Security World

 There are songwriters who entertain, and then there are songwriters who expose . Todd Snider belongs to the latter category — the kind of musician who doesn’t just sing to a crowd, but speaks through them, as if every lyric were a smoke-filled confession or a barroom sermon. With a harmonica slung across his neck and a grin that hints at both rebellion and redemption, Snider has spent more than three decades painting America’s truth in cigarette ash and laughter. Born October 11, 1966, in Portland, Oregon, Todd Daniel Snider came into the world with a sense of place that would never quite hold him still. He grew up in Beaverton, a suburban patch of the Pacific Northwest, and by the time he graduated from Beaverton High School in 1985, the restlessness was already there — a feeling that the real lessons in life were waiting far beyond any classroom wall. After high school, Snider gave Santa Rosa Junior College a try, not for the academics but for the harmonica — that simple, soul...