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Forbes
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Adam Duritz On New Counting Crows Album Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!
What began in 2021 upon the release of the EP Butter Miracle, Suite One, is completed today as Counting Crows release the brand new album Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!, their first full length studio effort since 2014. Now available on CD or vinyl and for online streaming via BMG, the new album includes the original four song EP plus five new tracks which showcase the incomparable storytelling of songwriter and vocalist Adam Duritz, amongst the best of his generation, set against raucous guitar work drawing on everything from Mick Ronson (David Bowie) to punk rock. Writing from a farm in England, several of the tracks have roots dating back to the quarantine of pandemic, with Duritz affected by the times as Counting Crows again enlist producer Brian Deck (Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings, Somewhere Under Wonderland, Butter Miracle, Suite One), while working alongside engineer Joey Wunsch from New York City's Flux Studios on the new five tracks. Prepping a summer tour set to kick off June 10, 2025 in Nashville, ahead of European dates taking the band into November, Counting Crows will appear beside heart-on-sleeve indie rockers The Gaslight Anthem during most of the U.S. run. 'I really like to tour with friends. I love to tour with bands I like. Because I'm gonna watch them all of the time - so I don't really want to spend my summers with a bunch of a–holes. And the nice thing is Brian's great,' said Duritz with a smile during a recent video call, shouting out Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon. 'I'm really excited. I've always liked the band. It first came to my attention because of 'High Lonesome' - because it quotes our songs,' said Duritz of a Gaslight Anthem track which nods lyrically in the direction of 'Round Here,' from Counting Crows' massive 1993 debut August and Everything After. 'They've just been a great band for a lot of years now.' I spoke with Adam Duritz about the influence of 'Round Here' on 'With Love, From A-Z,' the new album's opening track, constructing Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!, the importance of storytelling, navigating a changing music industry and much more. A transcript of our video call, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows below. Jim Ryan: Following work on the suite, when and where did you start working on this new batch of five songs? Adam Duritz: Right away, the next year. I went back to the farm and wrote these songs. And on the way home, I stopped in London. I have some friends in this band Gang of Youths - an Australian band but they live in London. And I had sung on their new record but they kind of scrapped it and were re-recording a more ambitious version of it. And they wanted me to come sing again. So, I did. And then, after I got home, David Le'aupepe, the lead singer, sent me the record. And it was so good! And I realized that my songs weren't at that level - not the suite but these new ones that I had written. They just weren't good enough. And so I went back to the drawing board. I put all of this work in. And then I found that I had kind of lost confidence in it. The songs sat for two years. Because, having re-written them, I thought that they were then done. But I found that I just wasn't sure if they were any good anymore, you know? I didn't even send them to the band. I sort of sat on them for two years. And then what happened is I wrote 'With Love, From A-Z.' And I thought that was great. And that made me go back and examine the other songs again. I called our guitar player David Immerglück, Millard and Jim, our bass player and drummer, and said, 'I need you all to come here to my house. I need to play these songs with you. Just in the living room, we can do them right here with a small drum kit. But I've got to play these songs. I can't tell if they're right. Because I can't play them the way that they're supposed to sound. I need a band.' So, they came to New York a few weeks later. And we started demoing the songs in my living room. And they were great! I was so excited. One by one they just came out fantastic. Over about four or five days we did all the songs - like one a day. And at the end, I was like, 'Sh–t, what have I been doing for two years?! These are f–ing great!' I was really frustrated about that. But we were all so excited that I said, 'Listen, we've just got to go into the studio right away.' So, we were in like two or three weeks later. We went into the studio and took 11 days maybe? Recorded the other half of the record. Done. Ryan: I love the way 'With Love, From A-Z' opens the record. That bluesy, rocking opening guitar part reminded me of Buddy Guy. Plus there's the storytelling element. How did that one kind of come together? Duritz: I think I wanted everything on this record, other than 'Virginia Through the Rain,' to