St. Louis has long had an appreciation for the music of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven. Last night the local music community came up with a nice save.

As the leader of two influential alternative-rock bands of the '80s and '90s, David Lowery has spent over 25 years in the music business.

While looking at all the music I was listening to this year I see that most of my favorite stuff ended up being single songs. (Stay tuned for a post on that topic.) But the albums that I dove into I dove into repeatedly and often. Here are about half of my favorites.

Performing his own take on the VH1 storytellers model last night, David Lowery and fellow Cracker compatriot Johnny Hickman played solo acoustic sets to an appreciative group of "crumbs" at Blueberry Hill's Duck Room.

David Lowery is a busy guy. Over the recent decades he's worked as singer, songwriter and guitarist for alt-rock icons Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, and produced records for artists like Lucero and Sparklehorse.