Snider - I never met a story I didnt like: mostly true tall tales

I NEVER MET

A STORY

I DIDNT LIKE

Copyright 2014 by Todd Snider

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

Designed by Pauline Brown

Set in 12 point Dante by the Perseus Books Group

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Snider, Todd.

I never met a story I didnt like : mostly true tall tales / Todd Snider. First Da Capo Press edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-306-82260-5 (pbk.) ISBN 978-0-306-82261-2 (e-book) 1. Snider, Todd. 2. SingersUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

ML420.S6729A3 2013

782.42164092dc23

[B]

2013034606

First Da Capo Press edition 2014

Published by Da Capo Press

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

www.dacapopress.com

Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail .

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to my hero/sister Shannon and her children;
my wife, Melita, and her paintings; Burt Stein, Jerry Jeff Walker,
Margie Mercer, Mike and Marie Osheowitz.

To Peter Cooper, for listening to me babble for years but more
importantly for typing it down for a few days so we could have
a book. All I had to do was say 90,000 words.
It only took me an hour or so.

Thank you to the characters in the book, all of whom I would readily
admit are much more reliable witnesses to these events than myself.

And to Bob MercerI will believe you are dead when I have gnawed
on your skull with my very own teeth. Hilarious.

CONTENTS

A lmost everything I say is true.

Ask anybody.

Hi, buckaroos. Heres that book I keep saying Im going to write. I got Tony Bennett, Bill Elliot, and lots of other big names in here. I could have called it Smoking Grass and Dropping Names, because its mostly that. No way its not a book, though. Look at it. I totally wrote this. High five.

C harleston and Byron came to the door, knocked, and said, Jimmy wants to see you.

Charleston and Byron were bodyguards.

Jimmy was Jimmy Buffettstill isand Jimmy Buffett was my boss. And he wanted to see me.

Why?

Because he wanted to throw fruit at me. And not in a playful way.

Why fruit? Because it was Jimmy Buffetts dressing room, at the dome in Miami. Fruit was handy.

Fruit hurts, it turns out. It hurts your feelings and fucks up your western shirt. I had on a western shirt, and Jimmy said it looked like shit.

Nobody wants to see some jackass in a cowboy outfit!

Anyway, Jimmy was explaining to me about the Internet. Id never heard of it. This was the summer of 1995. I didnt have a computer. I thought computers were for scientists. I wasnt a scientist, and Im still not. Im a folk singer. And if youve heard of me, Jimmy Buffett has something to do with that. He took an interest in me when a bunch of other people didnt. He signed me to his record label, which meant a lot to me.

Id been a fan of Jimmys since I was very young, had all the records, and had seen him play at least six or seven times.

And he took me out on tour with him, which involved putting me in front of fifty thousand people that night in Miami.

Fifty thousand people was 49,912 people more than I was playing for on the night Jimmy took an interest in me.

And now Jimmy was angrily explaining the Internet. There are people on the Internet who are mad because youre not playing Talkin Seattle Grunge Rock Blues at our shows, he said. So now theres an Internet. And its kind of aggressive. Talkin Seattle Grunge Rock Blues was on the radio, but it wasnt supposed to be. Another song, Alright Guy, was the one we had made a video for. We went to Atlanta, and we had goats, midgets, fireworks, models, walkie-talkies, and a director with a beret.

But all the goats and berets in Atlanta didnt make radio people play Alright Guy. Instead, some of them started playing Talkin Seattle Grunge Rock Blues. I dont know why people liked it, though I liked it and still do. Jimmy wanted me to make a video for it. I said I would do that if the video could be just me smashing a car. Just smashing the fuck out of it. No singing, no close-ups of my face, and no guitars, unless we were using them to help us smash the fuck out of that car.

Jimmy didnt like my car-smashing idea, which meant nobody liked my car-smashing idea. And Jimmy was my boss. We didnt wind up making a video. But they were still playing Talkin Seattle Grunge Rock Blues on the radio sometimes, which is why the Internet was mad at me and why I was dodging fruit twenty minutes before I was supposed to go onstage in front of fifty thousand Parrotheads. (I dont mean Parrotheads as a slur, like midgets.)

Jimmy had written down five of my song titles on an envelope.

I want you to play these tonight, he said. And by this point, he wasnt throwing the fruit.

I want you to play these every night on this tour, said Jimmy Buffett, one of the most popular singers ever.

Ever.

Jimmy Buffet.

And after more than two decades of traveling and singing, he was giving me tips. This guy whod done all this, and he was showing me how to do it. He was telling me the songs of mine that would be best for me to play on a tour like this, in front of his crowd. His hard-earned crowd, I might add.

Too bad for Jimmy that I was going through my sunglasses at night phase. Really. Shades inside, at night, walking into the same places Id been hanging out at for three years. Here were my reasons, such as they were: Hey, guys, I just happen to wear shades inside at night now. Oh, its not cause I have a record contract. Its totally unrelated. I dont know why youre trying to take it there. We all used to just be cool and wear whatever we wanted. Im not changing, youre changing. So I explained to Jimmy. You would have never let anybody tell you what to play, I told him, and Im not going to ever let anybody tell me what to play.