ifitbeyourwill Podcast
“ifitbeyourwill" Podcasts is on a mission to talk to amazing indie artists from around the world! Join us for cozy, conversational episodes where you'll hear from talented and charismatic singer-songwriters, bands from all walks of life talk about their musical journey. Let's celebrate being music lovers!
Season Four runs from September 2024 to December 2024
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ifitbeyourwill Podcast
ifitbeyourwill S04E17• David Lowery of Cracker & Camper Van Beethoven
What happens when the worlds of music and mathematics collide? David Lowery, from the iconic bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, joins us to share his intriguing journey from a math enthusiast to a prolific songwriter. Discover how his passion for numbers influences his unique, almost scientific approach to creating music. David also lets us into his world of hobbies, including amateur radio, and shares insights into his solo projects born out of the creative solitude during the COVID-19 pandemic. This conversation is a testament to Lowery's innovative spirit, where even the unlikeliest of inspirations can spark musical genius.
Reimagine the past with Cracker's "Alternative History" project as we explore the motivations behind this retrospective collection. David opens up about the band's quest to offer a genuine narrative free from the confines of algorithm-driven playlists and licensing hurdles. We delve into the creative process behind the alternate takes and unique collaborations with artists like Leftover Salmon and members of Drive-By Truckers, giving fans an authentic glimpse into Cracker’s evolution. Moreover, David shares his experiences at the University of Georgia, where he champions fair practices in the music industry while fostering the next generation of artists.
For aspiring musicians, the path to success is often fraught with challenges, but David offers invaluable advice. From the significance of producing a vast catalog of music to the irreplaceable value of live performances, he emphasizes building a real connection with your audience. We also discuss the importance of diversifying income sources and maintaining a balance to prevent creative burnout. Join us as we conclude with a poignant reflection on the emotional toll of farewells, capturing the bittersweet nature of goodbyes through poetic expression. Don't miss the upcoming release of "Alternate History: A Cracker Retrospect," which promises a fresh take on the band's legacy.
If I could just keep my stupid mind together, vent my thoughts across the land for you to see. Thoughts across the land for you to see.
Speaker 2:Cool, here we are, another episode of Viewer Podcast Today. What a treat I have David Lowery here from Cracker Camper Von Beethoven. You know such a wealth of music you've put out, david, for us all to enjoy and we're going to talk a little bit about this alternative history coming out a cracker retrospect. But I kind of want to start off a little bit. I know that you're a big math guy. Is that accurate to say?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, that's where I started, that's what I went to college for and and then some of my sort of when I have had sort of the straight jobs and stuff like that. They've been somehow oriented around that, whether it was like computer stuff or quantity, finance, economic stuff, stuff. So that's kind of my background. But it's actually really a young man's game. So you're not really generally a very good mathematician once you're over 40. So I don't really do math stuff anymore.
Speaker 3:But I I try to keep my brain fresh with doing a lot of odd, uh, technical sort of things that are completely unrelated to music, which, like um, I do a lot of really geeky um, ham radio stuff, um, and especially with computers and sound cards and digital processing and stuff like that. So that's always in my background and sometimes I don't know if you follow my twitter feed, but sometimes I post it. I'll post these incomprehensible tweets and then, like 30 other amateur radio operators post digital amateur radio operators post like 30 incomprehensible replies to it. So that's what I did. So that's really the yeah, that's the only place that well, a lot of it's just shorthand, slang and and abbreviations and stuff but um, but uh, that is. You know that's kind of where that lives right now. But I it's not really in my music or my, even my teaching world or my advocacy world or social media present. You know it's not really there I.
Speaker 2:I wanted to make an argument with you and see if it sticks. I think that you cracked the formula at a young age where computational ideas seeped into your music which allowed you to produce so many songs in such a short amount of time. I think I read your first three Camper Von Beethoven albums were done in like 20 months. The first three of them I think so.
