Todd Snider is still a folk singer at heart

Todd Snider has been garage rocking and singing in Hard Working Americans, the band made up of members of Widespread Panic and the Chris Robinson Brotherhood. But he's always remained a folk singer at heart, which is evident on his new solo album, "Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3" - there are no volumes one or two - a disc recorded in Johnny Cash's Tennessee cabin that is now a studio.

"I even have a talking blues song on this record," Snider said in a phone interview. "I've always thought of myself as a folk singer. That's never changed, even in the band. I wasn't playing guitar or anything. I was just the singer."

Snider's folk lineage goes back to his earliest influences, including Jerry Jeff Walker, whom he saw play in an Austin club and helped him realize he didn't need a band to be a musician.

"John Prine was probably my first (influence), back in the '80s," Snider said. "Then there was Jerry Jeff Walker and Guy Clark. There was that bunch of Townes Van Zandt people. Ramblin' Jack Elliott is probably the father of what I do. It feels like this is a family I ended up joining."

Snider made his name and wiseguy reputation within that folk family with the topical, tongue-in-cheek hit "Talkin' Seattle Grunge Rock Blues," and the wryly funny, autobiographical "Alright Guy" on his 1994 debut album, "Songs for the Daily Planet."

He's now got 19 albums that include 2012's tribute album, "Time as We Know It: The Songs of Jerry Jeff Walker," and his original-filled "Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables" from that same year, which landed on many best-of-the-year lists and got him praised by Rolling Stone as "one of the sharpest, funniest storytellers in rock."

Then came his two- album foray with Hard Working Americans and his 2016 garage rock excursion, "Eastside Bulldog."

So why go back to folk?

"It's just the songs, I think," he said. "A lot of it was I'd been playing with the band and learning so much about guitar, even though I wasn't playing guitar. When these songs came, the closer I got to finishing them, the more they seemed folkie. I recorded them with the band and they just sounded folkie."

But, he said, it's better folk than he could have played before getting schooled in Hard Working Americans.

For most of 2019, Snider will be getting things off his chest in clubs and theaters across the country on a solo tour. That tour stops in Walker Theatre Saturday, June 22. Opening will be Raelyn Nelson Band.

"This whole year, I'm touring by myself," he said from a stop in Helotes, Texas. "It's quite a bit simpler. It's just me and three people on the road as opposed to 10 or 12."

That me-and-my-guitar approach makes for a loose show. Snider will try to work in some of the new songs, but most of the night will be "whatever somebody yells for."