Friday, May 16, 2003 | 9:14 a.m.
Who: Cracker.
When: 10:30 tonight.
Where: House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.
Tickets: $15.
Information: (702) 632-7600.
Many musicians might be apprehensive about going onstage following 50 Cent. After all, the rapper is infamous for arriving late for his shows, which could make for a very late night for the second act.
David Lowery, singer and guitarist for Cracker, simply sees tonight's unusual schedule at House of Blues at Mandalay Bay as an opportunity for the ultimate in bizarre collaborations.
"We're right after 50 Cent's show, so maybe we can do a duet," Lowery said in a recent phone interview from his home in Richmond, Va.
"We have this new song called 'It Ain't Gonna Suck Itself.' Maybe me and 50 Cent can do that up. It's really fast and the words are just jammed in there, so we could probably work up some version of it together."
Doors open at 10:30 p.m. for Cracker's late-night, 21-and-over performance, the band's first show in Las Vegas in at least eight years, by Lowery's best recollection.
Lowery used to be a frequent visitor to Southern Nevada with his "other" band, 1980s college rock mainstays Camper Van Beethoven. But those days -- and the places in which he played -- are long gone.
"I remember playing a place called Calamity Jane's, and before that we'd come and play afternoon shows at a record shop that I don't think is there anymore," Lowery said.
These days, the 42-year-old Lowery actually fronts both of his projects. Though Camper disbanded in 1990, leading Lowery to create Cracker, the original members of Camper got back together in 1999 and have toured on and off since.
Tonight's Cracker-only show is part of a tour that also includes joint dates by both bands, featuring shorter sets by Camper and Cracker. To keep fans on their toes, Lowery and his bandmates employed a bit of hijinks at a recent show.
"About two weeks ago, since Cracker hadn't played since right before Christmas, we needed to warm up. So we sort of adopted disguises and opened for Camper," Lowery said. "We billed ourselves as Ironic Mullet and we just played country songs, real redneck things like 'Family Tradition' and 'Bottle Let Me Down.'
"And I was surprised at how few people understood that it was us in different hats and different clothes. And then we came out and played again as Camper."
Cracker is preparing its sixth full-length album, tentatively titled "Countryside," for a fall release. The band will play several cuts from the upcoming CD, along with old favorites such as "Low," "Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)" and "Euro-Trash Girl."
Don't be surprised if those golden Cracker oldies sound a bit different from their original album renditions, however.
Last summer Lowery and fellow Cracker singer/guitarist Johnny Hickman teamed up with fiddlin' jam band Leftover Salmon to record drastically new arrangements of 10 old Cracker tunes. The result, "O Cracker, Where Art Though?" hit stores Tuesday.
"We'll probably do some of our songs that way (in concert)," Lowery said. "It's great. They're like new songs. It's totally fresh to do them this way."
Cracker's foray into the jam band world actually isn't as unlikely as it may seem. The alternative rock band opened a handful of shows during the Grateful Dead summer tour in 1994, covering Jerry Garcia's gambling tale, "Loser," each night.
Lowery said the Dead also nearly took a stab at one of his Cracker compositions.
"The rumor was that Jerry Garcia and the band were trying to work up 'Euro-Trash Girl' right before he died, but there's no recording of it anywhere," Lowery said.
Cracker will move even further toward the jam-band scene this summer, when Lowery & Co. play a series of festival shows, including August's Bonaroo NE Music Festival, an event that also features the Dead, Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews and Tom Petty.
"Yeah, we're more jam-oriented now, but we usually stay under five or six minutes, and we still play plenty of 2 1/2- minute songs," Lowery said. "What was 'alternative' in rock changed, and we at the same time have gone towards roots stuff with Cracker, so maybe that's a scene that we might fit better in now."
After nearly a decade of inactivity, Camper Van Beethoven has also been busy lately, issuing a five-disc boxed set, "Cigarettes & Carrot Juice: The Santa Cruz Years," last year.
Camper also released a new album -- its first since 1989 -- in 2002, sort of. The band's latest CD is actually a song-by-song reworking of Fleetwood Mac's 1979 record "Tusk," mostly recorded during Camper's heyday, with a few modern touches.
"Whenever we had to add something modern, which is only a few places, we always used a sound or a little clue that you wouldn't have had in 1986," Lowery said. "Like there'll be a cell phone ringing in the background or a little snippet of a song that came later.
"So that's our little signature, like, 'OK, this part wasn't original, but some of the tapes were damaged and we had to fix the song.' "
Fans of former Eminem DJ Matt Shafer take heed: the band on tonight's House of Blues bill is not Uncle Kracker. The DJ-turned-vocalist actually contacted Lowery's management several years ago to inquire about the possibility of going by the stage name "Kracker," but Lowery wasn't amenable.
"This was before his record came out, and we were like, 'Uh ... no,' " Lowery said. "So he became Uncle Kracker. But Atlantic (Records) kept referring to him as Kracker, there was a Rolling Stone article with a title that said, 'Kracker' and there was a 'Drew Carey Show' that he was on where he was referred to the whole time as 'Kracker.'
"So we said, 'OK, that's enough. We tried to be cool about it.' "
Due to a legal arrangement between the two acts, Lowery can't say much more about the "Cracker vs. Kracker" episode. But he hinted every time Uncle Kracker sells an album, Cracker the band reaps some reward.
"I can't talk about the legal issues because we sort of have a 'be nice' clause," Lowery said. "But I will say that we wish him well and lots of success."09
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