‘Hallelujah, I'm a bum’: Troubadour Todd Snider on the drifting way of life

UPDATE: After this interview aired on The Show, Todd Snider’s team posted an update on Instagram that Snider was the victim of a violent assault in Salt Lake City over Halloween weekend, resulting in the cancellation of his tour.

SAM DINGMAN: So it’s 2007, and I’m driving a yellow cab in New York City. It’s not exactly what I thought I’d be doing with my adult life. But it’s also kind of great. I feel like I have a real sense of purpose. I’m like a conduit — I help people get where they need to go. And best of all, I get to listen to the radio all day.

Still, it’s a tough job. And this one day, I’m careening around the city, knowing I haven’t had enough fares to make rent. There’s about an hour left in my shift, and I’m realizing I’m gonna come up short this month. My thoughts start racing. I feel like a failure. I realize I don’t really have a clear plan to make my dream for myself come true — which is to be the person talking on the radio, instead of listening to it. I love the feeling of adventure I get from cab driving. But on days like this, it’s hard to keep hold of.

And then, right on cue, the radio starts playing this song that somehow makes it all make sense. One of those songs that feels like someone snuck into your brain, transcribed your inner monologue, and sang it back to you.

TODD SNIDER: [CLIP FROM THE SONG "CANT' COMPLAIN"] A little out of place. Little out of tune. Sorta lost in space. Racin’ the moon. Climbin’ the walls of a hurricane. Still overall … I can’t complain.

DINGMAN: When you don’t grow up religious, a song that finds you at the right time can become your faith. That’s what happened to me the first time I heard Todd Snider.

SNIDER: ["CANT' COMPLAIN" CONTINUES] I got nothin’ to lose. Nothin’ to gain. It’s like a one way ticket to cruise in the passing lane. I can’t complain …

SAM DINGMAN: Hey, is that Todd?

SNIDER: Yeah. Yeah.

DINGMAN: Hey, Todd. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for doing this.

SNIDER: Yeah, man.

DINGMAN: It’s 2025, and it took a while, but I’ve somehow convinced a radio station to let me talk into the microphone. At this point, I’ve listened to “Can’t Complain” — and all of Todd’s other songs — literally hundreds of times. My favorite thing to do is listen to recordings of his live shows, because he’ll often tell the stories behind the songs. And in one of those recordings, he says he wrote “Can’t Complain” after a gig right here in Phoenix.

SNIDER: Oh, that’s right. You know, I had a bad show there.

DINGMAN: It was the early ’90s, and Todd was playing at a Western-themed bar. Back then, he says, tour managers sometimes mistook him for a country act, and they would book him at places with line dancing and cow skulls on the wall.

SNIDER: Which is always a bad sign for groups like ours.

DINGMAN: Todd could tell: this was not his scene. He started drinking a few hours before his set. And by the time he got on stage, the crowd had spent the first half of the show booing his opener.

SNIDER: So I played like a song, and I had my guitar outta tune, and I knew it was outta tune, and I could tell the crowd was confused [LAUGHS]. Um, and I just left it like that. And then after the song got over, I thanked them and said goodnight. I did one song.

DINGMAN: The next day, in the car on the way to a show in Tucson, Todd’s label called. They were furious.

SNIDER: And the big thing was that I had deliberately played outta tune. ... And so I made that song little outta place, little outta tune, sort of lost in space, racing the moon. And it came to me like that, on the drive from Phoenix to Tucson.

DINGMAN: That night, Todd played “Can’t Complain” live on stage for the first time. And since then, he’s opened almost every show with that song.

SNIDER: It meant so much to me, the way it came to me, in that I trusted songs that came to me that same way after.

DINGMAN: And just so I make sure I understand — you mean you trusted songs that came to you in the intuitive way that that one did, on that drive to Tucson?

SNIDER: Yeah. When they come to me like “Can’t Complain” came to me, it feels more like I’m doing a painting than, say, making a chair.

DINGMAN: I get the sense that something clicked for Todd when he started making up songs in this more intuitive way because that’s kind of how he lives his life.

SNIDER: There’s this “Hallelujah, I’m a bum,” element to this that means more to me than the music part. I would rather be remembered for the way I lived than the songs I sang.

DINGMAN: When Todd Snider was 17, he left home and started doing what he calls “the sofa circuit,” crashing with whoever would take him. He spent most of his time getting high, reading Mark Twain and Hunter S. Thompson, and writing poetry. At some point, he was crashing with a guy named Trog.

