Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / "Rain King: The Life and Music of Adam Duritz and Counting Crows"/Geoff Harkness [Episode 156]

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"Rain King: The Life and Music of Adam Duritz and Counting Crows"/Geoff Harkness [Episode 156] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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We're totally booked in rock and ROLLO. I think I'll leave you. You're
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reading Little Hands Is It's time to run and roll row. We are totally
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booked. Welcome to Booked on Rock, the podcast for those about to read
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and rock. Find the podcast at booked on rock dot com. You can
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find every episode of Booked on Rock there, along with links to your favorite
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listening platforms, exclusive videos, blogs, links to all of the social media
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sites, and the latest rock book releases all there. Jeff Harkness is a
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first time guest. He's here to talk about his latest book, Rain King,
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The Life and Music of Adam Dirrett's and Counting Crows. This is the
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complete story of Counting Crows, one of the most successful bands of the last
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three decades, and their charismatic vocalists and songwriter Adam Dirrett's over twenty million album
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sold, led by several hit singles including Mister Jones, Along, December and
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Accidentally in Love. The book chronicles the writing and process of all six studio
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albums and how the band reimagined the songs on the road. We also get
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the incredible story of Adam Dirretts, who survived struggles with mental health fame and
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relationships. This is the first time we find out the lost history of his
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upbringing, the decade he spent on the San Francisco music scene, and the
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real stories of the people he chronicled in his lyrics, including Jennifer Anison and
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Courtney Cox. Jeff talks about all of that in this discussion. A link
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to hear a playlist of Counting Crows can be found on the show notes page.
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Jeff, Welcome to the podcast. It's great to meet you, Hey,
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Eric, thank you really happy to be here. Thanks a lot.
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I have been looking forward to this brings you back to the day. I
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remember the first time I heard Counting Crows, mister Jones. And remember guys
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in college, one particular friend of mine, he said, you have to
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get this new album, this CD. You know at the time CD,
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you have to get it. We both worked at the college station. They're
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called Counting Crows August and everything after. You gotta check it out. And
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I finally did. And I'm so glad and that my gateway was then.
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And so I'm curious as to when you became a fan of Counting Crows.
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Yeah. Also from the very beginning, I was working in a bookstore at
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the end of nineteen ninety three, that's right when they're you know, about
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the time their first album came out, and mister Jones had just been released
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to college radio as a single. And I think this was the November or
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maybe December issue of College Music Journal CMJ, and they they always gave away
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a CD in that issue, and I worked at the bookstore. The employees
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would get the free ones at the end of the month that I always take
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that CD and listen to it. And the second song on that CD was
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mister Jones by Counting Crows. Now this is pre internet, so you can't
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just dial them up and go, oh, who is this, Let's hear
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some more of their stuff. It just had the one song. But I
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distinctly remember, I mean I remember where I was when I played it,
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and also playing that song about twenty times in a row, I was just
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blown away at how great it was. I had no idea who the band
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was. I'd never heard the song, never heard of the band, and
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that was mister Jones, and I sort of put it in the back of
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my mind. They then played started at Live a you know, month or
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two later. The August album kind of blew up, and then I became
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a huge fan of that album. Just like everybody else, I fell in
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love with that album. I think that when it comes to Counting Crows fans,
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you have the fans who really loved that first album and and thought in
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some ways the band ever topped it. Then you also have those fans like
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me who loved the first album, but then also loved the second album in
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some ways even more loved the third album. You know, we like we
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stuck with the band as they grew and as they changed, and really,
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you know, I liked and appreciated a lot of the things that came after
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that first album as well, not to take away from the greatness of it,
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because it's it's today still brilliant. To me. They have a very
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interesting sort of musical trajectory and also faced interesting challenges as a band. Because
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Adam Dirretts was, you know, it's effectively twenty nine thirty years old when
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he made it, their story is very different than the you know, twenty
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year old coked out rock star you know on the road. It's a different
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story, and to me, a more interesting story as someone who's also older.
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How did he grapple with the fact that he became famous basically late in
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the game for a pop singer and had to sort of confront that challenge and
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build a career despite the fact that he was, you know, five to
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ten years older than his peers, like you know, somebody like John Mayer
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who was a young heart Rob or or you know Matchbox twenty with Rob Thomas.
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Those were some of his close competitors, Eddie Vetter, and that I
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think that created a unique set of challenges for Adam as a songwriter and also
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a public figure, and he grappled with some of those issues in public,
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and you know, for me, it was I appreciate how honest he is
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about his emotional struggles, his mental health struggles, his physical struggles with his
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weight. He's been very honest about that, nopeing about that in a way
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that many male rock stars especially aren't, and there's a great vulnerability there.
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I think I really appreciate about him. And I think it's interesting having a
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book like this answers the question what happened or what was going on with Adam
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Dirret's before he makes it big at the age of twenty nine or thirty,
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And that's what we get to in the book Let's go back even before then
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as a child, continual relocation. What's his childhood like? Where's he born?
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What's life like for Adam Dirretts as a child? Right? Well?
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He did. He was interesting story again, he was His father was a
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doctor, although just is still in medical school. And Adam was born in
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Maryland and moved, you know, lived there for a few years, but
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then moved relocated to Texas. And he had a sister who was a couple
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of years younger. He had spent his early childhood in Texas. Had wrote
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about how you know, he this was the first time he had left the
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house by himself. He went exploring and started to just open up and learn
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about the world. He also says that a bit of his Texas drawl that
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he sings with comes from that early period. The family then moved to Colorado
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for a little while, and ultimately, when he was ten years old,
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the family moved to Berkeley, California, where he spent you know, those
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his sort of teenage and years and then ultimately his twenties as well, living
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in the Bay Area. But his mother decided at some point that she was
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going to go to medical school and become a doctor like his father, but
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for whatever reason, she ended up going to medical school in Mexico. And
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so I think his mother was gone for significant periods of his adolescent life.
