Mouth of the South

Speaking in an easy drawl redolent of his current residence in Nashville, if not his Oregon childhood, Todd Snider explains the genesis of a song from his new album. "I was watching Judge Judy," he begins. "I think Judy's good looking, and I like the way she makes faces at everybody. I love watching people try to get the best of her. They never do.

"But this one guy got so close," the singer-songwriter continues. "He started off by saying that his baby's mother had been incarcerated. Somehow, this was supposed to be proof that he didn't borrow money from the girl who was suing him. He never connected his story, but he talked so far around it—almost like a good politician—that I thought Judy was gonna let him off. She liked him—but he owed that girl money."

The song subsequently composed by Snider, "Incarcerated," is the most raucous number on an album, East Nashville Skyline, that's dominated by unhurried folk and country. Yet the musician's paean to the hapless defendant is very much in accordance with his songwriting. In the tradition of Randy Newman, Snider devises unapologetically funny material that's often narrated from the perspective of delinquents and dimwits. In this case, Snider sings in the pleading voice of the TV culprit, ostensibly mocking the sap until he reaches the grave punch line: "Nobody suffers like the poor people suffer!"

The lyric resonates through East Nashville Skyline, which draws its title and inspiration from the weathered neighborhood where Snider resides. "Todd doesn't judge anybody," claims Texan songwriting giant Billy Joe Shaver, who has collaborated with Snider. "I think that's his secret." Indeed, the singer is a comic poet of the dispossessed. On the new CD, one despondent narrator sips a beer while bungling a suicide attempt; another sits in a jail cell with a "lump on my head and a boot print on my chest." Most impressive is "The Ballad of the Kingsmen," a tortuous sermon that uses the legacy of "Louie Louie" as a springboard for exploring censorship and religion. "Now brothers and sisters I am only one guy / And I don't even know the words to that song 'Louie Louie,' " the singer preaches. But "the next time some latchkey kid goes wrong / It ain't gonna be 'cause that Eminem gets to say the word fag in his song."

Few recent albums have featured such a shrewd array of tunes—and that includes the previous six CDs by Snider himself. That such a trenchant record was authored by this 38-year-old veteran is noteworthy: Like so many of the characters that populate his work, Snider had been counted out long ago. In the mid-'90s, he was signed to MCA through Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville imprint. Snider recorded the minor novelty hit "Talkin' Seattle Grunge Rock Blues" (it no longer gets much airplay) and, before being dropped by the label, indulged his now-suppressed egomaniacal side. "I didn't wear sunglasses inside, but I might as well have," Snider says. "If I hadn't had Jimmy Buffett as my boss, I might have been in a lot of trouble. He did throw food at me once—strawberries—but most of the time, it was this gracious guy trying to teach me things that I was too young to hear."

Snider long ago removed the sunglasses from his soul; struggles with drugs have proved harder to shake. It was during a recent stint in rehab that the singer dreamt up one of the album's most jarring moments—a cover of "Alcohol and Pills," Fred Eaglesmith's lament for downed rock stars. "That song kept coming into my head," Snider says. "I used to think of it as being about the really great singers dying young—people like Hendrix and Elvis. But when I was in that place, it felt more like a song about Joe Schmo musicians. I thought about how even normal working musicians can fall that way, including a lot of the people in my town. And that really made me want to sing it."