Follow him

Just how far and high can one DJ ride a set of turntables? With a little help from his friends, Matt Shafer rode his decks to another stratosphere.
Known on the airwaves as Uncle Kracker, Shafer is one shrewd, though unassuming, Detroit Rock City alum who sprouted in the shadow of his boyhood friend, Rob Ritchie, better known as Kid Rock. Ritchie would produce demos for the younger, chubbier Shafer, and one night when Rock’s DJ went AWOL, Kracker got the job.
After Kid Rock hit multi-platinum in 1999 with Devil Without a Cause, the wheels were greased for Kracker, who, aside from being Rock’s DJ, also co-wrote Devil and possessed plenty of songwriting chops of his own.
Kracker’s 2000 debut, Double Wide, recorded with Pro Tools in the back of the Kid Rock tour bus, built slowly at first, and on the power of the single, “Follow Me,” picked up by pop radio and MTV, eventually sold two million records and put Kracker on the pop-music map.
Not too shabby for a former strip-club DJ who many people thought was merely riding on a large set of custom-made coattails. Now, with his follow-up, No Stranger To Shame (Lava/Atlantic), Kracker stands in a unique position: With Cocky, Kid Rock’s latest album, “only” going platinum and therefore considered a disappointment, Kracker is poised to pounce, to develop with No Stranger To Shame a self-sustaining career beyond the margins of Kid Rock.
With punchy Memphis horns (“I Do”), a pinch of country twang (“To Think I Used To Love You”), rap-metal (“Keep It Comin’”) and Kracker’s hummable rasp (“In A Little While,” “I Don’t Know”), No Stranger To Shame might be the break out.
We spoke to Kracker and asked him how one goes from a strip club DJ to Kid Rock’s DJ to multi-platinum artist.
DJ Times: Now you have a band working for you, and at the same time you’re working for Kid Rock. What lessons can you take from working for Kid Rock and apply to your own band?
Uncle Kracker: Everybody would want me for a boss, I think. I’m not one of those guys who keep people on their toes. You know, if you screw up, I’ll tell you that you screwed up, but I’m not going to tiptoe around you until you screw up. I’m not a nightmare boss, I’m not saying that Bob [Kid Rock] is a nightmare boss…he’s very on top of his stuff, not that I’m not, but I’m a little more laidback about it. He doesn’t tolerate much, but that’s touchy, because when people show up late for rehearsals, I try not to give it to them. But at the same time, nobody ever gets yelled at, but they will get pulled aside and told, “Yo, mother#&*, we’re trying to run a business here.”
DJ Times: When you first hooked up with Kid Rock, you weren’t DJing at all, were you?
Kracker: When I first hooked up with Kid Rock—I’m almost four years younger than he is—I was really little. I was like 12 or 13 and he would produce demos for me, eight-track stuff. We would sit around doing that, and a couple years rolled by, so when I was 16 I became a bit more mobile, and we became best friends. I always looked up to him, so anything he asked me to do I did. He’d be like, “Oh, we’ve got to flyer the entire city, we’ve got 5,000 flyers and we’ve got to post them everywhere.” The entire metro Detroit area, there wasn’t nobody who didn’t know what was happening. I’d take a pickup truck out, with a crew after midnight, with a bunch of dudes in the bed of the truck, and we’d just roll into town and those telephone poles didn’t have a chance. So we did this for years. Carry the records. Run to Kinko’s. I need you to make the flyers up, I need you to pick up the T-shirts, I need you to drop off the consignments, I need you to pick up the consignments. I was a gopher, forever. And I guess one day his DJ kind of took a crap on him and Kid Rock asked me, “You want to be a DJ tonight?” I was like, “Yeah, sweet.” So I got behind the decks, and I was like, “Huh? What is this?” I didn’t really have a clue. There were these light machines, these fog machines. He would bring his own lighting rig to the shows. It was kinda like some Home Depot-type stuff that we’d set up in the corners of the stage, like those big humongous streetlights, something you’d see in some hippie room. It would blink on these timers. He figured it would add color. I’d have the DAT, sampler, the turntables, the lights, the fog, the backup vocals running at one time. And then I’d have to tear down. I was cost-effective, ’cause you know what I got paid for that? A smack on the mouth and we called it even [laughs].
DJ Times: What mixer were you using?
Kracker: I used his decks and that old Jazzy Jeff little Gemini mixer, probably replaced the fader on it once a week.
DJ Times: So in the beginning you were Uncle Trainwreck?
Kracker: Completely. I was so bad he wouldn’t even let me take the turntables home. You had to go to his place to play them. And even then, I’d be screwing around on the decks, and he would mysteriously make the turntable sound in the monitors disappear.
