Loading summary
Transcript123 lines
- [00:00]
David Lowery
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Scott Bertram
Hello again everybody and welcome into another edition of Political Beats. Thanks so much for joining us. Scott Bertram here on X at Scott Bertram, my tag team partner standing by as always, Jeff Blair. Jeff, how are you doing?
- [00:21]
Jeff Blair
Great and really happy to be here this time. We are part two for part two in what is now becoming a venerable series indeed.
- [00:28]
Scott Bertram
You can find us of course over@nationalreview.com for new shows and also encourage you to join the Patreon page too@patreon.com politicalbeats but we might as well get right to our guests. That's why we're here today. A two time guest. We like to celebrate when our guests come back multiple times. We have many, multiple guests here on the program. This is one of our all time favorites. He's the founder of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, producer, artist, rights advocate, also a senior lecturer in music business at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business. His new album, I Hold Fathers, Sons and Brothers, available now 3 LP, 2 CD set at davidlowery music.com crackersoul.com highly, highly recommend you also follow along on the blog at 300 songs or over at Substack as well. He's on X at David C. Lowry and he's here with us today once again, David Lowery, thanks so much for joining us here on Political Beats.
- [01:32]
David Lowery
Thank you. Thanks for having me on again.
- [01:35]
Scott Bertram
We appreciate the time we spent so much time last time going through your career and the music of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven and people can check that out. And this time we, yeah, it was.
- [01:47]
David Lowery
Like a hardcore history, like four hour episode, basically. It was pretty amazing. Or an acquired. That's sort of.
- [01:55]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, we put you through your paces on that one.
- [01:57]
David Lowery
Yeah, I know. Wow, that was great. That's a definitive. I often point people to it if they want to know more. So thank you.
- [02:05]
Scott Bertram
Thank you for that. Appreciate it. And thank you for this, the new album Fathers, Sons and Brothers. And I want to give you the opportunity to sort of set up how this all came about. People have been asking you off and on. And in fact, when you started the 300 Songs blog, like back in 2009, 2010, I remember distinctly you writing at some point that you were going to turn that into a book, which would be a pseudo autobiography based on things you've written through the years that didn't quite happen. And now this album is meant to be a kind of a musical autobiography. Tell us a bit about how it came together and how you pieced together the Details of your life.
- [02:48]
David Lowery
Right. Well, so just a second on 300 songs. 300 songs was my blog where I decided to. I was kind of. I was underemployed at the time. So I decided just every day write about pretty much every cracker camper song I could think of. And it was an interesting experience and stuff like that. And yes, I talked about turning it into a book, but it's a little odd for publisher. You know, couldn't quite get their heads around it. And then I was going to do it myself, and I just sort of realized, well, this is a whole different skill set, you know, to write a book. You guys are professional writers. You write columns all the time, stuff like that. It's a hard discipline. So to me, when I did start to kind of think, well, maybe I should do something autobiographical again in 2018, I thought about it and I thought, well, you know, maybe what I actually should do is just sort of just pick a bunch of topics that would be chapters of a book and then just try to write songs about them. And then pick different, like list the characters, important people in your life and try to write songs about them. And I just kind of played around with it for a few weeks and it started. Started coming out pretty easily. So I decided this would be my next project. So I really started in 2018. I got sidetracked by some other stuff, picked it up again in 2019, put out a limited edition CD of some of these songs in 2019. But it really kicked into overdrive when March 14th, we played our last cracker show. March 14th to 2020, we played our last Cracker show outside of Anchorage, Alaska. And then we went into 16 months of no shows. Covid, you know, this is the COVID shutdown I'm talking about. It really kicked in during that because I was like, well, what do I do now? So I really dove into this, and although it didn't start before COVID it really became the classic sort of COVID album that a number of. Or albums that a number of other people did during.
- [05:08]
Jeff Blair
A sub genre of music.
- [05:10]
David Lowery
Yeah, for sure it is. There was. There's a little sub genre of laptop album, mostly laptop albums, where everybody's kind of doing their parts independently in their own home studios and they're shipping it around.
- [05:26]
Jeff Blair
You and Taylor Swift, two peas in a pod, right?
- [05:29]
David Lowery
Two peas in a pod, yeah. Me and Tay Tay go way back. So that's a joke, by the way, for the people who are not humor navel theorists.
- [05:38]
Jeff Blair
They're like, well, maybe they do I mean, who knows?
- [05:40]
David Lowery
Yeah, so, yeah, so I kind of became a Covid project. But like I say in the liner notes is like, you know, a lot of people have sort of said, you should write an autobiography. You should try to autobiography. I did a couple false starts. What's in my wheelhouse is writing songs. And so I did it that way. Now that said, I decided then to just write substacks about each of the songs or substacks or blogs about each of the songs on the record. So in effect I have back into a written autobiography. And now of course, my. My wife, who's my manager as well too, is like, you need to take the 300 songs. You need to take the Father, Sons and Brother blog and you just need to put out a book. And I'll do it if it has. If nobody else is going to publish it. Right. So I kind of end up doing a. I've ended up basically essentially writing memoirs or an autobiography anyway.
- [06:40]
Jeff Blair
So point out, by the way, for those aren't aware, the album is fantastic on its own. And it's one of those things where it's wonderful to just have the lyric sheet, the book that comes with it, along with you. And we'll talk about this when you listen to these songs because they're so direct in so many cases, and then in some other cases they're indirect, they're elusive. But it was almost hilarious for me to go to the blog and then find. Find like the explanation for every one of these songs where I was wondering, like, I wonder what that exactly means. And now. Oh, well, there. That's exactly what it means. It's. These things are wonderful to listen to, but it's almost like flipping to the back of the book to find the answers, to find out. Exactly.
- [07:17]
David Lowery
It's like the teachers. It's the teacher's edition.
