David Lowery: Songs of the Unsung

Photo Credit: Jason Thrasher

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David Lowery toured this year with a mix of shows celebrating the 40th anniversary of Camper Van Beethoven’s debut, Telephone Free Landslide Victory, duo and band gigs with Cracker, as well as solo dates promoting his recently-released Fathers, Sons and Brothers.

Fathers, the 28-track musical memoir of Lowery’s personal life explored childhood memories, drugs at Disneyland and broken relationships. Of course, it tackles his lengthy career as an indie and major label artist who catalog highlights include the alt-rock classic “Take the Skinheads Bowling” and commercial breakthrough of “Teen Angst” and “Low.” The album works as a selection of songs that encapsulate much of his musical history— folk, country and rock—as well as an illuminating narrative that relates the ups, downs, tenacity, reflection and resolve of more than four decades as a musician.

“Over the years, many have encouraged me to write an autobiography,” Lowery said. “However, it never really appealed to me. So, in lieu of an uninteresting written autobiography, I’ve made this record.” 

The 3LP/2CD set compiles three previously online-only albums (In The Shadow of the Bull, Leaving Key Member Clause and Vending Machine), adds four unreleased songs and includes four re-recorded tracks that serve as both callbacks and reimaginings.

Lowery has written of Fathers, Sons and Brothers: “In lieu of an uninteresting purely written autobiography I’ve made this record and supplemented it with these relatively short explanatory notes on many of the songs. I do this not so much to tell my own story but to pay tribute to my mother, father, sisters, extended family, friends, and those who have shared their lives with me. I wanted to sing the songs of the unsung, celebrate friends and family, make amends, and apologize where necessary. I hope you as a listener and a reader enjoy the experience.”

In addition to the album, Lowery elaborates on the background of each track on his Substack page, https://davidclowery.substack.com/. For example, writing about “We Hate You,” he discusses the scene on a ferry ride from Denmark to Sweden when the animosity within Camper’s ranks reached its peak just prior to the band’s breakup. As he recounts the specific event that gives the song its title, he contemplates his mindset at that time and how it regrettably led to such circumstances.

While he’s kept a busy concert schedule over the past several months, Lowery has just returned to his role as a Senior Lecturer in the music business program at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business.

I spoke to him prior to a Cracker performance. He followed that up a week later with a solo acoustic date. It took place shortly after my conversation with Vince Herman of Leftover Salmon, which made it the closest to a reunion of the O’ Cracker Where Art Thou? lineup that featured Lowery and Johnny Hickman of Cracker joined by the members of LOS. Together, they recreated Cracker tunes in a bluegrass style.

JPG: Do you like that mix-and-match type of format—band then solo—or would you rather do all one then all the other?

DL: Yeah, that’s definitely it. I forget who said that. I’ve heard it attributed to many different people. “You pay me to travel, I play for free.” I’ve heard it attributed to Elvis Costello and other people.

JPG: When you perform, you have a specific amount of time onstage. People want to hear certain songs. As a creative artist, do you feel that obligation to do that and you’re fine with that or do you prefer to go out more like the Grateful Dead who changed things each night and do deep cuts and covers and, maybe, a couple hits?

DL: Well, we try to always play the hits. I mean, what counts as hits. It sort of varies from region to region, actually, but we try to play the main hits and then try to dive into the deep tracks as much as we can.

We used to work with a really big setlist when we played 100 to 150 shows a year. We have to be a little more methodical about it now that we’re more like about 40 or something shows a year. It’s sort of like, “Alright, we’ve got some shows coming up. What are we going to do?” It’s not like we write a set list for the shows, but we do kind of have to reel it in a little bit from what we once did.

We’re a little more methodical than we used to be. I wish I could put both bands together and over the course of a six-week tour, play all 300 songs from my repertoire but it’s a challenging thing.

That’s actually pretty amazing that the Grateful Dead did that all those years and had such a diverse setlist.

 DL: No. I’m not that kind of personality. I know I’m the lead singer, but I’m a member of the rhythm section and we rehearse and we’re tight. Literally, the only rehearsals that happened for Cracker are the rhythm section. We just do our own rehearsals.

JPG: Well, you have a good one in Johnny Hickman as a lead guitarist. I’ve seen him with you, and I’ve seen him solo.

DL: Yeah. He just plays off of feelings. That’s his thing.

JPG: I feel he’s similar to Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, where he’s very economical with what he plays and each note sets up the next one, which sets up going back into the chorus or next verse.



DL: That’s the formula of the band, originally, was I sing something, he plays something.