have big guitars - almost punky. Somewhere between Mick Ronson and punk guitar. We just wanted to have loud guitars. In a lot of ways, 'With Love, From A-Z' is a folk song. But I wanted to kind of play against the character of it. It is structured like a folk song. But I didn't want it to be an acoustic guitar song. And Immer just came up with that guitar part. That distorted thing. It wasn't anything I was thinking. But I really liked it. It was how we got the song started. When we were doing the song in my living room, he just started strumming it like that. Rather than count ourselves in, he just started and the band came in. And I just really liked it. It gave a caustic kind of edge to the song - so it didn't just do the folk song thing. It had some in your face punch to it. Because I think that's really necessary. We wanted it to have that. Ryan: On the suite, 'Bobby and the Rat-Kings' felt to me like it kind of had that punch. That love of rock and roll is apparent. On the new five, 'Boxcars' certainly seems to maintain that spirit. What were you going for there? Duritz: 'Boxcars' is a funny song. Because, in a lot of ways, it's the oldest song - but not really. The real genesis of that song was during the pandemic. All of the sudden there's two years with no gigs. And, also, New York was a pretty scary place to be during that. The whole city was shut down. And a lot of people died - I mean a lot of people died. There were freezer trucks in front of all of the hospitals to store the bodies. I'm walking around the house one day and I start playing air guitar and singing. And it becomes this riff that for two years I drove my girlfriend crazy with. I can't play music - but I've got this metal riff in my head! (Hums riff to 'Boxcars') But what am I going to do with it? I realized after a while that it's such a good riff! It's such a great guitar riff. I kind of tossed it away after a while. When I got to the beginning to write what became 'Boxcars,' I just had the music for the verse and the chorus - the first half of the chorus. And I came out of the chorus at one point and I was like, 'Makes it easier on me…' (hums riff) One time when he was over here having dinner, I said to Immer, 'Could you play this riff with this music?' And he played it on one of my acoustics. And it was so good! I was like, 'Maybe this is the f–ing signature riff for this new song I'm writing…' So, it's funny. In a way it was started before any of the other songs - because it was started in the middle of the pandemic with that riff. And it was finished after all of the other songs. It was such a guitar song that I couldn't play it on piano. And so I could never really finish it because I couldn't play it to sing along to it. So, it had this weird, long journey that most songs don't usually have. Ryan: There were a few lyrics in 'Under the Aurora' that jumped out at me. One was 'A man on tele tries to tell me what is real…' Were the times sort of seeping into the songwriting process there? Duritz: Yeah. I was kind of writing this whimsical life during the apocalypse [thing]. I was on that farm in England. And I had been in England for a while. So, I was writing it from the perspective of someone in England, The Times and the Telegraph being the papers over there - and the BBC. That was kind of my mindset at the time. And it was just kind of this whimsical song about the beginnings of the apocalypse hitting in London and trying to make a hit while that's happening. It had a different chorus that was not as good. It was catchy - but it didn't mean much. That was also very affected by the time during the pandemic and everything too. Because there was a lot going on in the world. A lot of people were dying. George Floyd was killed. And there were a lot of protests. And a lot of people who were really angry and really hurt and really frustrated about their place in life in America. So, when I was writing that chorus, it was watching that all from a distance in your house while you're shut down in there. And around you are all of these funerals and all of these protests. And you're wondering what place a whimsical song like that has in that world, you know? So, I was very affected by it. And it's also a bit of an homage to Gang of Youths too. Because the song that really knocked me off being done with these songs was their song called 'The Man Himself,' which is David Le'aupepe's song about his father dying - and realizing that his father had this whole life before their family that nobody knew about. But one of the things he says is, 'And they're hummin' away, hummin' away...' He repeats that line in that song. And so I put that line into 'Under the Aurora' too. Ryan: One of my favorite elements of your songwriting over all of these years now is the storytelling component. It's an element of your podcasting and it's certainly there in Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets! How important is the idea of storytelling to you? Duritz: Well, I mean, all songs are stories, you know? I think I've gotten away from nonfiction a