- [07:19]
Jeff Blair
It's the teacher's manual.
- [07:21]
David Lowery
Yes, the instructor's edition of the history, whatever, you know, and it really, it.
- [07:26]
Jeff Blair
Really is worth checking out too for some of these songs as we'll get into because, you know, I did not understand fully what they were about just on the surface or I had an inkling and then I had it confirmed sometimes. There's one song in particular that confirmed everything I suspected it was about by the fact that you actually made no commentary on it whatsoever when you published the lyrics of it on the blog. But we'll get to that in a moment. I just want to emphasize how wonderful this piece is, this album is, and maybe, Scott, you can add your thoughts here for Those who aren't aware of it, this is a much more folk country, a much more acoustic sounding record than what you might expect out of, I don't know, Cracker, certainly out of Camper Van Beethoven, at least in their earlier phase. But it's not sedate. I was actually a little worried when we agreed to do this. You know, I was like, what if I don't like this record? Boy, it's a double cd. It's full of autobiographical music, mostly wooden, you know, Is this one of these like, you know, like long, self indulgent things that's going to make me feel bored as I have to trawl through the boring facts of some person's life? This thing could not be further from it. Just an entire series of. Narratively, the narrative thrust of this record is kind of amazing given that these are songs that are written in different periods and different times. And boy, most people don't pull off double albums, but this is a concept album if it weren't an autobiography because the narrative structure of it is so clear and is so well put together that it really does feel like a full story of a person's life. And so that part of it impresses me. This should have been a self indulgent mess and it's the opposite of it. David, that's some kind of a miracle. Yeah, well, Scott. Well, I don't know, maybe Scott thinks it's a mess. I think Scott's actually. No, I'm kidding.
- [09:07]
Scott Bertram
It's magnificent. It really is. And Jeff talks about the narrative flow and the narrative flow is so strong that it's a lengthy album as, as Jeff has mentioned, three LPs, two CDs, but it never feels, it doesn't feel its length because the events and the way that you're taken through is so powerful.
- [09:29]
Jeff Blair
The musical changes in mood too. It's not monochromatic at all. It's not just the same four chords or like a violin here and a folk guitar there? No, no, this stuff, it actually, as I said, this is not hard rock, but it really just like some of these songs are, you know, got a real joy to them. Real vibe, real darkness. They're, they're, they're not all the same even remotely. It's surprisingly diverse for just the way that it's put together instrumentally.
- [09:54]
Scott Bertram
David, you had mentioned on, I think on X that it's difficult to sort of thread the needle on finding an audience for something like this. Musically it's not camper and it's not cracker. It's not sort of straight Americana. I was talking to a buddy who's just beginning to explore a little deeper into Graham Parsons work. And I'm like, there you go. Cosmic American music. That's what he called it. The blending of all these American styles, Blues and country and folk and even psychedelica a little bit. And it got me thinking, maybe that's a decent way to describe the sound on this record. Like cosmic American music. A blending of the west coast and the east coast and a bit of Texas and Arkansas. There's a little bit of everything through. Even a song with a great groove like the title track. Is it maybe cosmic American music?
- [10:46]
David Lowery
It could be. It definitely shares some. It. It shares some similarities with that sort of late 60s, early 70s, sort of hippie country. That's definitely part of it. You know, the guitars go psychedelic sometimes and stuff like that. It's not a pure Americana record. It would have been an easier road to sort of hoe because. Or row to hoe, sorry. And if it was pure Americana, just because there's a, you know, there's a good sort of superstructure of writers and reviewers and websites, podcasts and radio stations and stuff like that. But it just. It wouldn't fit in there. Like, I did kind of lean that way at first, and then it's just like. It's just too good to do Father, Sons and Brothers as sort of this sort of 60s, early 70s, sort of psychedelic, sort of almost like glam pop, you know, or something like that. Glam rock elements to it or something like that. So I'm glad I did that. You know, the other thing just sort of the process of like sort of when you do. I mean, I used to kind of poo poo the laptop records, but it's really. Or home studio sort of one guy playing everything sort of stuff, or a couple people playing things together. But it's really sort of developed into a form and I found my own sort of angle on doing the laptop record. And the way I did it was just like, hey, I can play with anybody by doing this, right? I can collaborate with anybody. And so this guy, Luke Moller, who's an Australian but is a phenomenal American fiddler style, you know, I ended up. A lot of stuff I just sent to him to see what he would do. And then later in the record I sent things to Megan Slankard, who's a sort of indie pop female writer out of San Francisco, does a lot of session work and stuff like that. And so I could just kind of collaborate with Everybody. I collaborate with the Bell Rays, Belle Rays, which is sort of a sole punk sort of ensemble. And, you know, I ended up drawing from all these styles by using a lot of different musicians. I think there ends up being. I can't remember how many people on the record. Was it 15 or 18? I can't remember. 13. But it ended up being a lot of people I collaborated with. Including members of Cracker. Yes.
- [13:27]
Jeff Blair
Well, I think.
- [13:28]
David Lowery
I think that's kind of how I got to the Americana. So sort of cosmic Americana as you describe it. I think that's how I got to it. It was just sort of the process itself.
- [13:38]
Scott Bertram
Jeff.
- [13:39]
Jeff Blair
I know Scott said that he had a bunch of nerd questions, a bunch of nerdy questions.
- [13:43]
Scott Bertram
Yes.
