WHAT: Cracker, Jason Isbell
WHERE: 8 Seconds Saloon
WHEN: Friday, Nov. 9, 7 p.m. doors, $15, 21+
WEB: www.8secondssaloon.com

NUVO: Congratulations on finally releasing your “Greatest Hits — Redux” (Cooking Vinyl, 2006) album last year. How have your fans reacted to the collection so far?

Lowery: It’s great. Most of our fans are familiar with that stuff, so it’s a lot of people who are catching up on us … [who] weren’t as familiar before that are buying now. It’s selling really well.

NUVO: Which classic Cracker songs from prior albums still make the rounds during your live shows? (i.e. “Euro-trash Girl,” “Low,” “Get Off This,” etc.) What is it about those tracks that you love, which keeps you performing them live?

Lowery: You can just kind of tell after you play a few shows or whatever on a tour, where you’re like, “Wow, you know, that old song from that record the crowd really liked and they really wanted us to play it.” So we try to pay attention to that. One thing that we had always noticed [like that] was a song from the first record [Cracker] [called] “I See the Light.” A few years ago, sort of this weird radio station in L.A. started, and … they started playing that song, “I See the Light,” and had played it every day like a regular rotation song to the point that like, in a weird way, when we go to Southern California, that’s actually one of our most famous songs now. … Sometimes we may have seemed like a little bit of a throw-back to more traditional rock or something like that, but it’s actually worked out really good for us, because now, 15 years later, some of those songs are 10 years old and people sort of see them as classic songs, you know?

NUVO: I’ve read that your latest album, “Greenland” (Cooking Vinyl, 2006), has been one of the hardest albums yet for you to produce personally. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little more on that.

Lowery: No. When I say that it’s the most autobiographical record for me, that’s kind of as far as I wanna go with it, ’cause I am actually a pretty private person.

NUVO: You’ve worked with Cracker’s co-founder, Johnny Hickman (guitar/ vocalist), since the early days of the band in the early 1990s. What is it about him and your other bandmates that you really admire?

Lowery: Johnny’s a great guitar stylist. He’s like a … pan-rock stylist, and by that I mean he sort of absorbed like 30 years of different guitar playing — anything from punk rock stuff to indie rock stuff to country stuff to classic rock stuff, and [he] sort of spits it all back out in his own way. I just think he’s an amazing guitar stylist … the choice of the tone and the kind of riffs and the versatility. It doesn’t matter if he plays wrong notes. It’s about the attitude that comes out and the way it comes across. And that’s a very powerful thing. I feel that’s what’s kept Cracker around for 17 years, and really made people follow us. There’s this sort of archetypal rock thing that he does. I sing something, and then he plays something. … He does it really well in a way that nobody else does. He can reference older rock but at the same time not sound dated or classic; it sounds modern.

NUVO: What about your other current bandmates? What are some things that make them stand out?

Lowery: Frank [Funaro, drummer]’s played with everybody from Joey Ramone to The Dictators to The Del Lords to Dion [DiMucci], and he’s just one of those guys that grew up in New York/Long Island in the late ’70s/early ’80s, and he was part of all the early punk rock and new wave. And later, through the ’80s, he was in a couple bands [that] were like real pioneers of the Americana roots-rock sound — The Del Lords and The Brandos. I mean, I know some of those guys have gone on to … Eric Ambel, I think is his name — he’s Lucinda Williams’ guitar player and produces all this Americana stuff. So Frank’s kind of been at the birth of several musical movements and played with the right people. The drummer is the guy who drives the whole show, and we don’t worry about him. He’s a good driver. The tempos are right; the transitions are right. He’s kind of a pro in that way. And then Sal Maida plays bass for us. He’s on the first Roxy Music record. ... And he’s another one of these Long Island guys. Cracker has been sort of gravitating toward these [guys]. We formed it specifically to be just me and Johnny, because we felt that that’s actually the core of the band, and we make the decisions and we’re the owners and stuff like that. We felt that a lot of problems with bands — just sort of the way they set up their structure. It wasn’t like musical things that made bands break up, it was ridiculous weird little power struggles among the members like art or the Web site that made the bands break up. … Basically, Johnny and I are the core of the band, and we have these guys that we record with and play the live shows with, and for some reason that has ended up being all these New Yorkers. (Editor’s note: Kenny Margolis plays keyboards for Cracker, and numerous guests are featured on “Greenland.”)

NUVO: How have you changed and evolved as a musician since the days of your “Kerosene Hat” album (Virgin, 1993), when you released your biggest MTV and radio hit, “Low”?

Lowery: I think we just really haven’t, in some ways, we haven’t changed that much. We’re not afraid to play songs like we did in the beginning. We haven’t been fearful that our sound would become dated or irrelevant or [that] we needed to update ourselves. A lot of bands feel that way, and they make bad records because of that. We haven’t really changed that much. The first couple records we did were very kind of simple — two guitars, bass and drums — pretty much recorded live. And then over the years, we sort of made these more elaborate feeling albums with a lot of details through arrangements, and I’m glad we could explore that. You know, a lot of things like “The Golden Age” (Virgin, 1996), which was a very elaborate record, a lot of people say that’s our best work, but in the end, it’s sort of like we’ve circled back to being like we were on the first couple records — just four guys in a room playing [music] together. [That] brought some of that complexity back with us to where I feel that “Greenland,” the last record, in a way represents all the phases we went through, everything from our exploration sort of psychedelic stuff to American roots stuff to punk rock and whatever our traditional alternative sound is. That record encompasses the whole journey that we’ve done. In a way, we’re not afraid of who we are. … We’re less afraid of who we are than we ever were before.

