Story-telling troubadour back at Stuart’s

The packed house tonight probably has something to do with the sort of shows that the iconic folk-country singer-songwriter puts on. He connects with the audience first thing and never lets go.

On this visit, he'll be plugging his new live record, “Todd Snider Live: The Storyteller,” a double album due for release early in 2011.

It contains a combination of his classic talking-story songs and singing-story songs, as well as talking-singing story songs. Yes, Snider tells a lot of stories, and they all have a few things in common %u2015 they're funny, they're sincere, and they come from left-field. And some of them appear to have been cannabistically (my word) inspired.

In a phone interview two days before Christmas, Snider said that while he's originally from Beaverton, Ore., near Portland, he's been all over, and has just put in a decade in Nashville.

Snider has always done his own thing musically, and isn't about to change now. “I’ve never had to keep up with the new stuff,” he said about popular music, noting that he's always played what sounded good to him. “Let someone else keep up with it,” he said.

Like a lot of alternative-country singer-songwriters who came out in the '80s and '90s, Snider said he looked up to the great Steve Earle. “Steve Earle was my hero. We all wanted to be Steve Earle,” Snider said. However, at some point he said he realized that Earle was so cool precisely because he did his own thing, went his own way. “So why would I want to imitate him? I decided to just try to be me,” Snider said.

He credited the success of his go-your-own-way approach largely to Bob Mercer, a famed record industry executive who died last May. Snider remembers when he was singing at a club in Memphis in the early ’90s, Mercer, who had worked with such big names as Paul McCartney, the Sex Pistols, Queen and Olivia Newton-John, urged him to take a plunge into the music business. Mercer, who was managing Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Records at the time, signed Snider to his first record deal in 1992.

“Bob Mercer came to Memphis to see me. He asked me what I was waiting for. I said I was holding out for artistic freedom.” Mercer looked at him, Snider remembers, pulled out a joint and said, “Well, let’s get the f*** to work.”

That plan appears to have worked pretty well, with Snider recording a number of highly acclaimed and entertaining albums over the years, while seldom compromising his own approach to the art and the business.

The new album follows that pattern. The following monologue, ironically titled on the album, “Eighteen Minutes Speech” (it's actually about 18-minute speeches, as opposed to being one) hints at the sort of sly humor concert-goers can expect tonight at Stuart's:

“...I make these songs up and I'll sing them for anyone who will listen. Some are sad, some are funny, some are short, some seem like they go on forever. Sometimes I may ramble on for as many as 18 minutes in between a particular song.

“I also want to let you know that I may share some of my opinions with you over the course of the evening. I'm not going to share them with you because I think they're smart, or because I think you need to know 'em. I'm gonna share them with you because they rhyme. I didn't come down here to change any of you all's minds, I come down here to ease my own mind about everything... If everything goes particularly well this evening, we can all expect a 90-minute distraction from our impending doom.”

Mr. Snider may not be pleased that I’ve outed his concert patter, but I doubt this genial dude will object. It’s on the live record after all.

Some of you familiar with Athens County's own poet laureate J.D. Hutchison might catch a whiff of his whimsically ironic humor in the much-younger Snider's way with music and words.    

Snider's show starts at 8 p.m. As of Tuesday, all the regular seats had been sold out, though a couple dozen standing-room-only tickets remained (actually folding chairs in the back of the room). For more information call (740) 753-1924 or visit the website at www.stuartsoperahouse.org .