You get the sense Uncle Kracker's life wouldn't be much different even if he hadn't been Kid Rock's DJ and then gone on to sell millions of copies of his own solo debut, Double Wide. A regular guy in every sense of the word, Uncle Kracker bowls at a local watering hole on Monday nights, owns a couple bars and a tire repair shop, and aspires to make music that could come on the radio at any of these locales. For his second album, No Stranger To Shame, due today, Uncle Kracker worked closely with producer Mike Bradford, recording the album in a loft above a law office in Mt. Clemens, Michigan. The guest list for the new set includes Dobie Gray and Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath, but not the Rock . . . not that the two best friends have broken up.

Where did this new record begin?

I didn't have a game plan going into this record at all. The one song I knew we were gonna do was I was going to cover "Drift Away." I knew I was going to do that just because it's kind of just like everything I've done in the past. There's another song on there called "Keep It Comin'" that was originally recorded for a soundtrack. And there was one more song I wrote a long time ago when my first record came out, but it didn't do anything.It didn't sell dick. So I wrote a song about the music business called "To Think I Used To Love You." And that's really all I had with this record was those three songs going in. Then the other ten or so we did those in like two and a half weeks, wrote and recorded. It was mainly like just go in there, write some good-feeling songs and be done and hopefully make a record out of it. And I always said I'd want to do a record like a book, from front to back, and this one wasn't exactly it, but it is a pretty good summing-up of myself. I didn't have any real direction, I just wanted to make some songs that you could probably hear fifteen or twenty years ago and some songs you'd want to hear fifteen years from now.

In the past you and Kid Rock worked together on each other's albums. Were you trying to break away from him on this one?

Not on purpose. I just this one he was so busy with all his other stuff, and I needed to get done. I love collaborating with him, he's my best friend and we work so well together -- but at the same time I needed to finish it. He was kinda like, "Here's the ball, just take it and run with it." That's what I did with this record. So it wasn't really by design.

Did you feel like with the last record that you didn't get your due, like there was too much attention paid to the Kid Rock connection?

Yeah, I felt like that. I don't think they'll ever be a day where I actually creep out under the shadow. It's gets to a point where, even nowadays, every interview that I do people will find a way . . . we could be talking about the new record and then all of a sudden somebody will go, "What do you think of Bob and Pam? How is Pam? Is she cool? Do you like Pam?" Stuff like that. But I was never mad. We knew going in that I would get annihilated just for being associated with him. But it didn't come out too bad -- "Follow Me" hit pop radio and it kind of sold itself. People who bought the record for the Kid Rock name were probably the people who bought it in the first couple months. And let me tell you something, it wasn't a lot. Listening to the record nobody was shitting on themselves harder than I was. I don't mind it. I know earlier I said I didn't really like it, but I don't mind it because I already knew. And we all did. But if it's going to happen it's going to happen. The Kid just sold 10 million records, and here I come out of his camp having written that record with him. The good part about it was I didn't have anything to really prove. It wasn't like here he comes with his one hit "Follow Me." I helped write "Cowboy," "Only God Knows Why," "Bawitidaba," songs like that. Nobody could really question the credibility of "Follow Me." Writing hit songs wasn't new to me. The only thing that was new to me was getting out on stage and actually singing in front of a bunch of people by myself and having to direct a crowd. The other day I was talking to somebody and I was like, 'You know what, I bet probably forty percent of the people that bought my last record don't even know I DJ for Kid Rock.' Nor would they probably ever care. And that's a good number, so out of two and a half million, forty percent of 'em, at least if I can have a million and a half people that bought it for that alone, I'm happy about it.

Why did you feel like Mark McGrath was particularly suited for "No Stranger To Shame"?

He helped me out a lot by putting himself in that "Follow Me" video, and obviously we're labelmates and we did two months of touring last summer. We became really good friends when we were out on the road, and then we agreed to write and record a Christmas song for some Christmas record or something. We swore to the record label we were gonna do it and after two months we had nothing. We didn't do it. There was just no time. So when I did my record I was like, "You what, I'm going to have him sing on this song. I went ahead and wrote "No Stranger To Shame." I figured that would be the title track and I wanted him on there anyway. He's got a cool voice and we're friends and you don't see a lot of friends collaborating much anymore. As I was writing, I was like, "You know what, I'll just get McGrath to sing on this thing." So I two-wayed him and said, "You're gonna get on this song whether you like it or not." It's like pulling teeth trying to get that fucker in the studio.

Is he a busy guy?

You know what? I don't know if he's busy or if he just pretends like he's busy. Because I'll be out in L.A. and he'll be home and you can never get a hold of him. He's got some like some Brian Wilson shit or something. I don't know. But he's an awesome cat and I just wanted him to sing on that thing.

I heard you tried to get the name Kracker for yourself. Whatever happened with that?

My nickname was always Kracker as long as I can remember. And none of us were aware that that band still existed. None of us really knew anything about the band other than that there was one. And so we tried going in like, "Hey, you guys mind if we use this name? We can spell it different or whatever." And they were like, "No, no," and they made a big stink out of it. And then they figured out legally you'd have to put something either before it or after it to make everything legitimate. So we did that -- I put Uncle in front of it, instead of something like DJ Kracker or MC Kracker.

They were OK with it as long as you had the Uncle in front of it?

No, it got stickier than that. I think, I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to talk about it. I don't know what happened [laughs].

You got Dobie Gray singing on your cover of his "Drift Away." How did you hook that up?

You know what? I started doing that song live. I thought, "Maybe I'll do this for the next record." And then I thought, "Man. A lot of people have covered this fuckin' song and it didn't work." After a while it was like, "Why not just get the guy it worked for?" I was on tour with Kid Rock and we were in New Orleans that week we set it up, the tour bus dropped me off at the studio in Nashville one morning and I did that then flew back to New Orleans. It was cool, and Dobie Gray was just . . . the guy still fucking sings amazingly. He was very into the song. He loved the new way of doing it. At the same time I felt like an idiot trying to sing next to him. We'd be in there singing the harmonies and stuff and I'm still standing there like, "Am I in key? Am I throwing you off?" I don't think you could knock him out of key. He's an amazing singer, still to this day.

I hear you own a couple bars?

They're shot and beer places. One's in Detroit, one's in Grosse Point.

Do you ever take a turn behind the bar?

Sure. I go back and grab my own beer and I come back.

Not quite the same thing.

Not at all. I do that at my tire shop I'll actually go change tires. I do that. I love doing that. I grew up in a gas station. So to go in and change the tires and turn some rotors and do stuff like that, I can put the car up on a hoist, swap out the tires, put it back down. I miss that. I'll be in the back area of the shop, which is better. It's a pretty laid back place, it's not like there's ever a lot of people hanging out that would be like, "Oh my god, who's that?" My pop runs the joint and there's no pictures of me anywhere. At the bars we got the plaques up and stuff.

COLIN DEVENISH
(September 24, 2002)