September 13, 2021 - State Theatre - Portland, ME

Setlist

[Agnostic Church Welcome]
Stuck on the Corner (Prelude to a Heart Attack)
[John Prine Stories] > Food and Pussy [Reeder]
Handsome John
[Skip Litz Story Intro]
Play a Train Song
[Skip Litz Story Conclusion]
Can't Complain
[Alan Greenspan Intro]
In Between Jobs
[First Day In Nashville]
[Where Will I Go]
Working on a Song
[Hard Luck Love Song]
Just Like Old Times
Doublewide Blues
[Gypsy Culture]
Like a Force of Nature
[Spreadneck Speedball]
Roman Candles
[Enjoy Yourself Intro]
Enjoy Yourself
Looking for a Job
Ballad of the Devil's Backbone Tavern > [Devil's Backbone Story]
Sail On, My Friend
Alright Guy > [Free Bird Story] > Alright Guy

Encore:
Turn Me Loose (I'll Never Be the Same)
Bruised Orange [Prine]
[John Prine Songwriting Story]
Mr. Bojangles [Walker]

Audio

SOURCE: Matrix | QUALITY: A | COMPLETE: Yes | LENGTH: 91:21 | TAPER: Todd Snider Live
NOTES: Not available for sharing.

Notes

Transcript

Oh, man, I'm gonna lay it on you. 

Woah...Everything...Everything...

Hello, my fellow Americans. Welcome to the First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder where we're always hoping for something and wondering "What the fuck."

[Stuck on the Corner (Prelude to a Heart Attack)]

Thank you.

So good to be back on the road. I think I saw that written in a tunnel somewhere.

I'm gonna do this. I appreciate y'all coming out and give me a chance to sing again. I'm grateful to get to sing again. I've been doing this since I was really young, and the traveling part...

[Audience member yells something indecipherable]

Thank you. I know that's true. And I enjoy the traveling just as much as I enjoy the singing.

I have a handful of people that I looked up to a lot whose ... some other singers whose songs I knew all of them ... which was Billy Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker, and John Prine.

Yeah, man. I'm gonna miss all three of them an awful lot. And all three of them were really good to me in my life. 

People ask me what John Prine was like all the time. And I tell him that one time we were taken on a trip to Europe. It was like fourteen hours in the air for some weird reason, and we were all frustrated by that anyway. And then the kid that pulled up to get us was the promoter's son and he started going a certain way.

And John said, "I think you mighta shoulda gone the other way."

The kid goes, "No, no."

And about two hours later, that kid says, "Mr. Prine, I'm sorry. We're going the wrong way. You were right."

And I could feel John's tour manager, Mitchell, wanted to strangle that kid. And I wanted to at least yell, "Goddamn, he told you."

And everybody else, it's just Jason and David, too ... the band. And you could see steam coming out of everybody's ears. You could feel it, but nothing off of John.

John said, "That's okay. It's fun to drive around.

And then on that same trip, we played a show and afterwards there was this older guy waiting for John to get done singing so he could give his songs to John ... his CD of his own songs, which isn't uncommon. That's a lot of the ways people get songs.

And some people don't listen because they don't wanna accidentally steal anything, which John usually didn't listen to that stuff for that reason.

Well, he got in the car with this guy's CD and he said, "Holy shit. This guy has a song called 'Food and Pussy.'" So he says, "We should play that. Right?"

This guy comes on singing with no band or anything. He says...

[Singing] "What do I want? I want food and pussy. How come? Cause that's the way God made me. It's alright. I guess it must be okay. Oh bop bop bop, shamma lamma ding dong. What do I want? I want food and pussy..."

At that point, you could tell that John was in love.

We listened to the next song, and then we listened to another one, and then he said, "We're gonna go find that man."

We went all over that town and we found him in a bar. And John held up the CD with the cover the guy had drawn by himself. There was a coffee cup on the cover. And John said, "Can I put this album out just like you gave it to me with this cover and everything?"

And the guy, I don't think the guy thought that's what was gonna happen.

But that record is out. It's called ... it's Dan Reeder. I'm not sure what he called the record. And he's made three other records for Oh Boy.

And that's what John was like, you know.

When he died, I knew I was gonna make up a song for him, and I knew there was gonna be something about the last time I saw him. The last time I saw him, he was dancing off stage in a way that he hadn't in his whole career. He was really getting at it like a teenager, shaking his butt and everything on this Lake Marie song. It was profound, especially when you think that it was his last tour and kind of his last poem in a way.

So when I made up this song, I made sure to put that part in there. It starts like this...

[Handsome John]

Thank you.

Oh, thank you so much.

I have this song ... my name ... I've been ... I feel like I, well ... I usually introduce myself for some reason. Thirty years later, I say, "Hey, I'm Todd Snider." But you might have just come out with some fucking friend or something.