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And she said in an interview that the relocation and some of that stuff was
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difficult for him. So he had in some ways a privileged lifestyle because he
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was born to a family that had means. He did live at an ice
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house and you know, all that kind of stuff. But at the same
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time, I think he also had some struggles early on. He you know,
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went to private schools and things like that. Incidentally, yes, right
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near where I live here, I'm in Connecticut, right, Southington, Connecticut,
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Watertown, Connecticut. Taft School is where he went. He went for
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one year in nineteen seventy eight. Found out that in your book, private
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boarding high school in Watertown, Connecticut. And the funny story he tells in
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concert in Hartford here when he played one time, he says he flunked his
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music course. Right, yeah, yeah, of all things. Yeah,
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Well, and that's that's what it was. Was me somebody who's been a
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fan and sort of followed their story, finding discovering these pieces of his life
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that for me were missing in my own sort of understanding of who he is
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as an artist. So finding those pieces and putting the story together it was
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a real journey for me too. I mean I wrote the book in chronological
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order, and I didn't really start, you know, chapter two until chapter
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one was done, and starts chapter three until chapter two was done, so
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that really the story unfolded for me as well as I was writing it,
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and I was discus evering his story in ways that I didn't realize that I
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would. All the challenge for you was, as you said in the book,
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was getting the correct information, because I think you had said there were
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different sources at different stories, or it was just trying to trying to piece
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together the story accurately was a challenge. Conflicting accounts of certain things was one
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issue. So for example, there famously their first album was recorded in a
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house. I mean they recorded several albums and houses, but that first one
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was they decided they would record the album in a house, like the band
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did recording Big Pink. But there are several different people attributed to who came
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up with that idea. I think I found four different people who took credit
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or who Adam gave credit for we are living in that house, So how
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do you decide? Ultimately, I had to try to find some consensus,
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but there were still pieces of the story that were missing to me and remain
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missing. I mean, I'd love to sit down and pick Adam's brain about
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all of those little details. I've been able to ask him a couple of
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questions, So maybe in the maybe in the revised second edition, I'll I'll
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clarify some of those peoples. Yeah, that would be cool. Yeah,
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talk about the bands he was in early on quite a few bands, but
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specifically there's the first band he's in because there's a connection to the Counting Crows
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breakthrough song, mister Jones, who's a member of that band. Yeah,
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Model Society was his very first band, and he's Adam has always been a
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band guy. He talks about he didn't want to be a solo artist,
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even though he writes one hundred percent of the lyrics and about ninety five percent
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of the music for Counting Crows. He's very much a band guy. Wants
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to be in a band. So that first band, Model Society, where
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he kind of learned what it was like to be in a band. Featured
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a lot of different musicians, one of whom was Marty Jones, who is
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the Mister Jones of the Mister Jones song. And that song is very much
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a very straightforward narrative of a night that he and Marty Jones had out on
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the town at a Flamenco show. That that was Marty Jones's father is a
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famous Flamenco musician, so they have just seen that show and he kind of
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describes what happens in that song. But yeah, Marty Jones. Interestingly,
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he shows up in several of Adam's earlier bands and somehow doesn't make it to
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Counting Crows yea, even though I think he played on the earliest demos.
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But yeah, it's too bad. Somehow Marty Jones got left aside. But
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I think they're still good friends. Amazing to think that he got so tired
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of fighting with his bandmates that he quit music for a period. Dropped out
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of music to work in landscaping and construction, saves up money, takes a
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backpacking trip to Europe. This is in the summer of nineteen eighty nine.
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He returns to music full time. Three projects Sorted Humor, the Himalayans and
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the acoustic duo Counting Crows with Adam and David Bryson. So tell us about
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this story. There's a rep from EMI Records. He has his sights set
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on these two guys, but he's he's got this Simon and Garfunkel thing in
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his mind. Yeah it is, well, I mean, what's interesting.
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Adam said this was the first time in his entire life that anyone from a
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record company had ever come to see him play. He was twenty seven years
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old the first time anybody came to see him play it. He had been
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playing in bands for most of his twenties in the Bay Area. So somebody
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from EMI, the label that once signed the Beatles, comes comes to see
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him play and says, all right, guys, I think we gotta something,
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you know, we can put together. So he calls a meeting.
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He flies them down to Hollywood to the EMI at Hollywood and says, Okay,
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here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna put you You're gonna be the
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grunge eros Simon and Garfuncle. We're gonna have you wear black turtlenecks and sport
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coats. You're gonna do an acoustic version around here with lasers beaming on you,
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like this crazy eyed concept that he had. We're gonna you know,
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he said, I'm gonna give you a development deal. We're gonna make this
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video. Here's what we're gonna do. And you know, Adam said he
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was really conflicted. It sounded nuts to him. But at the same time,
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it was his only offers. The first time he had ever had anybody
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give him a real offer, and this was a real record company. It
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wasn't you know, some fly by night, little indie label or something.
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This is and twenty seven years old. To keep him my twenty seven you're
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starting to think, is this it? This might be my only check?
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Yeah, I'll just take that, yeah, because at times running out.
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Yeah yeah, So he didn't, I mean, to his credit, he
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made some phone calls, he reached out, and ultimately somebody connected him through
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a friend of a friend. They got the Counting Crows demo to a lawyer
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who listened to it, loved that he was blown away, immediately offered to
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represent the band, but also got them in touch with real management, and
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you know, from there the band started to come together. It became obvious
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at this point that Counting Crows was going to be the one really these two.
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Adam was also in the lead singer of the Himalayans. Between those two
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acts, the County Crows and the Himalayans, County Crows was going to be
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the one to kind of go all the way. So it seemed like at
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this point he sort of put all his eggs into that basket. The third
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band he was in, he was sort of humor, he was singing back
13:03
up and they were great friends and stuff. But I don't think that was
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a project that he was, you know, at the center of. But
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of these two projects that he was really involved in, it became clear that
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County Crows was going to be the one to go all the way. Some
13:15
of that had to do with some of these key industry figures who got involved
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and sort of you know, worked behind the scenes to put the band out
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into the public. You know. And what's the origin of the band name.
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It was initially a nursery rhyme book. Yes, it's a it's a
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traditional English nursing rhyme that one for sorrow too for joy three. You know
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that that's all from you know, parts of the nursery rhyme but yeah,
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it's like a classic nursery rhyme, children's nursery rhyme, but nice, nice
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imagery too, And I feel like they've done some nice things with with that
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sort of concept and that imagery just throughout their career. I think their album
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covers are sort of interesting looking, and I don't know if you think of
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the van Go painting, like the Black Crows over the Wheatfield painted. In
14:01
some ways, some of their album art reminds me of that go through the
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tracks on August and Everything After from nineteen ninety one, it's very close to
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perfect in my opinion. Round here Omaha, mister Jones Perfect Blue Buildings,
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which I believe Adam said is his personal favorite, and it begins time and
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time again rain King Sullivan Street, which might be my personal favorite. Ghost
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Train Raining in Baltimore, a murder of one that's a killer track listing right
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there. The lineup on August and Everything After is Adam Dirret's on vocals,
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piano and harmonica, David Bryson on guitars, Charlie gilling Him on keyboards,
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Matt Malley on bass, and Steve Bowman on drums, although he's not on
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mister Jones. He's not on mister Jones, which I did not realize until
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I wrote the book right right. And then also David Emergluck played a lot
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of stuff on that first album. He's credited, but this just before Dan
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Vickery joined the band. David Emmergluck quit the band after the album was recorded,
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when did his own thing. He came back to the band later,
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but that's when Dan Vickery joined. So Dan Vickery didn't play on the first
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album. He wasn't in the band at all, but he's in the videos
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that he played on the tour and he's been in the band. He's still
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in the band today. The book done Rock Podcasts. We'll be back after
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this. Let's talk about mister Jones, because that was not intended to be
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the first single. You write that, Mister Jones, the band's breakthrough single
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number five on Billboard's Hot one hundred airplay charts, was the most difficult song
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to capture. Can you talk about that and how it was initially not intended
15:30
to be the first single. Well, one of the things that they did
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was they sort of test marketed some of the songs. The several of the
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songs from August and everything after got radio play, and they were the record
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company really liked a murder of one with I think it's the last song on
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the album. It has, as Adam has described it, the Jesus Jones
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right here, right now, drumbeat, you know. Then the radio,
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the radio loved it, The record company loved it, and they said,
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this is the song. You know, don't don't don't don't that all your
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life? You know, that was going to be the single, and that
16:04
was getting some airplay, and the record company said, this is going to
16:07
be the one. It's got the funky beat and it's gonna put you over.
