Todd Snider

There's something about Todd Snider's rambling, incisive, irreverent lyrics that have struck a chord with a wide audience. A Portland native, Snider eventually made his way to Memphis, where he often played a bar called the Daily Planet — hence the name of his 1994 debut full-length, Songs for the...

By Tom Murphy

December 6, 2012

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There's something about Todd Snider's rambling, incisive, irreverent lyrics that have struck a chord with a wide audience. A Portland native, Snider eventually made his way to Memphis, where he often played a bar called the Daily Planet — hence the name of his 1994 debut full-length, Songs for the Daily Planet. For that album, Snider wrote a track called "Talkin' Seattle Grunge Rock Blues," which, fittingly, fell somewhere between folk, country and blues and punctured some of the pomposity of the music milieu of that particular era. Live, Snider is part comedic storyteller and part troubadour, and he makes no bones about his anti-establishment stance. The title of his latest record, Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables, speaks for itself.

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Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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Twitter: @simianthinker