Although he’s sure to dismiss such praise with an impish shrug, Todd Snider is an undeniable legend in American roots music. Since his 1994 debut, the Nashville antihero has been releasing albums that have both challenged and invigorated country, folk, and Americana.

 His 2004 LP East Nashville Skyline is regarded as a pillar of alt-country. The 2008 EP Peace Queer stands as expert political commentary. And 2012’s Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables earned raves for sharply dissecting life in an inequitable America.

Throughout his career, Todd studied at the feet of songwriting visionaries like Kris Kristofferson, Jimmy Buffett, Guy Clark, John Prine, and Jerry Jeff Walker, sharpening his skills with each interaction with his heroes. Now, with all those greats gone, Todd has found himself as the torchbearer for their type of live-it-to-learn-it songwriting, and has mentored artists from Hayes Carll to Sierra Ferrell along the way. He has become the heartbroken troubadour, the wry observer, and the brilliant itinerant.

But that transformation didn’t come easy. To get here, Todd has had to navigate health issues, broken business relationships, and a lifetime of failed romances — not to mention immense grief over the loss of his friends and mentors.

“I sing about dead friends more than girls these days,” Todd says.

On his new album HIGH, LONESOME AND THEN SOME., his first studio LP since 2023, he does both while also taking a moment to acknowledge the fact that, remarkably, he’s still here.

“I’ve never gotten to stop and go, ‘I can’t believe I got away with that,’” Todd says. “But I did. I never did anything I didn’t want to do. And I’m proud of that. I just figured I’d be living in someone’s garage my whole life.”

Produced by Aaron Lee Tasjan, Robbie Crowell, and Joe Bisirri, HIGH, LONESOME AND THEN SOME. is a stripped-down, juke-joint album of nine tracks, each of them steeped in the blues and loping along on what Todd calls a “slow choogle.” Listening to it slows your heart rate and makes you breathe more deeply; that was by design: “I wanted us to sound like we’re so high that people think we should speed up,” Todd says of the recording process.

Tasjan, who modeled his early career on Todd’s, says he’s always wanted to learn Todd’s songwriting magic. “I thought that perhaps, getting to work with him on an album would be the perfect opportunity I’d been waiting on for 20 years to understand how he really does it. But do you know what I learned?” Tasjan says. “I learned that Todd Snider is a real, actual magician. And there would be no tricks. There was just Todd Snider and his real magic.”

Todd’s magic splits the album into two distinct parts: On side one, he’s pleading his case to someone for one more try, and to accompany him to Reno, Nevada — a trip that ultimately goes poorly. “It’s the idea of, ‘This is the life we’ve chosen, so let’s go out swinging,’” Todd says.

On side two, he shifts the perspective from himself to songs about the person he’s addressing, working through all kinds of baggage along the way. “I had a list of girls that I wanted to talk to,” he says matter-of-factly, “that I owed an explanation to.”

Ultimately by album’s end, Todd finds someone new and essentially tells them, “Hey, this is who I am, and if you’re still up for it, let’s go.”

Where? Back to Reno, of course.

“I meet a girl and tell her about my past, and what she’s getting herself into. Then we’re going to Reno — and hopefully the pattern doesn’t repeat itself,” he says. “The album is really a song cycle about the effects of love on the human condition.”

But this being a Todd Snider album, the life lessons come with a heavy dose of irreverent humor and stark introspection.

In “UNFORGIVABLE (WORST STORY EVER TOLD),” he comes elbow to elbow with the Count of St. Germain — a man who can never die — who takes a seat next to him on a plane and proceeds to tell a never-ending story. “There’s this tale in the Bible of a guy who taunts Jesus to walk faster when he’s carrying his cross, and Jesus turns to him and says, ‘You will never rest,’ and curses him to live forever,” Snider says. “I thought it was interesting that the guy who invented forgiveness never forgave that one guy for a tiny little slight.”

Later, in “ONE, FOUR FIVE BLUES,” he resurrects a long-lost word — “sockdologizing” — that appeared only in the play Our American Cousin, the production that Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. “The actor says, ‘You are a sockdologizing old man trap!’ and the audience laughs, and that’s when Booth shoots him,” Snider says. “That’s the only time anybody ever used that word, and I loved bringing it back in this song.”

He continues to search in vain on a smartly funny cover of Don Covay’s 1971 song “Ain’t Nothing a Young Girl Can Do,” retitled here as “OLDER WOMEN.” Still, the song’s message remains the same: the only thing young girls can offer is showing him where the older ones are. “I have to get my ego out of my love life,” Todd says, “and meet some women my own age.”

It’s the two songs that bookend HIGH, LONESOME AND THEN SOME. that reinforce Todd’s attempt to dig deep into humanity and all its inherent flaws. The opening track, “THE HUMAN CONDITION,” is Todd revealing his loneliness and questioning how he got here, while the finale “The Temptation to Exist” is ever so slightly hopeful.

“Humans are just awful, and I feel like I’m one of the worst ones sometimes,” he says unflinchingly.  

He’s exaggerating, but all of Todd’s mistakes in life and love, and the self-assessment that comes with them, have been fans’ gain. From his 1994’s Songs for the Daily Planet to 2023’s Crank It, We’re Doomed, he’s given listeners songs to both lean on and lose themselves in.

And now with HIGH, LONESOME AND THEN SOME., he further cements his reputation as an amalgamation of the greats that came before — while also being uniquely Todd.