Quick Take
The late singer-songwriter Todd Snider was not from Santa Cruz. But over the course of his 30-year career, he built an intensely loyal fan base in Santa Cruz that, by his own admission, was not to be matched anywhere.
Todd Snider was in the club.
The Americana singer-songwriter, who died Nov. 14, was part of an exclusive group of performers who, although they never lived in or near Santa Cruz County, were always considered honorary locals, thanks to repeat visits to Santa Cruz before consistently adoring and loyal audiences.
Snider’s death is still wrapped in mystery. On Nov. 2 — while on a performance tour that was scheduled to bring him to the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz the following week — Snider was arrested in Salt Lake City for threatening hospital staffers. At the time, he was begging to be admitted to the hospital after he had reportedly been assaulted the night before. His tour was quickly canceled and, the following week, his estate announced that he had died of pneumonia.
Snider grew up in Oregon, but was a runaway and vagabond musician while still in his teens. His first recording, “Songs for the Daily Planet,” was released in 1994, and was — at least, from my point of view — something new in the world, a shambling, sly, quick-witted, pointedly Dylan-esque folk record from a specifically post-boomer, Gen X perspective.
From that promising debut, Snider first connected with Santa Cruz audiences. Snider was championed locally by Santa Cruz concert promoter Snazzy Productions, managed by “Sleepy John” Sandidge, and radio tastemaker Laura Ellen Hopper, station manager at KPIG (107.5 FM). The Snazzy/KPIG connection is the secret behind the club that includes Snider, and fellow folk/country troubadours Fred Eaglesmith, Paul Thorn, Robert Earl Keen and others, musicians only moderately successful in the wider world, but full-blown rock stars in Santa Cruz. Snider captured the unique blend of scruffiness, outsider authenticity and songwriting heart on which KPIG had built a loyal fan base.
While a staffer at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, I interviewed and saw Snider perform in those early days. In print, I called him “a smirky blond long-hair with surfer good looks and a kid’s sense of fun.” On stage, Snider had charisma for days, often coming across as younger, hipper, and vaguely more dangerous and reckless than other folksingers of the era. Imagine John Prine rebranded by Kurt Cobain.
On his first album, he boldly laid claim to Gen X’s troubadour with a cheeky ramble through 1990s pop culture called “My Generation (Part 2).” But his most memorable hit from “Daily Planet,” however, might have been “Alright Guy,” which pre-figured the kind of gender-war food-fighting more associated with the younger millennial generation. The song’s regular-dude protagonist is attacked as a “scumbag” by a female friend for ogling a naked photo of Madonna (what could be more Gen X?), followed by the refrain: “I think I’m an alright guy.”
For the next decade or more, Snider was a regular on Santa Cruz stages. He was eventually signed by Prine’s own boutique label, Oh Boy Records, and in 2002, he immortalized his unique relationship with Santa Cruz in the song “Beer Run,” which became one of his most popular songs. It mentions Sandidge by name (“an old hippie named ‘Sleepy John’”), KPIG and Santa Cruz. He even wrote a song dedicated to Laura Ellen Hopper of KPIG after her death in 2007.
Sandidge stopped working with Snider several years ago, but he said several people in the industry have called him since Snider’s death to talk about him. He said that KPIG and Santa Cruz’s embrace of Snider was a critical element in his becoming a success.
“Laura Ellen really loved him,” said Sandidge, “and she was very much involved in his fame, because she had the ear of a lot of people around the country. Radio people would check on who [KPIG] was playing, and then would play them too.”
In a 2010 interview, Snider told me that he loved Santa Cruz: “My favorite place, bar none. Everybody who knows me knows it. I can’t ever wait to get there.”
Sandidge said that Snider, during his stops in Santa Cruz, would often invite a few friends to hang out with him at Sunny Cove beach, where he’d entertain a few dozen fans around a campfire until past midnight.
“He was certainly one of the most unique and talented people that Snazzy Productions ever brought to town.”
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