Finding His ‘Grainge’

The back cover of Todd Snider’s latest CD, “Step Right Up,” shows a Grateful Dead logo, a peace sign, a yin-yang symbol, bumper stickers with such slogans as “Truck Naked!” and “Only Users Lose Drugs.”

You get the picture: indications that Todd’s a party boy with roots in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

What the cover doesn’t tell you is that the 29-year-old singer-songwriter--who plays Saturday at the Coach House--is among the most gifted pop musicians to come down the pike since Fogerty, Hiatt and Prine.

While “Step Right Up” is as raucous and party-friendly as the best efforts of the Georgia Satellites, it can also boast a depth, passion and sensitivity that make it a top candidate for honors as the all-around album of the year.

In a recent interview from the road, somewhere in Northern California, a hung-over Snider came off like a slightly less bedraggled version of Reverend Jim from the old “Taxi” TV show. He groaned and grunted, he acted confused, he turned the tables by asking as many questions as were posed of him.

“We were up late last night,” he murmured. “Well, we’ve been up for a few days, actually. We’ve been in the Northwest, which is where I’m from, so I’ve seen a lot of old friends and we made the most of it for sure. Seems like I’m getting 10 years out of every year.”

Snider’s personality is, like his songwriting, at once cynical and idealistic, amused and angry, mature and childlike. Analogies could be made to Bob Dylan, but Snider lacks the pure nastiness and semantic obsessions of Dylan and indeed says he wasn’t even hip to Dylan’s work until fairly recently.

Rather, Snider says, he grew up with the records of Jerry Jeff Walker, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Billy Joe Shaver, Kris Kristofferson and Joe Ely, music he calls “stoner country.”

“In the ‘70s,” he noted, “there was still country music that didn’t all sound like a Disney commercial. There really isn’t a lot of that anymore.”

Back in the ‘80s, rock groups that used outlaw country as a springboard were often referred to by music writers as “cowpunk” or “moo wave.” Much to Snider’s chagrin, a new handle seems to have been coined in his honor: His music has been called “grainge.” But as he is quick to point out, “This is just a loud rock band.”

“I think that anyone who ever picked up a guitar thought about the Stones. We sweat a lot, jump around and act like idiots. . . . Other than that, I don’t know how to describe it.”

*

While the sound of Snider’s rockin’ backup band, the Nervous Wrecks, reveals the influence of all his stated heroes, his lyrical muse is less thematically simple than theirs. At play are a journalist’s eye for observation, a master’s sense of storytelling, a unique voice, a bent wit and a skewed vision that are Snider’s alone. But Snider, of course, will hear none of all that.

“I just kind of yell and hope it rhymes when it comes out,” he said. “I don’t get all hung up in trying to write the next ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ ”

But “Step Right Up,” Snider’s second album, in fact started out as a conceptual project, a song cycle about a couple of drifters named Elmo and Henry. It just never turned out quite the way Snider had planned.

“I choked on that idea, I guess. You know [Willie Nelson’s concept album from 1975] ‘Red Headed Stranger?’ I wanted to do an inbred, kind of acid version of ‘Red Headed Stranger.’ I only got halfway through it. I talked about it a lot longer than I worked on it. Then by the time we got in to record it, I had all these personal songs that really didn’t fit, so . . . I gave up on it.

“We kept some of the segues. And Elmo and Henry’s story is still in the liner notes.”

Career goals? Snider claims to have none, at least not in the business sense.

“You meet these guys all the time who try to put their hands in your pocket while saying, ‘Love your music, babe!’ I’m not goal-oriented. But what I would like to think is that the music we started out trying to emulate--we had all these bands we were trying to sound like--that now we’re at a place where we can do that, but maybe try to find our own place too.

“And I think we’re gonna do that. If I ever had any goal, that would be it.”

* Todd Snider and the Nervous Wrecks play Saturday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Jack Ingram and Walnut Grove open at 8 p.m. $13.50. (714) 496-8930.