“Life’s too short to worry / Life’s too long to hate,” the late Todd Snider wrote in “Ballad of the Devil’s Backbone Tavern” in 2000. Snider’s life proved shorter than his many admirers hoped. He died last month at 59.
Often compared to fellow Americana and folk storytellers like John Prine, Guy Clark and Jerry Jeff Walker, Snider was praised for his witty, insightful songwriting.
“When he died, it really crushed me,” said Sebastopol guitarist Nina Gerber, best known for her work with singer-songwriters Karla Bonoff and the late Kate Wolf. “There was something about him. It was his manner. He was charming onstage and very funny, and he had this way of telling stories in his songs.”
Gerber will join a long list of Bay Area singer-songwriters on Dec. 18 in a sold-out tribute titled “A Nod to Todd” at the HopMonk Tavern in Sebastopol.
The concert, a fundraiser for the Redwood Empire Food Bank, is being produced by HopMonk and KC Turner, who books music for the HopMonk Taverns in Novato and Sebastopol.
“I never met Todd Snider, but his music was there from the very beginning of my performing years. Whether we know it or not – musician or listener – there’s a bit of Todd Snider in us all,” said San Francisco guitarist Megan Slankard, who also will perform at the tribute concert.
“His tragic passing was felt deeply in the songwriting community, and I’m grateful for KC Turner and HopMonk for giving us a place to celebrate Todd’s music and share stories,” she continued.
The lineup also includes composer and multimedia artist Micah Nelson, who performs under the moniker Particle Kid and is Willie Nelson’s son, as well as Terrier, David Luning, Jesse DeNatale, the Coffis Brothers, Sweet Sally, Sebastian Saint James, Avi Vinocur, King Dream, Steve Pile, Ellie James, Adam Traum, Joshua James Jackson, Clay Bell, Tom Rhodes, R.O. Shapiro, Bill DeCarli, Matt Jaffe and Victoria George.
“He was an incredible, inspirational, funny and raw songwriter,” said fiddler, singer and songwriter Laurie Lewis, who will perform with Gerber. “I appreciated his honesty and his talent for songwriting.”
A storyteller
Snider was born Oct. 11, 1966, in Portland, Oregon, and grew up in nearby Beaverton, where he lived until graduating from Beaverton High School in 1985. He moved to Santa Rosa that fall to attend Santa Rosa Junior College for about a semester. There, he played third-string quarterback and joined the local music scene, where he learned harmonica.
After leaving SRJC, Snider moved to San Marcos, Texas, where a solo performance by songwriter-storyteller Jerry Jeff Walker inspired him to write his own material. From there, he headed to Memphis, where he landed a weekly residency at a local club.
Through Memphis songwriter Keith Sykes, Snider met John Prine in 1991 while helping with pre-production on Prine’s album “The Missing Years.” Their friendship lasted until Prine’s death in 2020.
Sykes, a one-time member of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, reached out on Snider’s behalf to Buffett’s label, Margaritaville Records, resulting in Snider’s first record deal.
As Snider’s reputation grew – he performed and toured widely and recorded nearly 20 albums for various labels – he continued to visit Northern California.
“I saw him at the Inn of the Beginning in Cotati in 1994 or 1995, when he had already become established as an artist,” said Don Lewis, a freelance writer and contributor to the weekly North Bay Bohemian in Santa Rosa. “I got to know him a little bit. He was a storyteller, and some of it was true, and some of it was B.S. He came around a lot, and I knew him off and on, but the bigger he got, the less I saw of him.”
Lewis had planned to see Snider perform Nov. 7 at the Uptown Theatre with friends, but the show – and the entire tour – was canceled after Snider suffered severe injuries in a violent assault outside his Salt Lake City hotel in early November.
He was taken to a hospital and later arrested for disorderly conduct after clashing with staff over what he believed was an early discharge. Snider died Nov. 14 of pneumonia in Nashville.