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Adam thought he was more in favor of something like mister Jones. He
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thought that was the perfect introduction to the world. And everybody seemed to think
16:18
that rain King was gonna be the song on the album, the big song
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on the album was going to be ranking Adam thought so. The record company
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thought so that they were sort of saving that one to be a big breakout
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hit, not thinking the record company didn't have a ton of faith in mister
16:33
Jones, and ultimately they couldn't come to a decision and there was no single
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that was released. When August first came out. Geffen just refused to release
16:41
a single and just put the album out, and it was actually several months
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that's when that Mister Jones came out on CMJ. It was months later they
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finally released at the college radio. They finally did a video. It finally
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started to get some airplany blow up. What's interesting about the recording of it,
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and the part I really didn't know this is that their drummer couldn't get
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just couldn't seem to find the beat. He said, I just you know,
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I couldn't find it. I couldn't feel it. They tried a number
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of takes, did it over and over again. It just didn't click.
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And finally the producer Tibo and Burnett came to him and said, okay,
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let's try it again. And finally Steve Bowman just said, no, I
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wouldn't know what to do. I've tried everything, You're not satisfied with what
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I'm doing, and I'm just kind of giving up. And so Tibo and
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Burnett immediately just replaced him with a studio drummer who came in and did it
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in like two takes, and that became the take. What's interesting is that
17:34
when the song blew up, this certainly caused a rift between Steve Bowman and
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the rest of the group and and ultimately so the seats for his departure.
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He left, or let's say departed after that first album. Round Here was
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a hit single, number seven on the US mainstream charts, seven on alternative
17:56
rock radio. Rain King was number four on US mainstream charts. But around
18:00
Here, this song goes all the way back to nineteen eighty nine. Yeah,
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it's well, it's it's a him a Land song. That's what's interesting
18:07
about around Here is that it pre dates Count of Crows even it's him Aland
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song, and in fact, they have writing credits on it, some of
18:12
the guys from that band, the him Alands. You can look at the
18:17
live YouTube versions that they played back in the clubs in San Francisco and you
18:21
could hear it's a It's a similar song back then, but much more of
18:23
a like a hard rock, almost a pearl jam type of sound to it.
18:27
It changed a lot. It became much more emotional when the Count of
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Crows did it, but certainly the seeds were there. They talked about specifically
18:34
that song and how he and Bryson as the acoustic duo would go into these
18:41
open mic nights. They'd get like one song to play, you know,
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it's an open mic nights, everybody gets a song. Here come all the
18:47
amateurs doing their things, and then Adam and Bryson would go up and do
18:51
round here and just blow the club away, you know, with the performance,
18:55
because it's such a powerful song. August and everything after reaches number four
18:59
seven times plat him in the US. Now, Adam's thrust into fame very
19:03
quickly. Things get crazy, so much so that he can't even walk out
19:06
of his apartment without being accosted. So much media attention put on his relationship
19:11
with Jennifer Aniston, but that really didn't last long. How do they meet
19:15
and how does that partnership end? That was something I wanted to clarify for
19:19
myself because we've all heard that story a million times about how he's dated the
19:25
two actresses from friends, but I never quite understood the story. I've just
19:29
heard that, and so I wanted to in this book. I wanted to
19:33
tell what the definitive account of those stories, just because one I thought they
19:37
were. You know, there's there's such a big thing about him. But
19:41
also they influenced his writing of that second album, and that's to me why
19:45
I was really interested in it. So his relationship with Anniston with very short
19:51
lived. They just went out a couple of times. They were introduced by
19:52
friends. Adam he became so famous that he couldn't go home anymore in Oakland.
20:00
He would go to his house and literally there were fans camped out on
20:02
his lawn. He would peek out his curtains and people were screaming at him.
20:06
There he is and stuff. I mean, he said it was crazy.
20:08
So he moved. He said, I couldn't even live in my house
20:11
anymore. He had to move to Los Angeles. So he moved to Los
20:15
Angeles and started tending bar at the Viper Broom, which was a celebrity hangout
20:18
co owned by Johnny Depp. So now he's hanging out with Sean Penn and
20:22
Johnny Depp and the celebrities in Hollywood. And they through his friends in Hollywood,
20:27
they said, oh, Jennifer Anderston, they had just had the first
20:30
season of Friends came out. She was very famous. This was after the
20:33
first album. He was very famous. Let's introduce these two young, beautiful
20:37
people they met, They went out a couple of times. It just didn't
20:41
click. Adam later says, you know, they never slept together. It
20:45
wasn't a great romance. It was just they went out on a couple of
20:47
times. But he later then developed a relationship with Courtney Cox, and this
20:51
was a much more significant relationship. I would say Jennifer Anderston and Courtney Cox
20:56
are friends. They're still friends. They've been friends for ever since they were
21:00
on that show together years ago. You know, if you're close friends with
21:03
somebody, you don't go date their X. So as we're like, oh
21:07
yeah, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if Jennifer Anderson's like, no,
21:08
he's a nice guy, Like, you know, we didn't hit lef,
21:11
but you should go out with him. So they became involved and got
21:15
much more involved and recovering the Satellites. The second album is a double album,
21:18
well, the second half of the second side of that double album.
21:22
The songs are largely written about Courtney Cox, and it was a very tumultuous
21:26
relationship. It went on for a long time. Famously, she's in the
21:30
Long December music video. Most people assume that's where they met, but this
21:33
was at the sort of end of their relationship rather than the beginning. They
21:37
even wrote a song together called Barely Out of Tuesday that he kind of refuses
21:42
to play anymore because because of the history there. But apparently it didn't go
21:48
well. I mean, she ended up getting involved with David Arquette and ultimately
21:52
marrying him. They met on the set of Scream. This was during the
21:55
time that she was at least, I don't know, seriously involved without him,
21:59
but around the same time, and so it seemed like it was a
22:03
bad break up and it didn't go well for him at least if you look
22:06
at his songs that he wrote, you know they're not they're not love songs.
22:11
No, exactly the difficulties and challenges of that relationship. Jeff Harkness is
22:15
the author of Rain King, The Life and Music of Adam Dirrett's and Counting
22:18
Crows It's Out Now. A song written in ninety one but not on the
22:22
August album was Einstein on the Beach for an Eggman. What a great song,
22:26
their first number one on the Modern Rock chart. It was included on
22:30
a rarities released by their label DGC Records in nineteen eighty four. Sophomore Counting
22:36
Crows album the aforementioned Recovering the Satellites, released in nineteen eighty six, number
22:41
one on Billboard, two times platinum, Angels of the Silences, number three
22:45
on the Alternative Charts, number four on mainstream rock, Daylight Fading, Have
22:48
You Seen Me Lately? And A Long December the other singles A Long December
22:52
top ten on Mainstream Rock, number five on the Alternative chart. You write
22:56
that this song was written at the tail end of another extent a day.
23:00
You say it's origins are in a piano ballad that Adam had previously written.
23:04
And by the way, this is a song I just was watching a YouTube
23:07
video interview with him. He says this is the one song he never gets
23:11
tired of playing live. Yeah, it's an enduring classic. And I think
23:17
also the fans, not just the Counting Crows fans, but music lovers around
23:21
the world have embraced that song. I think Long December has become more popular
23:26
now than it was even when it came out. And it's always been a
23:30
song that you know, people really appreciated. But yes, it's the one
23:33
song you can almost guarantee he'll play in concert. He still loves it.
23:37
He also said that he it was one of the two songs that he wrote
23:40
that was almost effortless. It just came out almost as a whole piece.
23:44
It was recorded in one not that it wasn't the first take, that it
23:47
was recorded as a single live take, and I think it was like the
23:48
sixth take. There's just a few little overdubs on it, but it's essentially
23:52
a live recording of that song, and it's a beautiful piece. I mean.
