You can’t get the full Todd Snider experience from any of his nine studio releases for a simple reason: there wasn’t an audience there when he recorded them. And when there isn’t an audience, he doesn’t do things like stretch his song intros into riotous, several-minute stories.

“When I started,” Snider says, “my first heroes were Jerry Jeff Walker and John Prine, and then their hero was Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. That’s just always been part of the troubadour thing. You sing songs and tell stories.”

The only place to get all of that is at a Todd Snider show or from the next best thing: a Todd Snider live album. He’s made two, or three, or hundreds of them – depending on how you count. Preceding the newest, The Storyteller, was 2003’s Near Truths and Hotel Rooms. Then, he recorded a semi-official one at Grimey’s, an independent record shop in his adopted hometown of Nashville, Tenn. (Specifically, his turf is the funky, historical area of East Nashville). And just about every show he’s played during the past year is available for official download. There’s probably some 15 years’ worth of bootlegs out there, too.

As for the content of his performances, Snider’s the kind of guy who likes to speak, or sing, his mind on social and political matters. And on his new double-disc live set – much of which features the loose-limbed country-rock backing of Great American Taxi – a couple of the spoken riffs clock in at around eight minutes.

It’d be easy for Snider to lose the audience with all of that talking and topical material if he wasn’t such a natural entertainer. He comes off as an extremely clever and thoroughly amiable slacker – not the sort of singer/songwriter who takes himself too seriously. (He says he “dislikes folk Nazis.” ) “I like to point out that I’m sharing my opinions with people because they rhyme,” he explains, “and not because they’re smart or important.” And he’s prone to set his lyrics to droll blues melodies and sly, shambling grooves that make the songs go down easy.

Snider began his recording career in the ‘90s fronting a tight rock and roll band. Then he turned solo folkie. He improvised with words, not music, until he fell in with guys like Great American Taxi ringleader – and Leftover Salmon co-founder – Vince Herman.

Snider and Herman first jammed in a school bus at the Dunegrass Festival. Then, they teamed up with Ben Kaufman and Jeff Austin of Yonder Mountain String Band for a few shows. But their touring collaboration began in earnest after Snider sat in with Taxi one night in Nashville.

Playing together took some adjustment on both sides. “Right from the beginning, Vince had this thought that it’d be like my guitar will lead and we will listen very closely to each other,” Snider offers. “And then there will come to be middle parts, which is my favorite part of the night these days where I’m learning to – as we say – ‘Ride the Taxi,’ which is to go on a jamband tangent. Now, if you listen to the tapes, sometimes you can hear the one guy that’s not sure what to do. But I’m learning.”

The band, likewise, learned how to compliment a troubadour. “With Todd being the consummate storyteller that he is, that has to be the focus of his shows or the people coming are gonna be bummed that they didn’t get to see Todd do that thing he does,” Herman says. “So, as a band, our job is to hone in on the story and respond to it or blow it up when it needs to or bring it way down when it needs to, so that the story is conveyed in larger terms than Todd would do on his own.”

Combining the sensibilities was half the fun. “I remember cracking up at the beauty of his approach one of the first times he played with us,” Herman laughs. “[He’d say], ‘Do that thing where you make [the song] longer. Can you do that here?’ Looking back at it, I think that some of that must have been tongue-in-cheek.”