- [13:44]
Jeff Blair
He was hoping that I would come up with a more general audience interest questions. But my confession is I have a bunch of even nerdier questions to ask than Scott. I guess I'll start with this. Okay. So I'm fascinated by the construction, by the way albums are sequenced and structured. Right. And so, and this one obviously feels, especially given how much time it had to come together, that there were a lot of deliberate choices made. I noticed pretty early on that almost felt like a divide. Disc one is Campervan Beethoven in the early years of your career. And then disc two immediately begins with the beginning of Cracker and like, later on in life and sort of your reflections now as an older man. You know, the great song about how, you know, they gave you a job at teaching at the University of Georgia, but you just couldn't leave your friends behind. You had to get back out on the road. Was the last. I can't remember the last. What was the name of that song? Every time I try to get out. That's the name of the song, right? That's like the penultimate song on the album. So it's good, basically, from beginning to end. And then I wonder about, like, why certain songs were chosen to be resurrected or why they were placed at certain, you know, points in the album. So, for example, I think one of the most fascinating songs on the record is called Piney Woods. It ends disc one, and it's this random little story, I guess, about a family memory. It seems like it was, like, your uncle, perhaps your father's brother, who killed in some, you know, bizarre incident in. In Arkansas somewhere. If I'm understanding the story correctly. This is what you can get just from reading the lyrics. And that's a fascinating sort of personal anecdote. And I'm asking myself, why does that end the first disc, as opposed to coming somewhere earlier in the narrative, somewhere else. Like, where did you choose to put that? Or a song, for example, like, it's a great one. It's just, you know, everybody. You know, everybody get a day job. Right? Which is, you know, comes after. Narratively speaking. It comes after the breakup of Camper Van Beethoven. But why there? As opposed to, say, after the end of Cracker, you know, when the pandemic comes? These are the kinds of nerd questions. But I just wonder, like, what kind of thoughts did you give to putting the songs where they did? Why that one Camper Van Beethoven song, Darken youn Door? Of all the ones to come back and return to that one from. From El Camino Real, I think, why choose that one? How does that fit in to, like, the narrative? Or is it just a really good song?
- [15:56]
David Lowery
Well, okay, so we're backwards from there. So Darken your Door was a. I thought it was a kind of a good Camper Van Beethoven song that kind of got overlooked. It fits very much in the sort of cosmic Americana sort of vein. In a way, it. And I realized that the story I tell in that is I could kind of go through sort of the rather. As these things go, the rather sort of amicable divorce that I went through with my first wife. I mean, it's never really totally amicable, but I think we actually did pretty good with it. And I thought I could actually kind of tell that story sort of what was surrounding us, you know, what was going on with our. In our world professionally and our lives. And, you know, I'm sort of talking about the band and the music business a little bit, but it's really kind of our life that I'm talking about. I just thought I could recast that song in that way, and that just.
- [17:10]
Jeff Blair
Makes perfect sense to me. That's exactly the kind of answer I'm looking for here.
- [17:13]
David Lowery
Yes. It was just kind of spurred the moment, and I just, like, knocked it out in, like, maybe, like, half an hour, rewriting the words. I was like, oh, my God, I could rewrite the words and just tell this part of our story right there. And so I did it. And sometimes, you know, when something's easy, that's like a message to. To, like, take care of, like, that this is an important thing. If it's easy, right. You just put it in the record, right? We knocked this out. It's easy. It's kind of light, but not really. It's kind of got a light gloss across the top of it. So I did that.
- [17:53]
Jeff Blair
The other song, by the way, you'll notice I had to ask about that question because you haven't gotten to that part of the blog yet. You haven't written the entries for some of the last songs. I did read the whole thing, and.
- [18:04]
David Lowery
I'm writing that one this weekend, so when I'm in Winnipeg. So, yeah, so that's that one. Everybody get a day job would love.
- [18:19]
Jeff Blair
The title of that song.
- [18:21]
David Lowery
Yeah.
- [18:21]
Jeff Blair
Musically. Okay.
- [18:22]
David Lowery
Okay.
- [18:23]
Jeff Blair
I got things to say.
- [18:23]
Scott Bertram
That is.
- [18:24]
David Lowery
That is actually fully like a. Done as a sevilliana or a flamenco kind of tune. It's actually more technically a Sevilliana. And I mean, so I just wrote that because of COVID Right. I mean, I wrote that, like, April, whatever, you know, knocked it out and just, you know, here we are in a sort of, you know, a band or. In a band. My life is groovy compared to what it might. Or something like that. And then, like, there's no more touring. Right. And I was like, whoa. And then, you know, also, too, I thought I was being smart by. I married a concert promoter. So, like, you know, we were on both sides of the table, you know, for a concert. So it was the perfect hedge. Exactly.
- [19:17]
Jeff Blair
Negotiating against yourself.
- [19:18]
David Lowery
Right. Yeah. But, you know, and she lost her job as well, so we, like, lost, like, 80% of our income. And it was just, like, super frustrating. But then I was just trying to make light of it, like, okay, well, here you are, you know, you're no longer in the music business. Just get a day job and, you know, earn some money or whatever like that. But then I realized it's like. Well, this actually kind of fits into the autobiographical part. I mean, it's just a little snap. The song is. It's not even. It's barely two minutes long, if. Two minutes. Right.
- [19:49]
Jeff Blair
It's a really clever little beat. I. In my notes. You're going to laugh at this. I was like, this could have been played by Arcade Fire if they'd electrified it. It has that kind of sound to it. Of course. It's the ultimate. The ultimate downbeat anthem. It's whatever the opposite of Wake up is. This is actually like, forget about dreams. Just get a damn job.
- [20:05]
David Lowery
Yeah, exactly. Forget your dreams. Get a job. So it just sort of fit in this little spot in the record Camper Van Beethoven breaks Up. And so, you know, that's kind of what happened to us. It's like, we were all.
- [20:20]
Jeff Blair
That song is brutal, by the way. The song we hate you is just so brutal where it's just like this dirge. It was just like everybody sitting across the city like, we hate you. We're sick of you. We're never going to be friends again.
