Lowery's band, Sitting Ducks, evolved into Camper Van Beethoven, formed in 1983 in
Santa Cruz,
California. Lowery produced and performed on the FSK albums
Son Of Kraut (1991),
The Sound Of Music (1993) and
International (1995), to which he also contributed some of his own compositions (e.g. "Red Sonja" and "Dr Bernice" on
The Sound of Music). Both Lowery and Hickman also joined FSK for concert tours in Europe and the US.
Other activities Lowery graduated from the
University of California, Santa Cruz in 1984 with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in
mathematics. He earned an
Ed.D. from the
University of Georgia of in 2018. He worked as a system operator after he graduated, then he worked in different jobs in the financial field and has started a number of music-related businesses, including a studio, a record company and a publishing company. Lowery's experience in business led to his appointment as a lecturer at the
Terry College of Business's music business program. Charles Pitter of
PopMatters has said that "in addition to this work, Lowery teaches as a lecturer and has a consistently high profile in the media as a champion of artists rights. As such, it could almost be said that Lowery has become the voice of a generation; however, it seems likely he would dismiss this title as meaningless blabber." Lowery is critical of the internet era and says that things may be worse now for working musicians than they were under the old record system. In 2012, he gave a widely shared talk called "Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss" in which he criticized
Pandora Radio for low songwriter royalties, claiming to have made less than $17 from a million streams of his song "
Low." In 2017,
Spotify settled a class action lawsuit initiated by Lowery and
Melissa Ferrick covering unpaid mechanical royalties. As part of the settlement, Spotify created a fund worth over $40 million to compensate songwriters and publishers affected. In January 2019, Lowery settled a lawsuit against
Napster, which concerned unpaid mechanical royalties. ==Solo discography==