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Mike Snider surged from 1983
national banjo champ to a member of the Grand Ole Opry. After
26 years of perfecting the three-finger style of banjo
playing, three years ago he switched to the clawhammer style
in keeping with his interest in old-time mountain music.
Some who gain
fame take due pride in being able to say they’ve never
forgotten their roots. Celebrated banjo player, Mike Snider,
on the other hand, dug his roots still deeper in the town of
Gleason from which he’d sprung, after being welcomed heart and
soul into the close-knit bosom of the Grand Ole Opry and
adoring fans everywhere.
Mike and wife “Sweetie”, the former
Gleason-girl, Sabrina Godwin, and children Katie and Blake,
live on an impressive estate “about a mile across the field”
from where Mike was raised with brothers John and Alan and
where his parents, Billy and Rubye Snider, remain.
Sabrina just celebrated her 20th
anniversary working with MTD Products in Martin, where she has
been employed since the plant was built in 1985, after
graduating from the University of Tennessee at Martin.
Blake, at 11-years-old, is more engaged
with Gameboys than making music, while Katie, a homecoming
queen at 14 and a member of Gleason’s eighth grade class,
“plays the piano and plays it well,” says her father. She
plays at church--like her grandmother, Rubye, did from a
youthful age--as well as for talent shows and beauty contests.
Mike was two years older than Katie when
he received his first banjo, a gift from his father for his
16th birthday.
“That’s all I wanted to do after that,” he
says.
Before then, he was an accomplished
trumpet player. He got his start on that instrument at the age
of six after the dogs dragged up in the yard an old cow horn
bugle or foxhorn. The big end of the horn was already chewed
away by the time he found it and showed it to his dad, who
blew into it to make a noise. Mike tried it, too, and before
long he was playing a tune. Seizing on the boy’s obvious
talent, his parents bought him a trumpet, similar in function
to the cow horn. He played it at school and community events
throughout his school career.
But when he was 15, Billy brought home an
old Flatts and Scruggs record he’d bought in Jackson in a
bargain bin, Mike tells. They listened as Earl Scruggs played
the banjo in the recording.
“Daddy loved the banjo,” says Mike, “He
said, ‘Boy, ain’t that fine!’”
Mike and his dad became excited at the
prospect of Mike’s playing the banjo. “I wanted one so bad; I
knew I could play it if I could just get my hands on it, he
says, adding, “Mama said I needed to stick with trumpet. But I
had lost interest in it.”
The trumpet had never captivated him as
the banjo later would. He had quit taking lessons after six
months, more interested in riding motorcycles and shooting his
bb gun. He also enjoyed a little bird and squirrel hunting
with his grandfather, Hubert Snider.
“Me and him, we was buddies,” Mike smiles.
The Snider family: Blake,
Sweetie (Sabrina), Mike and Katie.
Leaning back in his chair in his
comfortable living room in Gleason, he tips his cap back and
scratches his head, adopting his characteristic grin as he
recalls the day his father came home and lifted out of his
trunk Mike’s first banjo: “It was two days before my
birthday... May 28, 1976... at 12:30 noon. It was brand new
and it was a good one, too, and it was in tune and
everything.”
He found a teacher in Gene Harkey from
Sharon who came to the Snider home a day or two later and
agreed to teach Mike how to play.
“He was real nice to teach me everything
he knew; it took me about two years,” Mike says. “He was a
good teacher and after I got going good I helped him learn
some things he wanted to know.”
Contrary to Mike’s expectations, however,
he admits, playing the banjo didn’t come easy. “It was really
hard,” he says with a nod and raised eyebrows.
“It took like - seemed like forever -
before I could do anything,” Mike says doggedly, “but I would
not let up. I knew I could do it, deep down deep. I could hear
it in my head and I knew what it would feel like if I could
just do it right.”
He played eight hours a day, every day.
Every spare minute was spent in practice: “I had to go to
school and work on the farm, so I played before breakfast,
then I played ‘til the school bus came. After school, I’d
play, then go do what I needed to do, and come back and play
along toward midnight... Lots of times, I carried my banjo to
the field with me.”
He would sit in the truck and play while
his father drove the combine through the fields. When a load
was gathered, he stopped playing long enough to deliver it and
get back to the field.
“At night I had to come home and get the
vacuum cleaner to suck the corn husks out of the casing,” he
grins.
Even so, playing the banjo wasn’t the only
thing on his mind. He was just a junior in high school when he
started looking for his mate.
“I had several girlfriends,” he says.
“Every girl I met, I’d ask, ‘Is this the one?’ I was looking
for my companion; I knew she was out there somewhere.”
In the meantime, he makes no bones about
his dislike for academics, noting he “barely” graduated from
Gleason High School.
“All I wanted from school was to get out,”
he declares. “I already knew how to read, write and spell and
enough math--I could do that in my head--enough math to be
able to handle money. I thought I’d be a farmer, I never
thought I’d be able to play the banjo for a living.”
It was four years after graduation when,
in the spring of ‘82, he asked Sabrina Goodwin out for a date.
The homespun girl, who lived a couple of miles away, had been
three years behind him in school. Their first date on March
28, 1982, was all it took for Mike to know she was the one.
“On our first date, I knew,” he says, “I
don’t know why, but I knew. After I carried her out a couple
more times, I got my nerve up and asked her to marry me on the
third date. She took me up on it and nine months later we got
married on December 12, 1982.”
He pauses, pondering, before he continues,
“That just flew by. Now we’ve been married going on 23 years.”
