Just barely into his co-headlining acoustic tour with Robert Earl Keen, Todd Snider is having a blast.

And why not? Since 2006's "The Devil You Know," Snider has been on a roll, appearing on numerous end-of-the-year, best-of lists that attracted the attention of superstar producer Don Was, who helmed Snider's 2009 release, "The Excitement Plan."

This newest record is the perfect example of Snider's songwriting and his ability to be funny and touching at the same time. For example, "America's Favorite Pastime" chronicles the story of Major League Baseball player Dock Ellis, who pitched a no-hitter while high on LSD.

Snider gave his thoughts on the tour and his already-storied career in a recent interview:

Q: What was your reaction when Robert asked you to do the tour?

A: The first thing I thought of was that we would be hanging out on a bus and watching movies for 18 hours a day and that was going to be a lot of fun. We've done so many shows together, I didn't think too much about it, other than it would be fun.

Q: One of the ideas behind the tour was to exhibit the quality of songwriting in Americana music. Do you feel you guys get ignored in terms of what you do?

A: Not really. I have my list of favorites. My thought on it is that there are a lot of people that say, 'We haven't figured out how to reach our audience as a genre.' And I feel like, 'Yeah, we have. We're here.' There's no need to order any more beer or any more port-a-potties. We've got it.

Q: Who are your favorite songwriters?

A: I like Robert, Fred Eaglesmith, Paul Thorn and there are some other cats I like. I'll probably always be sentimentally attached to the music I studied when I was trying to learn to make up my own songs - Kris (Kristofferson,) Billy Joe (Shaver) and John Prine and Jerry Jeff (Walker) and the like. That gang.

Q: Speaking of John Prine, you were on his record label, Oh Boy, for a little while. How'd that come about?

A: He's just always been one of those guys I've stalked. Eventually, when I finally got a chance to make an album, my heroes were all pretty gracious to me. His manager was my manager. I guess I spent seven years there, or something like that, and still see him. I appreciated what I got to learn from John.

Q: Do you live in Nashville, Tenn.?

A: Yeah, east Nashville, particularly.

Q: That part of town has a reputation for being a community that stands as an alternative to the normal view of country music. Are you and Robert bringing attention to the "other Nashville" with this tour?

A: Yeah. You could almost call it country music for liberals. I like being part of it. It's not the Olympics, it's a dart tournament. But there are still a lot of people here and we're having a good time.

Definitely there's a side of Nashville that has its own TV station. So, that helps them a lot, and that's cool. When people tell me that kind of music sucks, I say, 'What kind of music doesn't?' I personally don't have a kind of music that I don't like. I haven't heard it yet. I'm still checking for it.

Q: Tell me about "The Excitement Plan." You worked with Don Was on it. What was it like to work with a guy who's produced the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan?

A: That was the most fun I've ever had making music. I can say that without having to think about it. It wasn't just the music, it was when we took breaks, too. We'd go out and have a cig and get to hear about how the Rolling Stones live and record and interact. Jim Keltner (drummer), too. He's been around so much stuff that's entertained and soothed me over the years. To get to hear about how they did it and who was drunk when they did it ... it's fun for an old rock magazine reader like myself. And then the part of just playing guitar while Jim Keltner played and trying to play as good as I could possibly play was exhilarating and fun.

Q: It's cool to hear you can still geek out when you're around these guys.

A: (Laughs) Sometimes I wish I didn't do it so much. I was at a festival this summer and Bob Weir (of the Grateful Dead) was in the tent having a sandwich right next to me, and I couldn't bring myself to go over there.

I got in an elevator with Jerry Seinfeld once and I didn't say anything. I thought I was being polite. I still don't know.

Q: When you're out on the road, would you rather be with a band or play solo?

A: It goes back and forth. When I first went out on the road, it was 1994, I'd been playing solo in bars for five years. At that point, I really wanted to play with a band. And then I played with a band for about four or five years and started to miss the storytelling part of what I do. So, I started going around solo and got into that, and lately I'm starting to miss the band thing.

I think what got me kind of tired about the band thing before is what's getting me excited about it now. When you're solo, there doesn't have to be any specific arrangement to the song. I've been hanging out with Vince Herman from Leftover Salmon and some of the guys from Yonder Mountain String Band. … Lately I've been making music with that crowd, more backstage than onstage. I've got a bunch of band shows in front of me. I guess you call it a 'jam band,' but in my mind it's kind of like what Jerry Jeff does now: I need you guys to sort of maybe listen to my records a little bit and I'm going to call out a key and do it right. You know how to play. We'll figure out the ending when we get to it.

The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale is a Lee Enterprises newspaper.

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