little bit more in the last 10 years or so. It's still expressing all of the things I feel - but I've been willing to express them in things that were not stories about my life: they're just stories about how I feel about life. Like 'Palisades Park,' the characters in that are not me. And on a lot of this album they're not. They really are on 'With Love, From A-Z.' I kind of think that's, in its own way, an update of 'Round Here.' It's very much a statement of where I am in the world right now, where I am in my life. But a lot of the other stuff on this album is fictional stories. I found that it was possible to express just as honestly things I was feeling with plotlines from other characters. But all songs are kind of storytelling. I don't know if I think about it as storytelling. I just think about them as songs. I want them to have a certain quality and I want them to have details and I want them to be rich. I want the imagery to be rich enough for you to immerse yourself in it. But, really, to me, I'm a songwriter. I'm not a poet. I'm not a fiction writer. I really write songs. And I just think of them as that. Ryan: So, Counting Crows broke through in the early 90s at the height of that major label system. Within a few years that starts to change - and here we are a few decades later. But looking at the way the industry works today, does it force you to keep a little closer eye on the business side in a way I'm guessing you probably didn't have to 30 years ago? How have you adapted to that? Duritz: No, you needed to keep an eye on it when you had a label. You really needed to keep an eye on it when there was a record label! I mean, that was the downfall of a lot of musicians in history. That's not where you want to place your trust all of the time. I just think it's different. There's a lot of positives and negatives. On the downside, it's that no one pays for music anymore. And that sort of sucks. The percentage we get from Spotify is miniscule. I mean, it was great for the record companies. Because it was a big payday at a time when they were cash poor and all going out of business. They get a lot of money from Spotify. How that trickles down to us is fractions of fractions of cents, you know? But, on the other hand, you used to have to have a major label deal to make music. Because you couldn't afford to go into a recording studio and you couldn't afford to print up records and distribute them in trucks across America or the world. Nowadays, you can make your music in your bedroom on your computer and you don't have to distribute anything or print up anything - you can just upload it to Bandcamp. There's a lot of ways in which the gatekeepers have been removed. Everybody can do it on their own now in a way that's wonderful. It's a great thing for music. And yet it's not always a great thing for musicians. But that's always been true. The record company system wasn't great for musicians either. But, I mean, there are very few businesses that could survive having lost basically half of their income. And the record industry has lost half of its income - because we don't get paid for records anymore. We basically just have touring - and it's hard to support yourself just that way. Especially when it costs so much money to go overseas. You've got less crowds over there because people don't know you as well. You used to be able to balance that out because you were making money from records - but now it's just like a bottom line: do you spend more or make more on tour?
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘It's a Happy Time': Counting Crows Return With ‘The Complete Sweets!'
Back during the summer of 2021, Adam Duritz said he was in the process of 'tightening up' the songs for the follow-up to Counting Crows' then-new Butter Miracle, Suite One EP. 'When it's right, we'll get in and record them and put them out, and then play them (live), which is always the best part,' he told us. But Duritz didn't expect to take four years, almost to the day, for that to happen. More from Billboard PinkPantheress Drops 'Fancy That': Stream It Now It's No Secret: Gracie Abrams Hits Three Non-Consecutive Weeks at ARIA No. 1 Motörhead to Mark 50th Anniversary With Release of 'Lost' 1976 Album Butter Miracle, The Complete Suite Sweets! comes out Friday (May 9) as Counting Crows' eighth full-length studio album. It includes the four songs from Suite One, plus an additional five — the four Duritz was talking about during 2021, plus the opening 'With Love, From A-Z,' which came later. He and the band are certainly happy with the result, but Duritz acknowledges it did not come easily. 'I really thought I'd finished the (new songs),' Duritz, who'd written the material at the same friend's farm in England where he composed the Suite One songs, tells Billboard via Zoom. On the way back home to New York, he stopped in London to sing on Gang of Youth's 2022 album Angel in Realtime, which he calls 'one of my favorite things anyone's done in the last 10 years.' That, in turn, changed his perspective on what he thought was going to become Suite Two. 