Todd Snider On Mountain Stage

When Todd Snider makes this appearance on Mountain Stage, his 14th since 1995, the East Nashville-based songwriter has just released his latest album Eastside Bulldog.

"I haven't played anything off my new album," Snider quips towards the end of the set. "It's terrible. I should be ashamed but I'm not."

Instead, Snider delivers a set of career-spanning favorites, including some of his most keenly entertaining yet insightful lyrics ("Statistician Blues") and his heartfelt ode to a friend who always had one request ("Play A Train Song").

"In my free time I like to jam," Snider professes, launching into his highly entertaining explanation of how he came to be the lead singer in Hard Working Americans, the band he founded with bassist David Schools and drummer Duane Trucks of Widespread Panic, guitarist Neal Casal of Chris Robinson Brotherhood and keyboardist Chad Staehly of Great American Taxi. "We're a superhero group," Snider says. "We jam out and we solve crimes."

And while he overlooks Eastside Bulldog, Snider opens with an acoustic rendition of "Roman Candles" from Hard Working Americans' 2016 album Rest In Chaos. (The band released its fourth effort, We're All In This Together, in August 2017.) He invites fellow East Nashvillian Rorey Carroll to the stage for his closing number "Enjoy Yourself" — Snider says he remembers his parents dancing to the Guy Lombardo version of the song.

Snider's memoir, I Never Met A Story I Didn't Like: Mostly True Tall Tales, was published in 2014.

SET LIST

• "Roman Candles"
• "Better Than Ever Blues"
• "Conservative Christian, Right-Wing Republican, Straight, White, American Males"
• "Stuck On The Corner (Prelude To A Heart Attack)"
• "Statistician's Blues"
• "Play A Train Song"
• "Enjoy Yourself"

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