- [20:33]
David Lowery
I know. Which is Tough Moment, which is an amazing chorus, which is a. Makes a great chorus. And it's a. You know, it's a very singular moment that's etched in my memory. We hate you. It really did happen. It was sort of. We had a band meeting, and then that's what Victor said. It's like, look, we hate you, and we're never going to be your friends again. You know, it's like, this is done right? And so, yeah. Which was probably a little overstated and a little overdramatic, but at the same time, I was like, well, if I'm going to write about the Campervan Beethoven breakup, that needs to be the chorus, right? So we. So everybody Get a Day Job is paired with that song, you know, and, you know, it's. Even though I sort of didn't really ride this part of the record, I was like, well, it fits perfectly. Because then what happens is about kind of a year and a half of us all. All of us sort of drifting around and trying to figure out what we're trying to do with our lives and stuff like that. And I'm trying to get another record deal, you know, and that's what the.
- [21:39]
Jeff Blair
Leaving key member clause is about. It's like all the financial issues, and then you come home, you find your storage unit's just been, like, ransacked by a robber. It's the worst feeling in the world.
- [21:47]
David Lowery
The. I would. Yeah, I know. And not even, like, literally, probably the night, like, I was gone for four months, but it was like the night before I went there, it seemed like they broke into the storage locker. It just seemed like it had just happened or maybe hours before I got there, which was just some kind of really deep insult. In a weird way.
- [22:14]
Scott Bertram
That'S the only song I ever have known that includes the phrase unrecooped debt. I don't think there's any other pop song out there that includes that phrase.
- [22:22]
David Lowery
Or the leaving key member clause. You know, I have a very quick.
- [22:25]
Scott Bertram
Darken your door question. Then I'll ask a bigger question. Darken youn Door and Merry Christmas, Emily have a parallel lyrical structure where we had some good times, we had some bad times. And I'm just curious, do you know you're doing that? Is that an Easter egg for fans? Is it just phrases that make sense of the song? Because, I mean, I noticed it immediately.
- [22:48]
David Lowery
Well, somebody pointed it out when we were recording the Camper Van Beethoven version of the song. So I didn't really intend it, but I was like, well, I'm not going to change that. Then, you know, because then that, you know, that is a little reference back to another song. I don't know. It's kind of a fun little self conscious thing.
- [23:13]
Scott Bertram
All right, so here's my big question. And I struggled with how to ask this because I'm fascinated by the way that you write about redemption in your characters and more recently, especially about grace. In that Piney woods entry, you write about the radical nature of grace and your family members at Arkansas who have kind of shady pasts. And your uncle, I think was apologizing for being in the Ku Klux Klan. But you say, nowhere else else in my life have I found people so willing to acknowledge their wrongdoing, seek forgiveness, express genuine gratitude for what they've been given in this regard. I often wish I were more like them. Vending Machine I said on X I could spend an hour talking just about that song.
- [23:55]
Jeff Blair
That is a fantastic song.
- [23:57]
Scott Bertram
That's today's entry. And in the end of Today's entry on 300 songs, Grace mentions Grace. And in your entry today, you talk about the rat and the vending machine and finding a direct connection to God you weren't finding faking it anymore. And so I want to ask something about God, but I don't want to be so direct about it. So I want to ask this. Earlier in, I wrote a song called Take the Skinheads Bowling. You Talk about Dave McDaniel who left the band because he felt a calling from God to serve and he went all these missions. And it's a great line where you say, sadly you've never heard of him and you've barely heard of me who went on to play music. Looking back now, because you could have done anything in your life, really, right? You had a great, you great parents, great family, great upbringing, went to college, could have done math, you know, could have done math eventually teaching business, you could have done finance. Do you think that there's also. Do you think that, do you think that God calls people for secular duties as well, meaning to use your gifts as best as possible, that you were called to be a songwriter and a performer and a musician. And that's why they keep pulling you back in, as you say. And every time I try to get out, because this is really what you're supposed to be doing. And it's not just because you like it, but because it's what your life was supposed to be. Do you feel that?
- [25:18]
David Lowery
Yes. And it took me a long time to kind of realize that. And that's a lot of what I'm going through on this record now. Now, I mean, I. I don't think, like I'm changing world, but I do feel like I was sort of given some weird innate gift to hear music in my head and put it down on paper. And also by trying to write a book through false starts, trying to write a book about my life, I realized that my strength is actually the songwriting. So that's why I did this album. Now, I don't mean like, I. I don't mean like I have a gift that's, you know, gonna change the world or cost. You know, I'm definitely not writing that kind of music, but it is, you know, like, a strength that I feel like I was just born with. And it's not like, necessarily. My grandfather was some sort of fiddler, but he chopped off his thumb and finger, and so he never. I don't know if he was gifted, but I know he did play music. But other than that, there's not really music people in my family. It's just sort of like. I mean, my family love music, but I feel like this is something I'm compelled to do, and it's a gift that I have. And it's a. It's quirky. It's. It doesn't. It's not in. It's not in the. You know, it's like, I'm not. You know, I'm not going to write pop songs. Right. You know, standard country songs and stuff like that. Just something my. My younger son, when he was about 5, was walking around the house just, like, singing songs perfectly in tune. And also, like, I was like, he was singing Ring of Fire for some reason. I go, he's singing that in the white key. Like, went over the piano and played the notes. Yeah, he's singing that the right key. So maybe it is in my family, but, yeah, I feel like there's a lot of stuff I ended up. I had to. I learned. Had to learn a lot of things the hard way. But eventually, I think I. You know, like, I ended up doing what I was supposed to do. So other than that, I mean, that might be a little Calvinist, which I am not, but there's something going on there that I feel like isn't me willing to stop. It's outside of me. Yeah. You know, does that make sense? You know? Yeah.
