This Detroit boy knows what’s going on

When he was 10 years old, Matthew Shafer remembers buying albums — yes, vinyl — and reading the backs of their jackets.

“I’d find out who produced it or who played on it and then I’d go looking for more by them,” said the man most people know as Uncle Kracker.

At 15, he had his first record deal.

At 17, he was onstage with his Detroit friend, Kid Rock.

“I always wanted to be a rapper,” Shafer said of the time he spent with the man born Robert Ritchie.

But, something happened and he found himself abandoning his rap roots for an Uncle Kracker version of country.

“I don’t know why it happened,” he said. “It’s just, getting older, well, the older I get, the less interested I am in some things and the more interested I am in other things.”

And, as someone who has grown up in the music business — he met a young Ritchie when he was in Grade 6 and his older brother was challenging the Eight Miler in a rap contest in Detroit — he listens to a variety.

Most recently, he’s been immersed in the music of Don Williams, the Country Music Association’s vocalist of the year back in 1974.

And, like most music fans, Shafer can find himself getting lost just by starting to listen to one Youtube video.

For example, he said, he wanted to find out more about the Ace hit How Long Has This Been Going On.

That led to discovering Paul Carrack was a singer with the British band — and also with The Squeeze.

“So, I’m listening to a lot of the Squeeze, now, too.”

He’s got plenty of time to listen to music right now, being in the midst of a lengthy tour that, on the day he called KTW, saw him headed for Fargo before heading north to start the Canadian leg in Winnipeg.

He’s in Kamloops on Tuesday, July 19 for a 7 p.m. show at the Kamloops Convention Centre.

Tickets for the 19-plus show are $49.50 plus taxes and service charges and are available at the Kamloops Live box office, 1025 Lorne St., 250-374-5483.