Almost a year after his marriage, he was
thinking of hanging up his banjo. He had won the state
championship twice and, “they wouldn’t let me enter again,” he
says. Then his banjo student, Lloyd Lewis from Henry, talked
him into entering the national banjo contest scheduled for
September, 1983.
Says Mike, “I thought, ‘Well, before I put
it away, that would be nice to show the grandkids someday. I
lucked up and won that thing, then came back home.”
Wayne Stoker, whose brother Gordon Stoker
is a member of the renowned Jordannaires quartet, told Mike
that Gordon was coming home for Thanksgiving and might be able
to help.
Mike, however, still convinced he would
remain a farmer, was in the shop working on a combine blade
with his father when someone came by and said Gordon was home.
Mike paid him a visit and played a few tunes on the banjo.
“Me and him kind of made friends right
there,” he says. “When he asked what he could do to help, I
said, ‘Well, I’d kinda like to be on the Grand Ole Opry one
time,’ and he said, ‘I believe I can get that done.’”
The Opry not only invited Mike to perform,
they invited the entire town, sending 1500 tickets.
Mike was confused. When the tickets
arrived, he called and asked, “How much am I supposed to
charge for these?”
After learning they were free, he took
some to City Hall and with the help of The McKenzie Banner and
other local media outlets, word got around.
“People just scarfed ‘em up!” Mike says,
still enthralled with the experience.
When the tickets ran out, about 500 more
locals purchased tickets so that, on January 21, 1984, some
2,000 members of the Grand Ole Opry audience were from Weakley
and Carroll counties.
“The whole town--just everybody I knew in
the world, nearly--was there,” Mike says. “It was the neatest
night in my musical career, and I’ve been doing it now for 21
years.”
Following his appearance on the Opry, and
the phenomenal support shown by his hometown, Mike was invited
to appear on TNN’s Nashville Now with host Ralph Emery.
“Everybody laughed at everything I said,
and I wasn’t trying to be funny,” said Mike, his easygoing
manner and pronounced country accent working with the
sincerity of his smile to effect a refreshingly happy
atmosphere for the audience. His comic appeal coupled with his
dexterity with the banjo proved to be a winning combination.
Over the next two decades Mike was a
member of the Hee Haw television show for seven years. He made
hundreds of appearances on Nashville Now, Music City Tonight
and Prime Time Country, plus over 1,000 shows on the Grand Ole
Opry. He performed for seven years at Nashville’s Opryland
USA. After originally hoping for a one-time performance on the
stage of the Grand Ole Opry, his name on June 2, 1990 was
added to the coveted membership rolls of the legendary Opry.
His unexpected rise to stardom had little
effect on his home life. “It was kind of a natural thing, it
unfolded real natural like,” says Mike, possibly because his
thoughts are always on coming home. “When I’m gone for a show,
it’s not a vacation--I’ve got getting there, getting done and
getting back on my mind--my favorite place to be is home.”
In the past few years, Mike’s playing has
undergone a regeneration. In the beginning, he worked
relentlessly to play banjo in the three-finger style of Earl
Scruggs. Then, he says, “After playing that style for 26
years, I kind of got tired of it. The desire left just like
it came.”
Grandpa Jones had shown him the frailing
or clawhammer style of banjo playing that actually predates
bluegrass music and that Mike first started playing three
years ago.
“I always loved the old fiddle tunes and a
lot of the old tunes lend themselves to the old-style frailing
type banjo,” Mike says, regarding the old American fiddle
tunes and “mountain-type” music performed by The Mike Snider
String Band.
In addition to the banjo, Mike also plays
mandolin and harmonica alongside fiddlers Matt Combs and Shad
Cobb, Tony Wray on guitar, and Todd Cook on the bass fiddle.
The group performs at Bethel College on
Saturday, February 19 at 7 p.m. following an opening by the
Danny Ray Martin Quintet. Tickets are $7 and can be purchased
beginning February 3 at Bethel College in the Office of the
President or at McKenzie City Hall Monday through Friday from
9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m.
Mike will also present a master class for
bluegrass instruments earlier Saturday from 4:30-5:30 p.m.
Those interested may call Onnie Grissom at 731-352-4049.
Mike says guests can look forward to an
evening of music, jokes, and stories as the occasion warrants.
“I just fly by the seat of my pants,” he says, allowing his
strategy for success has always been to size up his audience
and perform accordingly. “I just go without a plan; the only
plan I have is to entertain them somehow. I walk on stage and
do my best.”
Talk of his success always brings Mike
back to square one.
“I’m mighty grateful toward all the people
of Weakley and Carroll County for supporting me and coming to
see me when I was at the Opry and for coming to the show up
here,” he says. “Without the help of everybody around here I’d
never have made it in the music business.”
He reiterates the vital role Gordon and
Wayne Stoker played in “getting the ball rolling” and how the
people of Gleason and surrounding counties rallied to drive to
Nashville in the middle of winter to watch him perform at the
Grand Ole Opry.
“That was the key ingredient to seeing my
career started,” he says. “They (at the Opry) were really
flabbergasted that just that one little thing they did brought
in the town.”
That’s why he’s never regretted staying in
the small town of Gleason that he calls home. While some don’t
forget their roots, Mike’s just keep growing deeper.
“One of the reasons I want to live here
is, I love living in this part of the country,” he says with
warmth and sincerity. “All the folks I growed up with, they
know I ain’t changed none ‘cept I’ve lost a few more hairs.
And I love my parents. I go out and see them every day when
I’m here. It’s a little hard to go play the Opry 150 miles
away, but it’s worth it to be here the rest of the time.”
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