- [28:07]
Jeff Blair
You say you don't write pop songs, but the thing is, there are actually quite a few songs in here that I remember. Things like, this is a fantastic, fantastic pop song. And then I went and read what you wrote about the song Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey, which is a fantastic song on disc two. And this is, again, this is like. I guess narratively speaking, this is the moment where you're at the Cracker reunion era and you're just not feeling it anymore and you're having that question, like, is this all there is? Is there anything left alive? The lyrical sentiment itself is great, but it's the music I had. First of all, I did not remember that it was a remake of an older Cracker song. So I'm just listening to this. I'm thinking, you know what this sounds like? This sounds like the J. This sounds like one of those B sides that would have been written by the Jam, where Paul Goeller is, you know, going on acoustic guitar and there are strings because it has a certain pop melodic sensibility where, like, you know, put this in a different instrumental form and I guess it would be played on the radio. And again, finding out that it's an old Cracker song makes all the sense in the world in that context. And apparently it's as dark as they get, which is what I. I read the story behind it. Yeah.
- [29:11]
David Lowery
Right. Well, I'm glad you think it's a pop song, but you might also. Also be weird as well, too. I don't.
- [29:19]
Jeff Blair
I don't mean radio play literally.
- [29:20]
David Lowery
The chorus. One of the chorus lines is. Oh, yeah. Lines on hotel bibles with fallen debutantes, you know, in hotel rooms. You know, I always think of the.
- [29:32]
Jeff Blair
Music before the lyric. Right.
- [29:34]
David Lowery
But you know what?
- [29:35]
Jeff Blair
There's other examples of that, like, it won't last long. Which, like, you summarize the entire career. Cracker up in one. One song. It's all it takes, but it's perfect just from beginning to end. We had it we high Then we. We. What was it? We asked the crowd to chant the phone number of our record executive and they fired us the next day. It's a great line and.
- [29:54]
David Lowery
But that again.
- [29:57]
Jeff Blair
All you needed to say is just one quick song and it's another great one. Very, very snappy little tune. Maybe on my idea of pop is warped, but I think this stuff is instantly appealing.
- [30:06]
David Lowery
Well, it don't last long. The song you're talking about that probably is the most pop chorus on the record. There's actually the old alternative rock radio Station in Atlanta is kind of has resurrected itself and it is actually playing that song which is.
- [30:22]
Jeff Blair
Oh, there you go.
- [30:23]
David Lowery
It was just crazy. But so that one, you know, my wife also says that about that song and it also has the classic guitar counter melody. It sounds like Hickman, but it actually isn't because Hickman couldn't do a laptop record. He's not high tech. So his. One of his best friends, Jim Dalton is, and they play very similar styles of music and guitar. So I sent it to him and he comes up with that great counter melody, which is like the way a Tom Petty song works. It often has a simple, repetitive guitar lick in the chorus. That's the counter melody to the vocal melodies. So maybe in a way that is a pop song. It don't last long. Enjoy it while you can. It don't last long.
- [31:11]
Scott Bertram
You know, you mentioned Johnny Hickman and that's a great reminder for me to ask this question. I am fascinated, fascinated by long term creative partnerships, Penn and Teller, magic, or even something like Pat Sajak and Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune. Like, there must be enormous force that actually is trying to pull you apart for various reasons. Living in different parts of the country, different personalities, different stages in life and family issues outside of, say, professional or contractual obligations. What are the forces that keep you and Johnny together now for 35 plus years or so?
- [32:01]
David Lowery
Well, I mean, it helps that we have very similar backgrounds. His father was military at the base next to my father's base. One was the air transport and one was the bomber base. They're right next to each other in Southern California. But the same upbringing, the same, you know, like moved all over the world. I don't know. There's just so many similarities between our families. And we've known each other since I think I was 17. He was a little older than me. We didn't actually go to high school together. He's like four years older than me, but. And I mean, it's just literally like one of the people outside of my family I've known the longest in my life. And then there's just a weird thing that we do together. Like, I mean, I've played cracker songs with other people, but a lot of them just don't sound right unless he's playing them because. So I'm just getting like the really practical things about it. There's just a lot of that kind of stuff that in a band is way, way, way more important than like, necessarily like people like always getting along or seeing eye to eye and Stuff like that. There are these structural things that hold bands together in that way. And it's just like, literally, you know, it's like nobody really plays the low lick. Like, I. I don't even have to describe it. I remember him trying to teach somebody else. A friend of ours paid him like 200 just to teach him that lick because he's like sort of an aspiring guitar player, right? And it's just like nobody. Nobody can kind of do it. It just doesn't really work, right? But nobody can do it. And there's a bunch of songs that are like that. And so, I mean, I just really, on a fundamental level that's. That's kind of it, so. And there's a little bit of sort of this. You know, when you. When your family's in the military, you're more like, no matter what. You know, his dad was an officer, my dad was not. But no matter what, you're kind of in this sort of. You're more in sort of the lower middle class, sort of blue collar world in a weird way, you know, like the way a cop is or, you know, I don't know how to describe it, but like. And there's a certain outlook on the world that's a little sort of also. I mean, I'm as elitist as anybody when it comes to certain things, stuff like that. But there's definitely like kind of a non elitist sort of take that the band has that's like built into our personalities. Right. It's kind of why we called the band Cracker. You know, it's like, you know, it was sort of the 90s band with a food name kind of thing. But we also knew the subtext was gonna be that it was sort of like, yeah, sort of southern white trash, you know, and, you know, like, that is kind of built into our relationship in a way that, like, it isn't in the relationship with any of the members of Camper Van Beethoven. Right?
- [35:36]
Scott Bertram
Yeah, Jeff.
- [35:37]
David Lowery
Doctors. All those people were like. All their families were like doctors, bankers, pharmacists, college professors, you know, sort of a different thing. Not that I resent that or anything. Look at me, I'm a college professor. I am the cultural leaf. I'm in Hollywood and stuff like that. But that has. Can't be overemphasized that that's there in our relationship. Jeff, I have a question.
