- With Jam Cracker: The All Out Band, your event will be a night to remember! We are young, yet experienced performers who are dedicated to creating a fun, lively atmosphere for any occasion. We pride ourselves in playing a variety of music.
- After Camper Van Beethoven broke up — the band’s members apparently divided over whether to focus on their experimental leanings or pure pop songcraft — singer/guitarist David Lowery formed Cracker with two high-school pals, guitarist Johnny Hickman and bassist Davey Faragher (the group has never had a permanent drummer), to do the latter.
Uncle Kracker in December 2012 | |
| Background information | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Matthew Shafer |
| Born | June 6, 1974 (age 46) Mount Clemens, Michigan, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) |
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| Instruments | |
| Years active | 1987–present |
| Labels | |
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| Website | www.UncleKracker.com |
Bay Area transgender artist Cash Askew of the gothic dream-pop band Them Are Us Too, was a rare talent. Only 22, she tragically lost her life in the Oakland “Ghost Ship” warehouse fire in 2016. They recruited vocalist Monte Hawes and drummer George Holyoke, and naming themselves Crackers, they became one of Canada's first truly independent groups, playing the local area. In 2005, Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven started an annual three night 'Campout' at Pappy and Harriet's Pioneertown Palace in Pioneertown, California, close to where Lowery and Hickman met, in which they and several other bands perform, including sets by Cracker and Camper band members performing their own music.
Matthew Shafer (born June 6, 1974), also known by his stage name Uncle Kracker, is an American singer-songwriter and musician known for his country and rock music. He was a turntablist for Kid Rock's backing group Twisted Brown Trucker and since 1999 has recorded as a solo artist. His singles 'Follow Me' and 'Drift Away' were top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100.
Early life[edit]
Shafer was born in Mount Clemens, Michigan, on June 6, 1974.[1] With his brother Mike Shafer, he visited a nightclub in Clawson, Michigan, where a turntables competition was occurring. His older brother was competing against a then-unknown musician, Kid Rock. Shafer soon became friends with Kid Rock. In those times, he was mainly rapping. He went to L'Anse Creuse High School.[2] In 1994, Kid Rock asked Shafer to play turntables for his band called Twisted Brown Trucker. Shafer knew nothing of using turntables, but since his brother was an experienced DJ, he agreed. He only performed at live shows at the time, until he began recording for Rock's album, Early Mornin' Stoned Pimp; Shafer was a featured vocalist on some of the tracks. He then began working on a solo album, but he continued being the DJ for Kid Rock. Upon the release of Rock's multi-platinum album, The History of Rock, Shafer decided that it was time to release his first solo album, Double Wide in 2000.
Music career[edit]
Double Wide[edit]
Double Wide was Uncle Kracker's first solo album. Released on June 30, 2000, it peaked at Number 7 on the Billboard 200 album chart and is Shafer's most successful and highest-selling album. The album was produced by Kid Rock, with mixing additional production by Michael Bradford. The first single taken off the album was 'Follow Me', which was co-written with Bradford, and peaked at Number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 2001. The album spent the next 10 months on the Billboard 200, and 'Follow Me' also had a long chart run. His second single, 'Yeah, Yeah, Yeah', failed to hit the Hot 100 chart; however, the song has been released one year earlier in the soundtrack of Shanghai Noon.[3]Double Wide was certified 2× Multi-Platinum on November 29, 2001.[4]
No Stranger to Shame[edit]
After a great deal of touring to promote the first album, he began to work on a follow-up album. Entitled No Stranger to Shame, it was released on August 27, 2002. The album reached No. 43 on the Billboard albums chart. A hit single was released, a cover version of Dobie Gray's 1973 Top 5 hit, 'Drift Away' – also including Gray as a guest vocalist. Kracker's version of this song peaked at No. 9 on the Hot 100 one week to the day after Gray's 63rd birthday, and it set a record for most weeks at No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, remaining atop this chart for 28 nonconsecutive weeks. Other singles released from No Stranger to Shame include 'In A Little While', which peaked at No. 59 on the Hot 100 and No. 26 on the Adult Contemporary charts. A third single was released, 'Memphis Soul Song', which charted on the Adult Top 40 at No. 35. A special remix of 'Memphis Soul Song' was also released, featuring harmonies by legendary singing group The Jordanaires, who had famously sung harmonies with Elvis Presley. The album was certified gold by the RIAA within a year of its release. Soon after this period, Kracker became good friends with country music star Kenny Chesney and the two began a successful touring partnership together, brought on by the success of Kenny's hit single 'When the Sun Goes Down', featuring Uncle Kracker both on the single, and prominently in the video.
