In 1995, I purchased tickets to the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand to see a bill that included Todd Snider, the Mavericks, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. I bought the tickets to see The Mavericks and Mary Chapin Carpenter. I had no idea who Todd Snider was. His music was certainly not played on KEEY K-102 in the Twin Cities. I honestly had never heard of him before, but I assumed he had to be pretty cool given the musical company he kept.
Unfortunately, Snider was unable to make the performance and he remained an even bigger mystery to me after his no-show.
More likely than not, I must have read something about him in No Depression magazine after the missed state fair show. Somewhere along the line, I imagine I purchased his 1994 debut Songs For the Daily Planet album at Cheapo Records on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul, but I am not sure of that.
Co-Produced by Tony Brown and Michael Utley, Snider’s 1994 debut Songs For the Daily Planet is a revelation, a window into another alternative world of country music. Snider’s irreverent personality, social satire and penchant for breaking your heart had no Nashville equal.
If McBride and the Ride marked Tony Brown’ most overt reach for mainstream country music success, Todd Snider had to represent his most ambitious, unexpected, and left-of-centre project.
Issued on Jimmy Buffet’s label Margaritaville Records, the album was distributed by MCA. The album’s title is a direct tip of the hat to the The Daily Planet, a Memphis pub Snider was playing while refining his craft. The musicians on the album included Peter Hykra on the violin, mandolin, and acoustic guitar. Mark Marchetti played the vibes. Joe Mariencheck was on the bass guitar. Joe McLeary played the drums. Eddie Shaver played the electric guitar.
Including the hidden track, all 13 album cuts were songs he had previously worked at The Daily Planet. In the liner notes Snider quips, “The Daily Planet was the excuse for the song on this album. There is no actual excuse for the actual album itself.”
Thankfully, the album does not need an excuse. It’s as outrageously bold an artistic statement as was made in country music in the 90’s. The influences of songwriter’s songwriters like John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker, Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark, Bobby Bare, and Shel Silverstein were all over the album.
More than just an artist, here was a creative voice, a character, and a true believer in telling stories.
Critics have complained Snider offered little more than lazy and smart-ass heartland rock. Fans like me would counter that his sound was equal parts folk, country, blues, and rock. Snider could easily be dismissed as a cynical punk with a bad attitude, or celebrated as the most astute witness to his generation, the most political of dead-beat poets,
It’s wild this many years later that “Easy Money” and “Joe’s Blue’s” are still such a blast to listen to.
“I Spoke as a Child” can still bring me to tears just as quickly as “You ThinkYou Know Somebody” can gut me. His best songs cut so deeply because Snider is unassumingly razor sharp with his observations of character and strong sense of situation.
For what it’s worth, Gary Allan would later cover “Alright Guy” and Mark Chesnutt would record “Trouble.”
I mention that because Snider’s debut album is stacked with exceptional songs that have actually aged tremendously well; it is still a provocatively thoughtful and insanely fun listening experience.
In 2008, Kevin posted his favorite 25 hits by Todd Snider in a Favorite Songs by Favorite Artists feature, a great indication that Snider only got better with each subsequent album.
In his acknowledgments fromSongs For the Daily Planet, Snider wrote, “So to all these people and people like them across this very hopeful place who have lent floors, prayers, food, rides, hope, laughs and reasons to me and many like me for so long. To those of us who have run for left field in this right handed world, May your laughs always be loud, may your nights all be long, may your ideas always seem strange and above all may you never fit in. Save the vote, rock the planet. God bless.”
Songs For the Daily Planet is strange and doesn’t fit in well with anything else Nashville was doing in the early nineties, but like I said earlier, it doesn’t need to.
This album rocks the planet precisely because Snider never tried to fit in.
Leave a Reply