'I was suddenly thinking these songs I just finished aren't good enough,' Duritz acknowledges. 'They're missing some stuff.' He felt one, 'Virginia Through the Rain' was 'perfect,' but the others were lacking. 'I kind of had lost confidence in them,' Duritz notes, 'and I sat on them for a good two years. then I wrote 'With Love, From A-Z' here (in New York) and thought, 'That's great — now I have to figure out what to do with this, 'cause it needs to go on a record right away!' I've got to shit or get off the pot on these songs.' The solution, he found, was to gather some of his bandmates — multi-instrumentalist David Immergluck, bassist Millard Powers and drummer Jim Bogios — to his home New York and woodshed those songs that had been put aside. 'The problem was that my sort of ambition for what they should sound like outstripped my ability to actually play them on the piano,' Duritz says. 'I'm really good at arranging and singing, no doubt. I'm great at being in a band, but I'm not the player some of the other guys are, or that a lot of other songwriters are. 'So the guys came to the house and we went through them one by one and we loved them. They became great…and then we went into the studio only a few weeks later and knocked the record out in 11, 12 days — It's by far the fastest we've ever recorded (an album) — but it took forever to do it!,' he adds with a laugh. The Complete Sweets! new songs certainly demonstrate the merits of that extra effort. Taken as piece with the Suite One tracks they offer a Counting Crows amalgam, from the Band-like earthiness of 'With Love, From A-Z' and 'Virginia Through the Rain' to the sweeping, string-laden build of 'Under the Aurora,' the power pop of the single 'Spaceman in Tulsa' and the gritty guitar rock of 'Boxcars,' which Duritz says was particularly challenging until he brought the other players in. It is not a narrative, but The Complete Sweets! is certainly a conceptual whole. 'I wasn't trying to write a specific story,' Duritz notes. 'But (the songs) just sort of fit together for me. I just felt like this was a little world I was creating, and it felt very fertile.' The songs find him expressing himself mostly through characters — which he started in earnest on 2014's Somewhere Under Wonderland — than in the angsty first-person that was once Duritz's stock in trade. In particular, the protagonist of 'Spaceman in Tulsa' is clearly there in Suite One's 'Bobby and the Rat Kings,' which is the closing track on The Complete Sweets! and links the two groups of songs together. 'It's definitely thematically tied together; I think (the 'Spaceman') did end up in 'Bobby and the Rat Kings' for sure,' Duritz acknowledges. 'But I think even without that, that song would work even if there was no connection. But I wanted the connection to be there, 'cause I was vibing on that. I was digging writing about Bobby on this record. I think there are a lot of us like that in the arts who grew up wondering if we had a place in the world, wondering how we were going to fit in. We felt different from other people. We field weird. 'I think there's a world of people who work in our heads, and when we find that it's like we get to be the butterflies instead of just the caterpillars.' Counting Crows asserted its place in the world during the 90s, after Duritz and guitarist David Bryson began working as an acoustic duo in the San Francisco Bay Area. With its filled-out lineup, Counting Crows generated buzz by playing in Van Morrison stead's at his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction during January of 1993 — seven months before the release of its seven-times-platinum debut album, August and Everything After and its band-defining hits 'Mr. Jones,' 'Round Here' and 'Rain King.' Since then, Counting Crows has sold more than 20 million records worldwide and was nominated for an Academy Award for 'Accidentally in Love' from Shrek 2 in 2004. This year, meanwhile, marks the 20th for the current lineup, since 'new guy' Powers joined in 2005. 'I always wanted to be in a band and stay together,' says Duritz. And even though he's worked outside the band on a variety of projects — with the Wallflowers, Ryan Adams and other acts as well as films such as Josie and the Pussycats and The Locusts, and running a couple of record labels — Duritz contends that, 'I never wanted to be a solo artists. I have no interest in that shit. It's a hard thing to stay together as a band, and it's not surprising to me we've lost a couple people over 30 years, but right now it feels like we can go on forever — except I know that nothing works that way, y'know?' Nevertheless, Counting Crows is gearing up for its Complete Sweets Tour!, which kicks off June 10 in Nashville and runs through Aug. 23, with Gaslight Anthem supporting. And while forever seems like a big word, Duritz feels confident that the band will be with us for quite a while longer. 'I'm not tired of it at all,' he says. 'There were points where I was having more trouble with myself emotionally, and the band's stress was just too much. But our manager's great now. Our lawyer's great. I totally trust everybody. All that stress is gone. The band is so stable and great, and we're still killing it. 'So we're on our way again. Things feel good. Everyone seems to be in a really good place. It's a happy time — and,' he adds with another laugh, 'if even I can be happy, what's to stop everyone else from being happy, right?' Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