NUVO: If you could’ve picked another song, other than “Low,” to make it that big in the mainstream, which one would it have been?

Lowery: There’s a song on our 2002 record [Forever, Virgin/Back Porch] called “Guarded By Monkeys,” and that’s sort of strange title, but that should have been as big as “Low.” We put that record out on Virgin, and three weeks later, they pulled all the promotion money for that. But there are places in the world — in Spain or Germany — where it’s played on the radio. To me, that song was another “Low”-type hit that no one ever heard here — the masses didn’t hear. Our fans heard it; they liked it. But the masses didn’t. [It’s] to the point where, a lot of people say our record, “Forever,” we should have called “Guarded By Monkeys.” You’d have to hear the song to understand the title.

NUVO: What are some instances of trial and error or obstacles Cracker has had to endure to get to where you are today? And what accomplishments, both musically and personally, would you say you’re most proud of over the past 17 years?

Lowery: We’ve stayed together longer than The Beatles were ever together [or] most bands were ever together. We’ve been able to tour and put out records constantly and remain relevant to the American music scene, at least I think we are; I hope we are, and that is really hard. We’ve done that, and I’m very proud of that.

NUVO: Are there any social or cultural issues that you feel strongly about and would like to share with your fans? How do these things bleed into your songs?

Lowery: I don’t think it’s rained like six weeks here in [Richmond] Virginia. I mean, clearly, we have to do something about that. And I have two kids. We’re really concerned about climate change. I think everybody is at this point, but there are a few grape Kool-Aid drinkers not believing it. But that’s very important to me, to the point that the last time we bought a van, I thought, “Well, diesel in the short term is worse for the environment, but in the long term, it’s better. So, I’m gonna buy a diesel van to drive around instead of a gas one so we don’t use so much fuel.” We don’t use tour buses anymore. You’ve gotta think about that a lot more now. … It’s not as ecologically friendly as I’d like. I’d like to be able to burn bio-fuel, but Mercedes’ Dodge doesn’t let you put that in there yet. It’s not included in their warranty. Diesel’s good, ’cause eventually you’ll be able to burn bio-fuels in there much faster than you would with a regular car.

NUVO: Are there any funny antics of how you can tell if someone is a longtime Cracker fan? (For instance, do they shout out Camper Van Beethoven requests at your shows?)

Lowery: I think some of the people who were into Camper Van Beethoven, a lot of them came along with us when we made the transition to Cracker. And that’s great. I appreciate it. But actually, I should make a point, most Camper Van Beethoven records were sold long after Camper Van Beethoven broke up. So, a lot of people went the other way. The surest sign of finding somebody that’s like a hardcore [fan] that’s been with us for a long time is usually somebody who goes, “What happened to that bass player that wore the dress?” [For] our first record, our bass player, who used to play with Elvis Costello and plays with a lot of people now, he started dressing in drag — not always, but about half the time. It was funny. That’s the people who saw our first tour.

NUVO: How do you think the music industry has changed since you began performing in the 1980s? What changes have you embraced? For instance, there’s MySpace.com.

Lowery: Oh yeah! That’s actually one of the major ways we promote our shows reliably. First of all, let me just say something. The way the music industry has changed isn’t really that different than it was 25 years ago when I started Camper Van Beethoven, and here’s why. When we started Camper Van Beethoven, basically, the major [record] labels would put out hair metal, R&B or new wave. If you were doing anything other than that, there were punk rock labels, folk labels and new age labels. But if you were doing something that didn’t fit into one of the categories, you essentially were left to put out records yourself. And there were distributors. To us, the revolutionary thing was you could get phone cards and/or buy really cheap long distance from companies like that. And you could call college radio stations and other clubs. That was like early networking. It was the revolution of the time. Phone calls got cheap, so we would make our own records, put ’em out through independent distributors that would get ’em in the stores, and we just kind of promoted ourselves by calling venues and college radio stations all across the country — a very grass-roots way of touring and promoting yourself. [Now, there are] lots of small labels, but they tend to sell one type of music. So people are doing everything themselves and putting up their own Web pages, MySpace pages, Music Nation pages, Facebook pages and promoting directly to their fans. It’s really the same thing as we did with Camper Van Beethoven. We were constantly working on a grass-roots level to make our band … known well enough that the people who would like us, we got in contact with and then they bought our records. That’s all people are doing anyone. It’s just that the tools are different and they’re much easier to use. To me, it’s the same.

NUVO: What other current musicians do you listen to regularly who you believe are putting out quality rock and alt-country?

Lowery: A.C. Newman of The New Pornographers actually has a solo record that I like better than any of The New Pornographers’ records. … Rogue Wave from Oakland. One of the guys is from [Bloomington, Ind.’s] Old Pike, or something like that. I’ll flip open my iTunes. Alright, Hotel Lights [by Darren Jessee], the original drummer from Ben Fold’s Five’s band and Mint from Belgium or Holland are great … [and] Sufjan Stevens.

NUVO: What surprises can we hope to see from Cracker in the next few years? And what other projects are you currently working on?

Lowery: We should be in the very early stages of a new album here in December, and I hope we get another album out by next summer.

Listen to this interview in nuvo.net's Multimedia section.