Wry, witty and wonderfully warped, Todd Snider had political correctness on the run in the Republic of Boulder Saturday night. Mixing gentle musings with pointed sarcasm, Snider delighted a highly receptive audience in a crowded Boulder Theater. The show was taped for possible future use on E-Town.

Snider wove his way onto the initially dark stage to the pulsing beat of Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way.” His bare-footed, disheveled, just-got-up appearance helped him establish an immediate intimacy with the audience. Following the opener, Snider deftly mixed numbers from his five albums, continuing the show with “Horseshoe Lake” and “Class of ‘85” from Step Right Up and 2002’s New Connection respectively. Sandwiched between the slow, reflective numbers was “Out All Night” from his third studio album, Viva Satellite.

The prelude to “Beer Run” provided some of the most raucous laughs of the evening from the audience. The more you drink, the better off you are in Snider’s comically twisted view, because the “survival of the fittest” theme applies to alcohol use the same as it does in other biological contexts -- only the weakest and slowest (in this case, brain cells) are devoured!

Other songs covered from New Connection were equally amusing. “Statistician’s Blues” made statistics, a subject that sends many of us running, seem almost fun. The fast-paced “Vinyl Records” found musicians’ names rolling off Snider’s tongue as slickly as numbers from an auctioneer trying to run up the bidding.

A mainstay of the show was “Moon Dawg’s Tavern” and its long rambling preamble, which witnessed Snider in his finest story-telling mode. He farmed fertile southern- redneck, white-trash ground, weaving stories about inhabitants of Frazier, Tennessee, such as Moon Dawg, his wife, Moon Bitch, the “man who could hold his hand on a flame for an hour,” and other eccentric characters. “Doublewide Blues” continued the same cultural theme while “D.B. Cooper” played as an understated, admiring nod towards another free-spirit. “Keep Off the Grass,” humorously lamented the intrusiveness of modern day life.

Snider repeatedly jabbed the country music establishment, noting ironically Nashville’s “Music City “ appellation. He attacked music industry bean-counters as a whole with a deliciously amusing rendition of the hidden track off his first CD, “Talking Seattle Grunge-Rock Blues.” In the song, Snider details the tribulations of a band searching for the next great gimmick. Band members decide, when they take the stage, not to play their instruments. A visiting record company executive says he loves the act but doesn’t know if he can sell a ‘record with no music on it.” “Hey, you’ve been doing it for years,” ad-libbed Snider in this evening’s value-added rendition of the song. The quip got the greatest crowd response of the night.

“Alright Guy,” one of, if not THE, signature Todd Snider song, is sly commentary on the man-woman, Mars-Venus problem. Alternatively, you can look at it as a “good ole boys just having fun” type of song. That’s how it’s rendered by both Todd Snider and country artist Gary Allan who covered the song as the title cut on his last CD.

The encore found Snider gravitating towards a baby grand piano sitting quietly to the side of the stage. Though claiming to be a beginner, Snider showed ability not only to plunk the keys accurately but also to lubricate the instrument with spilled beer. Taken to task by a fan in Australia for apparently advocating guns and violence in “Broke,” Snider treated the audience to an “enhanced” version of the song, adding a repetitive chorus: “Don’t shoot guns. Don’t use violence ” He impishly proclaimed it his “Australian version.” The evening closed with a mellow rendition of John Prine’s “Crooked Piece of Time.”

Snider often hunches over on stage, curling inward, as if pulling inside whatever may be happening around him -- as if collecting experiences to be set aside and sorted later. In Snider’s quirky world, everyday things, actions and people are transformed, taking on new dimensions. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. Snider probably won’t change the world, but he may change the way you look at things. That’s artistic success by anyone’s measure.

Mountain West Music 2002