23:57
One of the things about Counting Crows that I think is so important is
24:02
that you know, they're they're one of the great American bands. They have
24:06
a deep catalog of great songs and a Long December. You mentioned Einstein on
24:08
the Beach, and certainly all of these other songs that we've been talking about.
24:12
They have a deep catalog of great songs throughout their career, and I
24:17
think Long December is just another one of those touch points where you go,
24:21
this is a band that's writing songs that are on par with you know,
24:23
Let It Be or Yesterday or you know, I mean names some of the
24:29
greatest songs that have ever been written. I think Counting Crows belongs in that
24:33
same conversation lyrically, it's just brilliant. We were talking about this before we
24:37
started recording his lyrics, the smell of hospitals and winter, and the feeling
24:42
that it's all a lot of oysters but no pearls all at once. You
24:45
look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl.
24:49
He does create these He paints these pictures in your mind. But he
24:53
also has a lot of characters in his songs. Sometimes I think they're all
24:56
real people, but I don't know. Maybe some of the some them are
25:00
just combination of people that he knows. But what is a Long December about?
25:04
Again, isn't that an actual wasn't even actually in a hospital or it's
25:10
in your books. It's another crazy story. The origin story of that song.
25:15
A good friend of him, well, a former girlfriend, a good
25:18
friend of hers, got in a terrible car accident, and Adam was sort
25:22
of tagging along and went went to visit her in the hospital, and the
25:26
mother of the hospital patient was there and she was saying, we, you
25:30
know, we kind of want people to come in and talk to her and
25:32
be with her. She's going to be hospitalized for like her. She was
25:33
in bad shape. So they were looking for friends of hers to come in
25:37
and hang out, and it turned out that there was really nobody who could
25:40
come in during the day because everybody worked. The only person who was available
25:44
during the day was Adam, who didn't know this person, but out of
25:47
the kindness of his heart, agreed to come in during the day and kind
25:49
of hang out. And he would bring in a VHS player and VHS state,
25:52
so they would watch movies together and they kind of developed like a platonic
25:56
friendship in this hospital. So he would go there every day. Now after
26:02
he would go to hospital, somebody else would come in. He would go
26:03
record with the band they were working on recovering the satellites, and then at
26:07
night he would go tend bar at the Viper Room. And so he said,
26:11
I was kind of in this routine, especially because of this person in
26:14
the hospital, where you know, this was kind of his life. And
26:18
so he said, at the end of one of those long nights he had
26:19
finished up at the Viper Room, they went up to a friend's house in
26:22
the Hollywood Hills. Everybody called it Hillside Manner and which is a lyric in
26:26
the song. And he said, just in that night after he went home.
26:30
He just wrote this song sort of describing that whole day, you know,
26:33
hospitals and winter and the and the hillside manner and all of these different
26:37
sort of components. So it's a very straightforward and descriptive song. And you
26:42
mentioned the names too often his songs, like Anna's a real person, Elizabeth
26:48
is a real person, and he wrote these songs about them. I think
26:52
Maria is the one who's who's not based on a you know, actual person,
26:56
But many of the missus Potters a real person. Many of the people
27:02
in his songs are real people. Many of the places that he describes are
27:04
real places. And desert life. He said he was singing about Ohio a
27:10
lot because he was dating this woman from Ohio, and so you hear all
27:12
those songs about seeing Ohio rise and all that stuff that just page directly from
27:18
his life. He once said that lyric you read is so good. He
27:22
once said that, you know, his whole approach to writing is that instead
27:26
of saying, oh I saw this this woman and it was love at first
27:29
sight, he says that line about the way the light attaches to her,
27:33
you know, like that's his same way of saying that thing, So he
27:37
said, he always takes that approach of trying to say something that we all
27:41
understand, but in a way that is very artistic. And yeah, yeah,
27:47
and he pulled it off and he still does. Although it hits number
27:49
one and sold two million copies, there was critical backlash to Recovering the Satellites,
27:53
and that I guess because it sold less than half of August. The
27:56
band it takes a hit in the press, but as you say, choosing
28:00
artistry over commerce on that album puts themselves on a path to longevity, much
28:06
like Pearl Jam. This Desert Life nineteen ninety nine. I have specific memories
28:11
of this album because I had just gotten my first full time job in radio
28:14
and I did six to ten pm weeknights and we played hanging Around every night.
28:18
I played that. That was a lead single, I believe, yes
28:22
it was. They released hanging Around before they released the album. I came
28:26
out like the summer before, and yeah, I was a classic. This
28:30
is about his days in Berkeley. Yeah, so that's another very descriptive song.
28:34
He you know, he spent most of his twenties living in Berkeley,
28:38
playing in bands, hang out in bars. He as he described it,
28:44
during that period of his life, he was drinking a lot, he was
28:47
doing a lot of drugs, and he wrote a Murder of One about this
28:49
period of time too. Murder of One is about what are you gonna do
28:52
with your life? You know? Are you gonna waste your life? Are
28:56
you just gonna stand here? Are you gonna get up and live your life?
28:59
And he decided kind of at that age twenty seven or something, you
29:02
know what, I'm not just gonna fade away and become this obscure musician.
29:07
I'm gonna make a stamp on the world and decide to stand out. So
29:11
hanging around as a description of what his life was like back in those days
29:17
in Berkeley, drinking in the bars, hanging hanging around with his friends,
29:19
and you know, just kind of wasting his life away as he later described
29:26
it. And I think he said he loved that period, but also he
29:29
realized that he couldn't stay there or who would have gotten stuck number twenty eight
29:33
on the Billboard Hot one hundred. So Missus Potter's Lullaby and all my Friends
29:37
that we mentioned that to other singles on that album goes Platinum reached number eight
29:41
on Billboard. They really hit the road hard for this particular album. Talk
29:45
about the count Crows approach to their music live, some reimagining that they do
29:51
with the songs. What are some highlights for you personally? You know,
29:53
songs that sound even better live than on record, very very much like Springsteen's
29:57
like that certain songs. Yeah, no, those are. That's very insightful,
30:03
and you're absolutely right about that. I think one of the hallmarks of
30:07
County Crows, if you are a big County Crows fan, it's largely based
30:11
upon their live performances because they take those wonderful and amazing studio albums and then
30:17
they transform them into something else. Now, there there's a subset of folks
30:22
who can't stand when bands do this, but many of us music lovers love
30:26
it. When you know, Bob Dylan was famous for this, Bruce Springsteen,
30:29
as you say, deconstructing their material, reinterpreting their own material in new
30:33
ways, and so County Crows started doing that very early on. Improvising was
30:37
the first thing. Adding lyrics from like thunder Road, Bruce Springsteen's thunder Road.
30:41
They would add Adam would sing that in the middle of Really they would
30:45
blend it in and there's amazing. Well go back to ninety four and you're
30:48
gonna hear some incredible thunder Road alternatives in the middle of range. So yes,
30:55
early on he they started from their almost their first tour, well their
31:00
first tour, incorporating lyrics of other songs into their own material, including Sordid
31:04
Humor Bruce Springsteen. I mean, just you could spend you could write a
31:07
whole book about just the Alts, and some people have done whole websites and
31:11
things like that. Then also the other thing was this really started more on
31:15
the second album, but also became a trademark of the first one too,
31:19
but very much deconstructing their songs. So taking a song like Angels of the
31:25
Silences, which is one of their hardest rocking numbers, they often will I
31:29
just saw them reinterpret that as an acoustic number with like five part harmony and
31:33
almost you know, with mandolins and accordions and all that kind of stuff.