Seventy Two and Sunny[edit]
After touring, Shafer began working on a third album which he called Seventy Two and Sunny. It was his first not to feature a parental advisory label as well as the first one to not feature any hip-hop songs, and moved onto a pure country sound. The album featured two singles: 'Rescue', which only charted at No. 20 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary singles chart but did not chart on any other charts, and 'Writing It Down,' which did not chart at all. Shafer did have some success that year though when he was featured on Chesney's track, 'When the Sun Goes Down', which peaked at No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart, and went on to achieve Gold status. Seventy Two and Sunny has sold about 200,000 copies. It peaked at No. 39 on the Billboard 200.
Happy Hour[edit]
Uncle Kracker's fourth studio album is entitled Happy Hour.[5] The album was in the works for five years and was delayed due to Atlantic Records' decision to bring in Rob Cavallo to produce the album right as they were finishing their cut of the album in late 2007. An early promo version of the album contained the tracks 'Happy Hour', 'Vegas Baby', 'I'm Not Leaving', 'The One That Got Away', and 'That's What's Happenin'. The first single from the album 'Smile' was released on July 13, 2009, and has peaked at No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album was released on September 15, 2009. 'Smile' also became his first solo entry on the Hot Country Songs chart, where it debuted at No. 57 for the week of November 7, 2009, and peaked at No. 6 in September 2010. A music video for the track 'My Girlfriend' was released in November 2009, though there has been no official word whether it will be serviced as the album's second single. The album also features country singer Jesse Lee (also on Atlantic Records) in a duet they wrote called 'Me Again.'
Happy Hour: The South River Road Sessions[edit]
A six song EP, Happy Hour: The South River Road Sessions, was released on June 22, 2010. The EP features country remakes of songs off the Happy Hour album. The singles released were a remake of 'Smile' and 'Good to Be Me', featuring Kid Rock.
Midnight Special[edit]
On November 16, 2012, Uncle Kracker released his fifth studio album, Midnight Special, produced by Keith Stegall. Sugar Hill Records and Vanguard Records released the album under parent company Welk Music Group. The album was a full-fledged country record. The first single to come off of the album was 'Nobody's Sad on a Saturday Night', followed by 'Blue Skies'. Shafer performed songs from the album while on the road with Kid Rock for his $20 Best Night Ever Tour during 2013.
On August 10, 2018, Kracker released his new single entitled 'Floatin', along with an accompanying music video.
Personal life[edit]
Shafer was married to Melanie Haas from 1998 to 2014. They had four children together: a son, Miles; and three daughters, Skylar, Madison, and Troy. In October 2020, a second son, Ford, was born.[6]
In 2007, Shafer was arrested for a second-degree sex offense charge and released on $75,000 bond.[7][8] He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to a year of probation.[9][10]
Discography[edit]
- Double Wide (2000)
- No Stranger to Shame (2002)
- Seventy Two and Sunny (2004)
- Happy Hour (2009)
- Midnight Special (2012)
References[edit]
- ^Wilson, Mackenzie. 'Uncle Kracker biography'. AllMusic. Retrieved June 25, 2013.
- ^'Uncle Kracker On Eminem/ICP Gun Incident'. YAHOO!. Retrieved June 17, 2008.
- ^'Shanghai Noon - Cast | IMDbPro'. pro.imdb.com. Retrieved September 7, 2020.
- ^'RIAA – Gold & Platinum – November 21, 2010: Double Wide certified awards'. Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved November 21, 2010.
- ^'Uncle Kracker 'frustrated' by album delay'. Yahoo! Music News. Retrieved May 11, 2009.
- ^'Uncle Kracker & Wife Welcome Baby Boy'. Country Rebel. Retrieved April 24, 2021.
- ^'Uncle Kracker Arrested On Sex Offense Charge'. Billboard.
- ^'Uncle Kracker Arrested on Second-Degree Sex Offense Charge'. Fox News.
