Counting Crows (Adam Duritz)

0:00Hey, it's Adam from County Crows and you are watching MSN exclusives. I really appreciate you doing this man. This is amazing. We spoke on the phone last year, we had a great chat. So it might allude to some of those things people are wondering what we're talking about because we did a little print article last year.

0:46But this tour is, this is like you and Jacob from back. This is like 6th Avenue heartache days all over again. This is great. So what's it been like to her? I guess it's only been like a week or so. Yeah, I know. I mean, it's kind of been a week and we haven't seen a huge amount of them. We had hung out on the bus one day, watched the show a couple times. Because everyone that comes to the one of these shows gets a disc, echoes the Outlaw Road show. Yeah, I'm going to go and do that. It was a cool idea. I think the way it works nowadays is no one really knows how to work direct your business. So you just have to try ideas. I mean, we, echoes was a bonus disc on underwater sunshine in Australia and it was a separate live album that we sold over in the UK and on Europe. And then someone said, what about trying in America with the tickets? Is that okay? I think we put it up on Spotify too. Nice.

1:32Well, we don't have Spotify in Canada yet. Still waiting. You got the record. We do get the record. That's true. And it opens, I like it because it opens and closes with Dylan. It's interesting. Sort of. Kind of. I guess it's a birds, Dylan ending, whatever that. But the first one's not really a Dylan song, anyways. What do you call it? Johnny's song? What would you call Girl of North Country? No, it's a traditional song. Is it really? For hundreds of years. Did not know that. Well, now I feel stupid. No, no, I mean, I just, I think that, you know, zappling, Dylan. They're really good at pop music and that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes signing their own names. I don't know. I'm not sure how much he attitude. I know I have other versions of it though. Live records, you guys have released a lot of them. You guys are a live band I've seen you guys a dozen times now. Do you feel Count and Crows are best experienced in a live environment? No, not really. No, okay. I mean, I think the records are a really good way to listen to you.

2:19I think there's like three parts to being a man. You got to be able to write songs, you got to be able to make records and you got to go to work live. I think they're all equally important. I think the records are a great way to experience this. I think live is too. I mean, changes every night. We try to like really put our all into all three of those things. Yeah, talking about changing every night. Where does that come from? I've never seen you play the same song twice the same way. It's amazing. I don't know. Just, is there someone in charge of that? Are you kind of leading the band? How does it, how did, I find that would be very difficult to do with six or seven people on stage. Play it like you're feeling at the moment. I never really think about playing it differently. I'm also not thinking about whatever the record version sounded like. I have no idea what the record version sounds like for a lot of songs. It's been so long since I've listened to them.

3:04We play them every night. You experience them differently. Going into those covers, even on the live record, you go into Elbow on Rain King. There's a little Van Morrison, sweet thing. I can't remember what tune, but it pops up in there. I can't remember where that was. Elbow has the first time I ever did that to Elbow song. It just popped up that night. It's a funny thing. I was thinking that when we were playing it midway through, Charlie started playing some spacey stuff on the organ, like echo-y spacey stuff. I thought, oh, cool. He picked up on the fact that I'm singing this Elbow song, Bill the Rocket Boys. He's probably never heard the song, but he picked up that I'm saying Bill the Rocket Boys and he's playing spacey stuff. But then when I noticed later on when I listened to it for the live record, he starts the song out playing Scips Spacey stuff. Maybe that's what gave me the idea of saying Elbow. I don't know. People play around their instruments every night and you listen.

3:50It's just a big thing in our band. It gets kind of drilled into you that playing is really important and listening is more important. Because that's how you know, the only thing that we really get mad at each other forever on stage is if you're not listening. Because someone could take a left turn and go somewhere and if you screwed up just because you weren't paying attention, then that's not very cool. Everyone will beat you up in the kitchen and go around and kick your ass for that one. Well, it must be fun to keep everyone in their toes all the time. It's got to be nice. Yeah, it's kind of like second nature after a while. We just started going where we came out on stage last night after playing ranking. Dave Brison comes running over to me and goes, dude, dude, what was that? Is that blue Nile? I was like, yeah, it was. You don't even know until afterwards. I was doing, because I started to sing Stay the other day. I was trying to sing a blue Nile song and I couldn't remember the lyrics.

