Cracker's Formula For Success: `3 Verses, 3 Choruses, 3 Chords'

Many times, you just can't win if you used to be in a popular band and try something new. Old fans will show up at your shows hollering for the old stuff, new fans will go "Who?" and critics will never, ever take your new work on its own terms.

Not so with David Lowery.

Lowery, formerly of college cult favorites Camper Van Beethoven, brings his new outfit Cracker to RKCNDY this Monday. Low on quirkiness, high on straight-ahead rock, Cracker nevertheless succeeds by building upon Lowery's past.

"I didn't have a master plan," Lowery said from Birmingham, Ala. "What I've always done is play songs I like, and I've never had to do anything I didn't want to do." Naming a couple of Camper favorites like "When I Win the Lottery" and "Take the Skinheads Bowling," he said, "Those songs are in a lot of ways based on what this band does - three verses, three choruses, three chords."

Cracker does include some Camper Van Beethoven tunes in its set, but according to Lowery, "I let the other guys in the band pick 'em."

With the exception of "I See the Light," which sounds like Lowery and the guys have been listening to too much AM radio classic rock, the new material holds its own.

The first song (and single), "Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)," sets the knuckles to involuntary drumming with its lean guitar line and hormone-charged vocals. But apart from that and "Don't F # # # Me Up (With Peace And Love)," the album moves along at a mid-tempo pace, with the pretty "Happy Birthday to Me," the loping country of "Mr. Wrong" and the quietly catchy "Satisfy You." "Dr. Bernice" comes closest to the old Camper, with its gypsy-like melody and sardonic lyrics.

When the Santa Cruz-based Camper Van Beethoven burst apart last year (three members wanted to concentrate on Monks of Doom full-time), Lowery hooked up with a couple high-school friends. Guitarist Johnny Hickman had participated in a few bands with Lowery early on, and bassist Davey Faragher sang backing vocals on the last two Camper albums. Drummer Joey Peters joined after the album was recorded.

After briefly touring the South under Lowery's name, Cracker went back to California to record the eponymous album. The band played around 30 dates in San Francisco clubs before releasing the album and taking the show nationwide.

Although Cracker's first road trip mainly hits the clubs, the band has performed a few large-scale dates, including opening for Robyn Hitchcock at a large festival in Birmingham and a show with Primus in Berkeley, Calif.

"We go out there, and there is not a single girl in there," Lowery said of the Berkeley show while Hickman laughs in the background. "I go, `Uh-oh, this is gonna be bad.' There was a smattering of stuff thrown at us." The band decided to just enrage the audience with extended versions of Cracker's slowest songs. They were rewarded with a hailstorm of Evian water bottles, Lowery said. "It made all the papers, and everybody talked about it in San Francisco," he smirked.

But on the whole, audiences have been "great - the longer we go along, the better," Lowery said, adding that in some Southern cities, crowds are larger than they were for Camper Van Beethoven. "Audience reactions are a funny thing. You can play for a lot of people, and it could be totally dead, or play for 50 and have it incredible. Some shows have verged on sheer pandemonium. The great thing is that you can never be on middle ground."

Opening acts are the Wallflowers and Antenna.