Written by James Killen

Man there are so many Todd Sniders running around in this one guy, it is hard to keep up, much less believe them all. There’s this barefoot homeless guy, but I know that he has been making money off of his recordings since before the file sharing thing sucked it all away. There is this Snider guy that toys around with the idea of robbing banks, but really, there ain’t enough Bruce Willis in this guy to pull it off, even if DB Cooper made such an impression on him. There is this stoner left over hippie guy….okay, he’s got me pretty well convinced on that one…but there is also a songwriter in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and John Prine and oh, for sure Tom Petty, that entertains me every time I see him with his stealthy wit and that laid back persona that keeps me coming back.

It seems the folks in Tomball feel the same way, as it was a sold out crowd of folks that seemed to know all of his lyrics and cheered for his stoner lifestyle. He jumped right in with the evening’s solo performance with “Slim Chance” followed by “Is This Thing Working?” and then “Conservative Christian, Right-wing, Republican, Straight, White, American Males” in which he pretty well delineated the differences he had with a big portion of the Texas electorate.

Snider spent a good deal of time retelling acid stories and discussing how great it was to be the lead singer for a jam band(The Hard Working Americans), because there were long periods of time that he just hung around and listened to the jamming while he was high. The perfect gig it seems.

Todd performed his co-written collaboration that he did early in his Texas touring days with Will Kimbrough, “Horseshoe Lake” followed by a rendition of his own “Tension” and RE Keene’s “Corpus Christi Bay”. The first set ended with a very convincing “B, double E, double R, U, N….Beer Run” (always one of my personal favorites).

The second set kicked off with “Good Fortune” and included the “Statistician’s Blues” and “Sunshine” about a failed suicide attempt. He went on to do “Play a Train Song” and Guy Clark’s “Desperados Waiting For a Train” before encoring with “Big Finish” and Woody’s “This Land is Your Land”.

Todd Snider, for all of his assumed personas, will always own the one of “An Alright Guy”, and will always draw the fans of his witty yet pertinent lyricism. This was a fun and entertaining performance for the Crossing and I’m certain that there will be opportunities to catch Todd here again in the future.