DJ Times: How did your skills get up to speed?
Kracker: Then we started doing more shows, and I figured out how to work the fader. I never really ever practiced at home. It was always at live shows. Basically I’m the kicks-and-stabs type of DJ, and I’ll cue the decks up, so if Kid Rock wants to get behind them he’d be set up. It’s the same thing I’m doing now. I’m not doing anything tricky. I’m not standing on my head.
DJ Times: For a typical Kid Rock show, how many records are you bringing up there?
Kracker: I only use eight or nine records, and that’s only because I’ve been dumb enough to not go and put them all on one record or I’ve been too lazy to go down to the studio and put them all down and normalize them and ship them out.
DJ Times: So the records that you’re bringing up on stage, are they Kid Rock/Uncle Kracker records?
Kracker: Some of them are. I use some of the Kid Rock records, some of the Uncle Kracker records and a lot of old breakbeat records.
DJ Times: Which breakbeat records are you using?
Kracker: There’s probably one Simon Harris record that I still use, a 45 King record that I use. I don’t get into too much of the new-school breakbeats because I don’t know what the hell is going on. Some bad-ass ones are those Gagball records. I like some of that shit for sure. Cool tones on that. But for me it’s hard to get to the DJ shop and flip through all of the records anymore. When I was younger, I’d spend hours. Nowadays, 15 minutes is a lot. So the only thing that does catch my eye are the Gagball records. I’ve checked out Swamp’s breaks. I still use one of those, too. His first breakbeat record is the one I still use. I don’t know if he’s made any since then.
DJ Times: He’s out there…
Kracker: I use a couple of Swamp’s records. I remember when me and Kid Rock first met him. We were doing a Kid Rock show in Cleveland and we didn’t have a record deal yet either, but we get up and Bob’s behind the turntables and there’s some kid with long hair in the front row screaming, “Let me get on! Let me get on!” and Bob’s like, “Hey, wait a minute, I’m the only guy with long hair on the turntables.” But Swamp gets up and starts wrecking the turntables. So that’s how we first met Swamp. It was after that that we first found out that he’d won the DMC.
DJ Times: The first time I saw him perform he broke his records and started cutting himself with the shards.
Kracker: That’s weird [laughs]. I guess it’s all about the show.
DJ Times: When you were putting stuff together, in terms of songs for your debut album and this one, you weren’t one of those DJ guys that was listening to a record for inspiration and taking it from there, are you?
Kracker: I don’t sample anything. In fact on both my records I haven’t sampled anything, just because the few things that we sampled on the Kid Rock record have been such a nightmare, as far as paying these people. Even using a slice of a sample—not even as your groove, just a little scratch—and they want 80-percent of your publishing, like they wrote your entire record. So it’s just been such a nightmare. I don’t sample. Once we get a couple more records out we’ll go back and sample them records.
DJ Times: You recorded your first record in the back of a tour bus. What about this one?
Kracker: This one I took the same Pro Tools rig and put it in a loft above my attorney’s office. Fourteen-foot ceilings, wood floors, and it was downtown Detroit, so there was plenty of bars and plenty of everything around. It was during the three weeks when the record companies shut down in December and that’s when we went into the studio. So we knew there wouldn’t be any interruptions, nobody telling us what to do. When everybody was back from their vacations, the record was done and on their desks.
DJ Times: Did you write in the studio, or were the songs demos?
Kracker: Only two were demos: “Keep It Coming” and “I Do.” “Drift Away” was a cover so we didn’t have much work to do on that. “Keep It Coming” I originally did for the Scooby Doo soundtrack. We loved it. I did that right when my last record started selling. When I was in the studio recording it, everybody had been dogging my first record, and then it was gold and going platinum, and I was like, “Keep It Coming” mother&*$#%.
DJ Times: The first record was a slow build-up.
Kracker: Going into the first record I didn’t have anything to lose. But at the same time, it was weird. I got a weird vibe from the record companies. I was like a charity case. “That’s Kid Rock’s friend, let’s just give him a record deal.” But nobody really knew that I co-wrote that Devil Without a Cause record with him, that I actually had a clue. When we did my record, nobody took it seriously. I think they dropped the ball on the thing. We were like, “Look, you guys have to do something with this because it’s a good record and you can’t shelf it like that.” That’s when they took “Follow Me” to pop radio. And it started reacting a little bit here and there, and then it almost died, and then it was reacting again, and then it went into full-tilt and then it just didn’t stop.