Speaker 3:I think that's correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a sheer amount of production. Do you think that there was a formula that you followed that you kind of cracked when you were first coming into your songwriting?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. Quantity is its own form of quality. Basically, um, in that we sort of accidentally set ourselves up in this way where, uh, kind of or I set myself up in a way and then that kind of continued with the band, which was just to record every single try to make a song out of every single idea that you have with a four-track tape recorder. At that time and I played in multiple bands, doing multiple demos, doing multiple incarnations of these songs, and then eventually, with camper van beethoven, I found a group of musicians that were basically kind of like-minded, where we were all producing sort of little like, like sort of. They weren't really songs, they were like little demi songs. They weren't quite songs, they were just sort of these little ideas. We try to flesh them out as much as possible. And, um, we'll just flesh them out, not as much as possible, but just flesh them out into a song. Right, and sometimes we did and sometimes we didn't.
Speaker 3:So it was literally just like kind of more of a kind of production line approach. The computational element of it was to gather more material. We'd almost like we cross things all the time. So let's take something that sounds like a television theme show and make it a ska song or take something that was like sort of not punk rock and throw it into the punk rock sort of genre. So it was like it was kind of like you know, it has a. It had sort of an algorithmic formula to how we would try to create new things. We, you know, sort of more like a Edison laboratory approach than a. You know what I mean Than a than a, than a sort of a.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean Than a than a, than a sort of a. You know, sit down in a room with lights and candles and, you know, put up some tapestries and stuff like that. It was completely different vibe than that and that sort of remained to this day, although I don't have as much time to do that. You know kind of way my life is now and you just kind of slow down when you're older. But what I try to do is, uh, when I'm not touring and when I'm not teaching classes, I try to like do that. I do some of that every single day. And there's the solo uh, this solo project that's coming out in may. That was the. It started before covid, but the bulk of it was during covid where I just kind of got up and sort of did this songwriting formula and collaborated with my friends all over the world in a very, very similar manner to how camper van beethoven started okay, doing that.
Speaker 2:So at the start of camper van like, did you already have kind of a an inventory of of songs that you brought in, or were they all collaborative? The songs that you created in?
Speaker 3:camp. Well, so we started camping with a lot of songs that I brought in from my earlier projects which were similar. There's a band called. There's a band that I had with chris mola and johnny hickman the a year before we did camper van beethoven. That a lot of the songs come from. Uh, it was a band called the estonian gauchos.
Speaker 3:So a lot of the first album and second album, a fair number of those instrumentals, come out of that project. And then there was even a band before that that was started kind of as a punk band but evolved into something else and, uh, it was called sitting duck and that was also with chris mola and uh like so. So a couple of those songs like uh, on the first camper album I don't see you skinhead stomp. There's one other that comes out of even that band, which sort of goes back three years. So I did bring in a fair amount of stuff. But, um, but you know it very quickly we developed our own sort of uh sort of. You know we developed our own laboratory with you know sort of little semi demi ideas for songs and stuff like that and and quickly developed a lot of them. So yeah, that's what the things that camper did was we just recorded little four-track snippets like uh and things that evolved into songs, like all the time right, that's cool.
Speaker 2:And yeah, you're the last record that you put out with camper key lime pie. I mean the connection to to that to cracker was like pretty, like there was so many like um wave, you know waves, that that connected together that that last album and then with the first Cracker brand that came out.
Speaker 3:Well, partly because we start incorporating more directly the pedal steel and strings and the Americana elements are coming out more in that Camper record and then Cracker specifically takes that and runs with it, although there's a lot of just straight up rock, energy and crackers. So key lime pie and golden age are really similar albums. Okay, right, is that is my uh? Are my uh notifications beeping in this podcast?
Speaker 2:okay, well, let me make sure, okay david, did you create a persona going into cracker um, because so many of the songs have these? You know mr wrong, you know even camper jack ruby, you know euro trash. Like they had this, like almost a different person that you were impersonating or taking the voice of. Who are these personas Like? Where did they come from?
Speaker 3:This is a longstanding trick I learned like back in the Camper Van Beethoven days and it was something I learned from somebody who was, like a, I think, a creative writing instructor part-time instructor, it's. Jana Cruz was just kind of in my peer group and he mentioned something about teaching his students like to like, make up the characters and let them speak, and it's way more interesting. You know, it sort of gets you, it's way more creative and I thought, oh, that's kind of what we're already doing here. So then you know it, that's that sort of turbo charged, that whole thing, especially when we get to cracker. That's like really a formula that I start to use for the lyrics. So yeah, so that's that's absolutely. You picked up on something that's very real. That's what I try to do, and a lot of times it's an unreliable narrator. The unreliable narrator, the narrator that's not telling you the truth, that you can see through what they're saying.
