The working life: Talking with Adam Duritz of Counting Crows

You can tell a lot about a guy by his record collection. Adam Duritz, songwriter, lead singer and focal point of the platinum-selling American band Counting Crows, concluded this telephone interview with the Catalyst by gleefully giving the reporter a brief tour of his “wall” of bootleg recordings. He carried the phone across his music room to the shelves of alphabetized live CDs and vinyl, and began reading out the artists.

“There’s a ton of Badfinger and the Band, a ton of Beatles, a ton of Big Star, a ton of Bowie, a lot of Byrds, a shelf and a half of Dylan, a lot of Elvis Costello live from the early days, Steve Earle, some Fleetwood Mac, a lot of Dead, a ton of Roy Harper and Robin Hitchcock, a ton of Joni Mitchell, Curtis Mayfield stuff, Bob Marley, a lot of Little Feat – a great live band. There’s a ton of Little Feat and a ton of Led Zeppelin. Because Led Zeppelin, also, one of the great live bands ever.

“There’s a bunch of Van Morrison, Oasis, Nirvana, Graham Parker. A bunch of Radiohead, almost a whole shelf of Radiohead, a great live band. A ton of Springsteen, a ton of Stones, Soft Boys … I can’t see below that, because there’s a piano in the way …” All in all, 18 shelves of bootlegs.

“I am,” he confessed, “a total music geek.”

Glory days. Photo: Geffen Records.

Anyone looking to play “spot the influence” can find the artists who’ve influenced Duritz and his buddies, from Morrison and Parker’s deeply soulful vocals, to the jangle of the Byrds and Big Star, the graceful grit of the Grateful Dead and the poetic shimmy and sway of Dylan and Mitchell.

There’s more to Counting Crows, of course, than residual hero-worship pixie dust. A lot of the credit goes to Duritz, who as a writer is a sharp-eyed observer of the human condition, and a gifted storyteller. He’s also a magnetic stage presence.

August and Everything After, the band’s 1993 debut album, took the country by storm, selling more than seven million copies in the United States alone, and nearly as many in at least four other countries. The singles “Mr. Jones” And “Round Here” were major hits.

The second album, Recovering the Satellites, went to No. 1 and sold nearly as well as the debut.

Counting Crows play the BayCare Sound amphitheater July 20. The Gaslight Anthem opens. Find tickets at this link.

St. Pete Catalyst: The fact that the upcoming HBO documentary is titled Have You Seen Me Lately? – I know that’s a song on the second Counting Crows album, but it makes me think of your photo, with the dreads, on the side of a milk carton. Like, even though you’re still out there writing songs and making records, the band has fallen off the radar. Does that sort of thing matter to you?

Adam Duritz: Well, we’re musicians. We’ve been playing for a long time, we’ve made a lot of great music over a period of 30 years. The new album is getting rave reviews … I understand, though, that popularity in popular culture is about the moments in which you’re at the center of it. And that’s something other people do. What we do is make music, all the time. And what pop culture does is notice you every once in a while. If they do at all, you know what I mean?

Unless you’re the Stones, which is so f—ing rare, you’re not going to spend 30 years at the center of pop culture. The Stones, though, have spent 60 years as a band, and for the last 30 people haven’t been noticing them as much. But for the first 30, which is incredible, they did.

The Stones made a record a couple years ago, Hackney Diamonds, that most people didn’t listen to. And it’s pretty good record. They’re still doing their thing.

For us, this is not about the moment we’re at the center of pop culture. This is our whole life. And because we keep living even after people stop noticing us, we’re still playing. We’re doing our thing, and you have moments where you’re a big deal and moments where you’re not. And maybe it comes back again, maybe it doesn’t, who knows? It is what it is.

Does it still feel the same to you after all this time, to be onstage and making that connection with an audience? That rush of adrenaline?

It’s great to play shows. When we play shows, it’s somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 people. Or if it’s a festival, it’s more. So we still play to crowds just like we used to play to. That hasn’t really changed; the crowd size is the same as it was, for the most part, 30 years ago. So that’s been pretty good.

But you’re always going to be a milk carton face to a lot of people.

A lot of people are going to come out and see us play – but (as far as) popular culture, it’s not the same as Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus. Or Post Malone.

A lot of them will look at us and go ‘Oh, they’re still playing.’ That happens.

And yeah, I would love to be mega-successful all the time. Because it’s just great. And there’s so much more freedom to do whatever you want to do. You can set up pension plans for your entire crew. You can do whatever you want, at that level.

But, you know, that’s not life. Life doesn’t allow most people to do whatever they want 24 hours a day. It’s just not realistic.

I’m just happy that it’s still going on! Because this could have been over a long time ago. The truth is, these things just last five minutes for most people. If they happen at all. And we’re still playing to multiple thousands of people every night. Which is pretty great.

So it’s hard to be too pissed off about that.

I recently spoke with Rick Springfield, who was candid, smart and funny. He was headlining an ‘80s nostalgia package tour. Some day I expect there’ll be a ‘90s nostalgia tour – doesn’t that make you kind of a museum piece?

Well, there may be a ‘90s nostalgia tour, but you won’t find us there! But you gotta remember, this is a business and people are trying to support themselves doing it. Including Rick Springfield, you know what I mean? So, you just gotta work. And keep making stuff. Whatever makes your life meaningful. But also, whatever lets you put food on the table.

I think we expect this sort of high-falutin’ attitude from our artists, but this is a job, too. We’re all trying to support families and ourselves, and our families as they get older.

I think it’s one thing that the hip hop community got right, is that they realize this is not about being saints, this is about supporting ourselves. So they’ll do commercials, and appear in things, and not feel guilty about it. This kind of white guilt about rock musicians selling out, which I’ve always found to be really ridiculous.

If somebody came to you and said We want to use ‘Mr. Jones’ or ‘Round Here’ in a commercial, would you do it? Or is that too much?

No, I don’t think so. If it’s something I really like, I don’t care. I mean, that’s not gonna happen probably for us, because it’s just not as popular as it once was. I had a real thought process in the beginning of our career that I was gonna be extra, extra strict about anybody using anything anywhere. I made everyone show me the movies before I would agree to do music for them. I didn’t allow ‘Mr. Jones’ or ‘Round Here’ to be used in anything.

My thought was, by keeping it really, really rare for them to be used in anything, it’ll make everything much more valuable later on, when I decide to use it.

But what happened was, the economic model became companies buying people’s catalogs, and the value of that catalog is based purely off however much you made last year, multiplied by ‘this.’ It’s all something X.

So what that means is by not using my stuff all those years, I actually reduced the value of it! I mean, I was trying to make it rare and therefore valuable, but because the economic model changed what actually happened was: I made it not valuable.

In other words, if somebody like Budweiser wanted to use your song, you’d say yes?

Oh yeah, probably. I used to not let anyone use ‘Mr. Jones’ for anything like TV shows. And now in recent years, I’ve let all kinds of stuff … as long as I like it, I’ve let them all use it. Because I’ve also realized that we’re talking about all of our retirement. And it wasn’t economically responsible to be doing what I was doing. I’m trying to prepare all of us for our retirements, too, because at some point we won’t be able to keep playing. I’m the middle guy in the band, age-wise, and I’m 60.