Bio for Cracker - current
by Bridget Hollenbeck
"Cracker is the only American rock band that matters anymore" El Pais, Spain 2007.
INTRODUCTION: Following the break-up of his seminal 1980's band, Camper Van Beethoven, David Lowery, looking to the future, formed Cracker with Johnny Hickman. Cracker was, and continues to be, an ideal showcase for Lowery's invariably satiric, oft-times, acerbic take on present day Americana. Anchored by Hickman's pan-rock stylings they glide seamlessly between rock, alternative and country musical styles, flummoxing those wanting to pigeon-hole the band, and giving them the freedom to consistently re-invent themselves. As a result, they have enjoyed a longevity possessed by few rock bands.
"What the world needs now, is another folk singer like I need a hole in my head.What the world needs now, is a new Frank Sinatra, so I can get you in bed."
CHAPTER 1- Those Cocky Young Turks
It didn't take long for the demos of Hickman and Lowery's newly formed band to
get them a label deal with Virgin Records, the home of many of the day's
alternative darlings. Cracker was brash, irreverent and cocky, and 1992's
self-titled debut left little doubt that conformity wasn't in the cards.
From the droll name of the band, to song titles like, 'Can I Take My Gun to
Heaven' and "Don't Fuck me up (with peace and love)" , all backed by driving
edgy rock music, the band exploded on the scene with a tongue in cheek bang.
Say what's your scene man, we got these questions.
Is it true that you have sold your soul? I say hey man, I don't know
Lend me a quarter won't you, I'll call my accountant."
CHAPTER 2-Alternative Rock Darlings
Cracker followed up their eponymous debut with the release of 'Kerosene Hat'
in 1993. Those listening carefully, could already hear the stirrings of a new
musical wind blowing, though few chose to pay attention at the time. With the
anthemic 'Low' driving the release, the band found themselves immersed in
all the trappings of the industry-MTV, radio, a platinum record, and
increasingly large stages with growing sold out crowds. It would appear
they had 'arrived'. Though, unsurprisingly, this success, while initially
titillating, soon grew hackneyed...
but baby I'm crawling
through the unbearable days
I threw away
but should have savored - This is the Golden Age"
CHAPTER 3 - Survival of the Fittest
As is the way of nature, young men grow up, albeit, some slower than others.
When things go as intended, the individual has a good base from which to
build, and with maturity comes substance and depth. Such was the case
with Cracker. The release of 'The Golden Age' in 1996 marked a coming of
age for the band. Slightly world weary, somewhat more introspective, the
band's sound started moving toward the Southern rock, country feel that
would further permeate later releases, with songs like 'Sweet Thistle Pie'
and 'Big Dipper'. Unfortunately, the giddy, 1920's style decadence of the
music industry began to take it's toll, causing the start of the industry's
not too gradual implosion. Those artists refusing to adapt, or choosing to
ignore the warning signs soon saw themselves sucked into the maelstrom of
musical oblivion. Thankfully, the keen observational nature intrinsic to
the band, gave Cracker an edge...they saw the writing on the wall before
the wall was even erected.
Anthracite grey on cobblestone
And the sooted flowers, on gentleman's towers
My sweet darling, where have you gone?"
CHAPTER 4-The Evolution of a Gentleman
Refusing to play in the band on the Titanic, Cracker continued on their
own musical path, though it took them futher away from the 'mainstream'.
1998's release of "Gentleman's Blues", was an apt title. A moody, beautiful
and evocative release, it proved the band had all but grown up. Though still
peppered with irreverence, the overall impression was one of maturity and a
sense of ennui. Lowery's lyrics had always been clever and pithy, but with
maturity came a literary poeticism truly unusual. Had Dylan Thomas and
Bukowski produced a bastard love child, Lowery would have been it. .
One fine day
This blackbird's mute gonna sing again
One fine day
So all you sinners come out
And all you drunkards crawl out
Come into the light of one fine day"
CHAPTER 5-The Merits of Perseverence
While the music industry continued it's downward spiral, Cracker motored on.
