Proof 1: Dressing rooms > Hotel rooms. Proof 2: Dressing rooms = classier than hotel rooms.

Follow my logic or not, it's the truth. Being asked for rolling papers is way cooler than being asked for 70%. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Typical. Let's begin at the beginning. (We're lovers and we're losers; we're heroes and we're pioneers. Skirting 'round the edges of the ideal demographic, we're almost on the guest list but we're always stuck in traffic.)

I do wish I could sing, but wasn't gifted with it. Might be tone deaf, actually.

Anyway, last night marked a new adventure with Awkward Ashley. (I have been scaling those Awkward Heights lately, always managing to achieve new and exiting levels of awkward like I've got the hand of God beneath me, lifting me toward the goal of Most Awkward Ever.)

Let's recap briefly some of my Awkward Concert Moments:

1. The time I refused to speak to Warren Zevon and he had to coax me into the picture.
2. The time I begged members of Low Millions to leave their trailers in a rainstorm to meet me and then I confused one of them for Adam Cohen and told him I loved his father. Oops...
3. The time Jess J and I noticed this realllly hot guy walking by and asked him to take pictures with him, after she said "Hey, hottie!" loudly enough for him to hear. Turns out he was the bassist for the Fray.
4. The same day, when I saw Ari Hest and was like, "Oh, hey! Do you know who you are? You're Ari Hest!"
5. The first time I met Ben Jelen, when I forgot how to talk, forgot my name and how to spell it, and managed to tell him he looked like "an old man."
6. The second time I met Ben Jelen, when we talked about my cousin Bailey the whole time.
7. The entire Teddy Thompson Debacle. Especially Prop 70/30.
8. The time I met Cory Branan and was like, "Ehhh, I like you because I like James Dean."
9. The (first) time I met Jonny Burke and Dad was all, "I'm her father" when I was trying to have an "I'm all grown up" moment.
10. The (second) time I met Jonny Burke and Brian made me drink Scotch. (Though that turned out less awkward because by the end of the night it was just.... something else entirely.)
11. The Jackson Browne Event? The screaming, the tears, the refusing to let go of his hand?

All of those are awkward. Most of those are embarrassing. I won't apologize for any of them. And do you notice anything that is conspicuously absent from that list? Loudon Wainwright III is the least awkward person ever. He puts you right at ease. So for the record, he's not the conspicuously absent musical encounter. And I'm not even getting into "Awkward encounters with roadies and tour managers." Because Cory Branan's tour manager and I had a rather fun discussion that left Brian nearly apoplectic, but that's not even the worst.

But there's this band you know I love. The Young Dubliners. And let me just say that they are incredibly awkward. Except they're not. Not with me. With me, it's all just staring at each other and laughing and texting and putting me on the guest list for Jethro Tull concerts. While texting Brendan Holmes might seem awkward to outsiders, to me it just feels right. (I think that if he and I were the same age, we'd be best friends. I'm not the only one who sees that, either. You know I've got a thing for bassists, too.) Anyway, this isn't about any of that. And I'm still getting ahead of myself and rambling as you know I do.

Parents came to town yesterday to visit me. Well, not for me, really. For him. Either way, it's generally pretty cool when they come to visit, even if Dad has the palate of a three year old. (Ehhh, it might actually be less diverse than that.) Anyway, The Great Todd Snider came to town, too, to visit me.

Well, not to visit me. To visit a sold-out Iron Horse. But still. I've seen some good shows there. Catie Curtis. Freedy Johnston. My boys. On the walls are the remnants of more shows -- Tommy Makem, Jon Pousette-Dart, David Lindley... Warren Zevon's comb-over days are immortalized on the cover of the menu, for Chrissake. It's like a little Ashley-haven. Anyway.

Todd was, as always, ON. He opened with "Greencastle Blues" and played three in a row before stopping. If you've never seen a Todd Snider show, this seems so "Meh, so what?" But in between the second and the third song, Todd said, "I'll play one more and then we'll catch up." Because that's what he does. Todd Snider is all about his audience. He doesn't just play to them; he speaks to them. He is, as I've mentioned in a previous concert review, a whole universe smarter than you or I will ever dream of being. Whatever your IQ, whatever the name of your college, however many degrees you've got hanging on your wall -- doesn't matter. Todd knows the only thing worth knowing: not a single one of us knows what happens next.

Not next "tomorrow" or next weekmonthyear, but Next.

And if he is, as he claims and as his concerts and music seem to support, truly an evangelical agnostic, well, I'm onboard with the Good News that we don't know jackshit about what's heading in our direction. There's a fair amount of comfort in that.

Listen: I can't say much more than I did previously about Todd Snider's concerts. He's funny, personable, affable, has the broad and guileless smile of one of my many toddlers... His live shows are an Experience. You can't duplicate them, though everyone tries. He encourages you to make and share recordings. He sells recordings of his shows online. He wears pinstripes and polka dots together! Bucket hats and bare feet! Sometimes he reminds me of Mr. Rogers in his online videos and promo material. He's happy; he's sad. He doesn't take himself seriously at all, at least not on stage.

I can't tell you why you should go to a Todd Snider concert and there's no showing what goes on at one. It's not like talking about how Jackson Browne makes me feel like the only person on the planet or how the Young Dubliners make me feel like the most important. Todd Snider does something else with his shows -- he makes me feel like I'm a part of the world. Like simply by being at his concert, I've not missed a single important experience. Like there's some community I actually belong to.

