Wry roots rockers Cracker have wrapped their fourth full-length album and first since 1998's Gentleman's Blues. Forever -- produced by the band at frontman David Lowery's Sound of Music studios in Richmond, Virginia -- will drop in January.

The album title is proving to be a popular one, as both Puff Daddy and the Spice Girls have released albums of the same name in the past couple years. Cracker toyed with calling the album "Uncle," a reference to Uncle Kracker, because, for his solo debut, the Kid Rock DJ originally wanted to go by "Kracker" alone, going so far as to ask Cracker for permission.

While tracking Forever, Lowery hooked up with his former Camper Van Beethoven mates Jonathan Segel and Victor Krummenacher to finish some unfinished business. Back in 1987, the band members holed up in a cabin near Mammoth, California, intent on re-bonding over new material at a tenuous point in their career. Instead, they opted to record Fleetwood Mac's 1979, twenty-song implosion document and lo-fi blueprint Tusk track-for-track -- some numbers done faithfully, others, well, "rethought." Lowery, Segel and Krummenacher -- who reunited Camper for a brief tour in late '99 -- dusted off their Tusk tapes, mixed and mastered them, and are hoping to release the album later this year on Lowery's own indie label, Pitch-A-Tent.

"We liked the record -- that's why we did it," Lowery says of the Tusk project. "But there is a certain irony in our liking it. I mean, what the hell is going on in songs like 'The Ledge?' It's just bizarre. 'Save Me a Place' is one of my favorite songs, but it also has this sort of broken-down, Roky Erickson thing to it."

Camper are currently sorting out the legal ramifications of releasing their twisted Tusk, a process Lowery doubts will involve Fleetwood Mac's ever hearing the it. "I doubt they would object," he says. "They'll be getting royalties."

In the meantime, Cracker is in the midst of a mini-tour of Alaska (no, really). They'll also be part of the second-annual, jam-happy Moe Down, alongside the Radiators and Moe themselves, to be held August 31st through September 2nd in New York's Adirondack Mountains.

Upcoming Cracker tour dates:

8/3: Homer, AK, Alice's Champagne Palace
8/4: Fairbanks, AK, The Blue Loon
9/1: Turin, NY, Moe Down at the Snow Ridge Ski Mountain
9/8: Richmond, VA, Brown's Island

GREG HELLER
(July 31, 2001)