Daily Mail
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
ADRIAN THRILLS reviews: Counting Crows: Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets! Stone me! The Crows are back with a classic
Verdict: Heartfelt storytelling The overwhelming success of their debut album, August And Everything After, proved to be a mixed blessing for Counting Crows. That richly textured 1993 release, produced by T-Bone Burnett, sold well over seven million and propelled the hard-working band from the San Francisco Bay Area to rock superstardom in the blink of an eye. But the downside of fame arrived just as quickly for frontman Adam Duritz, who struggled to cope with his overnight popularity. 'We were on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and selling loads of records, but I was still this shy kid from California who couldn't deal with people very well,' he said a few years later. August And Everything After has also overshadowed most of the music the band have made since the 1990s – something they have tacitly admitted with occasional revamps of their glittering debut: a deluxe edition in 2007; a track-by-track live version in 2011; an orchestral rendition of the LP's previously unreleased title track in 2019. Now they have finally come up with a late- career classic to match the melodic storytelling with which they first made their mark. Looking to Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, The Band and Mott The Hoople for inspiration, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets! suggests there's still a place for traditional rock music, provided it's played with passion and zest. From Taylor Swift to Lana Del Rey, most of today's best lyricists are young women. With his meticulously crafted narratives, 60-year-old Duritz is striking a blow for the older guard. His writing these days has not just heft, but a sense of joy. 'I'm talking about being happy and being in love,' he says. The romantic yearning is apparent from the off. With Love, From A-Z finds Duritz missing friends and family while on a road trip across America. On Spaceman In Tulsa, he offers a bittersweet take on the lure of bright lights and greasepaint. 'If you could see behind my eyes, I'm just an empty smile,' he laments, over a rollicking backdrop. The album's last four songs form a continuous piece of music. Keyboardist Charlie Gillingham adds Mellotron and strings to Angel Of 14th Street, while Elevator Boots and Bobby And The Rat-Kings celebrate the unifying power of song. 'We'll make them play 'til the stars all fade,' Duritz vows. It's a spirited addition to their legacy. Counting Crows start a UK tour on October 23 at City Hall, Newcastle ( Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke: Tall Tales (Warp) Rating: The Radiohead and Smile frontman hooks up with West Country DJ and composer Pritchard on an electronic album that frames his voice in a refreshing new light. Yorke sings and speaks in a husky croon on The White Cliffs, while Pritchard — an avid collector of vintage synths — supplies retro flourishes similar to those used by Pink Floyd and The Beatles in the 1960s on Bugging Out Again. Yorke's lyrics are typically bleak, but the nods to Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode are a welcome sidestep. The Kooks: Never/Know (Virgin) Rating: A faithful cover of Paul McCartney's slinky Arrow Through Me (from the Wings album Back To The Egg) gives a good indication of where Kooks singer Luke Pritchard's melodic instincts lie. The track is the centrepiece of a bright, breezy indie-pop album that started as a solo project before Pritchard invited his bandmates to join him. There are throwbacks to debut album Inside In/Inside Out, with Sunny Baby a paean to parenthood and Never Know an upbeat celebration of living for the moment. Best of the new releases... Arcade Fire Pink Elephant (Columbia) Rating: Heroes of alternative rock when they broke through 20 years ago, Arcade Fire's flame dimmed with 2022's bombastic We – and their old buoyancy is in short supply on the introspective Pink Elephant, an album released in the wake of accusations (strenuously denied) of sexual misconduct against the Montreal band's frontman Win Butler. There are no references to the matter here. Instead, we get songs, like Year Of The Snake, about the need to move on. Amid the melancholy, hints of their old flair resurface. Harmonies from Butler's wife (and bandmate) Régine Chassagne – who has supported her husband throughout – add a dreamy edge to synth-pop number Circle Of Trust. Butler adopts a tender falsetto on Ride Or Die, which sounds a lot like a love letter to Chassagne. 