I do all these songs I've been making up for all this time and have been getting away with it the whole time, really.

I live in East Nashville where a lot of troubadours live ... a lot of writers live there. And back in the mid-2000s, early 2000s, it became after this tornado hit ... people started moving into that area. It's like, you know that music they call Americana or unsuccessful country or whichever.

Right? Yeah. Okay, well, so all the Americana people started converging in this one neighborhood and that music got more popular, too. And it became a really just to hang around and trade good songs with people. It still goes on now with Sierra Ferrell and Aaron Lee Tasjan, and there's these young kids making great songs.

Still, I hope it's always that way, you know.

And this guy, Skip Litz, he ran the sound at this place called the Radio Cafe. He was well known for going into clubs and yelling for a train song. And the neighborhood was pretty known for doing that for him. He'd come in and people would stop what they were playing.

And then one day ... I don't mean to talk so much at first either ... just the songs I picked, I guess. I write all the songs down on a card and that makes the list. So you're stuck with this one.

But my point was that, well, when he died everybody started singing these train songs.

[Play a Train Song]

I got ... sound a little cotton mouthy at the end. I wonder what that is. I get it so often.

Man, I tell you, that cat ... that that last song was about a guy. Everybody in East Nashville has a song. This guy always used to say, "I am a song."

And then he went ... the last year of his life, he knew he was going and he wanted to go on the road. So we put him on the road and we took him out and then ... He also sold a shit ton of pot and that's how he knew everybody in the neighborhood, right?

And so when we were gonna go on the road we went over to pick him up and he was gone. Just like the song says, he's laying there smiling into his hand and I could see the television was blurred out. 

So I called the cops and they came and it wasn't until they got there that I noticed this big duffle bag full of pot and then the cop notices it, too, and asks me what it is.

I'm like, "Come on."

Well, I said, "I think it's pot, you know."

And he said, "What's he do with that?"

I said, "He sells it. You know? You got him. Take him away."

[Can't Complain]

So, man, I have this other song that I made up a long time ago. It's been years. Not that many years, but it's on a record. A yellow record.

My dog is on the way and he ... fuck it, doesn't matter.

But I got this song I started coming up with, and sometimes the first line of the song that starts the song doesn't even end up in it. And I remember I had read that Alan Greenspan played the saxophone and I wrote down "Alan Greenspan was misunderstood."

He played the saxophone, you know.

I don't know why I thought that was something to say, but then I started hanging all these other phrases off of it and changing it around and I was working on it with a friend of mine. Pretty soon Alan Greenspan was gone. We didn't know what the fuck we were talking about anymore.

Really. But we liked it still. You know?

And then we were on tour, and I believe it was in Philadelphia where I ended in the paper. They did a review of the record, which is always nice if they will do. And they said that this song was a guy who was talking to the guy he's about to mug. Right?

So I called my buddy and I said, "Hey, I think our song might be about a guy talking to a guy that he's about to mug."

And my friend was fine with it, too.

So this is a song about a guy talking to a guy he's about to mug.

[In Between Jobs]

My friend, when I was about ... when I was really young ... this guy explained to me that you didn't have to be the singer to have made up the song. And he also showed me this world where you can be a troubadour and travel around and just play like this.

And as soon as I understood that ... that the life I'd been living was already suitable for just that and a guitar, and as long as we weren't gonna do the complicated thing with the guitar, you know. 

But my point is, I guess, I started making these songs up when I was really young. And I had this one song called "Where Will I Go Now That I'm Gone?" And I could never finish it for like twenty some years.

And then about two years ago or three years ago, I was in a hotel room. It just comes up every once in a while and I work on it and work on it. And then that night, I thought to myself, "Do you really wanna finish this song?"

And then I thought, "Fuck it. Fuck this song."

And then I thought, "You know what'd be good? I could make up a song about that song."

And that didn't hardly take much time at all.

[Working on a Song]

Man, I'm having a good time. I hope you're hearing the songs that you wanna hear. You know, if eventually if you don't, it's alright to yell at me. I know most of the stuff.

This song, check this out.

[Audience member yells]

Oh, okay. I'll remember that.

Really. Well, I mean, I already got this one planned, but fuck. I'll do that for you in a second.

This song I made up, boy, in the early in the middle of 2000-something. But check this out though. A couple few years ago, my manager said this guy had made up a script that was based on this song.

And in the song, the pool player was also ... the song is called Just Like Old Times and it's about a pool player, which really was a folk singer. But I was getting tired of having singers in songs.

So I said, "Fuck it. This guy can be a pool hustler."

But it was really just something that happened to me.

And this guy made up a script that had a car chase and everything.

