Cracker

Cracker’s been going for twenty years now and Sunrise In The Land Of Milk And Honey is your ninth studioalbum. Did you shake things up a bit for this album?
David– We changed our work ethic a little bit. Usually David and I would bring in a piece of something or a finished song and show it to the other guys. This time we mostly sat down all of us and finished the songs. Quite a few of the songs came up with the four of us sitting around working on them.

Was that the first time you had done that?
David – Yeah. It was a cracker(!). But another thing, there was another studio in town where they would do all the commercial stuff, like jingles and that sort of thing. You’d have these guys come in three days a week at 9.30 in the morning and just write for two or three hours until they had something done, and they’d go on to their normal jobs. That was just very fascinating to me. In a way that was just as creative as the way a lot of songwriters write, you know, when they get a bottle of wine and go to some cabin in the mountains. There really wasn’t that much of a difference between what those guys did and what we did. We’d come into the studio in the morning and not leave until we had at least two pieces of music finished. It didn’t have to be a finished song, it just had to be something that in time would turn into a song, like an idea for a chorus or a verse or something like that.

David – Well, we wanted to see if we could incorporate Frank and Sal more in the songwriting. And what ended up happening was, you know, we all grew up playing punk, powerpop, new age daze or what ever you wanna call it, and I think that stuff ended up dominating what we did on that album.

Are you the kind of band that might have trouble getting shit done? Do you need discipline in the studio?
David – Yeah. I think everybody does.

Johnny – If you think about it, some of the best songs that were ever written, were written in the Brill Building by staff-songwriters who would say “before lunch today, I have to come up with a great song”. Hundreds and hundreds of great songs were written that way. Of course it can be done that way. It’s been proven that it can be done that way.


How do the two of you work together?
Johnny – Well, in different ways. Sometimes a song just starts with a title, and other times one of us has a verse or something, and the other one will come in and suggest we take out a verse or something like that. People will ask if it’s words first or music first, but really, it’s all of the above.

You’ve been together for a lot of years now. How have you – on a professional and personal level – avoided ending up like Don Henley and Glenn Frey or Lennon and McCartney?
Johnny – It’s not always a bad thing. We argue with our drummer sometimes, but you know, it’s a good thing. There are struggles here and there, but it helps the creativity. If it gets a little heated, it’s usually in a good way.

David – I think another thing is, we’re not really fighting over who’s Cracker, like The Eagles were or Fleetwood Mac or any number of bands. I’m perfectly willing to take some of my music that isn’t working with Cracker and put it on a solo record or work on it with Camper Van Beethoven or something like that. We’ve been doing this so long, and the band is what the been plays well together.

David – I thought this album sounded different than any other record we’ve done. I think it has this underlying punk attitude, for a lack of a better word, with how the drums are done and the way the guitar sound. I actually thought it would sound very different to people, but they tell me they think it sounds like a classic Cracker record! Haha! I don’t know if there is a classic Cracker sound. I like to think of ourselves as a pan-rock band in the tradition of classic rock bands. To me, that’s what every band should do – acknowledge that rock is this mongrel, a hybrid that constantly has to mutate to be interesting.

Back in the 90’s when you first started playing together as Cracker, you we’re labelled as college rock. I’m still not sure what that term covers…
David – Ha! Especially since we were in our 30’s.

…yeah. Good point. But did you ever think much about how the band was labelled?
David – No, we never really cared about how we were labelled, but you can tell an interesting story of the band by going through how we were labelled. For instance, when we played the first album to our label, they we’re like “WHAT are you guys doing??”! Everybody was saying that it was country rock or roots rock, and they told us how completely out of synch we were with everything that was happening at that time. Grunge rock was exploding. Different things were happening, and I remember our A&R guy going “you really wanna put out a roots country album in 1992? You sure that’s a good idea?”. But that was the music we played. Alt. country hadn’t really been invented yet, there wasn’t a phrase for it, but that was what people was trying to label us.

Johnny – I remember when we did our Countrysides record (2003  -ed.), we approached it with a sense of humour, almost the way the Stones would approach it. We’d never in a million years think of ourselves as country, but we’re showing a love for it at the same time as we’re making fun of it. And our chore audience get that.

