Todd Snider: Live: The Storyteller

"Some singer-songwriters just play their songs and get offstage. Others, like Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright III, go for droll repartee. And then there's Todd Snider. For years now, Snider has endeared himself to crowds with his endlessly digressive between-song commentary, which combines the sly phrasing of a stoner, the perfect timing of a standup comedian, and a mastery of the tiny detail. Snider's monologues are a dice roll, at least: he'll hold forth on everything from the war on drugs to the self-aggrandizing graffiti he scrawled in an Oregon tunnel to the apparently boorish behavior of the NASCAR driver Bill Elliott, and his stories are sometimes as long as the songs they're introducing. Snider's most recent album, 'Live: The Storyteller,' collects some of his best routines -- the K. K. Rider story, about his early days in show biz, is without equal -- along with sharply funny, lyrical, sometimes mournful songs" (Ben Greenman, "Critic's Notebook," New Yorker, 2/7/11).
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