Todd Snider Raided the Vaults for a New ‘Lost’ Album — And Found Jimmy Buffett Along the Way
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The only way to reach Todd Snider is to call his landline. He’s never had a cell phone. Never cared to own one, either. If you want to find him, hopefully he’s home when you ring or you’re lucky enough to run into him by happenstance.
“I’ve always been into being a troubadour. I love the chaos, that life of adventure — that’s what struck me. I had a predisposition for it,” the singer-songwriter tells Rolling Stone from his Nashville home. “I was [already] a hitchhike and sofa circuit person. Jerry Jeff [Walker] made me see that the difference between a free spirit and a freeloader is three chords on the guitar.”
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Lately, Snider has been thinking about certain faces no longer walking this earth, their phone numbers no longer active for Snider to call up and ask advice or just shoot the shit, swapping tall tales of the road and what it means to be a lifer musician.
“Jerry, John [Prine], Billy Joe Shaver, Jimmy [Buffett], Loretta, Guy [Clark],” Snider says. “Kris [Kristofferson] is the only phone number I got left. The rest are gone — I miss everybody.”
At 57, Snider has always harbored an old-soul heart in his relationships with others, but earlier this month he looked more deeply into his own past and unearthed Crank It, We’re Doomed — an album Snider initially recorded in 2007 and shelved. Sixteen years later, it’s finally seeing the light of day.
“When we made it, for some reason, I decided it wasn’t good enough,” Snider says. “I was overthinking it or something, or insecure. I’ve heard it twice since we found it and I really like it. I regret shelving it.”
Captured by producer Eric McConnell in East Nashville during the George W. Bush administration, the 15-song LP is signature freewheelin’ Todd Snider — ragtag, devil-may-care folk-rock coupled with his Cheshire Cat ethos of lyrical curiosity and musical discovery. Lynn also appears on the album, as does Kristofferson.
“I had gotten so into lyrics. I was making up so many of ’em and learning as much I could about the alphabet,” Snider recalls. “But at some point, I just got negative. [I questioned] being someone who needed to say something to everyone all the time.”
With Snider working his way through this identity crisis of sorts, many of the songs cultivated from the McConnell sessions were pushed to the side. To note, some of the tunes would bubble up on Snider’s seminal 2008 EP Peace Queer.
“[Crank It, We’re Doomed] was a real pivotal point. I was probably doing my best stuff and Eric was on top of it,” Snider says. “He was just trying to find what I tried to call ‘my sound,’ which I hadn’t done — [it was] maybe the best time for [my] music, but I just sort of flamed out.”
Within Crank It, We’re Doomed, there’s a genuine, intrinsic sense of “nothing’s the same, everything’s the same.” Sure, the tunes were recorded in 2007, but the topics hold water almost two decades later — an upcoming presidential election of dire consequence, war raging in the Middle East, a rising epidemic of school bullying and violence.
“‘All the news just repeats itself’ — that’s what John Prine said,” Snider says.
Digging deeper into the record, there’s also a poignant take on Buffett’s “West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown” from the tropical songwriter’s 1974 album Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. Snider had a longtime friendship with Buffett, who died in September at 76, and it continues to hang heavy on Snider.
“I learned so much from Jimmy [in] the way I tell stories,” Snider says. “He just sat [me] down and said, ‘Don’t do it that way, do it this way. And don’t tell anyone what I just told you.’”
Buffett was an early champion of Snider’s in the 1990s when, perhaps, even Snider didn’t see his creative potential. When he looks back at his career’s starting line, it’s all one continuous thread of people, place, and things.
Originally from Portland, Oregon, Snider ventured to Texas in the mid-1980s after high school to try his luck at whatever possible career path might stick to the wall. While in Texas, Snider stumbled into the life of a troubadour, only to then befriend singer-songwriter Keith Sykes, who was also a former member of Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band.
“My dad was in a bar and the bartender was talking about how her sister was married to Keith Sykes,” Snider says. “My dad called me from a payphone and said, ‘Is Keith Sykes one of your [musical heroes]? I know where he lives.’ So, I sent him a couple songs. He said he loved them. And I went to his house and he started working with me.”
Sykes was impressed with Snider and eventually pitched a deal on his behalf to Buffett’s label Margaritaville Records, whose executive, Bob Mercer, liked what he heard. Mercer had Snider open for Buffett on the West Coast in 1993.
“I had only known [Jimmy] for a few months. He was going to buy a seaplane and wanted me to go with him,” Snider reminisces. “So, we got [the plane] in San Francisco in the water and flew to Seattle. He landed the plane in the water and then we went and played the [Tacoma] Dome.”
Buffett found brotherly solidarity with Snider and signed him to Margaritaville. Sykes also introduced Snider to Prine, who later signed Snider to his Oh Boy Records. From there, Prine acted as the great connector for Snider, and where friendships emerged with Clark, Lynn, Kristofferson, and more.
“If you can play and sing, you can go anywhere you want and you don’t need any money — everybody will take you on their boat, just sing ’em some Jimmy songs,” Snider says. “It’s [about] being free — Jerry Jeff wanted to be free, John wanted to be free.”
While that sense of freedom remains fierce and strong within Snider, what has disappeared is the deep sense of place many musicians felt in East Nashville in the early 2000s. It was a time and place that arguably represented the last of a nitty-gritty Music City, before the bro-country boom and the celebrity bar takeover of Nashville.
“This was when they still called Americana ‘unsuccessful country music,’” Snider says. “I could walk from my house to Eric [McConnell’s] house and there’d be five band rehearsals [along the way]. This was the side of town where everybody thought the Rolling Stones were the best country band ever. Nobody cared if they made a ton of money.”
The release of Crank It, We’re Doomed jarred loose the realization that there’s other lost recordings still out there. Two albums worth of material, he says.
“Maybe if I get old enough or if I died, I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody put that stuff out,” Snider says. “I never did try to have hits or anything, just trying to make what I thought was art. Guy Clark was sort of the integrity police and he always said, ‘You have to decide if you want to be an artist or a star?’ I already made that decision before I made records.”
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