking about how you can’t learn jazz in schools man, you got to learn it on the Street. (You’re thinking to yourself, dudes, this is Bloomington, Indiana, do you mean Walnut Street? Atwater Street?) You and Natalie drift off into the blue smoke night while the bass playing boys continue playing and talking about Trane. (No shade whatsoever, I love John Coltrane.)
But then the next thing you know, Todd Snider, whose record I just described while recalling a night in college, is gone. There was a series of horrible things that happened to him on his tour, in Salt Lake City, of all places.Then his Commonwealth Room show was canceled. Then his tour was canceled. Then he was in the hospital in Nashville. Then he was gone. He was 59 years old.
I wasn’t a super fan. I haven’t listened to every record he made, but I loved every song I heard. I listened the HECK out of Near Truths and Hotel Rooms. That record is so good, his stories are funny but his songs are even better because they are the truth. I also spent a lot of time with Hard Working Americans record Rest In Chaos. (Neal Casal was part of that project, which is how I got there, but he’s gone now, too.)
So if I wasn’t a super fan, why is this hitting so hard? I think it’s because his songs were true, and he lived them, found them, and told them to you. I never heard a song by Todd I didn’t like, I never him tell a story that didn’t make me laugh out loud, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but out loud. Many things he lived by are things that other people told me, too. But Todd Snider was about six degrees from a lot of other folks I have been super fans of, in fact he officiated Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell’s wedding. (Oh welllll……..)
So I started digging deeper into his songs and stories. Here are some things I have learned.
Todd Snider met his idols, and they helped him, and he never forgot it. Even if and when it was complicated, he always seems to be expressing awe and gratitude. And love, too. Even when it’s complicated. It makes me think about being inspired by other musicians and photographers. I try to teach my students not to copy recordings they love, even though I know I’m guilty as charged sometimes, but instead to figure out what inspires them about the recording, in detail, and then work to use that in their own interpretations. I feel like there are times when I listen to songs by Todd Snider that maybe I can hear a little John Prine, but it’s the source material, not a copy. Todd is telling his own story.
Like other musicians and artists I follow, Todd lived the artist’s life. He writes about being in awe of folks who can use their left brain to do things like their own taxes, but that he can’t let his left brain get too caught up other wise it disrupts the creating. (Those are probably not his exact words, just how I’m reading it…) I read an interview where he said he just wants to get up early so he can spend all day writing poems and songs. When his death was announced, his people wrote, “He got up every morning and started writing, always working towards finding his place among the songwriting giants that sat on his record shelves, those same giants who let him into their lives and took him under their wings, who he studied relentlessly. Guy Clark, John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Jeff Walker.” It reminded me of when I met the artist Tom Judd at an art opening at ModernWest Gallery. He asked me if I was an artist, I said I was not, I was a musician. He said, “Are you obsessed with it? Because that’s all art is, something you’re obsessed with.” And I just want to live my life like that. I want to wake up and do the art things. I don’t want to think about the not-art things. And so that’s the reason I’m sitting here this morning writing about Todd Snider. He lived his art, and he practiced his art, too. He sounds like he’s telling those stories on the fly, but he PRACTICED.
(And maybe that’s what I’m doing right now, I’m practicing. Someday I might have an important story to tell and I need to be ready.)
He said that Kris Kristofferson told him that if you’re in it for the right reasons, you can’t fail. It reminded me of Atar Arad telling me that if you love music, the rest will follow. It’s almost as if the people that came before us might know something, if we are listening.
I’m pretty good at the not-art things. I can check things off a to-do list like an Executive Assistant. I never attended a meeting I couldn’t run better myself, never read a set of minutes I couldn’t write better. I never saw a shopping list I couldn’t decimate. (But I do ignore my cluttered closets and drawers like a pro.) But this isn’t what I want to do anymore. This stuff gets in the crevices of my brain and itches until I get it done right. It isn’t beauty and it isn’t art and it isn’t music. It’s just…. noise. Sometime soon…excise the noise. Follow the muse.
A few of my favorite lyrics by Todd Snider:
“We were light and sound
Before a darker matter
Froze us into what we are for now
It’s too late, over in a minute
Losing a fight before I knew I was in it
Just kept me swinging til long after I knew it was over
I may never know which road I’m on
The here and now or the gone
The coming home or the running away.”
Rest in Chaos“Well, if we never get together again
Try to forgive me for all of these fools I have been
See if you can’t remember me
When I was listenin' to my better angels
Just see if you can remember me
When I was listenin'May your hope always outweigh your doubt
Until this whole world finally punches you out
May you always play your music
Loud enough to wake up all of your neighbors
May you play at least loud enough
To always wake yourself up.”
Like a Force of Nature“She said “Life ain’t easy getting through
Everybody gonna try to make it tough on you
I tell you right now, if you dig what you do,
They’ll never gonna get you down.”
Ballad of the Devil’s Backbone
The entirety of Statistician’s Blues
Even sometimes just the way he says it: “I’m sure she is but that’s not all she is.” Just Like Old Times
He wrote once that writing a song was like cutting open your heart: Missing you
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child.
But all I heard was how I should get ahead.
Now growing up, it ain't anything but all this indecision
With these debts and doubts and worries
Hanging over my head.
When I was a child,
I spoke as a child.
I wish I could remember what I said.”
I Spoke As A Child
“Seems like day after day
Goes by like nothing is ever gonna change
But just like overnight
It's like it ain't never gonna be same
Hitting what you're aiming for
Forgetting what you missed”
Just Like Overnight
And the last song on his last record:
“The temptation to exist
Must’ve been the first one we couldn’t resist”
Temptation to Exist
Please listen to Todd Snider today. Todd Snider Rules.
On a side note, I haven’t forgotten about photography, I’m working on some fall images that maybe someday I’ll organize into a collection of some kind. Here’s one. I’ve heard songwriters, including Todd Snider but also Neil Young, talk about how songs are not written, they’re received. This picture was given to me. I turned a corner and there it was. I didn’t even ask.