- [36:08]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, my question actually is, are you touring this music right now? And if any of our listeners were interested in coming to see you, would that be possible? I know you have been recently. But I wanted to know if you were out on the road now.
- [36:21]
David Lowery
Yeah, I plan to do this for a year. I haven't announced that many dates. It's a little tricky finding the right room and the right time to play there and stuff like that. I don't really feel like this is the kind of record that you go out and you just sort of, you know, you start in Atlanta and you march up the east coast and play all the indie rock rooms and stuff like that. It's not that kind of record. In fact, I've been like looking at. I'm doing a bookstore thing here in Athens. I'm doing. I've been actually looking at doing things like that because of the nature of the record. I just feel like. So I am torn for it. I promise I'll get to all the big cities, but it's. It's a much longer term project. It's more like when we're doing a book tour or something like that. So it's probably over. I probably can take about a year to get around the country and also get a couple European dates.
- [37:20]
Jeff Blair
I was hoping, hoping for a soon Chicago day, but no such clock.
- [37:25]
David Lowery
Probably in the fall.
- [37:27]
Scott Bertram
Yeah, get there eventually.
- [37:28]
Jeff Blair
It's not that bad actually.
- [37:30]
Scott Bertram
Scott, I gotta ask about Mexican Chickens, which is the first time this album just sort of props up and smacks you in the face. Right. I think Mexican Chickens is incredibly cinematic in its scope. You can, you can picture all of these things happening, all these events happening. You could make a movie out of Mexican Chickens, which is.
- [37:53]
Jeff Blair
And this is the one, by the way, where I was waiting to go to find on the website. Well, what's the essay on this going to be? And of course this is the one for which there is no essay.
- [38:03]
David Lowery
Yeah. So what I say is that I think the song tells the story really well and there's some kind of privacy issues and there that are not mine and because I'm fully willing to be, you know, forthright as possible. Brutally honest. But no, I understand there's. So there's a little bit of a composite here. It is largely one relationship and it's something that. Which is kind of crazy that in a way is that my wife urged me to write this song.
- [38:47]
Scott Bertram
It starts at the end and then tells the backstory and then leaves us in the end, right back at the beginning. So there's a great sort of circular nature to the lyrics. And when. I'm sure, you know, artistic choice when, when the music drops and we, we have, you Walking out the door and you say. Earlier, you say you talked about the having little girls with. With this woman. And then at the end, the little girls were there. I saw their faces in their hair, in her hair. But now I was clear. It was clear I would never be their father. That just smacks you. And it's seven minutes long. Again, we've talked earlier. Does not seem that long because the narrative structure is so. Is so solid. It's just a magnificently written song.
- [39:33]
David Lowery
Well, thank you so much.
- [39:34]
Jeff Blair
And it's followed immediately by the tales of dissolution and drunkenness on the European tour. By the way, Europass, another fantastic song. That one's got a real rhythm and force to it as well.
- [39:45]
David Lowery
Thank you. Well, you know, Mexican Chickens tells the dissolution of an early relationship with mine. Somebody that I probably had been a different era, we probably would have been married. Very important person in my life. But also tells a couple relationship stories from when I was young. Slightly fictionalized setting, but. And just. I. I mean, I probably, you know, wouldn't have written that song. Well, no, let me put it this way. That song probably would have been shorter and told the story less, except that it just started flowing out of me and just pen to paper, it just really, really, like, wanted to be a long song with lots of verses and lots of detail and stuff like that. And there's a really weird thing about this song in that the verses get longer and longer as they go along. They start out with, like, almost the normal length and hits the chorus and then strike slightly longer verse and hits the chorus. And then it was kind of doing the same thing again. And there was a third chorus. And I was listening to it with Drew Vandenberg, who mixed this, and he's like. He's like. He's like, do we really need to go back to the chorus? Would it be more powerful if that last verse was just, like three minutes long or whatever and it just didn't stop? And it's like, that's sort of what we were trying to figure out something. There's something not quite right here. And so we did the most absurd thing you would ever do, like any producer, mixer or any, like, record executive would tell you to do. It's just like, take the chorus out, remove the hook and remove the hook from the end, please.
- [42:06]
Jeff Blair
Chorus, avoid the chorus, Right?
- [42:08]
David Lowery
Yeah. And it's just the weirdest thing that it just. It just makes that end work. Taking the chorus out, like, just. It makes it really powerful. And it's just something. I mean, that is just Like, a strange thing to do. I've never done anything like that with the song, and somebody told me that, and I guess this is true, that actually it wasn't really till, you know, music was heavily commercialized by Tin Pan Alley, that songs were actually just verses and choruses were these kind of throwaways. Right. And that's kind of what we do with the song, you know, so it's harkening back to, like, an earlier age of American songwriting.
- [42:52]
Jeff Blair
It's much more of a traditional folk tune is what it feels like to me.
- [42:55]
David Lowery
Yeah.
- [42:55]
Jeff Blair
Something you could. Yeah.
- [42:57]
David Lowery
Scott. Yeah.
- [42:58]
Scott Bertram
So the closing kick here, which I mentioned on X Vending Machine, which the story's up today at the blog about you realizing that you want to get sober and you want to change your life, and you go to the AA meeting and work on that. Fathers, Sons, and brothers, which is sort of a continuation about being a better person and realizing how to deal with others in your life. Great groove song. Jeff knows our listeners know I listen to music a lot. When I'm mowing the lawn, I got an acre. I'm out there. Two hours, two and a half hours. I'm listening a lot. I'm mowing the lawn. David. I'm not supposed to be tearing up as I mow the lawn. And yet I live.
- [43:40]
Jeff Blair
In tree father. Man, that one kills me, actually.
