Review: Alt-rockers Cracker cracklin' good in Pittsburgh Shrine Pavilion concert

Cracker has been itching to play and their Pittsburgh area fans have been anxious to hear them.

Led by lead singer/guitarist David Lowery and lead guitarist Johnny Hickman, one of the best pickers around, Cracker lit up an otherwise dreary Wednesday night in Harmar with a mix of songs easily recognizable to fans of 1990s rock as well as deeper cuts. The stop was part of the alternative band’s 15-city 2021 summer tour.

Cracker, back to live performances with a full six-piece band for the first time in 15 months, kicked off the evening at the Pittsburgh Shrine Center Pavilion with “Euro-Trash Girl,” one of the hits from their smash 1993 album “Kerosene Hat.” It was a curious choice since the song, though excellent, is not the up tempo opening number one might expect to hear.

But fans who know Cracker’s work understand that this is a band that prefers not to be predictable. It’s part of what makes these guys so darn likable.

Cracker, led by lead singer David Lowery, flanked by guitar virtuoso Johnny Hickman, opened its show tonight at the Pittsburgh Shrine Center Pavilion in Harmar with "Euro-Trash Girl" pic.twitter.com/kNOTtFtp31

— Paul Guggenheimer (@PGuggenheimer) July 1, 2021

Neither Lowery nor Hickman look like they’ve aged much in the quarter-century since Cracker songs were part of MTV’s heavy rotation. And the covid layoff clearly hasn’t hurt this band which includes bass player Bryan Howard, pedal steel guitar player Matt “Pistol” Stoessel, keyboard player Paul McHugh and drummer Carlton Owens.

The rare rehearsals they did for this tour definitely paid off. Cracker sounded crisp, cool and polished as it jammed through tunes like “Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now),” “Get off This,” and definitive ’90s song “Low,” numbers that kept the relatively small crowd on its feet and jumping. Stoessel’s pedal steel guitar added an extra dimension to Hickman’s amazing guitar solo on “Low,” which sounded just as strong as it does on the record, and also brought out vivid colors on the country flavored numbers from Cracker’s most recent album “Berkeley to Bakersfield.”

That 2014 double album famously showcases the alternative rock sound of California’s better known coastal areas on one disc and the country sound of the inland area Lowery grew up in on the other. Lowery’s edgy vocals were at their best on the funky, punky sounding “El Cerrito,” which did not show up on the playlist from Cracker’s previous night’s concert in Mentor, Ohio near Cleveland.

“Walking down the street in San Francisco

just the other day

Wondering what has happened to the freaks

and hippies and the punks

Everybody’s squeaky clean, they look and

dress and act the same

I don’t give a s__ about your IPO I live in El Cerrito”

The Americana numbers included “California Country Boy,” a somewhat autobiographical tune written by Lowery about growing up in the orchards in the Inland Empire of Southern California. Hickman showed off his vocal chops, brilliantly singing the lead on that one. Lowery sang “King of Bakersfield,” skipping a line in the first verse and slickly fixing his mistake so that few in the audience noticed.

Words can’t do justice to Hickman’s guitar playing. He is simply one of the best rock or, for that matter, country guitarists out there. He even played a mean harmonica on “Happy Birthday to Me.”

Lowery and Hickman continued to shine on the soulful “Sweet Potato” which transitioned to the pleasantly poppy “This is Cracker Soul.” They also performed a bouncy and gritty “I Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right” and a rich and lovely cover of Jerry Garcia’s “Loser” featuring a haunting solo by Hickman. The encore song was a soaring version of “St. Cajetan.”

Whether or not it was the storms earlier in the day that kept people away from the pavilion, a friendly place with a formidable roof, good acoustics and not much in the way of walls, or folks still skittish about the pandemic, the audience was between about 100 and 150 people in a place capable of holding 1,200. But that didn’t faze the band in the least.

At one point Hickman thanked the “small but mighty crowd. Post-pandemic that‘s just what we need.”

And Cracker is just what we need coming out of this year-plus long nightmare that shut down live music. It’s a band at the top of its game populated by men who clearly love what they do. If you missed Wednesday’s Harmar show, do yourself a favor and catch them on tour. Lowery said after the show that Cracker is adding a stop in Erie in August that is not yet listed on their schedule. Stay tuned for details.