Counting Crows Frontman Adam Duritz Phoned in the Inspiration for Their Latest Album
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ISSUE #36 MMUSICMAG.COM Q&A Danny Clinch COUNTING CROWS Frontman Adam Duritz phoned in the inspiration for their latest album IN THE YEARS FOLLOWING 2008’S opened me up for some different kinds of pumping stuff out. By then it was clear we Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings, writing. It was really helpful in the end. It was had a record. Counting Crows toured, released a couple liberating to write for other voices—to write of live records, and paid tribute to their for women, to write songs that weren’t just How did you write “Palisades Park”? heroes with a covers album. One thing for me. It gave me a different perspective I wrote off the top of my head a year or two they didn’t do: make a lick of new music. for writing. ago. I got the whole idea for all the musical Frontman Adam Duritz took a break from movements in one stream-of-consciousness penning Crows material to collaborate with And the band hashed it out together? sitting. I was just sitting at the piano playing writer Stephen Belber on the play Black It was kind of cool. The four of us got stuff and happened to be recording it. That Sun. Meantime, he slowly amassed song together and camped out for a week every song was full-blown there. It’s just that there fragments on his phone. Last fall, when three month. We would pop in and out with ideas. are no words. I don’t know how I conceived of his bandmates joined him in NYC for People would work on stuff, and I’d go to that much musically without putting lyrics to it. writing sessions, he ran the ideas by them. the back and come back a half-hour later “They were flipping out,” says Duritz.T hus with something and get their take on it. I And “Johnny Appleseed’s Lament”? was born Somewhere Under Wonderland, probably wouldn’t have finished any of it That was the last thing I wrote for the record. a set of brainy Americana rockers. without the guys. The weird thing about it was I started writing it, and I had this verse thing, and I realized You recorded song fragments on your What was the first week like? it was accidentally like [Van Morrison’s] phone. Would you do that again? I had pieces in my phone and in my notes. “Cyprus Avenue.” So I changed it, and then I don’t know. I never really think about how I had songbooks full of ideas. We started I wrote my way accidentally into some Dylan I do it. I like the finished songs. That’s what excavating them so we could see what they tune. And I changed it a second time. In trying worked this time. It’s definitely a different way were. In that first week we looked at a lot of to avoid these influences, I’d come up with of doing it. I’m just happy I finished it. I was pieces of music, but didn’t finish anything four different ways of playing the verse. We struggling to write for myself again for a while. until I wrapped “God of Ocean Tides” after wound up using all of them in different places. they left. The next month, after the guys came It’s the one song where, when I finished it, Struggle? back, we did five songs in one day—and then the guys didn’t think it was very good. It’s I just wasn’t doing it. But I didn’t have any it was feverish. We were finishing a song funny, because it’s everyone’s favorite now. trouble writing for the play. If anything, it a day, which was crazy. We couldn’t stop –Kenneth Partridge ‘We were finishing a song a day, which was crazy. We couldn’t stop pumping stuff out.’ 24 M mag 36.indd 24 9/12/14 5:11 PM.