4:39I went home and got all my blue Nile lyrics and checked them out the other day. I tried it again the other night on stage. I started singing the song of Walk Cough through Cross the Ruth tops but I literally remembered one line and then died on that one. And I switched into this other song and I got through a bunch of it in the middle of ranking but it flipped out Brison. He was like, well, I love that song. I haven't heard it so long. Do you go in? Like, as I know we were talking last year about setlist and you go around and asking everybody. So are people giving you ideas? Hey, go into this tune during this tune. Oh, no, they never really do that. It's just you off tangents, whatever comes in your mind. Or could also be them doing it. Like I said, like I don't know whether I might have picked up an elbow idea from Charlie playing spacey stuff because he was playing spacey stuff that day. I just didn't even think about it at the time but you're listening. So it happens. I don't know.

5:24What are people requesting this summer? Because you got two more Katie and Stops Calgary and Winnipeg a little later this summer. In the band? Yeah. What are people, what are you gravitating? I mean, I think you were talking about desert life last summer. This whole year it's been a lot of this desert life. Still? Oh, yeah. It's like people are always requesting which it was a girl, colorblind, speedway, high life gets requested like every other night. It seems like it's just those songs for some reason were really enjoying playing them. Was it a better time in the band? But did you guys have it? Was there something about recording those tunes that has stuck with everyone and everyone really just digs them? Was that the most fun record? It was a really creative record for us. I don't know if it was the most fun. It was really creative though. I mean we were really kind of in there. We'd been listening to a lot of Sparkle Horse and some of the earliest radio head bootleg

6:09stuff we had. And we were really interested in making sounds and like playing around the studio maybe less of a live experience in the studio and more of a what kind of tricks can you do in the studio? Like the most live sounding song on the album is probably hanging around. But hanging around is like loop after loop after loop. It was just messing around and continuously messing around with it. And that was kind of an interesting sort of record that way. That's so funny we were listening to on the way here and it sounded like a live record and you're dispelling that. I mean the other flip side of that is Mrs. Potter's lullaby which we did started the night after our week after I wrote it. We were working on it and we kind of nailed it that night. And then we proceeded to work on it for a week and completely ruin it. It just sounded terrible.

6:55And I was like I went over to my friend Monica's house and I was just sitting there after a studio one day saying I don't know what we did this song it's ruined. She goes no it's great. No I mean it's terrible. She goes no it's great to look and she had a cassette and she pushed play and it was this awesome version of Mrs. Potter's lullaby. I said where the hell did you get that she was when you were recording the other night the first night we did it. I go and I'll tell the tape out it says Mrs. Potter's lullaby take four. I'm like I'm gonna borrow this. Went back into work the next day I'm like check this out. Oh it's not ruined is it? Where's that from? What's that? I'm like well it's actually take four let's just go back to take four and then we'll figure out what stops screwing the song up. Sometimes you can that's completely live that song pretty much. Cool. Sometimes it's just that way. You did an interview in London recently you mentioned Heinlein for since we're on the topic and the guy asked you three songs that some kind of croz he said 1492 high life

7:44and what about here. Well yeah he didn't ask you why why those three songs and I was curious. Oh there's no reason I named them it was just named three songs. Name three songs that some up counting croz and you and you know. Oh okay well yeah that makes a lot of sense to me. Well because I think round here is the song that really defined us in the beginning much more than Mr. Jones it was round here and going on Saturday Night Live and playing round here first that like I think first really got people into the band and it showed the sort of scope of what we could do even back then we were barely like knowing how to do it. I mean because it really takes you into a world on that song. I mean I think high life is like you know all the experimentation that was going on in this desert life and it goes into making a song like that it has spoken word parts and singing most of it upside down.