The next few years saw two more releases from Cracker - "Garage D'Or" a
double-disc greatest hits compilation, as well as 'Forever' in 2002. The
band continued writing and performing steadily, though somewhat under the
mainstream radar. However, by this point, the location of the radar was
really irrelevant. The band's years, of well-crafted, clever and sonically
shifting releases plus near continuous touring had firmly entrenched them
with a multitude of fans. Fans, who were far more concerned with quality
of music than who held that week's #1 slot on the Billboard chart. Cracker
could proudly say they had survived for more than a decade on musical
prowess, adaptability and perseverance. An accomplishment few of their
1992 contemporaries could claim.
'Til I was alone in that shipwrecked house
Through the porthole sea, an epiphany
I would never leave this place alive
I drink gin with the old ex-pats
We are broken things from a broken past
And it comes near, but just out of grasp
The alchemist words that would bring her back"
CHAPTER 6-The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The true nature of "if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger", would
appear evident on Cracker's 2006 release, 'Greenland'. Lowery had overcome
several dark years of personal trials and emerged bruised and battered,
though stronger. He was no gentler when turning his acerbic observational
eye inward as is evident with songs like "Something You Ain't Got" and
"Sidi Infni". Though, through it all- more than a decade of record labels,
music industry woes, endless stages, cities, touring vans, personal and
professional achievements and challenges, remains the intrinsic charm and
lasting secret of Cracker's appeal- their ability to see and convey that
everything around us is both ugly and graceful, it just depends on how you
look at it...
Bridget Hollenbeck.
Cracker is currently touring in support of it's latest release Greenland
and will soon be in the studio working on a new album.
Bio for Cracker - Greenland
by Mike Ruffino (for JLM)
... "we're back on the block
with our freedom rock..."
— Everybody Gets One For Free, Greenland
Impelling as always, on Cracker's latest, Greenland, the band intensifies with a sort of new-fashioned 'freedom rock' - provided you separate the two words and re-pair them without the retro- kitschy irrelevance. Greenland is as rootsy as it is experimental, and as foreign as it is familiar. Few bands among the modern rock set could make a record as diverse and cohesive. Of course fewer still have a singer with the unalienable bragging rights of David Lowery, who, quite naturally, has made Greenland anything but a boast.
What's different about Greenland, if not clear from the start, is certainly evident by the album's conclusion, or rather, catharsis. The wry pop song-craft that's been synonymous with the band for more than a decade has been switched out for a reeling, dramatic narrative - and not a fictional one. The album mirrors a life in considerable transition; really, a sonic snapshot of David Lowery's exposed nerves plunging into a bucket of ice water.
Like any real process self-discovery, Greenland is a kaleidoscopic sort of journey, swirling and fading, confident one moment, half-terrified the next. In "Something You Ain't Got" (It's hard to tell what it is and what it's not/until it's something you ain't got) absence itself becomes artifact, almost a trophy, "but it's all right"; Lowery is self-effacing and impatient in the sway of "Maggie" but always short of desperate; "Where Have Those Days Gone", is an upbeat elegy (notable not least of all for being rock's only song in recent memory name-checking Thomas Pynchon AND syndicated astrologer Rob Brezsny in the same verse). The Americana-flavored drawl of the first quarter of the album falls away - and none too gently - with the riff-rock of "Gimme One More Chance", which reminds (or informs) that David Lowery has always paid exceptional tribute to his influences, in this case ZZTop (later, in the case of "Sidi Ifni" there's more than a hint of Pink Floyd, and "Minotaur" is strangely seamless mix of both Floyd and ZZTop). Then you're yanked into an Appalachian shanty and given a slug of bathtub gin with the dirty stomp "I'm Glad She Ain't Never Coming Back"; then pensively "drifting down the coast" only to be ambushed by "drunken friends" in "I Need Better Friends". Misery comes out of Lowery's mouth "like butterflies" in "Night Falls", and "Better Times Are Coming Are Way" sounds distinctly as if they are not, with Lowery so up close and personal with his inner Orwellian menace; in "Everybody Gets One For Free", Lowery has "a vision of the Blessed Virgin/but now I'm not sure at all"; and "Darling We're Out Of Time" is a strangely hopeful ode to surrender. Greenland on the whole feeds on contradiction, and questions without answers.
