MUSIC: Snider brings memories of LR to perform at South on Main

Singer-songwriter Todd Snider performs at South on Main in Little Rock today and Wednesday.
(Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
Singer-songwriter Todd Snider performs at South on Main in Little Rock today and Wednesday. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)

Todd Snider is talking about the time he stalked Johnny Cash.

"When I was really young before I'd made a record, I waited around in the parking lot of [the Fire Station] studio in Memphis to meet him," says Snider, who is playing shows today and Wednesday at South on Main in Little Rock.

Todd Snider

Opening act: Tim Easton

When: 7 p.m. today, Wednesday, South on Main, 1304 S. Main St., Little Rock

Admission: $35, $40, $42

Information: (501) 244-9660

southonmain.com/eve…

The Man in Black apparently wasn't in the mood for fan interaction, though, because Snider was asked to return to his car before Cash left the building.

Snider had wanted to play a song for the Kingsland-born singer but didn't get the chance.

The day wasn't a total wash, though. After Cash left, Snider was allowed to go into the studio to meet Cash's band and producer, Chips Moman.

Moman invited him to play and Snider impressed the veteran producer with "Easy Money," a groovy slab of hip-shaking rock that eventually ended up on Snider's 1994 debut, Songs for the Daily Planet.

"He said: 'Let's record it with the band,'" Snider, 53, says. "It was such a sweet thing to do ... I didn't get to meet Johnny Cash, but I started hanging out at that studio a bunch."

(Snider finally ran into Cash years later at a Highwaymen show with Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. "He was really sweet to me," Snider says.)

All this Johnny Cash talk comes up because Snider's latest album, 2019's Cash Cabin Sessions Vol. III, was recorded in a cabin/studio built by Cash in Hendersonville, Tenn., and which is operated by Cash's son and Snider's friend, John Carter Cash.

The album is an easygoing and loose assemblage of acoustic folk and blues laced with Snider's sly, witty lyrics and sung-spoken vocals.

His songs often take a while to gestate, he says.

"Mostly because of obsessive-disordery stuff, I take a couple of years on songs. I just stare at them a long time and always wonder, 'What's the point?' Then once in a while, one of them will make me feel good, and I think it might even work down at the bars."

Snider has plenty of songs that work at the bars and elsewhere. Like his heroes, Jerry Jeff Walker and John Prine, he has a scruffy talent for wry stories and social commentary tinged with self-deprecation and wrapped up in catchy melodies.

Want some examples? Check out "Alright Guy" and "Talkin' Seattle Blues," from his debut, or tracks like "Beer Run," "The Ballad of the Kingsmen," "East Nashville Skyline" and "Play a Train Song" along with a few dozen others.

Along with his solo output, Snider is also part of the Hard Working Americans, a jam band he formed with Dave Schools of Widespread Panic, the late Neal Casal, Chad Staehly and Duane Trucks.

On Cash Cabin Sessions Vol. III Snider pays tribute to Cowboy Jack Clement and sings about his friend Loretta Lynn in "The Ghost of Johnny Cash."

Snider first visited Cash Cabin in 2015 to watch Lynn record a pair of songs they had written together.

"She is funny and sweet and for some reason decided to take me under her wing and help me," he says.

She even tried to bail him out of jail one night, he says.

"They were like, 'Some lady's on the phone and says she's Loretta Lynn and she wants to pay for you to get out.' Nobody believed it was her."

Another friend, Jason Isbell, handles backing vocals on "Like a Force of Nature," an ode to lost love and survival that finds Snider singing: "See if you can remember me when I was listening to my better angels."

He turns topical on "Talking Reality Television Blues" and "A Timeless Response to Current Events."

"I'm a lefty, but I don't hate righties. For the folk singer, which I think I am, it's almost fair game to sing about almost anything. But sometimes I'll make up a song that's opinionated or heavy-handed, and I'll just keep those at home."

Besides, he adds with a chuckle, "who needs to be lectured to at a bar by somebody who smokes more dope before 9 a.m. than most people smoke all day?"

Snider played a sold-out show at South on Main last year and played there regularly when it was Juanita's. He remembers opening for Warren Zevon there in the early '90s and meeting well-known Little Rock groupie Connie Hamzy, who was with Zevon, he says.

"I've always liked Little Rock," Snider says. "I've got some great memories and ghosts there. I've been coming there since way before I even made a record."

Style on 02/18/2020

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