8:31We were trying all sorts of cool stuff. You're singing it upside down. Yeah what does that mean. I mean I mean I'm literally. Literally. It's suspended from the ceiling. I went back with my legs and like butt up on a chair to get me. It was singing too relaxed and it was just too easy to sing it and it didn't have any tension in it. I don't know why. And I kind of set upside down and did it and it had just the right amount. It made it a little harder to sing it and so it had the right and just sounded better. It sounded right. And 4292 is also like you know we've always had that very loud guitar sort of punk side. You know from it's not as much on the first album but it's certainly there by the very beginning of the second album is what catapulting angels of the silences you know. And it's always been a big part of who we were and you know I think that reached a real

9:17peak with 1492 which I think is one of my favorite songs I've written. Well it sounds like just the opening line is very personal. Yeah I mean it's very personal song. Yeah. Yeah I think there's a pretty good three songs for me. When we spoke last summer you said I can't remember I wrote it down too. You didn't think your head was in a space to write to sing stuff but you felt the need to write anyway and you started working on playing. Yeah. So where are things out with the play now? Ten boys they were then. Because we've been really busy. I've been on the road the whole time and whenever I was home my co-writer has been off like he directed a couple movies. He's been doing... Is this the freeloaders dude or someone else? No no this is my friend Steve Belber who writes a... He's a Broadway playwright. Straight playwright. He had a play open off Broadway this year and he's directing a movie of another one of his plays. So we just have not had any time when we both weren't working.

10:04We spent like a few days together around the opening of his play where we discussed stuff and went through stuff with the script and got some ideas with it but you know we haven't really done anything else. Cool. And then I had to go back to working on this stuff. Right of course. Are you writing a new record? Where's the thing? Yeah I'm working on that right now. That's one of the reasons I'm doing this tour. Now are you workshopping stuff live or are people going to hear songs or something? Well we hopefully will be. We haven't done them yet. We're doing them over in Europe. We haven't worked on it yet this summer here. Cool. Well maybe people can hear some at some point. Well I'm sure they will by the end of the summer. We rehearse every day. Nice. We take it except for today. Except for today. It's a little raining outside speaking of which we've kicked half the band off the bus so I should let you go. Well we have sound check every day and we usually spend it rehearsing songs but we not today. Right. Because we'll drown.

10:50Fair enough. Five quick questions. One more dancers. You were not able to do one word last year but we'll see if we can do this. Road or studio? Both. Lending or McCartney? McCartney. When you hear a song it usually hits you first. Lyric's melody or rhythm? Song. Song. What is that? I mean that's interesting. The three of them go together. The three of them go together. Add up to. Song you've written your most proud of. Today. No idea. In one word, Counting Crows. I think that's what you said last time too. That was it. I think so. Before I did those answers. No I did that's all good. Before I let you go, last year you gave me Viscween as a recommendation.

11:36Give me an indie band recommendation. I've never listened to you recently. It's really great. Daniel and the Lion. Daniel and the Lion. Yeah. Their album Deathhead, Side Aid and B, fantastic. Nice. Or Lucy Rose. Who just opened for us. You came up for it. These are all out of the road show bands but they're pretty great bands. That's why you put them on the other road show. Yeah it is. So true. Mean Creek. Mean Creek has also done several tours with us as well. The other night they came to the show in Boston and we realized we didn't have an opener for the next night in Hampton because the walklars weren't going to be there. So you might try it on Hampton tomorrow at Open Forest. Sure. They are amazing. They're like the rebirth of the pixies. They're an incredible band. Their record youth companion they put out last year. It's just an unbelievable record. Awesome.

12:21Yeah. Check it out. Thanks man. Appreciate it. No problem. You're going to let the other guys back on the bus. Yeah. That was good.