Todd Snider’s Upcoming Posthumous Release Looks to Country’s Future

There are many questions that still linger after the passing of songwriting legend Todd Snider on November 14th, 2025. The circumstances leading up to his death remain void of some critical details, and the answers of whether key moments when perhaps Snider could have been helped and survived remain outstanding. It also feels imperative that we continue to ask those questions, if for no other reason than if or when similar circumstance befall another beloved musician, the same mistakes aren’t repeated.

But in the interim, there is cause for positivity. Todd Snider happened to leave behind a posthumous album recorded in the period right before his death in the fall of 2025. Called My Second Rodeo, it’s said to be an imagining of “the sound of country music 10 years from now” from Snider. The album will be released from Thirty Tigers on October 9th. The lead single “Solid Country Gold” is out now (listen below).

The songs came together as Snider worked dismantle and reconstruct his favorite country music tropes, and then weave them into swampy grooves, backed by New Orleans-style horns. This is not a posthumous release of B-sides and outtakes. Snider approached this album intentionally, and in what collaborators say was a burst of creative energy coming out of his previous album High, Lonesome and Then Some release right before his death. “I finished eleven songs in October of twenty twenty five. Save this,” is what Snider wrote in an email to producer, engineer and longtime friend Joe Bisirri.

“This album is a glimpse into the creative outpouring from Todd in September and October of 2025,” says Joe Bisirri. “He was so sure of this sound, feel, and his studio band’s pliability that he insisted on recording his vocal and guitar first, with no accompaniment or click track. Todd wanted the band to record after him, so they would HAVE to follow his lead wherever it went.” 

Joe Bisiri, Robbie Crowell, and Todd Snider are all credited as producers on the album. Bisiri and Crowell worked off of notes that Snider left via emails and voice memos to finish the album at Snider’s Purple Building in Nashville. “He heard this album get to the 70 percent mark,” Bisirri says. “The last 30 percent took so much longer, because we were trying to follow his road map, all the while questioning and requestioning. Ultimately, Todd showed us where to go.”

In emails, Todd Snider told them, “….i honestly think we’re doing something important that is going to affect this town for a longtime,” and “ive never been more excited about art i was working on.”

The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco has also announced that they will be paying tribute to Snider in a Todd Snider Rules! show featuring Aaron Lee Tasjan, John Craigie, Elizabeth Cook, Chuck Prophet, Steve Poltz, and others during the October event.

My Second Rodeo is now available for pre-order via Bandcamp.

TRACK LIST:

1. Freewheelin’ (Every Day at a Time)

2. Solid Country Gold

3. (I Got That) Deja Vu

4. Con Your Monkey Do The Splits

5. Stoner Yodel Number 3 (Give Me a D for Gym Class)

6. The Manifesto

7. One Nation Under Fire

8. My Second Rodeo

9. Sunday Go Meeting Looking

10. The Moon Tonight