If people don’t know, the Oxford Comma is whether you put a comma between the second thing and the “and.” It looks funny in a title, if you ask me. So, we did not use it. That’s not rock if we put that comma in there.

JPG: I’m not a big fan of it. So, I was glad not to see that on the album cover. Now, it’s a 3LP or 2CD set, a compilation of online releases with additional tracks. When you originally made those albums, did you have the idea in mind to eventually put them altogether?

DL: So, I did those three albums. You could order them online. They were limited edition physical CDs. It was actually the opposite of being online. I didn’t really want them on any platforms. I didn’t want any intermediaries. I wanted to sell directly to the fans, and that’s what I did.

It was a project, it’s autobiographical is the idea of this record. I didn’t know how many discs I needed. After I did three, I wrote the remaining songs that I felt like I needed for the set and then put all that out together. I actually re-recorded a couple of the other ones and reworked them.

It’s 28 tracks. There’s eight new recordings. If you didn’t get those limited edition CDs, there’s 28 new recordings.

JPG: I wonder with pop artists, who are getting hooked up with alcohol brands or other products. Are they successful because they’re hooked up with so many other things or are they getting so many streams that they’re actually some of the few who are making money at it?

DL: I don’t know. But, look, there’s statistics on this, empirical data on this. People, when they’re streaming music, the majority of what they’re streaming is all their music. So, we won’t know what this means for another 20 years. We won’t know which of the artists that are current today endure 20 years from now. It’s weird.

I teach at University of Georgia. I’m teaching business stuff and some pretty technical stuff—licensing, copyright and stuff like that—but I do end up asking before and after class what they’re listening to. It’s amazing to me that most of the students are listening to music that was in my generation. It’s not necessarily the only thing they’re listening to but “Why are you guys listening to Steely Dan records? Shouldn’t you have your own Steely Dan?” [Laughs.]

JPG: There is no current Steely Dan.

DL: There’s also a lot of young people that are playing full ensemble music, too, where they have full bands. There’s been a trend back towards that with my students, away from that laptop kind of pop and back towards the four or five, six-piece bands. I don’t know. We’ll have to see. We won’t know for years.



JPG: For someone who has that duality of being a musician for years who has been around during the transition of the record industry as well as someone who teaches and gets into the numbers of the business side of the music industry, do you think things are better or worse now for artists?

DL: Yeah. The thing with streaming though is it’s literally because of the federal regulations. There’s no renegotiations. There’s no capitalism in digital music. When you’re a songwriter, there’s a board called the copyright royalty board in the copyright office that sets your royalties. You don’t say, “No” to a streaming service. There’s a way to say, “No” if you own both the recording and the underlying songs, but there’s no capitalism in streaming music.

It’s this monopolistic, highly-regulated, crony capitalism, maybe, is what you have, which you see in a lot of other places as well as, too. It’s an interesting time to live in.

JPG: Speaking of owning your recordings, Cracker’s Alternative History: A Cracker Retrospective, reminded me of what Squeeze and Taylor Swift did in re-recording their songs in order to own the material rather than the artist’s former record company to do what they want with it.

There’s a song called “Merry Christmas Emily” from Forever. At some point I was going through the demos and I was like, “Oh, at first we were doing this slower and it was spookier.” So, I was like, “Okay, let’s cut this alternate version of it.”

So, the reason it’s Alternative History is, yes, some of the re-recordings were done years ago, and they are just soundalikes of the original. One of the reasons we did those often was somebody would come to us with a license for a commercial or a film and instead of giving half the money to the record label, we would just re-record it. Then, we would take all the money. That’s how some of those came about. So, “Low” sounds like the original “Low.” “Teen Angst” sounds like the original “Teen Angst.” But, “Sweet Potato” with Leftover Salmon is entirely different…

JPG: “Eurotrash Girl [Waltz]” (with Leftover Salmon).

DL: Yes. So, there’s three Leftover Salmon ones that are totally different than the original record.

Really, what Alternative History was, the last time there was a Cracker greatest hits was 2005, and there’s been another 20 years, and there’s been more albums and stuff like that. So, we wanted to do a greatest hits by licensing all the different things from the different record labels but it was gonna be expensive and then, sometimes, the licensing people at record labels are like those little petty, middle management people that just feel like they have some power, and they want to negotiate for something. You’re like, “I’m trying to get 25 songs together here. I ain’t got time to spend a week negotiating with you over this and we don’t have $5000 to license the song that we basically own half of.”