David – The very first tour we did in the US…it was in the South...the only band on that tour who was genuinely excited about opening for us, was Uncle Tupelo. I remember having this fuckin four hour conversation with those guys between the sound check and the show. They were the ones who were really excited about playing with us. I’m not sure if our first album was out, but we were playing for like a hundred people. Us and Uncle Tupelo, in South Carolina!

You’ve been around for years and have surely played and toured with numerous bands. And the Counting Crows…
David – You know that Counting Crows opened for us!

No. Didn’t know that. But what was it like seeing bands like the Counting Crows and to some extent Uncle Tupelo shoot to stardom?
David – First of all, I think we’re bigger than a lot of people think we are. We have sold millions of records. A lot of our songs have become sort of new classic rock standards. At least in North America, and probably other places too. A lot of people know them. But one of the tried-and-true ways to drive yourself crazy in the music business and turn into a bitter old fuck, is to sit there and wonder every day “why the hell did that fuckin untalented loser get to be more popular than I did?”…

Johnny – Not naming any names!

David – Haha! No, not naming any names! But what I mean is, that’s one of the tried-and-true ways to becoming a really unpleasant person. And the other thing I’ve learned, is the degree to which ones success is unpredictable or due to really completely random events. It is what it is.

Patterson Hood sings on the song Friends on the new album. What’s it like working with a talent like that?
David – Patterson is really easy going in a lot of ways. Especially with us, cause we’ve known him for a long time. Before the Drive-By Truckers were really known anywhere outside of Alabama, for some reason they’d always come and play in Richmond, Virginia. They were quite popular there. I’ve spent a lot of time with Patterson, drinking beer at 4 in the morning after shows. The same with Counting Crows. I knew Adam Duritz before all this, so I get some kind of pass. I don’t need to deal with these people as rock stars, but as people.

Johnny – Patterson actually said something interesting to me not long ago. He and (Drive-By Truckers guitarist) Mike Cooley had first started out more punk rock, sort of going against Patterson’s father, David Hood, a very famous musician. He told me that when he first heard the first Cracker album, he knew that he could “embrace his inner redneck”. So he and Cooley said, well if those guys can do it, so can we. I thought that was funny and humorous, but it also took me by surprise. They’re really considered an Americana roots band, while we’re in a lot different camps. It was an honour.

Do you see any resemblance in the way you’ve done things through the years and the way the Drive-By Truckers are approaching music now?
Johnny – I don’t know. Maybe they take it more seriously than we do, but I don’t think so. They just play the music they want to play. They certainly incorporate more things than country in their music, but it’s based there, and they’re unashamed by that. They really are an Americana band, more so than other bands that are labelled Americana. They have humour. I don’t think they take themselves too seriously, and neither do we.

Is that the secret to surviving as a band these days? Not to take yourself too seriously?
Johnny – Definitely. You know what, it’s just fuckin music. Relax. Take a look in the mirror. It’s not brain surgery. Not that we don’t take what we do seriously, but once in a while you just have to take a deep breath. Everyone I know who has taken it too seriously, burned out really quickly. One bad review and they were ready to call it quits. We’re in this band because the music comes naturally to us, it’s what we do and we’re friends who enjoy playing together. You have to stay the course and accept that it’s gonna be up and down repeatedly.
This is going to make you sound really old, but was everything easier back in the old days?
David – It’s a lot easier to earn some of your money and making some of your living from selling cd’s and the funds that come from that, than it is to make all your money from touring. It requires that you spend a lot more time away from home. So yeah, that part of it was easier. But in the old days, there wouldn’t be a career for a band like us who’s been around for 25 years. There wouldn’t be any way we could stay in contact with our old fans, like we can do today on social networks and so on. But it’s a mixed bag.


So how long do you think you’ll keep going?
Johnny – God only knows. A year. Three years. I don’t know. To be honest, I’m amazed we’ve gone as long as we have. The average lifespan of a band is what, six years? We’ve managed to keep going.