31:37
So they will take a song that's their hardest rocking song and they'll do it
31:41
like, you know, like a rain King or something like that. They'll
31:44
take a song like that and transform it too, so for the fans,
31:48
for the big fans. We love those moments where they improvise or where they
31:52
add something new, or where they change it up. And even on their
31:56
latest tour, I mean, I just saw them less than a month ago
31:59
and Adam came up at this incredible alt that it's brand new for around here.
32:04
It's all about the summer, and the summer's almost gone and school's about
32:07
to start, and it's incredible. You can go watch the videos. So
32:09
they're still vital. They're still changing it up. There's still you know,
32:15
they don't they don't paint within the lines. They're not formulaic. Even still
32:19
they change it up. The book done Rock Podcasts. We'll be back after
32:22
this. He talked in the book about how Adam had to navigate the Crow's
32:28
career through a period of significant turmoil and change, talk about some of the
32:31
difficulties he faced in the years to come, particularly when it came to battles
32:37
with record labels. One of the things that I built the book around the
32:40
making of each one of their albums, and each one had its own story.
32:45
It was unique. Different producers recorded in different places, The albums had
32:49
different themes, and they had different things going on behind the scenes. As
32:52
well, and I wanted to sort of show some of how the music industry
32:57
operates behind the scenes. So what happened during Life is they're recording this album
33:00
once again in the house. It's coming together. Well, it's not a
33:04
repeat of August, it's not a repeat of the second album. It's a
33:07
whole new thing. It's Desert Life. It's coming together. And suddenly their
33:12
record label, Geffen, is sold in some conglomerate, you know, corporate
33:16
merger, and they become effectively signed to Interscope all of a sudden without ever
33:22
agreeing to that. So suddenly instead of being on Geffen with Nirvana and The
33:28
Cranberries and Swede, they're on Interscope with Limp Biscuit and Eminem and Doctor Dre
33:35
and these are who they're These are their label mates and also now their competition.
33:38
So the people at Interscope immediately said, let's call a meeting and we
33:44
want to hear this new album. And so they go to the house.
33:46
I think these guys are all like twenty years old, driving their masser bodies.
33:50
All right, let's hear this album. You know, they're spinning the
33:52
new Eminem in the car, and then Adam plays them. He played the
33:57
Missus Potters lullaby. He said, it's eight minutes song and we're not cutting
34:00
any of it and it's acoustic, and it was not a good meeting.
34:05
They just they weren't feeling it at all. So eventually he had to go
34:08
to the head of the interscope and you know, sort of talk him down
34:12
and say, listen, you gotta leave us alone and just let us do
34:14
our thing, and he said that. They basically agreed to, but in
34:16
some ways this was the beginning of the end for their dealings with major labels,
34:22
because, you know, eventually, after I think it was their fifth
34:24
album, they were dropped by Geffen and went independent and they've been independent since
34:30
then. And I think largely this had to do with their clashes over their
34:35
record, you know, what to do with their music, how to distribute
34:38
their music online. Adam wanted to give away a lot of their music on
34:43
their I think it was their fifth album, he wanted to give away the
34:45
whole album, and Geffen's no, we sell albums, that's will always sell
34:51
we can, and so there was they were fighting over it. Eventually he
34:54
got them to agree to give away two songs instead of the whole thing.
34:58
But he fought with his record labeled a lot, and you know, they
35:01
also had a good partnership. They made money together. But ultimately County Crows
35:06
went independent, and you know, that's that's been good in subways because now
35:10
they could do whatever they want. At the same time, it was I
35:13
think it was kind of good to have somebody from the label calling every once
35:15
in a while and going, hey, guys, you got that new album
35:19
finished yet, or you know, like oh sure, absolutely, yeah,
35:22
because otherwise it could take forever. You can have Chinese democracy. Well,
35:25
they haven't put out a studio album since twenty fourteen, County Crows nine years
35:30
and they put out one epiece, so maybe it'd be nice. Yeah,
35:35
they have even Axel Rose probably could have done a little better than that.
35:38
Yeah, A Hard Candy two thousand and two, So that's the last with
35:42
Geffen. No, it was Sunday Mornings. Yeah, it was two thousand
35:46
and eight, okay, which is a really good album. Okay, I
35:51
mean Saturday Night Sunday Mornings. There's a lot of mellow looked, very focush,
35:53
very acoustic, some nice stuff in there. There's one fourteen ninety two
35:59
is a good tune, but there's one about I believe it's about him just
36:02
kind of walking around New York. What's it called Washington Square? Yeah,
36:07
great song. Yeah, Well, Saturday Nights and Sunday mornings. You know.
36:10
In some ways, that was probably the most difficult album for them to
36:15
make. Adam was at a very low point in his sort of mental health
36:20
and was struggling taking a lot of He was never a guy who did,
36:22
you know, street drugs, at least since he became a rock star.
36:27
He was getting prescription drugs and trying to get his medications right, but really
36:31
having a lot of problems. During the recording of that album, he said
36:35
he was almost like passed out during a lot of parts of it, and
36:37
they would have to like, you know, pull them off the off the
36:40
you know, Florida Code sing. That album is sort of a two part
36:45
album. The Saturday Nights part are of like hard rock songs, and then
36:50
he conceived it as a double album. The second half are the Washington Squares
36:53
when I dream of Michaelangelo's the slower acoustic e you know, more folksy side
36:59
of the County Crows. So it's one of those albums that's got both sides
37:04
of the band. If you want to hear the hard rock side of the
37:06
band, you go to the Saturday nights. If you want the more mellow
37:07
stuff, you got the Sunday mornings. And it's kind of all there.
37:10
But again he fought with the label over this. They didn't want to do
37:14
this. They said, don't give us a double album, give us a
37:15
single album. Don't give us all hard rock songs up front, and then
37:20
the mellow stuff at the end, mix it up. You know, they
37:22
wanted them to do something much more traditional. But again he said, no,
37:25
this is my concept, this is my art. Take it or leave
37:30
it, And you know, he ultimately he did have artistic control over what
37:34
he did much, I think to the chagrin of Geffen, going back a
37:37
little bit again to Hard Candy because I don't want to breeze over that one
37:40
because that, yeah, it's a great album. And also I think from
37:45
whatever we call Adam was a little bummed because he was intentionally writing songs that
37:50
had hooks and then We're really good radio single worthy tracks, American Girls,
37:55
Miami, Big Yellow Taxi, if I could give all my love, Richard
38:00
Manuel is Dead. Those are all the singles it did well, But was
38:04
he a little bummed that it didn't do better or because now we're getting into
38:07
that period where new decade tastes change. Absolutely, right, well, music
38:13
was changing a lot. But sure I think that, you know, to
38:15
some degree, Adam was stung by the criticism of recovering the Satellites. I
38:20
think he was hurt by the fact that that didn't sell as well. Desert
38:22
Life sold half as many as that, and Hard Candy half as many as
38:27
that, So there, you know, in some ways, their sales kept
38:29
you know, having over the years, and I think probably he did feel
38:32
like, wow, I'm doing some of my best work and fewer people are
38:36
buying it. At the same time, it's partially just reflective of the changes
38:39
in the music industry. Sure, nobody was buying CDs in two thousand and
38:44
four. Everybody was just downloading them online wire. Now everybody streams them,
38:47
and so now we know that a top ten album only sells twenty thousand copies
38:52
because nobody buys records anymore. We all stream them. So I do think
38:55
that he was hurt by that. But at the same time, you know,
38:59
he said in interviews during that time, you know, I don't worry
39:01
too much about the sales. The beancounters worry about that. I worry about
39:06
making great music. And also he pointed out people still come to our concerts.