Speaker 2:Fantastic storytelling, fantastic storytelling. Fantastic storytelling, I mean, had you like amassed this kind of character or characters over time, like what drew you to kind of that underbelly a little bit of humanity and making that more, putting in the spotlight you know, like putting it on radio and like, how did you, how did you come to develop these, these, this, that voice?
Speaker 3:Um, well, I mean, I did a few of them and they were very uh successful in a way, you know, with our audience.
Speaker 3:They got, they really engaged the audience. And so sometimes I'd meet somebody and, and you know, just some random stranger, and seem to think like, oh, what does that imply? Who's that character? You know, maybe I'll imagine, I'll fictionalize some real sort of stranger I met that I had a short conversation with, like when I live, when the lottery is, this is basically this guy that was a tow truck driver when my car broke down, he was the tow truck driver on the freeway that the king, the highway patrol called or whatever, and he was like this crazy, like sort of right-wing lunatic, um, uh, like, and so that's my, that's my when I win the lottery character. It's basically the tow truck driver, but but no, they just it, just it kind of worked and it sort of it helped like sort of the, the laboratory of songs, move along more quickly to do that, instead of having to find, like, always find my own personal inspiration, like, and there's plenty of personal inspiration in the songs, but it's just was easy to do. You know other characters.
Speaker 2:I mean it. It takes a lot of observation too to like you seem to be an observer of life and then have this knack of like portraying it through music, which is not an easy thing. Many people can't't many artists, it's just they they have, you know, they have a hard time removing themselves from the music. So I always just loved the way that you were able to so well, are still able to um infuse a person or a person into the songs.
Speaker 2:Um, and so the first two cracker records came out lots of hoopla, lots of like attention. What was it like? After kind of kerosene hat had had had gone through its cycle of the record, um, and then you were starting to focus on on the next. What kind of pressure was there? Um like talking to artists, success always kind of creates a little bit of anxiety at the same time, because now you're having to kind of like all right, our bar is here. Now, how do you, how did you approach like the third record and the fourth record? Um, with that kind of idea that you know it has to, it has to be at this level.
Speaker 3:Well, um, for one, we spent about a year recording the third record because the commercial expectations were really high and you know. So that's a lot of pressure, but we spent a lot of time on it. We also spent a lot of money on it, but sort of tried to take it like doing things like string sections that are all over Golden Age. That's really expensive to do, but the idea was to create, to take the commercial pressures and just turn it into sort of crafting. A very finely detailed record was sort of our way of sort of dealing with it Right.
Speaker 2:So I mean, that computational again coming in where you're, you're breaking down the song into small little pieces. I remember hearing a conversation with you and Dennis Herring where you would fixate on one piece of a song for, like you know, hours, days and just that interplay of trying to make it the best that it can be. I mean again, attention to detail sounds like has always been kind of a part of your craft.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, so, so, yeah, but but it's a little it's.
Speaker 3:It's maybe a little more complicated than that, because there's certain things that almost are kind of like throwaway elements, like you don't, kind of like we would really fixate on something when we realized it was doing something important for the song, right.
Speaker 3:So, you know, we didn't obsess over getting like you know, like some, some engineers will take a project and grid it out and make every single beat perfect, every sort of instrument beat and note, like perfectly in time, perfectly in tune, like. So we weren't doing that kind of detail work, but what we were doing was like, well, what, wait a minute, that piano part that's implying something totally bigger, what is it, you know, and then kind of obsess on it and work on it for days and days until you, sometimes until you figured out what that was. Or sometimes you figured out it's like, oh, I, I can't find it. We're moving on right and stuff like that. But it was sort of this idea to to find those things. It's like we're a lot of a good counter melody and counterpoint in that golden age album. Uh comes from is from exploring those things right okay, that's so cool.
