Earlier this year Todd Snider released “Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3,” which was a title both informative and misleading. It was, in fact, recorded in Johnny Cash’s recording studio in a cabin in Hendersonville, Tenn. And while Vol. 1 and 2 aren’t entirely non-existent, they’re certainly not available for one to go out and purchase.

Snider, who plays The Heights Theatre Sunday, has never been much of one for clean, linear order in his 25 years of releasing music. The Oregon native has instead drifted like his heroes — Jerry Jeff Walker, Billy Joe Shaver — ever since he started playing his songs at the Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos years ago.

He made a few records for a big label in the ‘90s, but found a more comfortable groove later, creating a string of witty and wise records starting with “East Nashville Skyline” in 2004. Snider steered through some rock ‘n roll territory with the Hard Working Americans, and made a rowdier record with “Eastside Bulldog” in 2016.

The new “Cash Cabin Sessions” picks up closer to where he left off with the old-school protest folk music of “Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables” in 2012. He says he barely remembers making that record, and his zig-zagging path since has had a few fraught moments and addiction-related close calls. But he came out of it with one of his best records.

Todd Snider When: 8 p.m. Sunday Where: Heights Theater, 339 W. 19th Details: $26-$38; theheightstheater.com

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Q: The new record opens with ‘Working on a Song,’ which is about writing a different song called ‘Where Will I Go Now That I’m Gone?’ Is there a real ‘Where Will I Go’ in progress?

A: I guess, maybe there is. I wonder if now that I’ve done that song that it became another. I started it at Kent Finlay’s house (Finlay owned and operated the Cheatham Street Warehouse). I’ve worked on that song for 30 years, with a lot of people too. It just never all fell together. At some point I was like, ‘Well, this isn’t getting anywhere.’ So I got this idea for a song while working on another.

Q: So now what?

A: I don’t know! I kind of don’t want to finish this song. I don’t want it to get done because I’ve been carrying it forever. I started to see it as a metaphor for whatever the next song is. Something you’re trying to chase down. It’s pretty effective: Now I know why Willie Nelson plays every night. To keep from not.

Q: There’s an element of time passing in the song.

A: Yeah, I was hoping it was about aging. The whole record has a lot of me singing about singing. Which sometimes I don’t like so much. But in general it was kind of about trying to find another song. It’s still an interesting mystery to me. I’ll think I finish a song, and think, “Is that done now? Is it this simple?”

Q: A couple of songs reference reality and TV and reality TV.

A: Yeah, I feel like from radio to TV, just how they became this thing you carry around with you, getting all this information. It’s funny I said, ‘Goddamn TV’ twice, and I realized I couldn’t do that so I took one out. But it’s interesting to me. We say it was the Beatles or Elvis that blew up, but really it was television that was blowing up. You know what was bigger than Jesus, it was TV. And now it’s even more so since you can take it in the palm of your hand. It’s strange, I still love YouTube as much as anything. You can pump in any blues singer’s name and find something amazing.

Q: Last time we talked you were obsessed with Axl Rose meltdown videos.

A: I still do that! And keeping up with Van Halen. I don’t know the songs. Don’t care. It’s more like, is Wolfie going to get kicked out and they bring Michael Anthony back again? I’d like to see Oasis get their (expletive) back together. It feels like there aren’t any rock stars who do silly stuff anymore. The kids are smarter now. Maybe Axl ruined that for everyone. There’s not as much of it, so I watch videos of Jesse Fuller and Lightnin’ Hopkins. There’s a YouTube clip of Hopkins that says, ‘Greatest blues performer ever,’ and I agree. He’s explaining how the blues works as he makes up a song on the spot. That’s how it goes if you’re Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Q: There’s a line on the song ‘Blues on the Banjo’ — ‘we mistake desperate people for the devil all the time’ — that reminded me of your ‘The Devil You Know.’ Which is sort of despair-inducing because both touch on a financial disparity in our culture.

A: I could see that, yeah, I think the older I get the more I feel I have one song or a couple of songs that I sing over and over. I try to make then sound a little different. But sometimes I feel like I’m just making the same point in a different way. It makes me think of my favorite writer philosopher Alan Watts. When he died he didn’t talk anymore, he just made animal sounds. I wouldn’t mind letting myself go completely and sitting in a chair making bird sounds. I don’t understand the point of sanity. As I get older, I’ve worked and I just don’t know what I owe sanity to anybody for. Who do I owe rational thought to? I’m the one who’s going to die in this little box of a body. So I admire those people who just let go.

Q: I was quite fond of ‘Agnostic Hymns’ a few years ago, but heard you barely remember making it. Is that your ‘Station to Station’ — a masterpiece with no memories?

A: Yeah, it came out and I don’t know. I was blind drunk through most of that. I don’t get that way a lot during records. This one I was pretty together. This one I remember well, I was only smoking weed, though it came after a three-year acid bender that I’m not sorry about. I wish it was still going on. But I did it until I couldn’t anymore. The wires were poking out a little.

andrew.dansby@chron.com