39:09
He said, you know a lot of these bands are out there struggling.
39:13
We pack them every night. Because of that, they were able to
39:15
sustain themselves by touring, and as we talked about earlier, sort of increasing
39:21
the amount of time they spent on the road, and they became this band
39:24
in some ways it was always on the road and couldn't get off the road
39:29
in some In some cases they started recording their albums while they were touring,
39:34
rather than taking time off to go record. I mean, they became in
39:37
some ways economically dependent upon having to tour all the time. And to some
39:42
degree that was because they were selling fewer albums. But everyone was selling fewer
39:45
albums. So I mean, that's it now today. That is the music
39:49
business. It's it's touring is where you make the money and merchandise big yellow
39:54
taxi, I want to ask you about that. That's the cover of Joni
39:58
Mitchell Joy Mitchell Class. That was among a batch of cover songs that,
40:02
at least, according to Billboard, were recorded for a covers album, they
40:06
recorded a cover of Pure Prairie Leagues. Amy, Now did that covers albums?
40:10
Those songs Surface, Underwater, those the songs Okay, so I was
40:15
killing twelve by the way, Yeah, Underwater Sunshines twenty twelve, the covers
40:22
album. So I had the exact same question, because you know that one
40:24
of the things they did way back in the day was they always used to
40:28
go to New Orleans. They loved New Orleans, spend a lot of time
40:30
there, and they would go to New Orleans and do these like cover shows
40:34
where they're just playing acoustically, you're bringing their friends up on stage. It
40:37
was usually just Adam and like whoever else from the band was there. Immergluck
40:40
played a lot of them, but often it was just covers. They would
40:44
play unreleased Crows songs. Sometimes they would play old Crows songs, but the
40:46
covers was really the point, and they would play thirty different cover songs and
40:51
every year it became this annual tradition, the shim Sham Show, the great
40:54
bootlegs of those available and doing covers became kind of a little thing that especially
41:00
Adam was very interested in. So one of the things they started doing at
41:05
that time was recording the covers. Let's record these cover songs and we're going
41:07
to ultimately do a covers album out of it. So they were recording these
41:12
songs in with the idea of doing a covers album, and ultimately I thought
41:16
the same thing. Oh okay, so these are all the cover songs that
41:19
eventually came out in twenty twelve. Turns out that's not true. They rerecorded
41:22
all of those songs later. But the sort of Big Yellow Taxi, I
41:27
think is also interesting because there's a little more to the story than I knew
41:30
and many people know. They originally recorded that song and put it on Hard
41:35
Candy, and they were trying to do something a little different. They said,
41:38
let's do a song that has kind of a hip hop beat, so
41:42
they got this kind of hip hopy producer. Guy didn't do the album,
41:45
but just to do that song and like produced this song. I think they
41:49
thought they were going to use this for a covers album, but they liked
41:52
their cover of it so much they said, let's put this on the Hard
41:53
Candy album. So they put their version of Big Yellow Taxi at the end
41:59
of Hard Candy as a hidden track, and it was kind of a forgotten
42:01
thing. The fans listened to it and liked it. Now, a year
42:06
later, a year goes by Hard Candies Out, A year goes by that
42:08
same producer. It's in the book. I can't remember his name, but
42:13
he was the producer. He was like a hip hopy kind of contemporary pop
42:15
producer. He produced Vanessa Carlton and did her big song A Thousand Miles.
42:21
That was his producer. So he said, oh, I just had this
42:23
big hit with Vanessa Carlton. I'm gonna have her sing over the top of
42:28
this County Crows song that I did. They weren't in the studio together they
42:30
I don't even think the County Crows had knew about it. And I'm gonna
42:34
have her sing over their song. And then they ended up putting that version
42:37
of it with her basically doing karaoke over her their song in a movie,
42:43
and that became a huge hit. That's the version of Big Yellow Taxi that
42:46
everybody knows. They made. Geffen immediately said let's do a music video,
42:51
and they also said, we're pulling your version of Big Yellow Taxi off of
42:54
Hard Candy and replacing it with this new version with Vanessa Carlton on it,
43:00
and it's not gonna be a hidden track anymore. We're gonna list it on
43:02
the album. They put that on their Greatest Hits album after the fact.
43:06
So it was interesting to see how Geff and and the powers that be in
43:10
the music industry sort of remade this song, you know, without the Crow's
43:15
involvement, really and turned it into a hit, and then redid their album
43:21
and took their own song off of their album and replaced it with this other
43:22
one. I'm not saying that they were upset about this. It was a
43:27
big hit for them. They even played the song together. Conny Crows and
43:30
Vanessa Carlton did the song live ones, so I don't think that anyone was
43:35
upset about it, as I understand that they met for the first time and
43:37
said, hey, we sang on a hit song together. It was all
43:39
fine. But it's just interesting how I didn't know any about that about that
43:44
song. I what I remember is I do remember their version of it being
43:47
on Hard Candy originally because I bought that album when it came out, and
43:52
then I remember, you know, a year later when the new version came
43:54
out, and I'm like, yeah, that I never liked that, as
43:58
you could tell that second version very much. Album reached number five Big Yellow
44:02
Taxi, number forty two on the Billboard one hundred, only forty two.
44:07
I'm surprised. I thought it did better than that. They do get the
44:09
top forty single Accidentally in Love from Yeah, Shrek two two thousand and four,
44:15
and again something that you mentioned hanging around earlier, and I think Accidentally
44:20
in Love goes into this same category of Adam saying to himself, Okay,
44:23
I have to be sort of strategic and I have to write a particular type
44:28
of song, and he just nails it. You know, he's such a
44:30
brilliant songwriter that he could be strategic and say I have to write a song
44:34
and he was given you know, as you could imagine, this is a
44:37
Pixar film, DreamWorks, and it was DreamWorks, so you can imagine the
44:42
money involved here. This is Shrek two. Shrek one was you know,
44:45
one of the biggest, you know, children's films of all time. So
44:47
there's a lot writing on this song. And of course this was again DreamWorks
44:52
was co owned by David Geffen, who owned Geffen Records, who County Crows
44:55
was signed too. So eventually County Crows get the where Adam Dirretts gets the
45:00
opportunity to go in and take a look at the film and see if he
45:04
can come up with something. They had tried a lot of different songwriters and
45:07
nobody could come up with a good song they had to open the film.
45:09
It was going to be the first single released before the soundtrack, and it
45:13
was gonna be the first song on the soundtrack. So this is the first
45:15
song you see when you watch the movie, it's the first song you hear
45:17
when you play the soundtrack, and it's gonna lead off the entire media campaign
45:22
for the film. So there is a lot writing on this song, and
45:24
Adam, you know, once again went in and just executed and brilliantly wrote
45:30
a song that's just perfect for you know, for what they needed. And
45:35
I think he wrote a great another great song. The next three studio albums
45:37
two thousand and eight Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings that reached number three on Billboard,
45:42
the singles fourteen ninety two, you Can't count on Me, Come Around,
45:46
and When I Dream of Michelangelo two and twelve covers album Underwater Sunshine or
45:52
What We Did on our Summer Vacation number eleven on Billboard. That includes the
45:57
single untitled Love Song, and my personal favorite in that one is their cover
46:01
of Fairport Conventions Meat on the Ledge. That's a great one too. Yeah.
