Adam Duritz, the lead singer for popular rock band Counting Crows, took the time to talk to talk to Joshua from PopWreckoning during their Kansas City stop on the Traveling Circus tour.
They talk about everything from the band, side projects to the music business.
Counting Crows’ Traveling Circus and Medicine Show Tour wraps up Tuesday, August 24 at the Ravinia Festival in Illinois. 
Joshua, Popwreckoning: Your band formed in 1991. So over the last 19 years, how have the drastic shifts in the business of music changed the way your band works?
Adam Duritz, Counting Crows: We formed in ’89.
PW: I see. Wikipedia fails me again. Well then, in the last 21 years, how have the drastic shifts in the music industry altered how your band approaches music.
AD: Well, I think, at the time, there was a lot of constant interaction with the record labels. Um, at the the time, we gave away a lot of money for full creative control and to choose the label we ended up with. We were in a bidding war and there was a lot of money from other labels, but we gave that up to be on DDC and work with our current manager. At the time that label was kind of approaching music in an alternative way of how things were done in music. He was creating a lot of modern music in that time. Nirvana, The Sundays, Peter Gabrielle: the list goes on and on. There were just so many great bands. There was all this music that you look back now and are like the bedrock of what modern music is. And they’re so eclectically gifted too. But at the time, I mean, Nirvana was playing the kind of music that no one was looking at until then. And that of course became a part of a huge movement.
And I think that we were an Indie-College Radio band from San Francisco who also were playing music that didn’t sound like anyone else’s music. Especially stuff like “Round Here.” It was nothing like anything else at the time. Like The Posies, bringing back the guitar rock, using piano half the time. There was just so many great bands that were there. And that’s a major thing about it.
The other thing was the money and creative control. It’s something we needed later when Gary left, but at the time it was what was important because we could really collaborate with record companies. We were contacted by a lot of guys who were very musically inclined, very talented, very creative, very daring. They were willing to take very fun bands and be willing to be quite visionary about what to do with them. They worked with their musicians. At the time we really did work with these record companies. I think that’s the biggest change we’ve gone through – that there was a time when labels like Geffen did exist and were collaborative. But as it went on it became more and more corporate and more and more consolidated. And I think the real disaster was the net. It’s not what killed them economically, but it did kill the business in terms of, um…the business recovered from the bit torrent thing, from Napster, but I think when iPods and iTunes came along, that killed it. Because once you can pass an album around and you can carry it in your pocket, there is not much reasoning for an album. But Napster killed it in the fact that they never really grasped the concept that the internet as a worldwide marketing tool. That’s what it is. It’s not a cash register. It’s really the most amazing tool ever in the fact that it connects you with every person in the world for free. You can reach everyone and all you have to do is put it out there. It’s better than radio. It really is. They’d rather pay radio millions and millions of dollars or to push their formats up the chart instead of realizing that people are not carrying radio in their pockets. They’re carrying their iPods. You only use radio if you’re driving. But the truth is they simply didn’t embrace the internet and it’s free. You still need smart marketing people to creatively know what to do with it, but you don’t have to pay for the land, you know? To pay for the space. People will take it, you know? They’re HAPPY to go to sites. And there are so many great websites. So many, big ones and midsized ones. There are a lot of people who love music. And, America is not a country with a lot of great music magazines. It hasn’t been for a long time. England first of all, they’ve always had so many. There are sites that review 100 plus albums a week or every month. But online, there are great sites. And there are times where I can be really closed off from the world. I don’t listen to radio or anything. But the internet makes it possible for people to come to me and say, “You have to listen to this band, they’re awesome.” On twitter, people just point me to music and they end up being great bands. But the thing is, we are on the verge of being on the edge of a total golden age of music. Where all kinds of new fresh rock and roll can get born again. Because Rock and Roll is on the verge of dying and being replaced by these massive acts that labels are choosing to spend millions and millions of dollars on, but the internet puts us back into punk rock. It puts us back into rock and roll.
PW: Okay.
AD: Sorry, that went really long.
PW: No, you’re fine. I’m a huge fan of detailed answers. I guess though on kind of the same note, you guys have always been very supportive of both recording and the trading of your shows, or bootlegs. How do you think that that with the help of the internet has helped the artist and/or hurt the industry? Because the industry itself has always seemed to kind of frown on it, but you’ve always been very supportive.
AD: Well, I think the industry was foolish to frown on it in the first place because once you’ve bought the record there is nothing more to get. You know what I mean? Except to go see them live. You might do that. But the things that were there were these live recordings. And the more you listen to a live recording and the more that you like it the more likely you are to give it to a friend who’ll end up going to buy their record. It’s just another way to get music out there that would otherwise just end up going unheard. So it was always harmless. It was always silly to not like it.