Speaker 2:So you're kind of on the eve now of of this collection. I wrote down all the different things on. I want to say so. Alternative history of cracker retrospective coming on 22nd. So it's re-recordings, demos, outtakes, collaborations and live tracks that are on this. How did you go about assembling this? What's that process of? Okay, we want to put out a retrospect. Where do you start from that initial kernel of an idea?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, a lot of people who are more casual listeners come into this will often gravitate towards the algorithmic Spotify playlists, which are simply based on the popularity of songs. But a lot of our songs were a number of the top five usually of those lists, or things that were on the radio have worked their way into 90s playlists, algorithmic playlists and stuff like that. So a lot of times, if you either go to the algorithmic playlists that are built by the streaming services or you go and look at the greatest hits that are out there, they're actually old and out of date and they don't really tell the band story. So the first idea was like we need to redo this and also cover. You know most of these. You know the redux only covers up to 2004 with cracker and there's another 20 years after. I mean there isn't like a whole bunch of stuff, but there's other albums after that and you know there's some good songs there and so we wanted to do that. So, you know, started talking to cooking vinyl about it and when we explored licensing because you know we had to license to do that we had to license from universal and we also had to license from concord we realized it was going to be pretty expensive to do and that what. So we wanted to like sort of.
Speaker 3:But there's a, there's a number of re-records that we control because basically what we, we figured out an old, we learned some from the old country artists is that basically, if we re, when certain licensing you know for commercials and films come in, if we could re-record our songs, uh, and make them sound pretty much like the original recordings, we could keep a lot more of the money right. And so we had, over the years, built up these tracks in fact that's the one greatest hits is, redux is where we recorded them, right. So we had a lot of those tracks that we controlled. So the, the idea was like, well, what if we just tried to do this without licensing, like the, the sort of the major label in the concord tracks, and use re-records or alternate takes or things that we control? It's it's kind of this alternate history of the band, right, it's. So you know we're an alternative rock band, so it's alternative history. We're making a little pun there and it tells like a different story of the band than you would get from any of those algorithmic playlists. So you know, we lean into, you know.
Speaker 3:So, yes, we do use those re-records that are kind of knockoffs of the original recordings, but there's all these different reinterpretations, like the ones we did with um leftover salmon, or that version with some members of Sick, of Goodbyes, with members of Drive-By Truckers, sort of the weird. You know like. There's a re-record of Merry Christmas Emily that's based on me just digging through our archives and I found a very early demo of what became Merry Christmas Emily it's. It's just I just approached it completely differently than the one that's on the Forever album, like almost like a different song. So we took that and fleshed that out and you know so. So you get these sort of alternate versions of the songs that sort of tell it, I think, in way tell a more accurate story than those greatest hits and those algorithmic sort of popularity playlists, right, I mean, I had the opportunity of listening to it before this podcast and it's so brilliant.
Speaker 2:I mean I love the ordering, too, of the tracks. It just flows so nicely and surprising. I love the reduct that you did also. I mean those are just amazing tracks. I mean I was telling you, kind of before we hopped on, how it breathed new life into these songs that I used to obsessively listen to.
Speaker 2:So it's been a real treat, and I'm looking forward to November 22nd for sure when it officially drops David. Just to kind of wrap things up, I know that you teach now at the University of Georgia. Is that correct? I know that you teach now at the University of Georgia.
Speaker 3:Is that correct? Yes, I do. Actually I have a doctorate as well, and so you know, a lot of people don't know that I'm technically a doctor but I'm not a professor. I'm a senior lecturer in the business school Right and specifically in the music business stuff, and so I teach a lot of things like business school kind of concepts, I apply them to the music industry, sort of show how the music industry might illustrate some of these concepts, and then I teach a music licensing and publishing class. And then I teach a very strange class about public policy and the music business, which is kind of my favorite thing, cause there's actually people don't realize how regulated parts of the music industry are and then how, like, if you want to change or fix something, you have to kind of mount a public policy campaign with either state government or federal government or even international treaties with the state department, and so there's a whole art and science and the history behind all of that.