'I could work a nine to five, and you could be a waitress,' he sings, adding a little light to an understandably tentative return. Pinkpantheress: Fancy That (Warner) Bath-born Victoria Walker – aka PinkPantheress – won the BBC's Sound Of 2022 Poll, but has since struggled to consolidate her position in a crowded market for female singers. Her latest 'mixtape' is a feel-good trolley-dash between dance genres. With her high-pitched vocals to the fore, four of the nine tracks feature samples from electronic duo Basement Jaxx, while there are also references to Underworld, Sugababes and Just Jack's catchy 2007 debut single Starz In Their Eyes.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'90s Rock Band Makes Fans 'Nostalgic' With 'Tonight Show' Performance
Rock fans were delighted during the latest episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, which featured a performance from musical guests Counting Crows. During the Wednesday, May 7 episode of the late-night talk show, Counting Crows lead vocalist Adam Duritz and the rest of his bandmates took the stage to perform "Spaceman in Tulsa" from their new album, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets! 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 Fans of the legendary '90s band were nothing short of ecstatic over the performance, with users on social media saying they were "so happy" to see the group "still playing together." "Aw, Adam Duritz's voice makes me feel so happy and nostalgic" one user commented on a YouTube video of Wednesday night's performance. "Best live band ever!!" another commenter gushed. "Followed them for 30 years and still got it." "love counting crows they never disappoint," another adoring fan added. The late-night performance made several fans eager to see the band live on their upcoming tour, which kicks off next month and includes stops across North America and Europe. "YEAHHHHH!!!!!! That was AMAZING!!!! More psyched than ever for the tour!!!!!!" one user wrote on Instagram, while another person added, "I am so excited to see them this summer!"
Telegraph
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Counting Crows' Adam Duritz: ‘I've known Springsteen for decades and I still can't speak around him'
It's not often – if ever – that an American pop song name checks The Telegraph. But now, we can add at least one track to that list, thanks to alt-rock veterans Counting Crows. Their latest single, Under the Aurora, opens with an image of London commuters grasping this very newspaper. 'Almost the entirety of our new record was written in England, which is why there's that reference,' explains Adam Duritz, the band's lead singer and principal songwriter. He's talking to me from his home in New York, ahead of the release of Counting Crows' new album, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets! Other nods to Britain are scattered across the album: one track references a 'shrinking English sky'; another sneaks in the British colloquialism of 'telly' for television. But while his recent stay in England clearly influenced the album, Duritz is a longtime Anglophile. 'I can't describe to you what a thrill it was that first time we went to London,' he says. 'As a kid, you see pictures of the Beatles coming to America and getting off the plane. Going to London for the first time was like that in reverse for me.' That first overseas tour came in the mid-1990s. Counting Crows had experienced a smash success with their debut album, August and Everything After. It seemed like a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, the breakout single, Mr. Jones, was about an aspiring singer who dreamed of fame. 'When everybody loves you / You can never be lonely,' Duritz sang. But he soon found that celebrity had its drawbacks. 'It was a really hard adjustment,' Duritz recalls. 'I didn't know how to be famous. When I got home at the end of touring, there were kids camped out on my lawn – I mean literally!' To escape, he started working a menial job – albeit in an exclusive location. 'I bartended at the Viper Room for a while,' he says. Founded by Johnny Depp and his 21 Jump Street co-star Sal Jenco, the club became the infamous epicentre of 1990s Hollywood culture. 'I was among friends and I was comfortable,' Duritz tells me of his time at the Viper Room. 'I have been a really shy person my whole life. I had trouble going up to people and saying 'Hi'. But when I got famous, I didn't have to go up to people anymore. They came up to me.' Duritz found he was more comfortable being approached in that contained world than out in public. 'The Viper Room gave me a home at a time when I needed one,' he remembered in a 2021 documentary about the club. 'I will treasure Johnny Depp for the rest of my life because of that. It changed my life. It was the making of me in some ways – the remaking of me.' Duritz became a key figure in the venue's celebrity scene, where he met – and dated – a string of A-list actresses. 