Todd Snider, a singer-songwriter who had been a leading light of the Americana music scene for three decades, captivating fans with songs like “Alright Guy,” has died at age 59, it was announced Saturday morning.
The news was announced on his social media accounts and confirmed by friends. No cause of death was given, although his family had announced on social media Friday that Snider had been hospitalized with pneumonia.
Friends famous and otherwise quickly began to weigh in with shock and heartbreak. “Freak flags at half-staff for the Storyteller and all the songs he still had left to write. I sure did love him,” wrote Jason Isbell on Threads. “No. I refuse to accept the loss of Todd. I refuse,” wrote Adeem the Artist. Said Aaron Lee Tasjan, who recently produced a record for Snider, “I don’t know if anyone has ever been as good to me in my life as you were. … My music wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for you.”
That report of what the family called “walking pneumonia” followed a concerning series of headline-making events that had included an arrest in Utah as he tried to regain admittance to a hospital after being discharged, at what would have been his second tour stop. The tour was brought to a halt after just one date.
A statement on Snider’s Facebook and Instagram pages read: “Aimless, Inc. Headquarters is heartbroken to share that our Founder, our Folk Hero, our Poet of the World, our Vice President of the Abrupt Change Dept., the Storyteller, our beloved Todd Daniel Snider has departed this world. Where do we find the words for the one who always had the right words, who knew how to distill everything down to its essence with words and song while delivering the most devastating, hilarious, and impactful turn of phrases? Always creating rhyme and meter that immediately felt like an old friend or a favorite blanket. Someone who could almost always find the humor in this crazy ride on Planet Earth.”
The statement continued, “He relayed so much tenderness and sensitivity through his songs, and showed many of us how to look at the world through a different lens. He got up every morning and started writing, always working towards finding his place among the songwriting giants that sat on his record shelves, those same giants who let him into their lives and took him under their wings, who he studied relentlessly. Guy Clark, John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Jeff Walker…
“How do we move forward without the one who gave us countless 90 minute distractions from our impending doom?” the statement concluded. “The one who always had 18 minutes to share a story. We’ll do it by carrying his stories and songs that contain messages of love, compassion, and peace with us. Today, put on one of your favorite Todd Snider records and ‘play it loud enough to wake up all of your neighbors or at least loud enough to always wake yourself up.’ We love you Todd, sail on old friend, we’ll see you again out there on the road somewhere down the line. You will always be a force of nature.”
Less than 24 hours before his death was reported, a statement on his Facebook page from “Todd’s friends and family” reported: “We have some difficult news to share. After Todd returned home to recover last week, he began having trouble breathing and was admitted to the hospital in Hendersonville, TN. We learned from his doctors that he had been quietly suffering from an undiagnosed case of walking pneumonia. Our beloved brother’s condition has become more complicated, and he’s since been transferred for additional treatment. His care team and those closest to him are by his side and doing everything they can. Right now we’re asking everyone who loves Todd to hold him in your thoughts in whatever way feels right to you. Say a prayer, light a candle, roll one up, send strength, or just keep him close in your heart. You’ve carried him through so much over the years, and he needs that from all of us now more than ever.”
Prior to recent events, Snider had openly discussed the difficulty of dealing with chronic pain resulting from spinal stenosis.
On Nov. 3, Snider’s team announced that his tour was being canceled, saying that before the planned Salt Lake City show, “Todd sustained severe injuries as the victim of a violent assault outside of his hotel. Todd will be unable to perform for an undetermined amount of time… We appreciate your understanding as Todd receives needed medical treatment.”
Subsequently, it was revealed that Snider had been arrested and booked for disorderly conduct. Body cam footage of his arrest outside the hospital was released and shared on news accounts, showing Snider plaintively telling officers that he was in pain. When officers asked if he was homeless, Snider said that he was “famous” but that the band he was touring with had gone home without him following the cancellation of the tour date. Salt Lake police told local reporters that they did not have a police record of the assault referred to in the press release.
Snider’s most recent album, the one he was due to tour behind, was “High, Lonesome and Then Some,” released Oct. 17 on his Aimless label through Thirty Tigers.
Among the many artists who championed Snider was Jimmy Buffett, who signed the singer to his Margaritaville label, with a debut album produced by Tony Brown and Mike Utley, “Songs for the Daily Planet,” coming out in 1994. The album included Snider’s first airplay success, “Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues,” which impacted the album-rock chart.
After leaving Margaritaville and detours with Island and MCA, Snider was signed to John Prine’s label, Oh Boy Records, releasing his fourth album, the Paul Kennedy-produced “Happy to Be Here,” for the imprint in 2000. He realized what many considered his greatest success with the album “East Nashville Skyline” in 2004.
In 2006, on the heels of the album “The Devil You Know,” Snider was nominated for artist of the year at the Americana Honors & Awards.
He launched his own label, Aimless, in 2008 with the EP “Peace Queer,” which went to No. 1 on the Americana airplay chart.
Snider was known to fans of the Adult Swim animated series “Squidbillies” for his frequent appearances in season 5, including playing both Lobster Freak and himself and singing the show’s theme song in one episode.
In 2014, through De Capo, he published a memoir, “I Never Met a Story I Didn’t Like: Mostly True Tall Tales.” A book about his work, “East Nashville Skyline: The Songwriting Legacy of Todd Snider,” was published by Texas A&M University Press earlier this year.