Speaker 2:That, I think, is like sort of my going to be my, my real academic contribution you know For sure, I mean you're a huge advocate for musicians and making sure they get their fair share, and I mean, in in these days too, where, just you know, everything's digital now, it makes sharing easy to do. You know, it's just like, um, what advice do you give those students about, particularly musicians starting up? Like, I talked to a ton of musicians that are starting up and it seems like since COVID, there's just been this influx of, you know, bedroom artists and releases out. What do you, what do you tell those young you know, seeing as that you've been in this business for four decades, right, what are some of the advices that you give to your, to your students and musicians that are up and coming about the music industry?
Speaker 3:um, the main thing I tell them is, first of all, like I said, quantity is its own quality. Right, make a lot of stuff, do a lot of collaborations, all that stuff. But the other thing is there's uh, sometimes a lot of musicians use social media and the internet and all the digital platforms as a crutch and you actually do a lot better by leaning into live appearances to live live appearances, like whether it's like you know, when you're doing like an open mic night or I don't know, like I have kids that play like really odd. I have students that like play like really odd specialty little forms of music and there's a little tiny venue called Flickr in Athens and if you get 25 people in there, it works really great. If you get 60 people in there, people can barely breathe in the room.
Speaker 3:Even those small little in real life events, as they say, as the kids say, are super important for growing your fan base, because it's a different kind of experience than the sort of throwaway sort of likes and clicks and just that. It's kind of a throwaway experience when you're online and you're competing with everybody else, right. So I really try to push that and if you know that you're kind, if you're the kind of artist that, um, you, you don't, you know, you're not even really sort of oriented towards live performance, or it's too, I mean like listening parties, meetups with your fans, like anything that's more real life go to go to a record store and sell your vinyl there and spin discs, you know, for people at the record store, you know, like just anything you could think of, like that to to get sort of off the phone, the little screens, the big screens and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:It works off screens and into people's actual brains and eyes yeah, yeah, that's right, it's a different kind of engagement yeah, another thing you said is don't rely on music as your only source of well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you have to broaden yeah, but there's two, there's a. There's a second reason for that. I think you get too much in your head when you're just kind of pursuing something like full-time. Now, it's it's really great to to go full-time, like when you're making an album or something like that, but it's it's often um, counterproductive to sit around every day, all day trying to write songs. You get like too far in your head, you get too down into the detail. It's better to go out and have other experiences waiting table, tending bar, driving an uber or something like that for parts of the day and coming back and doing that sort of the most. The earliest part of creating songs and ideas should be approached a little more like two or three hours a day and then drop it right. That's the way actually pro songwriters, like co-writers in nashville, like, do they actually do these like kind of a session usually, um, I think it's usually 9, 30 to 1 o'clock. Some of them do two a day, but they just do one a day okay interesting.
Speaker 3:That's what a lot of writers do, professional writers do. That's the, that's the formula.
Speaker 2:Right, there you go back to, so you should follow that as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, you don't want to have to always be strategizing and planning everything. You should just have some things that are rote. You already did the planning, you already did the strategy. Now you're just doing the rote stuff like the habit stuff, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:yeah, Habit forming is good for sure. Well, this has been fascinating, David, Thanks so much for carving a little piece of time out for us to chat, and I wish you a bunch of success with this new retrospect that's coming out Again November 22nd alternate history a cracker retrospect coming out on cooking vinyl. All the best, and again, I really appreciate you coming in talking with us today.
Speaker 3:All right, thank you, no problem, bye.
Speaker 1:Bye. Vent my thoughts across the land for you to see. The sun drags locomotives to the ocean. No one knows this like I do. No one knows this like I do. Seconds click in which I'm changed to dust Withered roots of hair, nuts and rust of hair and nuts and rust. I'm waving in the currents of the ocean. I'm so sick of goodbye, goodbye. I'm so sick of goodbyes, goodbyes. I'm so tired of goodbyes, goodbyes, goodbye, goodbye. The night comes, crawling in On all fours, soaking up my dreams, fours, soaking up my dreams through the floor. Well, I'm so sick. I'm so sick of goodbyes, goodbyes, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. I'm so sick of goodbyes, goodbyes. I'm so tired of goodbyes, goodbyes. I'm so sick, so sick of goodbyes, goodbyes, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