DJ Times: It still kinda hasn’t. I got my haircut the other day and they were playing it on pop radio and the 40-year old ladies loved it.
Kracker: Totally. A lot of them Muzak places play it, where they pipe it in. I don’t have no problem with 40-year-old women liking that song.
DJ Times: Especially when you’re getting checks for it.
Kracker: Yeah, every quarter there will be a check sent. It actually goes to my parents’ place. It’s funny ’cause my dad pretends he didn’t open it. He knows what it is when it comes. Every quarter he’ll open it and call me, and say, “Hey, you got another one of those things.” I’ll say, “How much was it?” And he’ll say, “Oh, did you want me to look?” Hell yeah! And then he’ll spit it out and he’ll say “Godammit, you sonofabitch.”
DJ Times: How much of a check will you see every three months?
Kracker: So far, I haven’t seen anything less than $175,000. I’m waiting for it to taper off. It just seems that way for the last two years, and that’s just the radio play on that.
DJ Times: What do you do with it?
Kracker: Ah, in the bank, man. But you know, I did so well with that Devil Without a Cause record that all them checks, they come, and I’m still excited about them because I know it’s a lot of dough, but I wasn’t hurtin’ anyway. So when Double Wide came out it was a bonus. So now going in with No Stranger to Shame, what could I do wrong really? This isn’t going to make me or break me. I think I know in my head that I’m not going to be a Led Zeppelin. I’m not going to be a Rolling Stones, especially this day and age. The average span of an artist has got to be four or five years only. So I’ve invested in some trailer parks out of state, went in with partners, investment groups, people that I know through my attorney. So I haven’t been careless with my dough at all. I don’t live like a rock star. I don’t do anything different than anybody I know does—except for a couple of my rock-star friends. I’m married. I got kids. I just want my kids to be happy, to get what they want. Instead of buying a big stupid house, I had one built for a quarter of the price. So I haven’t gone all stupid. And the beauty of it is, I’ve sold all these records, and nobody knows who I am, anyway. I can go anywhere and nobody knows, which is a beautiful thing.
DJ Times: But still, with all your money, you’ve got to have people coming up to you being like, “Yo, Kracker, remember me, back in the day?”
Kracker: Oh, I know. But even they get it after the first couple of minutes, when you’re not feeling it. It’s creepy.
DJ Times: I’m sure people are approaching you with all sorts of “investment opportunities,” right?
Kracker: Investment opportunities. Oh God, some kid comes to me the other day, out of the blue he brings me this big booklet. Now, I’m in Michigan, off of Lake St. Claire, and 10-15 miles up the road there’s a place called Marine City. He wants me to invest in an oil well. I’m like, “What? I’ve been here my whole life and I’ve never heard of anyone digging for oil!” He wants me to invest in an oil well! This is a water-lake community and there’s people digging for oil down the road? Minimum investment was $1 million. I’m going to be like, “Oh my God! Here’s a check!” An oil well, what is this, some Beverly Hillbillies shit?
DJ Times: Tell me how you got a job as a strip-club DJ.
Kracker: It was during the whole Kid Rock experience. My dad owned gas stations my whole life. So I pumped gas forever, changed oil, sold cigarettes, all that bullshit. When I turned 20, my dad sold the gas stations, so I was ass-out, in terms of expecting to work for him or take one over from him. So that’s when I got into DJing strip clubs. So I had a buddy who owned a strip club, and he offered me a gig spinning CDs there. It was more of an R&B joint, but the owner wanted to play rock-n-roll music. You got all these girls who want to dance, but they don’t want to dance to rock-n-roll. So here’s the DJ stuck in the middle. I should play what these girls want me to play, but no, I should play what the owner wants me to play. The solution was one rock song, then one R&B song. And the rock song was like those Natalie Merchant songs that have the loops in them, and only one Phil Collins song, “In the Air Tonight,” and it was the only one they would dance to.
DJ Times: So “In The Air Tonight” is the winner in a strip club?
Kracker: A sure-fire thing, totally. There isn’t any one of these strippers who doesn’t know it. They can get their little show in because there’s not a lot of music in the beginning. You set the lights down and send the fog, then the beat kicks in, it gets a little better.
DJ Times: How was the vibe?
Kracker: A lot of the strippers more than anything wanted to latch on to something or somebody who was a little more sane than they were. One thing I did learn is that all of them have a story, and they all have the same story, and it gets redundant and you know what? They see some cat up there who’s actually making some dough, spinning records, can talk on a microphone, seems to have his act together a little bit. I don’t know if it’s that or if it’s because I was the only guy in the building who was not paying them. I could never figure it out, and I didn’t really question it, either.