So, it became a better idea to look at what we owned and the outtakes and the demos and things like that. As we started looking at those, we’d go, “Oh, there’s kind of an alternate history of Cracker here by using all these other takes.” That’s how we end up with the 3LP set, and I think people have really enjoyed it because it is, “Whoa! I didn’t know this was out there. This was a B-side I’d never heard,” or we used a live tape from a German television show or something like that, where the song is placed and stated in a different way.

The last one, I pretty much paid for out of my own pocket. Sure, there’s a recording budget, but it wasn’t enough to cover what we did. It’s not a viable economic concern anymore.

JPG: Other than as an occasional touring band…

DL: We’re touring! Where people will pay us.

JPG: Creatively, with solo material, is there a different mindset, because listening to Fathers, Sons and Brothers it’s a lot more spare than the sound of a full band record with Cracker. Does that free you?

JPG: I appreciate it as an album, but on the other side, I think you’re selling yourself short because reading your Substack, which discusses each track from Fathers, Sons and Brothers, and listening to the reflective lyrics of your life and band history, I still think there’s a memoir or an autobiography in you waiting to be written.

DL: I did actually go through the process. I had a really good book agent when I was talking about doing an autobiography. There is a formula where the book industry like major labels, they have these formulas for what they’re putting out now, what’s working out now. There’s a formula for the rock autobiography book and that would be the lamest thing for me to do, to use that formula.

The greatest rock autobiography is the David Lee Roth one where it’s just unconnected stories in each chapter. There is no formula!

JPG: Doing these songs, you find that for some people, emotionally, it’s difficult to go into their past and dredge all that up. You don’t, at times, go easy on yourself, whether it’s the Substack of “We Hate You” or even in the songs. Was it occasionally a difficult process or did you just think of it creatively and musically of this is what it is and carry on to get to the truth of the matter?

The thing about this record in this style and the stuff that I’m doing, it’s something new for me, which has really been hard for me to find over the years. This is new. This is fresh. This invigorated my songwriting and my creative juices, but it’s a complicated thing to do. It’s easy in a way in that it’s fun, engaging and stuff like that but there’s a lot that goes into this Fathers, Sons and Brothers album – the recording, constructing the songs, constructing the lyrics and all that stuff, and then writing a frickin’ Substack for each one. It’s a challenge, but it’s a good thing for me to do at this point in my life.

JPG: At some point, the next challenge would be the next album. Do you see it as fourth album in this realm?

DL: It won’t be autobiographical. I have a list of subjects that I’m planning on singing about. I’ve got it started. I don’t know if I’ll do that this year or next year. When I’ll start on that, I don’t really know.

JPG: Wrapping things up and we arrive at Camper Van Beethoven. You recently toured in celebration of the 40^th anniversary of the release of its debut album, Telephone Free Landslide Victory.

JPG: Is it nice for yourself and, maybe, the other members as well, that you’re not just revisiting the tunes and seeing that they held up, but also that you’re able to be with each other and hang out with each other and enjoy each other’s company?

DL: It didn’t end with anybody saying, “We Hate You.” Well, I don’t know. They haven’t read the blog. I didn’t tell them I was writing a Substack for every song. [Laughs.] That song’s been out for a while. I don’t think there’s anything in there that anybody’s gonna object to.

JPG: You can figure out what exactly is going on in that song before reading the Substack and its explanation on the background.

DL: Yeah, just look at the title.

JPG: You’ve been teaching for years, and you’ve also been playing and writing and recording for years. Is there any particular lesson that you’ve learned from teaching and lecturing that you either use now or think, “Damn! If only I knew then, what I know now.”

DL: I learned all of those things as it was going on. I didn’t learn it from teaching. I’m a co-author of a textbook on music publishing. These are things I learned from the school of hard knocks, but also learning to read contracts and knowing how accounting and royalties work, copyright registration, performing rights organization registration, all the technical details.

I learned all of that on my own, and I think that’s partly why it works well as a teacher, as an instructor, because I can go, “Hey. Look. This happened to me, and this is what I did wrong, and I figured out this, and how many of you are registering your music right now?” I can give real stories.

The other thing is, a lot of times people who teach these classes are career academics. I’m not. I’ve stood in front of an audience trying to capture their attention for forty-something years of my life. So, I feel like I’m genuinely pretty dynamic.

JPG: You hear stories of musicians who are just so happy to get signed and get an advance that they don’t realize what they’re doing.



DL: Well, there was some of that. That probably happened to us. We took contracts that, probably, there were some elements in the contract that could have been better to us, but generally, we didn’t really have any of the nightmare stuff that happened.