Which brings me to what I said at the beginning, about the adventure.

As you may have guessed by this particular post, or as you know if you're my one regular reader (you do exist, don't you? Mom?) I have a tendency to meet musicians. Call it Susannah's Strategic Hover if you want. I call it a genetic predisposition to being found where music is being made. And for the most part, all of those people have been really, really cool. I've met them in all sorts of ways: accidentally on the sidewalk, waiting in the cold for two hours (guess who!), hanging around their tour buses, offering them band aids, pressed forward by my mother, entirely by accident, right place right time, all of it. I once manipulated my brother into being the best wingman in the history of wingmen. It just works out for me, usually.

I say strange things like "I named my dog after your song," or "You look like an old man," or "I like 'Knickers.'" They say things like, "But you only have to do, like, seventy percent of the work!" or "I smell terrible" or "What you do is -- you get a fake ID and then you come to Ireland with us and drink."

I've been asked where the afterparty was, invited to hotel rooms (yes, rooms, yes, it's happened more than once), asked on dates, asked for use of the slogan on my shirt, gone out partying with them, been put on their guest lists -- and as of Mach 3d, 2010, been invited to the dressing room.

There are two experiences prior to this moment that I cherish and hold dear (as far as music is concerned). Which is to say that I've had a lot of "Meet your heroes!" moments and most of them have been positive experiences, with a few really unfortunate moments in there to make me feel terrible about myself. (The "Your cock is huge, Teddy" moment still makes me blush and fills me with undeserved shame.)

1. Meeting Jackson Browne. I was incoherent and a shattering mess for it, but he was the slice of perfection I always dreamed he would be.
2. Todd Snider left me a voicemail that got me through several all-nighters whilst I finished my finals.

After Wednesday night's concert, my parents left and I politely asked Elvis, the tour manager, "Excuse me, but would it be at all possible for me to get a picture with Todd tonight, please?"

His response? "A pretty girl like you? We can make it happen."

I've always thought Elvis was funny; turns out he's a bit of a charmer, too. He told me to wait a few minutes while things settled down and then, after a bit of staring at impressive photos on the walls of the Iron Horse, Elvis walked by me and said, "Follow me." Oh, oh, okay! I followed him right into the dressing room, where he informed Todd I was just too cute and he couldn't say no when I asked for a picture. Seriously: ladies, look out for Elvis; he will make you blush.

So I got to meet Todd Snider. With my awkwardness, the conversation was strange and delightful -- at least on my end. I'm convinced I petrified him. He asked how old I was (22), if I liked to sing (ha!), and what I wrote about (historical fiction, but I really want to write about music). He asked if I was going to school for writing and I said I was graduating in May. "You're so young!" he said. "I just... powered... through..."

Then this happened...

Me: My parents actually met you about a year and a half ago when you played Johnny D's in Somerville.
Todd: Yeah, with Don Was and Was Not Was -- wait, don't tell me -- we didn't call you?
Me: (in shock) YEAH! I'm THAT girl!
Todd: It's so great to meet you.

Then I spilled some nonsense about Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson and Ben Shahn and Arthur Rothstein and the FSA. I swear to god, every time I had the chance to open my mouth, I put my foot right in it.
Todd, of course, was incredibly gracious, funny, disarming. When I told him I couldn't believe I was able to put sentences together after what happened with Jackson Browne, the screaming and the tears? He replied, "Was that in Chicago?"

He actually made me feel like less of a fool for responding that way to Jackson Browne because, apparently, it's not so uncommon. (!) What an utter gentleman he was, so unlike the Hoteliers. Oh, they also asked me if I had any rolling papers -- nah, don't smoke, sorry.

I'm not saying he's a perfect guy, just that whatever flaws he has, they are not ones that prohibit him from being ridiculously wonderful to be around. When he says he is having fun on stage, oh dear, but you believe him. He's funny -- I cannot stress this enough -- and even when he is saying something tragic, well, he says it from the newspaper's point of view, the tree pulp, so you have to laugh.

When I met Jonny Burke the second time, we spent most of James McMurtry's set chatting and some of time we talked about what a cool dude Todd Snider is. Jonny had just finished a stretch of opening for him, and so we were just talking about how excellent his music is and how some musicians, when you meet them, are bitter letdowns, but not Todd. I hadn't met Todd at this point, but something told me he'd be more Jackson, less Thompson. Jonny had pretty much all nice things to say about Todd, and my opinion of him was already pretty inflated. Now that I've met him -- it's only gotten worse.

There was just one thing I meant to ask and totally forgot in the "Wow" of the moment:

"Hey, Todd, will you play my graduation party?"






PS. I am well aware this post isn't REALLY about the concert. I'm not sure what I could possibly say about it. It was an hour and a half of fun times. Todd taking requests, playing songs he'd never played before, songs that weren't even his. The highest possible compliment I could give a concert is that there is no describing it; you just have to see it. And this is exactly the case with Todd Snider. Drive to the nearest show he has scheduled, I don't care if it's six states away, just get your butt to one of his shows.

PPS. I finally got my Todd Snider teeshirt. About five years ago, my brother went to a Todd Snider show in Virginia and I gave him twenty bucks to get me a tee shirt. Promised me he got it. Told me he had it. Told me he just forgot to bring it home. A few years later, he finally admitted that he never bought me a shirt. Now, I have a Todd Snider tee shirt all my own. Thanks, Brian!