I can understand not wanting to give away your record entirely, while I could still see giving away songs for free as a good idea. And, in some cases I think giving away the whole record could be a good idea, but it was always silly to not give it away live. I mean, take me for instance. I have a wall of CDs and DVDs and records. But the thing is, I think we are a good live band and I want people to hear it. I want as many people as possible to hear that music. Because I love listening to live music. It’s like, you got the album already by the Counting Crows, so here’s the concert. If you want to record, record. I mean, bring your video camera. When we had Saturday Night, Sunday Morning coming out, I was just encouraging everyone to bring their cameras out. Bring your video cameras. Because if I want to play a song that’s on the new record, you’re going to put it on Youtube today. So, go ahead. It’s like promoting our record before it comes out.
I’ve never understood why there is such an antagonism between fans and bands and record labels. It gets this whole anger about which bands are trying to pull the wool over your eyes and shit. And the media tends to pick up on that as well. The writing becomes very venomous and I’ve never really understood that. If you love it and get it, then you want to foster some goodwill you know? If people like your music, give them more. You weren’t going to sell it anyway. Or else, find a place to sell it, you can do that, too. Maybe people want a better copy so you can make that available. But like, you want to make as much connection as you can with everyone. So, why not make the connection. Which brings us back to the internet and what hasn’t been done.
PW: I can see that. I’m going to rush you a little as we only have about a minute. So I’m going to ask you kind of a quick question not completely surrounding the Counting Crows. I’d like to discuss with you a wonderful album I recently discovered by Kid Lightning. He recorded a song, “Barely Out of Tuesday,” which you wrote. I kind of wanted to hear your thoughts on the album, his version of the recording and why you think, for being such a beautiful album, it simply wasn’t noticed as much as it should be.
AD: When I started my first record label for Dave‘s band, Gigolo Aunts, we also worked with Joe 90. He and members of Joe 90 formed Lowstar together. We lived together for ten years. We also made a movie together, that he wrote. I think Dave is a brilliant songwriter. Gigolo Aunts and Counting Crows came out about the same time and worked together. We opened on different ends of the same tour with The Cranberries. Then we went on tour together.
I think that album is really beautiful. I think it didn’t get noticed because it wasn’t really on any label. I think if it came out now, it would have a better chance thanks to the internet. I’m hoping that after the movie is made, since his real life is one of the characters in the movie. It’s kind of about a bunch of townie art colony fuck-ups. I’m kind of hoping that after that people get to hear his music, because a little bit of it is on that, there’s a Lowstar song, but I think it’s a beautiful, beautiful record.
The funny thing about “Barely Out of Tuesday” is that I had forgotten I’d written it. I’d written it a long time ago with an ex-girlfriend. I played piano and she came up with the chords and we blended it together. And well, we don’t get along, so I’ve never used the song. But neither of us had a copy of the song. He just sort of sat down one day and wanted to do it from memory. And strangely enough, remembered most of it. I mean, there was a verse in there that he got all wrong and was kind of made up I wrote that song in 1996. That recording is from maybe a decade later. I don’t know how he came up with that off the top of his head. I think he did a great job with the song and the album as whole is beautiful. That’s the kind of record I hope will get the attention it deserves in the future. That’s the kind of record that could draw attention now.
We’re building a website called Underwater Sunshine. It’s not a Counting Crows website at all. But we’ll be involved in it. We are building it from scratch. It is going to involve like magazine, film, dvd, and music. It’ll be a forum that anyone can write on it. Short films. And our film, there will be clips from that. We will keep the Counting Crows archives there. We will have my blog there. Then links to the Facebook. We are going to do a jukebox. Everything on there will have a link where you can go buy it. We’re going to get people to do podcasts. Everything on the Podcast will be listed with links where you can purchase it. We plan to release the Notar record there, our rapper. Counting Crows stuff will be there. The soundtrack for the movie and the artists. I want the entire soundtrack to be a free download. The deal is, we give away that one song as a free download. But right behind it, we link it to your whole album or all your albums. We will sell them there. And it is all digital, so there is no overhead. So we can afford to sell things really cheap. So we give all the money to the bands. I’m hoping that it’ll be a place that I can find many different things to attract people.
People say it is fragmented. But you’ll come for a sports article or something and see Counting Crows. You’ll come for Counting Crows and find independent rock music. You’ll come for independent rock music and find, shit I don’t know, the movie. Come for the movie and find Kid Lightning. The idea is to cross pollinate with the internet. I’m hoping that there are sites like that and sites like yours, that these places will become more and more essential to the culture than records. Like, the Kid Lightning record, records like that in the future you’ll be able to get at place where you’ll go. It’ll be less like a band’s website where you go only if you care about that band and more like a home entertainment center.
You’ll go there like you go to your blog. Have fun. Listen to bands that you like. Watch a movie. Find things to read about music and art and interesting people. You’ll listen to radio shows and podcasts and through that discover all sorts of new music and new films and old films. Shit you didn’t know. But it’s more like home entertainment. We’re going to launch it in the fall when we release the Notar record. We’re also going to launch Counting Crows live stuff on there. A lot of other material. So, I can’t wait for stuff like that. That Kid Lightning record is fantastic and most people have never heard it.
PW: It’s a shame man. This whole thing sounds fantastic.
AD: Thanks, man.
