Todd Snider, a singer and songwriter beloved on the American music scene for his funny but empathetic portraits of people struggling to survive in an uncaring world, died Friday. He was 59 years old.
His death was announced in a post on his Instagram account, which did not indicate the cause or say where he died. An earlier post signed by “Todd's Friends & Family” said he had been admitted to a hospital in Hendersonville, Tennessee, after experiencing breathing problems and had been diagnosed with pneumonia; Before that, he canceled a tour this month after telling fans he had been injured in a “violent assault” outside a hotel in Salt Lake City.
Often compared to people like John Prine and Kris Kristofferson — who were his mentors at various times — Snider wrote about “how poor people sometimes deal with pain and hardship,” he told the New York Times in 2009. “A little bit of drugs here, a little bit of sex here, a little bit of denial there.”
In a prolific recording career that spanned three decades, Snider made albums for labels owned by Prine and Jimmy Buffett and for his own company, Aimless Records. However, for many his best experience was on stage, where he wove his songs into a kind of monologue about his hectic life.
Among his best-known songs are the cheerful “Beer Run”; “Can't Complain,” about a guy who “has nothing to lose because there's nothing to gain”; and “Alright Guy,” which begins with a scene in which a friend catches him flipping through “that new book with nude pictures of Madonna.”
“He said he never thought of me as a motherfucker before,” he sings, “He said he never wanted to see me again / And I still don't know why.”
In his 2014 memoir, Snider told a shaggy-dog story about the time Garth Brooks called him into a studio to help him record a cover of “Alright Guy” dressed as his alter ego, Chris Gaines.
“I was already starstruck before Garth walked up and introduced himself,” Snider wrote. “He said, 'I thought you had red hair,' because he had seen me on the TV show 'Austin City Limits,' and I dyed my hair red for that show. It wasn't supposed to be red. It was supposed to be dark brown. My plan was to look like John Fogerty, but I ended up looking like the guy in the movie 'Dumb and Dumber.'” (Brooks did not reveal the cover, although Snider said the country superstar sent him a check for $10,000 anyway.)
Todd Daniel Snider was born on October 11, 1966 and grew up in Oregon before coming to Texas and then Nashville. Their debut album, “Songs for the Daily Planet,” came out in 1994 through Buffett's Margaritaville label; He closed with an acoustic song with motorized lips called “Talkin' Seattle Grunge Rock Blues” in which he lovingly satirized the rise of alternative rock of the time:
Now, to fit in quickly, we wear flannel shirts.
We turn up our amps until it hurts
We have bad attitudes, and also
When we play, we stare at the ground.
A favorite of critics from the start, Snider earned rave reviews with 2004's “East Nashville Skyline,” whose highlights include a characteristically long-winded depiction of the culture wars ravaging America in the wake of 9/11 — “Conservative, Christian, right-wing Republican, straight, white, American,” it's called — and “The Ballad of the Kingsmen,” in which he contemplates the meaning of the lyrics to “Louie Louie.”
Among the many other LPs he released were 2009's “The Excitement Plan,” which was produced by Don Was, and a 2012 collection of songs by Jerry Jeff Walker, the country-folk songwriter who had been a crucial influence on him. Snider's most recent album, “High, Lonesome and Then Some,” came out in October.
Snider spoke openly throughout his life about his struggles with drugs and chronic pain related to spinal stenosis. “I do a lot of things to try to alleviate it, but I also have to make peace with it,” he said of his condition in an interview last month with Rolling Stone. “Which hasn't been easy.” Information about Snider's survivors was not immediately available.