- [43:43]
Scott Bertram
Yonder distant shores about losing your parents. I'm tearing up. Darken your door comes right afterwards, the story about your divorce giving tree father, where you talk about being a dad and not being there perhaps at times for your son. And he says, no, you were a great dad. And that great line where you say, the fact that you answer that way means you actually are a really good son. Those kick like a mule emotionally when you realize the stories that are being told. And I guess I just wonder, are you a little too hard on yourself? All those songs sort of paint you as being someone who needs, you know, who needed to change or perhaps wasn't the best husband or perhaps wasn't the best father. Are you being too hard on yourself? And were there particular songs that were tougher to get to the emotional core of.
- [44:38]
David Lowery
Well, first of all, yonder Disenchure about My Parents dying is written sort of like allegorically most. You know, there's the ferryman death. There's, you know, like, it's much more.
- [44:58]
Jeff Blair
Poetic than everything else is so direct on this album, like, almost to the point. Like, here I am in Europe opening for REM or whatever. And then this one is Suddenly very, very poetic. And it's. The tone change is immediately obvious.
- [45:12]
David Lowery
I. I started doing it more direct. And then I actually asked myself a question. What would Cat Stevens do? Which, if you notice, it's very like. I was like, who writes this kind of stuff? But they do it not in a direct way? And I was like, yeah, you know, there was a number of people, but Catsy was kind of stuck in my head and it really kind of wears it on. It's. It's almost obvious, I think, that that's what I'm doing. But I made it. I changed it and made it more, you know, less direct because partly I just felt like I was starting to feel like that the listener might need some relief and, like, how brutal this was getting. I mean, really seriously. And I actually moved that song in the sequence of songs. It's not in quite the same spot, like Darken your Door should be before chronologically, really. But I flipped them around for the pacing of the record. But it also worked better. Something about the story worked better that way. And so, yeah, that's what's going on there. The Giving Tree Father has. I mean, so this is another thing. You're talking about Piney woods, where I talk about grace. And, you know, this is. This is where, like, having that Baptist upbringing, which I ended up ignoring for many years of my life as an adult, and it all kind of starts. Comes flooding back to me where I was like, ah, I totally understand this so much more. It was partly because a lot of my friends would just say things about Christianity and religion and religious people. I was like, man, you really don't understand it, right? You don't really understand what, you know, what this is really about. And so Giving Tree Father sort of tells the story of me sort of having a flash and sort of understanding sort of the prodigal son story, which I won't get right. I'm too much of a. You know, spent too many years not being a Baptist. But, you know, that story is super. The way I describe it was when I heard it in Vacation Bible school. It's super confusing because you're like basically say, you know, that's the one son goes off and it's bad whorings, drinking, spends all the money and stuff like that. And he comes back and there's the other son that's been good and. And he's kind of, like, pissed off. Like, why are we celebrating the son that did all the bad stuff? Like, what? It's super confusing. You're like, yeah, I'm taking the other son's side here and stuff like that, right? And then also, when my older son was young, he loved the Giving Tree Father book by Shel Silverstein. And I read that book and it kind of dawns on me at some point, you know, because I'm reading Giving Tree Father, and I'm like, oh, you know, why do my kids love this book? Because this kid is a user. You know, he keeps taking and taking from the giving tree. And in the end, he's, you know, chopped down the giving tree and he's sitting on the stump and that's it. You know what I mean? It's like. And then it just kind of dawned on me. I go, oh, no, this book is actually. This is for the father, right?
- [48:52]
Jeff Blair
It's written from the parents.
- [48:54]
David Lowery
This is from the parents point of view. And then I flashed on the prodigal son. I was like, oh, like, I know how to tell this sort of chapter in my life when, you know, boys are 15, 16, and they're like the race car with no brakes. And they're like, just not risk averse, risk seeking. And there's like, you know, and then plus, I'm gone during that time on the road and. And, you know, I wanted to write this. It started out as a song that was like, kind of like, you know, it's like, hey, I want to write a song to my son. I'm just like saying, hey, I'm sorry I was gone. And then you were going through, you know, sort of that form, those formative teenage years. I was gone too much and stuff like that, and it could have been easier for you and stuff like that, but then I sort of realized that this is more of an understanding of fatherhood. That's what that. That's what that song is. So. And I know, you know, like, a lot of people who probably are familiar with Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, and they're probably like, what. What are these themes on the record? Because this is a small C conservative record. This is like family, you know, honoring mother and father, you know, religious practice.
- [50:18]
Jeff Blair
But speaking of small C conservative, I mean, that actually brings me to my final question. I don't know, Scott, if you have another one, but one, one, one song that really brought that all home for me again, near the end of the album is. I mean, I guess I'm going to ask it this way. Is the Miami Art show really as awful and pretentious as you make it sound like on the song Art Basil?
- [50:39]
David Lowery
Because Absolutely.
- [50:42]
Jeff Blair
Wonderful. It was a Wonderful portrait of a place that I never want to be. Like all of the, like, most plastic and shallow people, the Instagram influencers, you talk people doing drugs and all that, and you're just like, I'm glad I'm not part of this life anymore. And that's the small C out look, you know, just saying, like, boy, it's really nice to be on the outside looking in. I think that's the way you people.
- [51:02]
David Lowery
Right? Yeah. You know, people are doing this stuff. Yeah. So it describes me and my wife. It's her business trip. We go down to look at the. Just go look at the Jackie Gleason Theater, which she, I think is one of the rooms that she books still and Miami Beach. And we don't realize we're in the heart of this art show that has been kind of taken over by kind of the Crypto Bros. Along with sort of the global rich. It's like the spring break for decadent rich people. Right. And we just walk into the middle of the scene and we're like. I mean, I feel like we're. We're worldly people. We're like, holy, look at this going on. We're observing it. We're not freaked out, but we're like.
- [51:46]
Jeff Blair
You'Re just doing drugs right in front of me right there.