'I met Jennifer Aniston there because a bunch of my friends lied to me and told me she had a crush on me,' Duritz recalled in the documentary. 'I honestly had no idea who she was. I had been on the road during all of Friends.' He also dated Aniston's Friends co-star, Courteney Cox, who appeared in the music video for the Counting Crows song A Long December. After their debut, the band continued to find success – their second album went to Number 1, and they also picked up an Oscar nomination for their song Accidentally in Love, from Shrek 2. But that first album and single still seemed to overshadow everything else. A recent video promoting their tour acknowledges this with good humour. Duritz lies on an analyst's couch, while a therapist (played by Brain Fallon from New Jersey rock band The Gaslight Anthem) enquires: 'None of your other records have sold as well as your first one. How does that make you feel?' Duritz may be able to poke fun at the diminishing returns of his band's output. But it's still a sore point. In fact, it's a key reason why Counting Crows haven't released a full-length album in 11 years. 'I really loved our last record,' Duritz says, referring to 2014's Somewhere Under Wonderland. 'Our label did everything to promote it. And I felt like it still barely made any impression on the general public. After that, I got discouraged about the idea of doing really good work and then having it just disappear.' As Duritz acknowledges, the seismic changes that reshaped the music industry have put bands from an earlier era at risk of being left behind. 'I got the feeling we didn't know how to put records out in this new world,' he admits. 'Radio doesn't really do it any more. There's no MTV. I love social media and its possibilities. But I missed the boat on Instagram and TikTok.' Throughout our conversation, Duritz defaults to this kind of self-criticism. Rock stars are supposed to ooze confidence. But he seems more focused on his shortcomings – particularly his mental health struggles with dissociative disorder and social anxiety. 'I can be a complete frozen nightmare with my heroes,' he tells me. 'I've known Bruce Springsteen for 35 years and I still have trouble forming sentences around him.' This lack of confidence is another reason for the 11-year gap between albums. 'I sat on these new songs for two-and-a-half years without even playing them for the band,' Duritz says. 'It was hard for me to know if they were good. I really started doubting them and I lost a lot of confidence.' One is tempted to draw an analogy with the Biblical Sampson, whose powers were bound up in his hair. After all, this new album will be the band's first since Duritz shaved off his trademark dreadlocks. It was a haircut so significant that it made headlines around the world. It also sparked a social media storm among Counting Crows fans. Most were supportive, though some took the opportunity to mock Duritz's departed dreads, which had reportedly been reinforced by extensions. 'Where will the crows nest?' one commenter quipped. But whether the hair was real or fake, the Old Testament analogy is apt. Duritz admits that his new look has had a major impact on his identity and self-esteem. 'Since I cut the dreads off I've become much less recognisable,' he says. 'I've found myself struggling to talk to people again.' At a recent party, he found himself next to actors Michael McKean and Bob Odenkirk. 'Neither of them knew who I was,' Duritz says. When a partygoer outed him as 'the singer from Counting Crows', McKean joked, 'Let me shake your hand again now I know you're famous.' 'It was funny,' Duritz acknowledges. 'But I'm having this weird experience where I'm suddenly not famous. I'm having to do that thing I had to do when I was a kid which is introduce myself to everybody. But I'm still paralysingly shy.' However, the party ended with a more affirmative encounter, when Duritz was recognised by Jack Antonoff, superstar producer for Taylor Swift and frontman of indie band Bleachers. 'He was probably the only person there who actually knew who I was,' Duritz says. 'I said to him, 'Ever since I shaved my dreads, nobody recognises me.' Then he was like, 'It was never the dreads, man. It was always you.' He was really nice.' Duritz could have used such positive reinforcement two-and-a-half years earlier. Because when he did finally share his new songs with the band, he found his doubts had been misplaced. 'It just felt great. We ended up going in a couple weeks later to make the record.' Now, everything will come full circle, as the band's upcoming tour culminates with a final show in London – like the Beatles in reverse again. 'It's still the coolest thing coming to London,' Duritz says. 'It's still a thrill.' Beyond that, he has hopes for the future of Counting Crows, albeit in his usual self-deprecating way. 'I suppose at some point it's going to run out,' he reflects. 'No one's going to want to see us or we'll get sick or someone will die. But as long as we can play, we will. Because why not? I mean, who gets to spend a whole life playing rock'n'roll? It's pretty rare.'
