East Nashville’s Ambassador to the World

'The Snider Files' revisits 2011 cover story on Todd Snider

This photo of Todd Snider taken in front of the original location of The Family Wash appeared on the cover of the March-April, 2011, issue of The East Nashvillian. Snider sports a homemade Tennessee Titans jersey featuring late Titans quarterback Steve McNair’s jersey number (nine). (Photo By Stacie Huckeba)

By Daryl Sanders

Around the time of the release of Live: The Storyteller, I pitched The East Nashvillian magazine on the idea of a cover story on Todd Snider. I had noticed in recent years that East Nashville was increasingly getting ink in national music publications and large daily newspapers, and that the go-to person for the scoop on the rising neighborhood was Snider. So in my pitch, I proposed the story be written from the angle of Snider’s unofficial role as East Nashville’s ambassador to the world. I got a green light for the story, and “Todd Snider: East Nashville’s Ambassador to the World” appeared in the March-April, 2011, issue of the magazine.

A few days after the publication of the story, Snider was on walk around the neighborhood and saw a kid he had often seen on his walks. As Snider passed him, the kid said, “Good morning, ambassador.”

Because The East Nashvillian was distributed only on Nashville’s East Side and its content was not available online, many of Snider’s fans have never read the story. So for subscribers who never saw the piece, The Snider Files presents it below.