The singer and songwriter was known for his funny yet empathetic portraits of hard-working people.
Todd Snider, a singer and songwriter beloved in the Americana music scene for his funny yet empathetic portraits of people struggling to survive an uncaring world, died Friday. He was 59.
His death was announced in a post on his Instagram account, which didn’t state a cause or say where he died. An earlier post signed by “Todd’s Friends & Family” said that he’d been admitted to a hospital in Hendersonville, Tenn., after experiencing breathing problems and that he’d been diagnosed with pneumonia; before that, he called off a tour this month after telling fans that he’d been injured in a “violent assault” outside a hotel in Salt Lake City.
Frequently compared to the likes of John Prine and Kris Kristofferson — both of whom mentored him at various points — Snider wrote about “how poor people sometimes cope with pain and hardship,” he told the New York Times in 2009. “A little drugs here, a little sex here, a little denial there.”
In a prolific recording career that stretched three decades, Snider made albums for labels owned by Prine and by Jimmy Buffett and for his own company, Aimless Records. Yet to many he was best experienced onstage, where he’d thread his songs into a kind of running monologue about his rough-and-tumble life.
Among his best-known tunes were the rollicking “Beer Run”; “Can’t Complain,” about a guy with “nothing to lose ’cause there is nothing to gain”; and “Alright Guy,” which opens with a scene in which a friend catches him leafing through “that new book with pictures of Madonna naked.
