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Though he hadn’t called the greater Portland area home for decades, the echoes of Todd Snider’s upbringing and later-year escapades in and around the Rose City didn’t make his untimely passing on Nov. 14, 2025, feel distant. Tunes with proximity references like “Tillamook County Jail” and “D.B. Cooper” assured those paying attention that the Pacific Northwest had not been dropped from his wellspring of influences.
And not every commuter heading west on Highway 26 in November may have noticed the “Todd Snider Rules” message scrawled through the accumulated soot on the walls through the Vista Ridge Tunnels, but to those for whom his music became a kind of wild-eyed love letter to a decaying American dream, the gesture of the communiqué seemed to firmly entrench Snider as just as legendary as any other artist who decided to stick around.
Snider—the eminent folk troubadour responsible for such incendiary modern classics as “Conservative Christian, Right Wing, Republican, Straight, White American Male,” “Alright Guy,” and “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues”—was scheduled to make a triumphant return to Revolution Hall last October, prior to a muddied series of events in Salt Lake City that led to his tour being canceled and his death about a month later from walking pneumonia in Nashville. There are many questions surrounding those circumstances; Snider complained of having been mugged in Salt Lake while on the tour for what would turn out to be his last album, High, Lonesome, and Then Some, prior to an arrest by local police, and following an unsuccessful attempt to be admitted into a hospital there. It appeared Snider received the kind of heavy-handed, compassionless treatment he had so often railed against in his music, albeit typically accompanied by the requisite wink and nod that defined his humorous outlook on life.
The folks behind A City of Roses Tribute to Todd Snider certainly would prefer to be gathering and performing under different conditions. But even amid ongoing grieving, organizer and Portland musician Ashleigh Flynn is quick to shine a light on the many facets of Snider’s wonderfully skewed world. The tribute show takes place at Mississippi Studios on Feb. 9 and features performances by Flynn and her band The Riveters, Scott McCaughey of the Minus Five and Young Fresh Fellows, Snider die-hard John Craigie, Nashville songwriter and longtime Snider friend Elizabeth Cook, and other musician admirers and friends, including Kevin Shapiro, the loving perpetrator of the tunnel graffiti aforementioned. A portion of the proceeds for the show go to Street Roots, the Portland nonprofit that Snider had rallied his own benevolent talents for back in 2013.
Flynn became friends with Snider after she was asked to open for him on a string of dates in the early 2010s by a mutual music business associate.
“He was like a big brother mentor,” she says. “I was just this kid that he took a shine to and he took me around when he could. I had chicken skin night after night watching it go down. It definitely left me with an idea of what I would hope to manifest.”
Snider’s funny and whipsmart political commentaries endeared him to a wide-ranging fan base that adhered to no genre. Established as he was in the Americana, roots and folk scenes, Snider’s unfiltered storytelling and matchless wit drew devotees from across the musical spectrum. McCaughey recalls a time when Snider visited his Dungeon of Horror studio to record some demo ideas with Peter Buck.
“He told some pretty good stories too!” McCaughey remembers. “He just seemed so naturally made to do what he did. Writing, singing, playing guitar...it seemed effortless, and necessary, to him.”
Craigie also had the opportunity to tour with Snider in 2015. A year or so earlier, Craigie’s fandom, in the form of his hilarious folk sendup “I Almost Stole Some Weed From Todd Snider,” summoned the musician to jump onstage and hand Craigie a jar of weed during his High Sierra Music Festival set, offering a faux truce of sorts, and again highlighting the magic that Snider could incite by his mere presence.
“I felt a kinship with Todd’s style of storytelling and insightful lyrics,” Craigie says. “While we were pulling from the same influences, I really felt like Todd was bringing the storytelling and humor to a new level that showed me how the limits could be pushed.”
That inspiration was a two-way street for Snider. Flynn recalls his fascination with songwriting luminaries like John Prine and Jerry Jeff Walker, artists he befriended as arbiters of his artistic acumen after he’d established himself in Nashville.
“He was a thoughtful guy,” Flynn says. “You could see him puzzling about everything. Once he set his mind to it, it became this kind of steel trap for songwriting, but based on his very astute, poignant and poetic observations.”
“This town is full of people who love this guy,” Flynn continues. “We thought, let’s transform our grief into something beautiful as a tribute.”
GO: A City of Roses Tribute to Todd Snider at Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., mississippistudios.com. 7 pm Monday, Feb. 9. $26.05. 21+.