And I thought, "Well, fuck." You know, most stuff doesn't happen. Right? In general, most stuff doesn't happen. So I didn't think much of it.

Then this guy, he came out to meet me and he seemed like a normal guy, but I just still ... I don't know what people who make movies look like. So I just didn't buy into it.

And then this kid who was an actor came out and followed me around. And then they made the movie and I got to see it. And this guy acts like a train wreck dickhead for like two and a half hours. Which is fine, fine, fine.

But it's really a movie though. It's called Hard Luck Love Song. And if you watch it ... it's gonna come out, right? I've seen commercials. The guys sings and wears shirts like this and shit.

[Just Like Old Times]

[Doublewide Blues]

People ask me about this flag all the time. These colors run at the slightest indication of any kind of trouble whatsoever.

I hate that it's true, but it's true. In gypsy culture, they call it traveler. I could tell you the whole story.

Boy, a lot a lot of men went out to the Northwest after World War II and, in that culture ... like Rastafarian culture, which I also am ... in gypsy or traveler culture, the way of giving sacrament to your gratitude is to bullshit a little.

That's true.

It's really fun on planes, you know, because nobody wants to confront anybody on a plane. Like if you tell somebody you play for the Dallas cowboys and there's a three hour flight left, they're gonna just say, "Okay."

Right? I would.

So you can really get strangers going like that ... as a sacrament though.

Anyway, this song is a lot, I guess. Supposed to be about that kind of culture.

[Like a Force of Nature]

I hope you're still...

[Shouts from the audience]

Oh, yeah. I heard that. I heard you. Yeah, I'll do all that shit. I can do all that shit. And I really will.  I hear him. Didn't that guy ask for Doublewide and I played it?

Sometimes ... I'll just do this one more maybe and then we'll just turn it over to you.

This song, I worked on this little thing like this since I was in my early twenties, this part. And my friend, Neal Casal, who's not with us anymore, helped me to come up with this whole other part that was really hard. And it was my song.

So like how am I gonna make up a song if I can't play it?

And he said, "You're gonna learn to play it."

It's really a mind-changing experience about music. And then once we had the music, as soon as I joined that band, my wife didn't want no parts of me, man. Because the plot of the band was to take acid and then stay on it till the end of the band.

I'm not joking about that either.

There's a certain kind of people that see that as a spiritual thing and I'm one of them. And we took LSD for the entire summer and made such beautiful jams.

I thought so.

And I would go to see my buddies in Widespread Panic and that's ... this next song starts there.

I was getting divorced. I was driving to see Widespread -- their fans are called spreadnecks.

And a spreadneck speedball is coffee and marijuana as opposed to harder things.

I was making my way to that concert and all of a sudden I thought up some words and so it goes like this...

[Roman Candles]

This song I learned off of Keeley Smith and Guy Lombardo record. My parents ... this was their song, you know.

I remember I was making this record called East Nashville skyline, and I was in a shitty way, you know. And my manager at the time, the late great Al Bunetta -- he managed John, too -- he came up to me after one of my shows. He said... 

[Enjoy Yourself]

[Looking for a Job]

[Ballad of the Devil's Backbone Tavern]

The only reason I made up this song was so I could tell a story to it.

I was a young kid. I was living on the floor of the women's dorm at Rhodes College at that time when I made up this song. 

And I remember there was this cat that would hang out at that place. He only had a couple of teeth. I thought he liked my music. By the end of the summer though, he finally came up and said hello. And I told him I've been meaning to thank him. And he said I didn't bother to thank him because he thought that I suck.

And I knew what he meant. Right?

But he wanted to go on and on about it. He told me that he preferred guitar players to play down here, really. That's all.

And that's the only reason I got this in here.

So I say, "Eat your heart out, you inbred fucker."

I've said it so many times.

But I'll tell you, on the live record where I tell that story, right, in the liner notes of the story, I say, "Trog, where are you?" Because I had lost total touch with the guy. And about five or six years after that record came out, I got a message on my machine that said, "Todd, it's Trog. I'm right here, man."

And then he hung up.

This is the song ... I gotta play this one ... It's one of my favorite new ones.

I came up with it for a friend of mine that called me right before one of his shows. And I could tell he didn't wanna play and he probably shouldn't have. And then, anyway, I would give anything for that phone call back. And this is what I would rather ...

[Sail On, My Friend]

I might have fucked that up. I can't remember if I did that last verse or not.

I tell you, I'm having a good time of playing for you cats. That's for sure.

This is my Free Bird, man.

[Alright Guy]

I suppose some of y'all have been to one of them shows where I showed up too fucked up or something. I've been out here thirty years. No break, you know.

