Friday, July 11, 2003 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Say Uncle

Kid Rock's friend and DJ Uncle Kracker hits the Paris Las Vegas pool with his own music

What does Uncle Kracker do while in Vegas? "Eat, gamble, drink, gamble, pool, gamble, eat, drink, gamble."

Uncle Kracker has sung hit songs, and he's co-written hits with his friend Kid Rock. But Kracker may go down in music history in equal measures for driving Kid Rock and Pam Anderson in a Cadillac to the Nevada desert so that Kid Rock could propose to his model-actress girlfriend.

Can you tell he's been asked about this once or twice?

"Yeah, it was all planned out. He was gonna take her out on a Harley, blah blah blah ..." he says.

Clearly, he does not talk in pretenses, as evidenced by this interview he gives while in Vegas to promote his show, which is inked for Saturday at the Paris Las Vegas pool.

"I love it here," he says, "just gambling, lying around by the pool, and gambling. That's it. Eat, gamble, drink, gamble, pool, gamble, eat, drink, gamble. I love blackjack."

Kracker, 29, who is Matt Shafer on the dotted line, has a biography music writers are drawn to. He grew up middle-class around his dad's gas station. As a teenager, he became Kid Rock's DJ back when Kid Rock (whose real name is Bob Ritchie) was a rapper.

A decade later, the pop world made a star out of Kid Rock with his unusual and fun musical salad -- Southern-rock/white-rap rock and dance songs -- which went under the titles of "Cowboy," "Only God Knows Why" and "Bawitdaba."

Shafer later churned out his own solo hits, 2000's "Follow Me" and this summer's remake of "Drift Away," featuring vocals by that song's originator, Dobie Gray.

Shafer's success seems odd in that he doesn't seem like a star. He is not skinny. He sings adult-pop songs with a gravely voice. His songs are scaled-down ballads with twang. He is not slick.

"It's just country-blues stuff, basic blues scales, but twanged-out. The country makes it sound a little flashier. It's feel-good music to me," Shafer says. "It almost seems like people are afraid to sit down and do ballads anymore. And I don't know why, because those things sell the most records."

Shafer says the main things he writes for "Bob" (Kid Rock) are song intros, outros, "or he'll need a chorus, or a bridge, or a verse, or a half a verse."

"And the only other reason I'm there is I give the seal of a approval. If something sucks, I'll say, `Bob, that sucks,' where most people say, `That's good! Might be the best thing you ever did!' "

Shafer says Kid Rock's search for honesty is uncommon. Most musicians surround themselves with yes men and women.

"That's why they look the way they look, and act the way they act, because everybody tells them that's how it's supposed to be, and everybody tells them it's cool to do that."

Shafer says many of those stars are "trustafarians."

"A lot of musicians are well-to-do. I think that's mainly because it's not a very rewarding business for the first X-amount of years, so a lot of people's parents had dough," he says.

How do those behave when Shafer runs into them?

"Most of them just act like idiots. They don't care for nothin'. Some people try to hide it up with charity events and (stuff) like that, but there's a bottom line. Everybody's got a bottom line."

Shafer isn't enamored with all of the music that those musicians make.

"There's a lot of hits, but there's a lot of dumb hits. That's why I don't have one. I haven't figured out how to make one," he says.

But Shafer thinks he's done better for himself by not taking the money and running.

"I've had opportunities to do a lot of dumb stuff, commercials, jingles and stuff like that for a lot of money. But you get to a point where you're comfortable and you're like ... `Do I really want to put myself in that position?' And I say, `No, I'll pass on that.' "

It has been difficult turning down big money, though.

"Trust me, it is hard -- `They want you to stand on top of the Empire State Building and wave.' Just something dumb. And you're, like, `What?' And they're, like, `But they want to give you $400,000 for it.'

"You're like, `... I wanna take that.' But then you're kind of, like, `That's dumb. What if somebody sees a picture of me doing it?' ... Someday, my kids will read about me, and I don't want them reading anything dumb."

So, what was it that catapulted Shafer out of obscurity? It wasn't exactly persistence, he says.

"We did bust our ass, Kid Rock and me both," he says. "Probably the right thing for me to do is to tell kids that it was hard work and perseverance that shines through. But I can tell you, I don't know if it was the hard work that initially did it."

Timing and connections were more important, he says: Playing a type of music that was acceptable to the mainstream at a certain time, and finally meeting the right industry insiders.

It sure wasn't pure talent, he says.

"I know there are a million people way more talented than us who will never see the light of day. Maybe they don't work hard enough. Maybe they're just too good."