Todd Snider High Lonesome and Then Some
Reno is where Johnny Cash shot a man just to watch him die. It’s where the Grateful Dead lit out from, and where R.E.M. staked their claims to being stars. It’s more funky than flashy, more quirky than conventional. It is very much a Todd Snider kind of town.
And Reno is where Snider’s new album, High Lonesome and Then Some, begins and ends—on the road to Reno, chasing redemption, love, and, always, one more good story. After a career built on equal parts humor and heartbreak, Snider has delivered a record that sounds both weary and rejuvenated. The title nods to the “high lonesome sound” of bluegrass—the sharp ache Bill Monroe once described as music that “soars to the point of audible strain”—but Snider filters that through his own juke-joint sensibility: loose, soulful, funny, and unmistakably his own.
At 58, Snider is still chasing something, though maybe not the same things he used to. In recent years, spinal stenosis has sidelined him, forcing him off the road and into an uneasy truce with pain. He’s spoken frankly about the condition—how it “doesn’t get better, just worse,” how he’s learning to walk again, how doctors and chiropractors keep him moving. High Lonesome and Then Some is the sound of a man who’s been to the brink, looked around, and decided to laugh rather than moan. It’s also the sound of a survivor who knows how easily the line between holding on and letting go can disappear.
The album, co-produced by Aaron Lee Tasjan, Robbie Crowell, and Joe Bisirri, is compact—nine songs that play like a late set in a smoky club. Snider’s band—Aaron Lee Tasjan on guitar, Sterling Finlay on bass, Robbie Crowell on drums, with Brooke Gronemeyer and Erica Blinn on background vocals—gives him a looser, more Southern feel than he’s had in years. A subtle reggae lilt – Snider calls it a “slow choogle” — drives most tracks, offering rhythmic sway that lets the songs breathe. You can feel the musicians leaning back, giving Snider space to tell his stories.
For three decades, Todd Snider has been one of the cornerstones of the Americana world—even if he’s never seemed much interested in cornerstones. He’s the bridge between generations of misfit troubadours: the guy who learned from Prine, Kristofferson, and Buffett, then turned around to mentor Hayes Carll, Elizabeth Cook, and Sierra Ferrell. His songs have been covered by everyone from Loretta Lynn to Tom Jones, and his blend of storytelling, humor, and heartache helped define the alt-country sound long before “Americana” became a brand. When Snider puts out a record, other songwriters stop and listen.
The stories—always Snider’s gift—are plentiful here. The album opens with “The Human Condition,” a deceptively simple blues shuffle that doubles as a mission statement:
I was born in the human condition, facing the great unknown /
I have to wonder what we’re doing here together, even though I know I’m leaving here alone.
It’s both cosmic and conversational, the kind of line that feels tossed off until it lingers for hours. Snider sounds playful even as he circles big questions about mortality and connection—the voice of someone who’s found grace in imperfection.
From there, High Lonesome and Then Some moves through a series of sketches and confessions. “Unforgivable” spins a surreal in-flight encounter with the Count of Saint Germain, a very Snideresqe historical figure who may or may be immortal and may or may have been able to fix flaws in diamonds. “It’s Hard to Be Happy” turns therapy into a blues refrain:
It’s hard to be happy even when there’s nothing wrong…
The humor softens the blow, but the ache underneath is unmistakable.
Then there’s “While We Still Have a Chance,” co-written with Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes, a plea disguised as a road song:
We don’t want to miss this dance / Let’s go to Reno one more time / While we still have a chance.
It’s tender and romantic, but also a quiet acknowledgment of time running out. Reno here isn’t just a destination—it’s a symbol of risk, reinvention, and maybe even resurrection.
On Side B, Snider flips the script, turning the lens outward. “One, Four, Five Blues” is a clever jab at clichés of both love and music, while “Stoner Yodel #2 (Raelyn Nelson)” brings back the mischievous twang of Peace Queer-era Snider, full of sly self-deprecation and sideways grins. His take on the classic country tune “Older Women” (made famous by Ronnie McDowell in 1981) feels like a nod to his mentors—Prine, Kristofferson, Buffett—all gone now, but very much present in spirit.
The title track, “High, Lonesome, and Then Some,” ties it all together:
What might have been was always meant to be /
Still looking for someone, looking for someone like me.
It’s one of Snider’s prettiest melodies in years and one of his most forgiving. If earlier records like Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables wrestled with injustice and absurdity, this one accepts them with a shrug and a grin. The closer, “The Temptation to Exist,” ends on a note of profane joy:
You’ve got to live a little / People die a lot.
It’s the best kind of Snider gospel—unsentimental, honest, alive.
Throughout the record, Snider’s writing remains sharp, his phrasing elastic, his humor essential. He’s still the same guy who once called himself “a stoner with a notebook,” but the notebook’s heavier now. The losses of his mentors hangs over the songs, but so does their lesson: write it true, keep it funny, don’t flinch.
“Recently,” Snider says, “I heard someone say, ‘If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.’ So I tried it, and so far so good.” Maybe so—but what he’s really paying attention to here is life itself: the absurd, the tender, the fleeting.
Reno waits on the horizon, the road stretches on, and Todd Snider—laughing, limping, and telling his stories—is still holding the wheel, inviting us along for one more ride.
High Lonesome and Then Some is out October 17 on Aimless Records (distributed by Thirty Tigers/Lightning Rod).
Enjoy some of our previous coverage here: Interview: Todd Snider on Returning to the Devil’s Backbone Tavern, Cash Cabin Vol. III, and Life Imitating Jerry Jeff Walker
