street roots
5
July 19, 2013
TODD SNIDER from page 4
Me and this guy, Paul, who plays drums
with me we just didn’t want to do it
anymore. And then we got some acid and
we ditched them. When they caught up to
us, we were rolling down this hill in a park —
which a lot of people do, it’s kind of fun. I
know we’re in our 40s, but I think I consider
it extra pay — the idea that we don’t have to
grow up.
And so, we sat up on the park bench and
told them that we think they should stop
filming us. Just as they are doing that, our
friend Elizabeth Cook, who is a singer who
lives down around the corner came up and
told us and she had just gotten a deal with
David Letterman where she is supposed to
come up with a TV show and she can’t find
an idea.
Then she took acid with us and the
Barnes Brothers were still filming and
somehow, I’ve only seen it once, at a certain
point I said “I’m gonna help you (with the
TV show) and it’s gonna be way easier than
you’re making it sound. Then all of a
sudden, we had a plot. And we all got
interested. Even though it was a blurry
interest, there was a point A and a point B.
They ended up capturing a movie that is
kind of a documentary about two people
running into each other in a park and taking
acid and deciding to put on a show. And
then we really put on a show.
We made a talk show. Two hundred
people came to it and we had guests. And I
did it on acid and we filmed it and recorded
it and they turned it into a movie called
“East Nashville Tonight.” The last 20
minutes of which are the actual show. The
first hour of which you’re watching us try to
get it together in a pretty gonzo way. Almost
everybody around here [East Nashville] is
like me or worse.
S. Z.: Where can I see it?
T. S.: It comes out in the fall. There will
be a tour, I think. I don’t know exactly how
it, comes out or all that, but I know it does.
S. Z.: Tell me, how did the song “New York
Banker” come about?
T. S.: I met Rahm Emanuel in D.C. when
he was working for Obama. He came to one
of my shows with his wife, Amy. And I really
got along with them. And then they moved
to Chicago and they came to my show again.
I asked them about politics and the
military industrial complex - which I always
thought of as a stoner fable. I told them
about these songs I was working on and
Rahm said, “That’s a cool idea, but right
now the most comfortable people that are
afflicting the afflicted are the bankers.”
That inspired me to get my father-in-law
to teach me what that was all about - to
figure out some sort of story that would be
about something that I would understand, a
story that would be about somebody that I
might end up drunk with one night. I
learned a lot about what the military
industrial complex is and what the banks
are.
S. Z.: You’re married. How’s married life?
T. S.: I love it. It’s my favorite thing in my
life. We live a great marriage. I feel really
lucky. She’s definitely the most important
thing in my life. More so than music and all
that.
S. Z.: You are also an ordained minister. Do
tell.
T. S.: I was ordained. Two friends of mine
- songwriters who are on fire right now
Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires — they told
me they wanted me to marry them. So they
made it happen so that I was a reverend. I
just got a license one day. At the service I
said some stuff and made them married.
Now that I have the ability to marry people,
I’m available for hire.
S. Z.: But now you only marry same-sex
couples?
T. S. Yeah. I married a couple of guys
about a week ago. It was great.
S. Z.: Tell me about the wedding.
T. S.: It was a video-slash-wedding. There
is a band called the Turbo Freaks and
they’re one of my favorite punk bands. They
are just chaos and disorder in a box and I
love it. They’re in the “East Nashville
Tonight” movie.
We decided to record “Why Can’t We Be
Friends?” by the band War. And then we got
this idea that what would be a cool video
would be a gay wedding, but in the South.
So there’s two men getting married, but it’s
a bunch of people with cowboy hats that are
cheering this on. It looked like Southern,
country people that are at this wedding and
very happy to be there. And then they kiss
each other and everybody cheers, and then
a party breaks out that is insane.
It was a really fun wedding. And it made a
cool wedding video. Everybody fell into the
pool — it looks like a rap video.
S. Z.: You have a bipolar diagnosis. How do
you manage that?
T. S.: I wonder if I do. I don’t know. I have
medicines I take. I don’t remember exactly
what they’re supposed to do. Since I was
really young, I’ve kind of been told I was
crazy. And I still don’t really believe that. If I
am, I’m OK with that. “The only ones for
me are the mad ones.” That’s what Jack
Kerouac said. And I feel closer to homeless
people than I do to the people who are
allowing them to remain that way. I don’t
mind — especially in today’s culture — if
somebody would say I was suffering from
any kind of mental health issue. I would
take that as a compliment because that
would make me feel like I was having a hard
time fitting in.
S. Z.: Mental health issues are rampant on
the streets. It is reported that half of the people
who are homeless in the U.S. are mentally ill.
Many don’t have access to services and
medications they need. Drugs. What are your
thoughts about drugs?
T. S.: The thing is, many people think that
those people are the responsibility of
themselves and their own families. That
goes against exactly what we were trying to
get going.
The original idea was that we could
create a situation where the majority would
rule and it would work as long as that
majority always kept its heart open to the
minority. We thought we were going to be
better than people before us and we trusted
ourselves to do that. And now, I feel like
those people, they hide behind phrases like
“love the sinner and hate the sin,” but it’s
really just an excuse to not help anybody but
your own children. It’s an excuse to be
e x tra v ag a n t w ith y o u r own c h ild ren as
opposed to help the people in your
community who need it.
My idea is that the very, very first time
somebody in a community — whatever
community it was — was like, “Hey man, I
don’t have anywhere to sleep, so I’m just
gonna sleep on the street.”
If I had been in charge that day, I’d have
said, “Alright, let’s just stop everything until
we figure this out, you know?” Nobody is
going to work today. We’re all just gonna
have a meeting and figure out what to do
about the fact that one of us doesn’t even
have a place to fucking stay.”
Todd Snider will be
performing at the
Oregon Zoo
Amphitheatre,*
Saturday, Aug. 10