Photo credit: Jason Thrasher
Tell us about your tour vehicle.
These days we tour in rented vans from Bandago, a company started by a friend of ours. Maintaining our own vehicles proved difficult with the amount of touring we do. We’ve driven several into the ground over the years to the point where we basically sold them for scrap. The same with trailers full of our gear. Now we bring our own guitars, bass, and pedals etc and rent amps and drums from local backline companies.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
At 68 I take extra good care of my health at home and try to on the road, although it’s challenging. I bring some organic dried food with me, instant oatmeal etc. I have a small travel kettle for that and tea. This saves me a lot of money as I don’t have to eat the overpriced, generally unhealthy food out there. This also affords me a little extra, much needed sleep instead of going to out to forage for an overpriced breakfast.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
I break a string about every 10 years. I shouldn’t say that, I might jinx myself. If you change them every 3 or 4 shows and give them a good stretch it helps.
Where do you rehearse?
Our ever-morphing band members rarely rehearse together. Everyone goes over their parts on their own from the recordings and we pull it off pretty well. Cracker is essentially two people, David Lowery and myself and we hire the other players for recordings and tours. In the business this is sometimes referred to as the “Steely Dan” method. This was our arrangement from the start. David and I surround ourselves with world class players who can keep up with our methodology. We dial the arrangements in as we go through shows to allow for some great spontaneity and to play to people’s strengths. If it’s been a long time between tours we might get together to rehearse and fine tune things. We have an outer circle of great players who live all over the map so getting together to rehearse is difficult, but with players as good as we work with it’s rarely a problem to get up onstage and just deliver.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
When I was 14 I wrote my first song entitled “No Easy Way.” I wrote it for Elvis but then he died before I could get it to him. I’m convinced it would have been a late career hit for him! “Some dog’s howling at the moon, and I know what he means” It’s not a bad song and I eventually tracked it with my side band The Hickman Dalton Gang here in Colorado.
Describe your first gig.
I was 13 years old. My older sister was on drums and a friend of ours was on bass. We played cover songs on the back of as flatbed truck at a Catholic school event in the parking lot of the school. Grand Funk Railroad, The Doobie Brothers, Led Zeppelin songs…all pretty badly ha ha!
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
They are one and the same. David Lowery tracked me down after Camper Van Beethoven broke up which was not easy to do in the pre-internet, pre-cell phone era. At the time I was doing hair and make-up for the deceased. I wrote and recorded a song about it called “Styling The Dead” At the time I was playing in punk rock / new wave bands, early 80s. Working on dead people paid pretty well and the customers were very easy to work with. Never late, held nice and still. Very peaceful work.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
With the advent of streaming, it’s very difficult to make a profit from your hard copy recordings any more of course. Music is truly in the hands of massive corporations now and that’s where the profits from pre-recorded music goes, not to the artists.
Lucky for us, Cracker fans know that we rely on their support this way and still buy our products, mostly at shows. I’m happy to report that our live draw has steadily increased over the decades and our shows sell out regularly. We now make the lion’s share of our income from ticket sales and merch at the shows.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
Being a content creator is vastly important. Of course, it’s good to be as proficient as you can be on your chosen instrument or instruments, but as I tell my 2 sons who are active musicians now, write songs! Then write more songs! Learn how to do that well as you go. Also, to enjoy and learn from every step, the ups and the downs. Treat your fans like gold and be grateful for the opportunity to bring joy to people.