The album is unusual and complex, but flows easily from Cracker's new lineup, sounding nothing less than spontaneous at times. Along with Lowery and guitarist / band co-founder Johnny Hickman are keyboardist Kenny Margolis, drummer Frank Funaro (formerly of The Dictators, among others), and Victor Krummenacher (Camper Van Beethoven), and for very good reason (see: Greenland, Cracker). But during the course of making half-dozen albums, Cracker developed a working method that situated the band at the center of a community of guests and contributors, a sort of musical meetinghouse.
Said Lowery to NYROCK.COM a few years back, "It's very rewarding for Johnny and me. It's almost like a Cracker concept, a concept that was never verbalized, but working with guest musicians is really important for us. They have an energy and idea input. There's a certain dynamic in working with strangers and we both like that. We always make sure to invite a couple of musicians we've never met before".
Stephen Koester (bass), Miguel Urbiztondo (drums, percussion), Cam DiNuzio (bass guitar), Matthew Trowbridge (keyboards), Matt Durant (keyboards), Craig Harmon (organ, keyboards), David Immerglück (guitar), Mark Linkous (guitar, synthesizers), Margaret White (violin), Alan Weatherhead (pedal steel and keys), Lauren Hoffman, Casey Martin and Caitlin Carey (backing vocals) all help to make Greenland a warmer place.
That such a community should pull together around Cracker should come as no surprise to those who know Lowery's musical history, inextricable from the story of what came to be known as 'alternative rock'.
In the mid-nineteen eighties in Santa Cruz, California, David Lowery and Victor Krummenacher formed Camper Van Beethoven, and their jangly and stoned "Take The Skinheads Bowling" became an instant college radio staple, kind of a coded but equally joyous "Louie, Louie" for the Reagan-Bush years. CVB was the only band going that could, for example, finesse the relevant weird tension out of Black Flag's "Wasted" by slowing it down with a honky-tonk beat and adding a half-schizoid violin, and in David Lowery had a singer whose bong-loaded Zen-punk lyrics resonated no matter how puzzling and surreal they got. What came to be called 'alternative' music had just begun.
Camper Van Beethoven disbanded, rather eventfully in Sweden, following their second major label release. But by then, 1991, the world in question had changed considerably, and not without help from CVB, so when David Lowery formed Cracker in its wake, the band fit nicely into this new ever-widening niche he'd helped create. Cracker's sound had less in common with Camper's exotic excursions, more in common with the Kinks and Southern roots music. Where CVB was eccentric, Cracker was smoothly eclectic. In '92 Lowery, guitarist Johnny Hickman, Davey Faragher (later replaced by Bob Rupe) enlisted drummers and percussionists Jim Keltner, Rick Jaeger, and Phil Jones, and released their eponymous debut on Virgin. That record offered a hooky sociological diagnosis, "Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now)", that proved to be quite correct. The song was taken to heart by modern rock radio, hitting #1. The band followed up a year later with Kerosene Hat , containing an enormous hit and instant (freshly coined) 'alternative' classic called "Low". And lo, the band had a gold record.
Since shortly after the tour for Cracker's The Golden Age, Lowery spent considerable time putting his inimitable sonic humanism in the service of other artists as a producer, first with San Francisco's Cat Head , and on to Sparklehorse's obviously titled Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, Counting Crows, and most recently Jason Molina of Magnolia Electric Company as well as Lucero. "I just have to feel like there's a real strong artistic vision with the artist, and if there is, then it's fun to make a record. If there isn't, it's like assembling furniture or something." Sufficient here to say David Lowery does not make a lot of furniture, figuratively or otherwise.