46:07
Yeah, a point that we were talking about a little bit earlier.
46:09
Just to clarify that, I too thought that these I just figured, Okay,
46:14
they took everything they had ever recorded as a cover song and slapped it
46:17
together and made this compilation. But that's not what they did. They actually
46:21
did go record all those songs as a as a new collection of songs.
46:24
So even things like Amy, which I think they had recorded earlier, they
46:29
re recorded for that album. And so those are like fresh versions of those
46:32
songs. And I, I too love Meat on the Ledge and untitled Love
46:37
Song. And what's so great about that album is songs like that I had
46:39
never heard. Yeah, that's exactly right. So, yeah, these aren't
46:45
songs that were bona fide hits. These are songs that are deep tracks that
46:50
few may know about. Yeah, And so in that sense, they almost
46:52
became like new Counting Crows songs because you didn't have, you know, any
46:57
memories or baggage attached to the songs. You know, we all know Amy,
47:00
of course, but there weren't a lot of songs like that on on
47:02
that cover's album. No Oo La lah by Face is somewhat familiar, Yeah,
47:07
but other than that, yeah, it's not. It's a lot of
47:10
obscurities. And again, this just goes to that point I was making earlier
47:15
about the artistic choices that Adam Durris has made throughout his career. He wasn't
47:19
always in search of a hit. You know, most acts when they put
47:22
out a cover album, they're just looking to sell some records. They're gonna
47:24
put some you know, some crowd pleasing favorites on there. Conny Crows decided
47:29
that they were going to make another record and not just a covers album,
47:32
and well, you know that's that's why you still want to listen to those
47:37
songs today. Twenty fourteen, Somewhere Under Wonderland peaked at number six. Scarecrow
47:42
great song, God of Ocean Tides another great song, and Earthquake Driver the
47:46
singles, and there was also cool Ep titled butter Miracle Sweet One, which
47:51
has a great single, Elevator Boots. Now rewinding back to twenty five twenty
47:55
six, you lead off chapter six saying that Adam reached the dark time run.
48:00
Then you were alluding to this before. Can you talk about where Adam
48:04
and the band worth that time? How long was it before Adam was able
48:07
to pull himself out of all that? How did he recover? And you
48:10
mentioned the band playing the grand opening of a shopping mall in Kansas City,
48:15
which is so hard to imagine. And this is a big yellow taxi kind
48:19
of is part of this story too, oh right, yes, because they
48:22
played in a parking lot and they sing and they were contractually required to play
48:27
big Yellow Taxi at this opening of this parking lot and shopping mall. Yeah,
48:31
I was using that to sort of illustrate how far they had fallen,
48:36
because this was a band that was so lauded and critically acclaimed and also pride
48:43
to themselves on you know, always doing making the artistic choices, refusing to
48:46
play Mister Jones when they went on Saturday Night Live, they refused to play
48:51
that. First, they refused to play Top of the Pops where the Beatles
48:53
and the Stones and the Who had played, because they refused to lip sync.
48:58
So this band who had made all these credible decisions early in its career
49:02
was now playing, you know, shopping malls. And also I think aligning
49:06
with bands that just weren't in the same category as them, touring with bands
49:09
that just honestly weren't on their level musically, and I think that that diminished
49:14
the group too. Adam has said that the one thing they always managed to
49:17
do through all of it was play and perform, and it's true he did
49:22
even in that Kansas City show. It sounds like he was having a hard
49:24
time getting out of bed at the time, but he'd only get up to
49:28
go to the show, and he would make it to the show, so
49:30
that is to his credit. But there was a very dark time. It
49:34
really started with the passing of his grandmother. And I talk about this in
49:37
the book. This was something I didn't know about, but he had a
49:40
close relationship with her, especially as a child. But as he grew and
49:45
especially as became a rock star, he became very distant, partially just because
49:49
he's busy, became very distant from his family, from his grandmother, and
49:53
I think that her death profoundly affected him because he realized how much of real
49:59
life he was missing because he was living this life of the rock star,
50:02
and when we say rock star, maybe our VH one image is of you
50:07
know, partying on the road and having a great time. But I think
50:10
Adam is somebody who's always been pretty isolated, and that includes on the road.
50:15
I think he keeps to himself a lot. He has to protect his
50:16
voice. He can't talk a lot when he's out on the road. They
50:21
tour all the time. He's really got to protect that voice, and so
50:23
he spends a lot of his days not speaking to people, not because he
50:27
doesn't want to, because he's trying to preserve his voice. So I think
50:30
during that time he was especially isolated. He was having serious mental health issues
50:36
that he talked about. He has a dissociative disorder, a psychological disorder that
50:42
you know, he says, makes him feel unrealistic, like life is not
50:45
real. And he was also trying to manage this with a bunch of doctors
50:51
and pharmaceuticals who were, you know, not giving him, you know,
50:54
things that were helping him. So he was really struggling with the pharmaceutical side
51:00
of things. He was gaining a lot of weight, he talked about that.
51:02
During this time. He said he kind of turned into Brian Wilson.
51:06
Around this time, he weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. And you know,
51:08
he was an athlete when he was in high school. He was a
51:13
star soccer player and played tennis and stuff like that. So he was very
51:15
athletic as a as a young person. And he just sort of, yeah,
51:21
as he described it, kind of let it all go eventually, And
51:24
he chronicled this on the Saturday Nights album. I mean, that's the album
51:29
when he was probably at his lowest point, and he put a lot of
51:32
that energy into that album to his credit, but he also started to eventually
51:37
sort of come around a little bit. And he said that's when he envisioned
51:42
that Sunday Mornings album that you know, not necessarily a redemption of the night
51:45
before, but you know, maybe the hangover after the crazy night before,
51:52
and wrote the Sunday's album, and in some ways I think that helped lift
51:54
him out of it. Ultimately, he came to the realization that the best
51:59
thing he could do is develop a routine where he keeps his medicines organized and
52:05
together, but where he's out on the road. He really likes to be
52:07
on the road. He doesn't like to sit at home so this is why
52:09
they tour, because he says, there's a routine. I have something to
52:13
do. I have people to talk to because I have to interact with everybody
52:15
because we're on the road, and I have to talk to the sound engineers
52:19
and everybody when I'm on the road, so I have to interact with people.
52:22
I can't just lie in my apartment by myself. So he says the
52:28
routine of the road has really been what kind of saved him, and he
52:30
wrote about that in songs like Come Around, where he writes about the sort
52:35
of redemptive power of just going out on the road with the band. He's
52:38
kind of wrote about that in Daylight Fading too, this idea that, you
52:43
know, maybe the best solution is just to hit the road with the band.
52:45
By the way, I forgot to mention Palisades Park two from that twenty
52:47
fourteen album. That's another great single, Yeah, from Somewhere Under Wonderland.