- ^'Singer Pleads Guilty; Gets Probation in Bar Incident'. WRAL.com. September 2, 2007. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
- ^'Uncle Kracker not happy with guilty plea - USATODAY.com'. Usatoday30.usatoday.com. November 1, 2007. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
Cracker Band Members
External links[edit]
June 09, 2017 by Craig Phillips in Beyond the Films
Real Boy is the portrait of Bennett, who is undergoing gender reassignment surgery, and his mom’s struggle to process the change, but it’s also the portrait of a young musician (Bennett) who is mentored by the more experienced folk singer Joe Stevens (who is also trans and been through a lot of ups and downs himself). In other words, it’s a coming of age film, a coming out film, but also a story of music. Bennett and Joe are complex human beings who find common ground not just in being trans but in their love of music.
It’s no surprise, then, to find trans artists making a fascinating variety of music. Here are just 12 such artists, from fresh new voices to critically acclaimed virtuosos.
Artist: Anohni
Song: “Drone Bomb Me”
Artist: Anohni (F.K.A. Antony, and J. Ralph)
Song: “Manta Ray”
Born in England as Antony Hegarty, and once lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons, Anohni has a remarkably unique and transplendent voice. Her song with J. Ralph, “Manta Ray,” for the documentary film Racing Extinction, was nominated for an Oscar, who considered herself the first (actually the second) transgender performer ever to have been nominated for an Academy Award. But she decided not to attend the ceremony after discovering the show’s producers (for various reasons) had no intention of letting her perform it on stage.
Separate from that story, is the story of Anohni’s amazing voice, above all else.
Read more:
“Anohni, the artist once known as Antony Hegarty, on life beyond the Johnsons“
Artist: She King
She King is the stage name of Shawnee Talbot, an aboriginal “Two Spirit” Canadian (Mohawk First Nation) pop singer and songwriter.
Song: “Mirror Me”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSOq5wUgLIQ
She “writes stellar pop songs with big hooks, polished production and plenty of vocal power. It came as no surprise to learn that She King’s recent accomplishments include being invited to tour with Roxette and Glass Tiger and asked to record a song for a show that’ll soon air on The Disney Channel,” says AutoStraddle, a GLAAD Award-winning Canadian site, which also included She King on this list of 12 Incredible Indigenous LGBTQ and Two-Spirit People You Should Know.
Artist: Ezra Furman
Song: “Restless Year”
Singer-songwriter Ezra Furman, whose work has elements of Jonathan Richman and Weezer, considers himself gender-fluid, not transgender, and, after his Catholic-raised mother converted to Judaism and he followed suit, “an observant Jew.” In this first-person piece for the Guardian, Furman writes about a seminal influence on his work, and on coming to terms with who he is.
“Looking back, I realise how primed I was to fall in love with Lou Reed and the Velvets. I was a suburban kid who fancied myself somehow intellectual. I was into punk rock but I couldn’t get into the subcultural signifiers of dyed hair, safety pins and torn denim. Being a punk seemed like a new set of rules that I wasn’t interested in having to follow.”
Read more:
“Talking with Ezra Furman: Champion of Sincere Body Positive Dance Jams”
Artist: Audrey Zee Whitesides/Little Waist
Song: “(I Wanna Be A) Dyke Wife”
Whitesides fronts emotional punk/singer-songwriter trio Little Waist and folk solo project Audrey Otherway, and has been or currently is in several other queer bands, including Mal Blum, April Mei, and Worriers. “She’s a poet, a big nerd, and a fan of crying,” she says in her bio.
“Fronted by Audrey Zee Whitesides, Brooklyn-based queercore-transcore trio Little Waist strikes a revolutionary chord with this raw, blistering track about queer domestic bliss.”-The Advocate
Artist: Laura Jane Grace and Against Me!
Song: “Black Me Out”
Leader of the Florida punk rock group Against Me!, Grace publicly came out as transgender in 2012. “Her deeply personal songs about gender identity on 2014’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues provided for the band’s most impassioned effort to date. And this perceptiveness stretches through the band’s entire discography. Against Me! is one of the premier punk groups of the past ten years and only shows signs of improving.”-What Culture
Artist: Shea Diamond
Song: “I’d Love to Change the World”
New to the music world, Shea Diamond‘s story is a powerful one reflected in the strength and urgent inspiration in her soulful single “I Am Her” and in her gorgeously evocative cover of the song “I’d Love to Change the World,” which was used for ABC’s LGBTQ rights miniseries When I Rise:
“A New Yorker via Flint, MI, the new musician says she was born into a gender role that she did not accept, so Diamond ran away from home as a teen, ultimately ending up incarcerated for ten years—where she discovered others of trans experience who helped her find her voice.”-Time magazine
Artist: Mina Caputo (band: Life of Agony)
Song: “Got Monsters”
“Becoming one of the first openly trans women in heavy metal when she came out in 2011, Mina Caputo is the founder and lead singer of legendary band Life of Agony. Despite some initial backlash from some in the metal community, she has since been widely embraced, with Life of Agony reuniting in 2014 to sold-out shows, and Caputo joining Laura Jane Grace on an acoustic tour.”-Advocate
Cracker Countrysides
Here’s her solo song, the powerful “Got Monsters (I No Longer Exist),” in which she sings “Was born a monster/Do you hide your monsters, too?”
