Celebrities | Music | Pop Culture | 00s
What Ever Happened To Uncle Kracker And Is Everything Still Alright?
Follow me and everything is alright, he'll be the one to tuck you in at night. And if you don't believe he can guarantee, you won't find nobody else like him. At least that's what he said 16 years ago when Uncle Kracker's hit song "Follow Me" debuted and became a huge hit.
His follow up album ended up getting him another pretty huge hit called "Drift Away", but since then he has kind of fallen off the map. But where did he go?
He got his start in music with Kid Rock as the turntablist for the backing group Twisted Brown Trucker. He had actually met Kid Rock back when they were pre-teens and became close friends. In 1994 he was asked to join the band and eventually was also putting vocals on the tracks.
Uncle Kracker's real name is Matthew Shafer. He kept the name Uncle Kracker for his first solo album that was released in 2000.
While the follow-up single on the first album didn't do as well, his first single from his second album managed to make it into the top ten. He had a few other successful songs over the years but just like a lot of other artists he faded into the background.
So what has he been doing since? He may have said it would be alright, but he actually got into a little bit of trouble...
In 2007 Shafer was still releasing music, but he ended up dealing with a big legal battle. He was accused of sexual assault by a 26-year-old woman after an incident in a club. She alleged that Shafer put his hand up her skirt but he said "there was no sexual anything involved."
He says that he had actually hit her after she hit him. He said that he regrets his reaction to being hit, but at the time his choice to plea guilty to the accusation. "Assault is a far cry from sexual battery. You can either wait a year, spend 150 grand, go to trial, make more of a debacle out of it, or you can get it over with," he said.
After his legal battle was over, he went through a change of heart in his music. "I'd recorded a whole [fourth album], and then finally when it was done, it just didn't feel right. It just felt like I was kinda beating a dead horse and I wasn't having as much fun as I thought I should be while writing, while recording, while anything. So I just went back in, and everybody was mad that I was canning the whole record."
Luckily the studio executives let him start fresh and since then he has been switching up his sound. He has tried a few different things from country to indie and continues to experiment with new styles.
He has three daughters with his first wife who he was with from 1998-2013, and now he has a new girlfriend and his first son. The singer is actually still touring around America now. You can check out details of his tour on his website.
The fact of the matter is, he is doing just fine now. “I really subscribe to this mindset of just having fun. That’s what it’s always about. It’s the train that I’m forever on. The way I feel is if I’m enjoying it, it’s really worth doing.”