| LIVE MUSIC I'VE SEEN | |||||
| 2025 | |||||
| Artist | Date | Location | Comment | ||
Cracker
with Johnny Hickman
|
01/04/25 | 3Ten Live |
My first live music show of 2025 was an excellent performance by Cracker at 3Ten Live this past Saturday. Cracker is a rock band formed in 1990 by lead singer David Lowery and guitarist Johnny Hickman, following the breakup of Lowery's previous band, Camper Van Beethoven. I've seen them a number of times in recent years, and have always enjoyed their mix of grungy rock and alt-country. In addition to Lowery and Hickman, the band includes bassist Bryan Howard and drummer CoCo Owens. Hickman is a great lead guitarist, which he again demonstrated on this night, but for this tour, the band brought with then a secret weapon, violin player Anne Harris. She apparently joined the band fairly recently, and she blew me away with some of the best rock violin solos I've heard since Papa John Creach.
During the evening, Cracker played many of their best known songs including "King of Bakersfield", "Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)", "Pictures of Matchstick Men", "Euro-Trash Girl", and "Low". They also played several Camper Van Beethoven covers, including "Take the Skinheads Bowling" and "Club Med Sucks", and surprised me with a cover of Jerry Garcia/The Grateful Dead's "Loser" (which I later read had been included on one of Cracker's early albums). Johnny Hickman opened the show with a solo acoustic set, during which he sang a number of his both funny and sad original songs. He was joined on his last few songs by Anne Harris, who played some nice violin along with Johnny's acoustic guitar. The mellower material was a nice warmup for the rocking set that came later in the evening. Here are the setlist and my photos from the show. |
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