I tell you, I just feel like I get misunderstood sometimes because I'm on the road all the time. So if anything happens, I still gotta play that night, whatever's going on during the day.

Don't take breaks. You know.

A lot of times, it feels like I'll be, like, misunderstood or, like, well, I'll tell you before I..

You know those shoes, Crocs? You know. They have holes in them. The guy who made them up, I don't know how long ago it was, but he came to one of my shows. And now we fuck around together. He's kinda like Arthur from that movie Arthur, and I'm like his guitar playing sidekick.

And man, oh my god. That man makes me look like a boy scout. Breaks out in handcuffs almost everywhere we go.

And one time I was up somewhere like in the Montanas or the Wyomings or something like that.

Well, I'll tell you before that though, this guy came to the studio and Elizabeth Cook, he had never met her. He wanted to meet her. He gets in his car. He goes to the music store to call us back for some reason. He's gonna get strings and while he's there, he called and had my friend Burt put him on speaker phone.

And he said, "I just wanted to tell Elizabeth what a great time it was to meet her this afternoon."

And in the background, you could hear somebody say, "Sir, I said, 'Put the phone down.'"

And you knew ... fuck ... this guy's getting arrested again.

So one time, wherever I was telling you I was on tour, he shows up at the show and he says, "Man, I got a plane."

And I said ... you know, it's his own.

He said, "I'll fly you to the next show."

So he flies me to the next show. Means I'm not gonna sleep until the next show.

I didn't.

I came up there on no sleep and too many shrooms and shit like that.

And the crowd was being kinda weird ... bossy. But there was this one fucking guy. He was just like, "Free bird!"

I mean, right out of the gate.

"Free Bird!"

And I even really don't mind when people yell for Free Bird. This guy is just being hostile about it, you know. And I eventually kinda said, "Hey, listen, man. You better stop bugging me with that fucking Free Bird. I'll bail. I will leave."

And he said, "Free Bird!"

So I knew I was in this fight or flight. I'm not proud of it. It was only like three songs into the show.

These colors run. So I told the guy, "Please stop yelling Free Bird."

But he wouldn't. And for some reason ... I was so tired ... I said, well, then fuck it. And I left.

And when I left, everybody started booing. It was a nightmare. I thought, "Well, that's the end of my folk thing. You know." I mean, they were really mad. There was some guy shaking the bus, calling me a pussy from outside. 

And then my friend from Crocs, George, comes in. He says, "Man, that is the coolest fucking thing I will ever saw."

I said, "Really?"

He said, "Yeah." He goes, "Can I try?"

And I said, "Yeah." I didn't know what he meant. Right?

But he went ... I guess he just loves to get a thrill because he went on stage and all he did was say, "Todd's not coming back because of y'all."

And they booed him and threw shit at him.

And they came back on the bus going, "God, that was so fun. Fuck."

Rich people are fucking crazy.

So we finally ... we drive away and he's laughing. He's laughing and then he finally says, "Man, what made you leave like that anyway?"

I said, "That one guy kept yelling 'Free Bird.'"

He said, "Man, that was me yelling 'Free Bird.'"

Thank y'all for giving me a chance to sing my songs for you. I won't forget it.

Thank y'all.

-- ENCORE -- 

[Turn Me Loose (I'll Never Be the Same)]

Thank you all for coming out and giving me a chance to sing for you.

[Shouts from the audience]

Yeah. I'll do it all. Oh, fuck.

[Bruised Orange [Prine]]

That song was a was a John Prine song.

I remember I had a night in in my life, and, yes, I'm bragging. Before I really got to know John, when I was just getting to know John, he had a party at his house and when everybody faded out, it was just John and Keith Sykes and Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt and me.

And I was just making drinks like that spider in that one movie. Right?

And, yeah. That wasn't ... they got drunker and drunker and eventually I was making the set list. 

They were like, "What else, boy?"

And so I got to ask them about their songs and to pick the ones they played. It went all night. And I remember, my favorite one of John's was that one I just played.

And I asked him that night ... I said, "How'd you come up with something like you 'heard sirens on the train track, howl naked gettin' nuder ... an altar boy's had been hit by a local commuter?' What the fuck is all that?"

And he said, "Well, I was walking and an altar boy got hit by a local commuter."

He said, "I saw that."

And then he said, "That broke my heart. And then later in life, when I got my heart broke by a girl, I connected the two events. But I saw that happen."

And I said, "Oh."

And then I also ... when I got to meet Jerry Jeff Walker, I asked a similar question.

I'm so disappointed. I'm so gonna miss them both so much.

But when I asked him, "How did you come up with that Mr. Bojangles?"

And he goes, "Oh, it was really easy."

Check it out.

[Mr. Bojangles [Walker]]

Ya'll, thank you for being so kind to me. I had a great time.