SNIDER: We used to sit around at night and listen to whatever music Trog wanted to listen to.

DINGMAN: In another one of those live show recordings, Todd tells the story of what happened next.

SNIDER: And one night he pulls out a cassette tape by a guy named Jerry Jeff Walker.

JERRY JEFF WALKER: [SINGING “DRIFTIN' WAY OF LIFE"] I’m singin’ about the driftin’ way of life. It’s different from the many that I’ve known …

SNIDER: I hadn’t heard of him before, but I just loved it, I fell in love with it. I said we gotta — I wanna see this guy. So he was playing at this club, and me and Trog, we went down there to watch Jerry Jeff. And he was standing up there just with his guitar, just like I am. I thought shit, I could do that. So I got a guitar, and I practiced those — I used the same three chords he uses, the whole night. I still do, you know?

DINGMAN: Armed with some chords to pair with his poetry, Todd had everything he needed to live life like his heroes.

SNIDER: People who are like, well, what do you do? I just bang around and, uh, stuff happens. ... Soon as I got the guitar I was just, like, the Muhammed Ali of drifters. I could just make up songs about — pick me up in your car, and I’ll make up a song about you. Or let me stay, and I’ll make up a song about you.

DINGMAN: Even if Todd didn’t set out to be remembered for his music, he turned out to be a really good songwriter. One night, Jimmy Buffett heard him play, and offered him a record deal. Todd did a few albums for Jimmy, but then he got drunk before a show one night and went onstage and cursed out all the label execs, so they fired him.

Then he got picked up by John Prine’s label and spent a few years touring with Prine. Eventually Todd started his own label — fittingly called Aimless Records. Through it all, he sold just enough albums to keep touring. And that was fine with him — that’s his favorite part. The banging around.

SNIDER: I used to like to get off the bus in the middle of the afternoon and go find some people that didn’t know who I was and not tell ’em. And then just go on the wildest adventures. And then, at about seven, go, “Man, you guys wanna go see the folk show?” [LAUGHS]

DINGMAN: During our conversation, Todd says he thinks of himself like a lost sock in a dryer — just rolling and tumbling until the cycle is complete. Which might be soon.

SNIDER: It feels like it’s kind, it’s over. I mean, about two years ago I stopped. And I’m never gonna be that person again.

DINGMAN: Well, can I ask you about … what led you to stop? Because I mean, just to say in full disclosure, I — you know, as a fan — I noticed that you had stopped touring and …

SINDER: Yeah. ... I have this, um, like degenerative arthritis that has been eating at me for a long time. ... My bones — it’s like chronic pain, through everywhere, you know? Some days I can’t, I can’t do anything. ... So I worried that I wouldn’t be able to play, or that I would get locked up in front of everybody. And it’s embarrassing, and it just gets worse, you know? And they say there’s no cure for it.

DINGMAN: Thank you for sharing all that, Todd, and I’m really sorry to hear that.

SNIDER: Yeah.

DINGMAN: And I guess I’m tempted to ask — for a while, I don’t know if you’re still doing this, but for a while you had this kind of mantra that you would give at the beginning of your shows, where you would say …

SNIDER: [CLIP FROM A LIVE SHOW] I didn’t come down here to change any of y’all’s minds about anything. I came here to ease my own mind about everything. It works every time. With that said, I wanna thank y’all for giving me a chance to do this for you again …

DINGMAN: Do you feel like if you, if you weren’t making up songs anymore, you, you’d still have a way to, to ease your mind?

SNIDER: No, I don’t.

DINGMAN: Todd says he’s got a handful of songs left about the sock life. Nine of those songs appear on a record Todd released earlier this year: “High, Lonesome, And Then Some.”

SNIDER: There’s a, like a last batch from, just, um, living like a conduit and, um, or, and, and letting it happen.

DINGMAN: Todd has a tour planned for the new record. That was my excuse to talk to him for this piece — he was scheduled to play a show at the Van Buren tonight. But last night, I got an email from Ticketmaster saying that show has been postponed. The email says it’ll be rescheduled. But based on my conversation with Todd, I’m not so sure.

I do know that whatever happens, he’ll still be Todd Snider. And that overall, he can’t complain.

SNIDER: I’m really, really lucky and really grateful. I can’t believe the way it all turned out, but … I set out to be a failure. And I still think I can pull it off.