Read more:
The Advocate: “Agony and Ecstasy” (Heavy Metal Rocker Comes Out as Transgender)
Artist: Black Cracker
Song: “The Sun Is in My Face”
Black Cracker is an influential American MC, producer and a poet now living in Berlin, who describes himself on his site as “Not one to stay put or be pigeon-holed in a time which revels in classifying artists, Black Cracker’s work has resisted and presented a problem to those who insist on stretching the chaotic web of creation into a straight evolutionary line.”
Hear more:
Artist: Native Cats
Songs: “Cavalier” and “Soft Chambers”
The duo of Chloe Alison Escott and Julian Teakle form the noise-pop band from Tasmania, Australia, Native Cats. One of their songs,”Soft Chambers,” was released as a pay-what-you-want download on their Bandcamp page, with all money going to support the San Francisco-based Trans Lifeline.
Taken from an upcoming album to be released on RIP Society in early 2017, “Soft Chambers” was written in early 2015 before Chloe started transitioning and she says it’s the most complex song the band have tackled: “We wrote the bare bones (Julian’s bass, my lyrics) in my last months of denial before I came out and started transitioning. This year I came back to it with my new lease on life and made it what it is now. Appropriately it’s a song about healing from trauma and physically revisiting moments from your past.” – Vice
Artist: Cash Askew and Them Are Us Too
Song: “Eudaemonia”
Bay Area transgender artist Cash Askew of the gothic dream-pop band Them Are Us Too, was a rare talent. Only 22, she tragically lost her life in the Oakland “Ghost Ship” warehouse fire in 2016.
Askew’s stepfather Sunny Haire and mother Leisa Baird Askew said: “She was very special, an enigma, and I can say without hesitation she truly affected and made an impression upon everyone she met…”
“With her passing, the world lost a tender, luminous spirit who was just beginning to imprint an indelible mark on the world through her art and through her humanity.”-Remembrance on KQED
In an interview published posthumously on Medium, Cash talked with Beth Winegarner about influences:
“As a young teenager, I was definitely attracted to goth and new wave in part because of the androgyny, and that aesthetic gave me a way to explore my gender expression before I could even come to terms with being transgender. But that was just a personal relationship with images in my head, ‘cause I wasn’t a part of any scene, I was just walking around on my own looking like a freak.”
Uncle Kracker Band Members
Artist: Angel Haze
Song: “Planes Fly”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVQnrASp4RA
The MTV, BBC, BET and GLAAD Award-nominated hip-hop artist broke through in a big way and has performed with Sia and covered Macklemore in her diverse arsenal of deft, dynamic rap tracks.
After the braggadocious calling card that was New York, Haze released an EP online: the acclaimed Reservation is titled with her Native American heritage in mind, but also serves as a statement of arrival: “That was my way of introducing myself – I’ve made a reservation here already.”-The Guardian
Historical Flashback
Artist: Billy Tipton
Billy Tipton, a jazz pianist who began his career during the Great Depression, had a remarkable life story.
“He toured around the country with other jazzmen – and they almost invariably were men – playing swing music. In the ’50s he formed his own small group, the Billy Tipton Trio, and recorded two albums of standards. Then moved to Spokane, where he spent the next decades running a booking agency for musicians, while still performing weekly until arthritis made it too difficult. Tipton was married five times, or at least there were five women who at times called themselves Mrs. Tipton without the benefit of a legal wedding. With the last of his wives, he adopted three children and became involved in the PTA and camping trips with the Boy Scouts. One of Tipton’s sons was with him at home in 1989 when he fell seriously ill. Paramedics arrived and, attempting to revive Tipton, removed some of his clothing. The question they then asked took his son by surprise: ‘Did your father ever have a sex change?'” Read more here on KCTS, “Writing His Own Tune: Billy Tipton’s Secret Surprised Even Those Who Knew Him Best“