His most recent full-length album was the acclaimed “First Agnostic Church of Hope and Love,” issued in 2021. It debuted at No. 36 on Billboard’s album sales chart and was described by Rolling Stone as “a raw portrait of a world-class songwriter processing calamity and chaos in real time.”
Snider’s themes were social even more than romantic, registered in titles like his early-2000s cult favorite of a tune, “Conservative Christian, Right Wing, Republic, Straight, White American Male.” He often dealt with themes of religion and hypocrisy in his work, clearly reflected in how the word “agnostic” made it into two album or EP titles, “First Agnostic Church of Hope and Love” and, earlier, 2012’s “Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables.” (On that record, Snider returned a favor to Jimmy Buffett by covering his “West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown.”)
When Snider released the nine-song “High, Lonesome and Then Some” a little less than a month before his death, he spoke in his artist bio of a harsh reality: “I sing about dead friends more than girls these days,” referring to songs about bygone friends like Neil Casal,
He was profiled in Rolling Stone in October, candidly discussing some of his challenges with both the pain that often kept him off the road and personal relationships. Josh Crutchmer wrote that the troubadour was “working through baggage, assessing broken relationships and confronting the notions of loneliness and desolation head-on.”
“It’s all heartache,” Snider told Crutchmer. “I wouldn’t say I’m better, and I don’t think I’m going to get better, but the last decade was hard in my personal life. In the last couple of years, it’s gotten harder, and I felt like the title. I sat out here by myself and had, like, a dark night of the soul.”
Of the tour that ended up only lasting for one date, Snider said, ““I told my team that I want this tour to be the funnest one. I at least want to do it one more time. After that, I may just have to do one show at a time, but that’s been coming for a while. I’ve got this arthritic shit they call stenosis, which makes it painful all over… I do a lot of things to try to help it, but I have to make peace with it, too. Which hasn’t been easy.”
Ken Tucker of NPR, one of Snider’s many critic fans, singled out what he felt was a telltale line from the album “Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables” 13 years ago. Said Tucker, “If one line could sum up the album, it’s ‘It ain’t the despair that gets you / It’s the hope.’”
For all the darkness that crept into his work, expressed seriously or in mordant wit, Snider was known for his high-spiritedness among the friends to whom he remained committed. Aaron Lee Tasjan wrote a touching tribute on social media:
When I met you it was 2006.
You were opening for Kevn.
It was Thanksgiving and we were all in Athens.
When you sang Train Song, you leveled the place.
You were on stage all by yourself.
I had listened to you for years but it was first time seeing you live.
I saw what I wanted to do for the rest of my life that night.
Because of you and Kevn, I am doing it.
When I moved to East Nashville ten years ago, it was cause of you.
I got to town and slept in your old bed.
I wanted more than anything to be like you like how you were with Jerry Jeff.
At first you didn’t like that.
You told Larry I wasn’t allowed to open for you.
But then you let me open for you after all.
I cried when you sent me that email about Don’t Walk Away.
You said I could come with you to Black Mountain.
I would follow you anywhere.
My heart breaks that I can’t go where you are now.
You came to be the one I turned to.
When the label was doubting me you sent me an email and all it said was “you were made for this.”
Later, you told me Jerry Jeff sent you a letter that said the same thing once.
It made me cry when you told me that.
You made me cry a lot.
When I didn’t think anyone would wanna see me play solo you invited me on yet another tour to give me the chance to get better at my solo shows in front your audience.
You never gave me advice but you always encouraged me.
Do you have any idea how rare and special you were?
When my van broke down last summer, your fans gave me the money to fix it.
You let me share your world and had me up with you to sing Paradise.
Your fans have been so nice to me because of you.
You let me play for them and meet them and become friends with them.
That makes me cry, too.
Last year you wanted to get together and try to figure out how to sing country songs really slow.
Those days you and I spent at the Purple just the two of us figuring out how to count the songs with all that space in them were some of the best days of my life.
You threatened to record 12 Bar Blues but you didn’t.
I never told you the original title of that song was ‘Owed To Todd Snider.’
Then I came out to your house with Joe and Robbie and Stacie and Sterling and Brian and Erica and Brooke and we all made High Lonesome & Then Some.
You got mad at me cause I had my prescription sun glasses on.
I know its cause I was somebody you felt safe enough with to get mad at.
You knew I loved you no matter what and knew you were safe.
You felt bad about getting mad at me afterwards and apologized a million times.
I have no idea what I’m gonna do without you, now.
Are you back with Handsome John, now?
Is Guy there, too?
Remember at Blackbird when Guy said, “Where’s the guy we usually have?”
That was hilarious.
Remember when you handed me his guitar and I immediately dropped it?
You just laughed.
You had an Aaron Lee Tasjan t-shirt on.
You were so good to me, man.
I don’t know if anyone has ever been as good to me in my life as you were.
I don’t know how to deal with not being able to talk to you anymore.
I am so grateful I got to have you in my life for almost 20 years here on earth.
Rest assured, you’ll be with me till the day I’m gone.
My music wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for you.
I miss you already.
I love you forever.
I know you’re laughing in your sleep, now.
Goodbye, my brother.
You’re still it for me.
The best one.