- [51:49]
David Lowery
Yeah. I mean, in the pool at 9am in the morning, you know, like doing lines of cocaine off of a boogie board. People are, you know, it's like crazy stuff. So, yeah, that's my. I actually wrote that as an email to a friend, basically, that song. And he goes, this needs to be on the record, you know, perfect. So I'm like, okay, I can do this. Right.
- [52:14]
Scott Bertram
I've got two more. Two more quick questions if I'm. If I may. One, you described a couple weeks ago a show, I don't recall where it was, maybe in Colorado, as being like the highlight of your live music experience. You played, I think, all or almost all of them, the new album to wrapped attention at a show. And if you go to a cracker show these days, you see Anne Harris playing violin and it's. It's fantastic. And it's a lot of songs from Chicago in. Yes, a lot. A lot of songs from the first album. First cracker album. What for you makes for a great live performance these days? What is your joy? Where do you find your joy in performance forming for an audience these days with a massive back catalog and a new album that you just put out? Where's your joy in playing these days?
- [53:06]
David Lowery
Right so there's a general rule. You don't want to play too many of the new songs when you play a concert. So the thing about that, the show is actually the Hot Monk in Nevada, which just developed a really nice music summer music series. And so usually, typically, what I do with the solo shows is I come out and I play as many of the newer songs and sort of talk and sort of explain them a little bit like the blog or the short version. And at some point I can tell the audience getting restless. And then I flip to playing songs from the classic catalog. And it didn't happen at that show. I went all the way through the 75 minutes, and then I played the Cracker and Camper songs in the encore. But I was like, holy shit. I just played. I've never done that in my life. You play the whole new album for an audience and they don't complain, right? And they wanted to hear it. They wanted to hear it. So that was amazing. So that's. That's what I was talking about there. As far as the Cracker shows, I guess it started last winter. We did. We sort of revived. We hadn't done our winter tour that we knew was doing between. Between Day After Christmas and Martin Luther King Day. That's when nobody else is touring. That's why Cracker Camper Van B started that. There's nobody on the road. Like, my wife, the concert promoter is like, you should go out that time because nobody's on the road. So we started that tour again with just Cracker. And I just thought to do something different. We've been playing these shows with Ann Harris in the Chicagoland area, she playing fiddle. And we brought Ann in at first thinking, like, oh, well, she played the country songs, but she's actually more of a blues Celtic player, which is the formula that you get Led Zeppelin out of that. And when she played on the Southern rock songs, it was just crazy. It was like having, you know, a second, like lead guitarist, but not stepping on the lead guitars, not occupying his space and his style, you know, And I was just like, holy, holy shit. We could do like the Southern lot stuff with Ann. And so we've shifted to doing that with Anne and sort of taking us around the country as much as we can. So that.
- [55:23]
Jeff Blair
I'd be very careful with that, though. Dave, you do that too. Well, people are going to start calling out for free birded shows and you are not going to have an answer.
- [55:32]
David Lowery
We probably could play it. That'd be hilarious.
- [55:37]
Scott Bertram
The violin solo version.
- [55:38]
David Lowery
Solo to Anne. Yeah, right.
- [55:39]
Jeff Blair
I mean, it'll happen soon, I guarantee.
- [55:42]
Scott Bertram
My suggestion, if Anne continues for a bit, I would love to hear her play on How Can I Live without you? From the Golden Age.
- [55:50]
David Lowery
That is a good. That is a really good call. There you go. Because that's got that funky Southern, rocky kind of thing going on. And we're definitely a little shy on the funky Jerry Reid, little feet part of Southern law.
- [56:06]
Scott Bertram
All right, last question. Last question is this. You're a professor now at Georgia? I teach here at Hillsdale. And not unexpected, but I'm still surprised by one of the highlights of this being the successes of the students that we teach. Like, they're going on to do great things in my world in journalism and finding jobs and doing amazing things. So have you had any students in your class go on in the music business using things that you've taught them to be successful? Is there anyone you want to brag about?
- [56:43]
David Lowery
Well, I don't want to necessarily pick just one, but I have a lot of students who've gone on to be agents, entertainment attorneys and record executives that have really good careers. There's actually a couple stars out there. I'm not going to single any of them out. Slightly other ones who are having really good careers and are the next wave of those people. But I also have quite a few ones that were musicians as well who have just really kind of developing their own sort of careers. And so some of them are getting kind of mainstream. Megan Maroney has sort of become a breakthrough country artist. She's not huge, but she plays pretty big places. And I'll single out Cannon Rogers, who's a member of the band Susto or Susto. I never know how to say that band's name, which has developed a. Which is a great, really great band out of Charleston, South Carolina, and sort of Athens now. Really remarkable catalog. And I recommend their shows, like, if they ever come to Chicago or Detroit area. I think you'll really enjoy them. Really unique band. But there's so many of them out there, I'm just like off the top of my head. And it's really great to see them out there playing in bands, making great music and doing it the right way. Like really kind of understanding how to build a career. And I feel like I gave them mostly the financial and the business tools for that stuff. I never talk music. I think that is not my role at university.
- [58:45]
Scott Bertram
All right, perfect. Hey, here's the album. Fathers, sons and brothers. Three LPs, two CDs. There are still some LPs available if you want them. They're red, white and blue. David Lowry music.com or crackersoul.com and if you like Camper, if you like Cracker, trust us, you will love Fathers, Sons and Brothers. It's magnificent and highly recommended. You can find David on X at David C. Lowry. And do follow along in the blog too, which brings so much depth to some of the songs on the record. 300 songs, the blog or David Lowry's substack as well. Now a repeat guest on Political Beats. David can't wait to see you next time you're back in Michigan. Jeff Perhaps next time you're back in Chicago. We look forward to seeing you play.
- [59:33]
Jeff Blair
Thank you so much for joining us.
- [59:35]
David Lowery
Thank you. I really appreciate it. Sam.