52:52
Well, so he's now fifty nine, he's touring. As you say,
52:58
another album. Have you heard anything would you like? Yeah, you're another
53:01
album. What do you hope for the future of the band? Oh,
53:05
that's a great question. Well, you know, somewhere Under Wonderland also had
53:08
like Possibility Days. That's I think that closes the album, which I think
53:12
is one of his very best songs he's ever written. I think that,
53:15
you know, to me, you hear like Possibility Days or God Devotion Tides,
53:19
and it's like he is still writing songs that are as good as he
53:22
ever wrote them. Great reviews, Yeah, All Music four out of five
53:24
stars, Daily Telegraph for out of five stars. Yeah. Critics finally came
53:30
back around and realized, Okay, there's nobody left but this band, so
53:35
we might might as well start praising them and appreciating them. So yeah,
53:38
I thought that was a great album. As Adam has described it, he
53:42
was very surprised, you know. He's like, I'm making some of my
53:44
best music, but people aren't really buying it. And I think in some
53:46
ways he's just decided that they haven't really put out a full album since twenty
53:52
fourteen. They put out the EP and they were going to do a second
53:55
part of that, but I even heard that's been scrapped. I think to
53:58
some degree he's like, why should I bother to record albums if people aren't
54:02
interested in hearing the albums? You know? So I think these days he
54:07
focuses a lot on the live show, and he kind of centers his artistic
54:13
energy around the live show. So I don't, you know, I don't
54:16
think that they have anything like right on Deck about to come out. And
54:21
they're not a prolific band. They've they've only released six studio albums and the
54:24
and the one covers album in a thirty year career. Think of like ri
54:29
Em released five albums before they signed to Warner Brothers. Sure, sure,
54:32
I mean back in the seventies, bands released two albums in one year.
54:36
Yeah, I mean the Doors. I don't know how four years that many
54:40
albums, you know. So they've always been a band that's taken their time,
54:44
and I think that, you know, what would I hope for the
54:46
future. I guess what I would hope for the future is is that the
54:51
band would decide that they want to experiment more. They want to change it
54:55
up. They want to play songs that they never ever played before. They
55:00
want to dig out every single old They only have six albums, they should
55:05
play every song from every album. They should play all the covers. I'd
55:07
like to hear them do alts that they've never done before. I'd like them,
55:12
you know, to deconstruct songs that they haven't deconstructed, or reimagine songs
55:16
in new ways. I would just like them to get more creative and more
55:21
energized around the improvisation and stuff like that. Will they do that, I
55:25
don't think so, I don't. I think that Adam has sort of found
55:29
what he's willing to do. But also his voice can only do so much
55:32
too. He doesn't have the vocal range to sing some of those songs,
55:37
at least the way that he used to sing them. He can't. He
55:39
just literally physically cannot hit those high notes anymore, or he would blow his
55:44
voice out if he tried. So he has to preserve his voice and be
55:46
careful. So to some degree, you know, some of the songs would
55:51
be hard for him, I think, to go out and do. It's
55:52
not that he doesn't want to do them, and in some ways it's another
55:55
tragedy. I mean, I didn't write about this in the book, partially
55:59
because I hadn't sort of seen him in concert lately and noticed it as much.
56:05
But this is someone who's greatest gift was his voice, and to some
56:10
degree he's lost a bit of that I mean, think of like a great
56:15
runner, you know, who breaks an ankle or something. It's there's a
56:17
tragic element to it in some ways, and I sense that he knows that
56:22
too. I mean, he knows he can't hit those notes, and he
56:24
probably wishes he could. And in some ways there's a tragedy to that too.
56:29
There's a melancholy, had mournful quality to the Counting Crows music today,
56:34
because I think in some ways Adam is is limited to what he can do
56:38
in terms of his own catalog, and that that's got to feel I would
56:42
imagine that would feel kind of frustrating to someone who who has such a gift.
56:46
You know, Rain King The Life and Music of Adam Dirrett's and Counting
56:51
Crows by Jeff Harkness. You could find it anywhere books are sold, Amazon,
56:54
all those usual places, right and where can people find you online?
56:58
Just the usual places. This is my fourth book. So you could read
57:01
other things that I've written. You can find those in all the places that
57:06
people usually buy books, and and you can you can find things that I've
57:08
done on YouTube documentaries and stuff like that. But yeah, I'm out there.
57:14
I was a music journalist for years and many of the things that I
57:16
published as a music journalist, you know, fortunately survived and are still online,
57:21
so there's there's lots of stuff out there. I don't have a website.
57:23
I don't I don't really do the social media and stuff like that.
57:25
But I'm working. I'm working on a new book right now, and I
57:30
just finished the audio book of the ranking. I imagine that will either be
57:35
out by the time people hear this or very soon afterwards. I'm excited about
57:39
that because people have been asking me to do it. And yeah, I
57:43
wanted to ask you, though, Eric, because you said earlier that Sullivan
57:45
Street was your favorite song from August, and I wanted to circle back and
57:49
just ask you, you know, what was it about that song that it
57:52
makes you say that's the one? You know what. I'm glad you asked
57:57
that, because it's actually kind of strange, just to why I connect with
58:00
the song and see if I can explain it. But when I graduated from
58:05
college, I was really bummed because I was like, this is that's the
58:08
end of a period in my life, you know, kind of bump What
58:12
do I do now. I was at home and I turned all the lights
58:15
down and I just I remember just lying on the floor, just staring at
58:17
the ceiling, and I put on August and everything and after and Sullivan Street
58:22
comes on when he sings the lyric take the Way Home leads back to Sullivan
58:27
Street. Sullivan Street just in my mind was that life. Like I wish
58:32
I could just go back home to that life again, you know, if
58:37
I could just take that road down to Sullivan Street or or my old life
58:42
one more time. I don't know why it hit me that way. It
58:45
just struck me that way. And the song is not about anything like that.
58:49
I mean, I don't know what the song is specifically about, you
58:51
know a little bit. And he describes it as being about he was in
58:57
a relationship with this woman and he I think he would drive her home at
59:00
night along Sullivan Street and then he would drive home by himself. And you
59:05
know, it is this sort of driving along the street that just brought out
59:07
these feelings in him or whatever. But I think what's interesting about a band
59:12
like kind of Crows is that everybody hears their songs differently. They mean something
59:15
different to different people. I was just talking to somebody about Anna Begins,
59:19
which is one of my very, very favorite songs by them. I think
59:22
that's just such a good song, even even today. And a friend of
59:25
mine I was saying, well, you know, Anna Begins is about sort
59:29
of young love, and you know that feeling of young love which is so
59:31
overwhelming, and although you know, I can relate to it, it's kind
59:36
of hard to relate to it. And he was saying, oh, you
59:38
know, I just had my first child, and to me, I hear
59:42
Anna begins as about childhood, about as about fatherhood, you know, and
59:45
so she's talking in her slip, you know, like every time she sneezes,
59:49
I believe it's love, you know. And he's like, that's what
59:52
it's like to be a father, and I'm like, that is, but
59:52
it's like to be a father, you know. So I think that these
59:55
songs can mean different things, even to the same person, at different times
1:00:00
in their life, and you know, it's one of the things that makes
1:00:02
this band so special. Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's just a particular
1:00:06
lyric or a verse that that really hits you. And that's what it was
1:00:10
with that particular song. I don't know why, it just hit me at
1:00:14
that moment in time, and I always think about that now. I just
1:00:17
feel like it just represented what was and if I can only go back down
1:00:22
that street one more time, it's just the way hit me weird, right,
1:00:27
No, I think that's awesome. I mean that's that's the power of
1:00:30
music, is that it elicits memories and feelings, and you know, like
1:00:36
what a powerful feeling you had in that moment that you're still remembering today.
1:00:40
You're still talking about it today, and it's because of that song. If
1:00:44
you put that song on, you're gonna go right back to that. Yes,
1:00:45
right lying on the floor and yeah, that's it. My old my
1:00:51
old bedroom I grew up in. Jeff Harkness, thanks for coming on.
1:00:54
This was super fun. Loved it.