Greenland's new more emotional panorama is not without Lowery's trademark candor—twisting references (we were ripped/and we were torn ; or it's bar time at the Scottish gates of dawn/there's a piper playing on the cemetery lawn), an eye for character (you dress like a chick/ drawn by an outsider artist), and utterly unique lyrical cadence (no one but David Lowery can sing this with the such old-soul conviction: hanging out with folks just half my age/buying vintage synthesizers/sometimes skater shoes/sometimes re-issues of those vintage synths from "I Need Better Friends" (please note organ solo therein). There's plenty of mirth in the fog, flotsam, the thorns, the broken light, the old circus tent, and any number of places on Greenland. Greenland's openness and virtue—doesn't come with the sort of egoistic 'soul-bearing' that usually passes for it. It comes from someplace else altogether, probably someplace huge and faraway and strange. Like, say, Greenland.
Cracker Biography
courtesy AMG, corrections made by Cracker
Cracker may be considered a somewhat traditional rock band (almost comparable to roots rock at times), yet singer/guitarist David Lowery's roots were anything but traditional since he fronted the '80s alternative outfit Camper Van Beethoven. Shortly after Camper Van Beethoven called it quits in 1990, Lowery began demoing material along with guitarist Johnny Hickman and bassist Davey Faragher, eventually going by the name Cracker (several of these early demos would eventually surface under the title of David Lowery Demo Mixes).
By 1991, the newly formed band had signed a recording contract with Virgin and enlisted the help of several drummers/percussionists (Jim Keltner, Rick Jaeger, and Phil Jones), issuing their self-titled debut in 1992. A year later, Cracker issued their best-known album, Kerosene Hat, which spawned the popular MTV/rock radio hit "Low."
But by the time of their third release, 1996's The Golden Age, Faragher had been replaced with Bob Rupe, while the drum spot was occupied by a trio of players: Charlie Quintana, Eddie Bayers, and Johnny Hott. After the album's supporting tour wrapped up, Lowery briefly concentrated on projects outside the band, producing such artists as Joan Osborne, Lauren Hoffman, Magnet, Fighting Gravity, and Sparklehorse (all at his Sound of Music recording studio in Richmond, VA), and co-producing the Counting Crows along with former Camper Van Beethoven producer Dennis Herring. Lowery also found the time to co-star in director Eric Drilling's independent film River Red (also music directing the film, which Hickman scored) and appeared in another film, director Matt Leutwyler's This Space Between Us.
By the end of the decade, Cracker seemed to have settled on a somewhat permanent lineup as drummer Frank Funaro and keyboardist/accordion player Kenny Margolis joined up with Lowery, Hickman, and Rupe, issuing 1998's Gentleman's Blues. During the early 21st century, Cracker continued to tour and even enlisted the help of several of Lowery's former Camper Van Beethoven members on select dates (bassist Victor Krummenacher, guitarist/violinist Jonathan Segel, and guitarist Greg Lisher). They issued a live set in 2001, Traveling Apothecary Show & Revue, while a year later, Cracker issued their fifth studio album overall, Forever. Forever completed the bands slow progression back to the eclecticism of Lowery's former group CVB.
In 2003 the band released its 6th studio album Countrysides. As the title would suggest this record was a exploration of the bands country roots. Of note this record was the result of the band playing redneck and biker bars under the psuedonymn "Ironic Mullet". This Enhanced disc also contains a short documentary on the making of this record. The group has also been the subject of a pair of compilations over the years: 1994's The Virgin Years (credited to Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker) and 2000's double-disc Garage d'Or. Lowery is currently touring North America and Europe in support of the new Camper Van Beethoven CD "New Roman Times". But Cracker is still active and continues to play shows and record.
The band recently began work on a new batch of songs, to be released in early 2006.