  At 37, Todd Snider isn’t quite yet the “old timer” he professes to be in “Age Like Wine,” the opening track on his new album, East Nashville Skyline. Indeed, lines like “five and dimmer” suggest more of a portrait of his longtime friend and outspoken fan Billy Joe Shaver, who unlike Snider has been through five (at least) different record labels.
Snider’s only on his third, and that’s counting the label that dropped him before he even finished a record. But everything else in the song rings true to Snider’s personal experience, capturing in just under two minutes the better part of half his life and his entire career. “I’ve met every fool that ever signed their name upon these walls in the backs of all these beer joints and concert halls,” he sings at one point, and there’s no reason to doubt him. Even before he became a touring troubadour, Snider was a wanderer, drifting all over the country first as a child and later as a young adult. Collecting and making up stories along the way and turning them into song just happened to be an industrious use of his rambling time and wit. By fate and circumstance, the Portland, Ore., native just happened to be in Texas for a spell when he decided to pick up a guitar — inspired by a fellow wandering spirit originally from out-of-state by the name of Jerry Jeff Walker.
But while Walker made Texas his home, Snider kept on moving, and it wasn’t until he got to Memphis and Atlanta that his career took off, beginning with his 1994 MCA debut Songs for the Daily Planet. Featuring the minor hit (a hidden track, no less) “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues,” as well as the loser’s anthem “Alright Guy” (since covered by Walker, Gary Allan and — almost!
— Garth Brooks), that record still holds up today, dated pop culture references and all (anybody remember Madonna’s Sex book? ) And though he admits in the new “Age Like Wine” that “My new stuff is nothing like my old stuff was / and neither one is much when compared to the show / which will not be as much as some other one you saw / so help me I know I know I know,” the fact is that the six albums Snider’s released since his debut, including 1998’s straight-up rock ’n’ roll record, Viva Satellite, and last year’s Near Truths and Hotel Rooms Live, have just found him getting better and better. Along the way, he’s picked up fans like Shaver, Walker, Jimmy Buffett and John Prine (whose label Oh Boy Records has released Snider’s last four records). He’s also, as any true Snider aficionado will tell you, one of the best live acts you’ll ever see; both Walker’s wife Susan and his son Django swear that Snider’s the most entertaining just-a-guy-with-a-guitar. 
