I caught my personal poet laureate, Todd Snider, twice at The Granada this weekend. I won't bore you with a long-form review, since my raves about his music are exceedingly well-documented.

However, there are a few things worth noting:

• Friday night attendees got a freewheeling, albeit messy show with at least one new song. (To be fair, sounds like a flight delay prevented soundcheck from occurring.)



• Saturday show was less spontaneous, but far higher quality in terms of sound and coherence. You could really hear the difference on the few repeated songs from the night before.



• Friday opener, Austin's Dedringers instantly became my favorite new band. They sound as if Dan Baird got together with Jason and the Scorchers back when both were still younguns.



• Saturday's extended jam on "Alright Guy" included the coda to the stalker story Scott Miller shared with us a year and a half ago. Turns out the Dallas woman was just trying to get Todd to say hello to her son -- and happened to use language very similar to that of the unrelated Nashville stalker.



• And finally, Friday's crowd was treated to a second encore cover song that most found hilarious. Unfortunately, based on my informal survey, they weren't aware of the source -- one of the great television music performances of all time: