Adam Duritz, lead singer and songwriter for Counting Crows, spoke with Morning Version in regards to the band’s new album, Butter Miracle, the Full Sweets!
Mark Seliger/ BMG
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Mark Seliger/ BMG
Greater than 30 years in the past, Adam Duritz and his band Counting Crows debuted with “Mr. Jones,” a tune about eager for fame within the music business. Little did he know that fame was going to be speedy — and a bit scary.
Counting Crows’ first album, August and Every part After, finally offered greater than 7 million copies within the U.S. alone and catapulted Duritz into the pantheon of rock ‘n’ roll storytellers.
He is since tried to handle that fame as finest he can. His signature dreadlocks, which made him immediately recognizable, have lengthy since been sheared. He is additionally slowed his launch of latest music.
On Might ninth, Counting Crows launched its first full-length album in 10 years: Butter Miracle: The Full Sweets!
Morning Version host Leila Fadel requested Duritz in regards to the prolonged delay between albums — and in regards to the curious title, to which he replied: “It is a secret.” (He obtained extra candid after that.)
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
Interview highlights
On the delay between Counting Crows’ albums:
I used to be on my pal’s farm proper earlier than the pandemic. I hadn’t written shortly, and I began scripting this tune, “The Tall Grass.” After I was virtually completed, I prolonged the tune. I believed at first it was an extended tune, after which I noticed, No, it is a completely different tune. However is not it fascinating how they move, proper from one finish to the opposite? And I obtained actually intrigued with the problem: What if I wrote an entire sequence of songs that move like one lengthy tune with completely different actions?
We recorded it and we ran proper into the pandemic as we had been ending. It got here out throughout that interval [as the EP Butter Miracle, Suite One]. As quickly because the pandemic was over, I went again to the farm and I began writing one other half of the report.
I ended in London and sang on my pal’s report. They’re on this band, Gang of Youths. They despatched me the completed report, and it was so good! It simply made me notice that the brand new songs I had simply written weren’t actually as much as that commonplace but. I went again and rewrote a bunch of stuff. I’ve by no means carried out that earlier than.
If I do not assume one thing’s actually good, I simply do not end it. I had by no means rewritten one thing and had that many doubts about it.
I sat on the songs for a few years with out even taking part in them for the band. Simply not feeling assured about it. After which I wrote “With Love, from A-Z,” which is the opening observe on the report. I beloved it and I believed, okay, this has to go on a report. I’ve obtained to determine what I am doing.
On the central theme behind the brand new songs:
There are lots of people, particularly in American society these days, coping with being dismissed for being completely different from all people else. Whether or not that is since you’re Black or white or trans or homosexual or straight, no matter it’s. If you happen to’re not doing what everybody thinks you are imagined to be doing as a bunch, there’s a whole lot of ostracization. And that is a lot more durable once you’re younger; you have got much less buffer to cope with that stuff.
Leila Fadel: I used to be questioning if that is what “Spaceman in Tulsa” is about.
Adam Duritz: Yeah, it’s totally a lot what “Spaceman in Tulsa” is about. It is issues I went by as a child — mates of mine, all of whom handled very troublesome, considerably traumatic stuff within the early components of their lives. And all of whom got here out of it type of superb folks. The widespread denominator in all of them was artwork — discovering a strategy to have fun who they had been, versus simply hiding it away.
However there’s a whole lot of trauma in there, too. And I feel that is a standard thread for lots of people within the arts since you felt so completely different as a child. So it is a severe tune in regards to the difficulties and the unhappiness concerned in that, but it surely’s additionally a fairly celebratory tune about discovering a spot for your self and a life for your self.
It is obtained some issues in widespread with “Mr. Jones” in that sense, which was about dreaming about being a rock star, but in addition figuring out it would not transform what you needed it to be. Nevertheless it’s nonetheless a hell of a dream, ?
Counting Crows video for “Spaceman in Tulsa”
YouTube
Fadel: Once you wrote “Mr. Jones,” you were not an enormous well-known star but. It actually put you on the map, and it was about dreaming of that precise factor. Did you think about that this might be the life that you’d have? Is it what you thought it was going to be?
Duritz: I undoubtedly imagined being a rock star. I imply, I would by no means even had anybody from a report firm come and see a band I used to be in. After I wrote that tune, it was only a full fiction dream, ? It was simply an concept about, like, would not this be nice?
However even then, I knew it isn’t going to make the whole lot great. There is not any panacea in life. Nothing solves your world for you. You continue to must go try this your self.
I dreamed about being a rock star as a result of I needed to play music and make a life out of that. Despite the fact that that is not normally what occurs. Even in the event you get a once-in-a-million probability, it is over in a yr, for probably the most half. None of us dream of being one-hit-wonders. However to be right here 30-some odd years later, that is virtually not possible. So, yeah, it is nice.
Fadel: I wish to ask about “Angel of 14th Avenue.” You have got this line, “The angel of the pavement cries/ If God is lifeless, why am I right here? Did he go away a lightweight on for me? Did he go away a lightweight on for me?” And it repeats.
Duritz: I simply felt there was an actual callousness in our society in direction of girls — this actual boastful, we-know-what’s-best-for-you thought course of returning to our tradition within the final decade. I imply, clearly it is at all times been there, however you thought you had been shifting in a greater route for a few years.
Granted, with the MeToo motion, you bought a whole lot of —for the primary time — exposing lots of people who had been victimizing girls. However on the similar time, it additionally made you notice how prevalent it was. Half of our race as people messed with and abused and brought benefit of and, fairly actually, raped. After which instructed what to do by the opposite half. It is attaching a valuelessness to half the inhabitants of the world.
I used to be attempting to think about what it should really feel prefer to be a girl. When energy speaks to you as in the event you do not matter.
Fadel: As I used to be listening to this album and studying the lyrics, it felt such as you had been placing phrases and melodies to those deep anxieties that so many individuals are feeling on this unsure world proper now. Did you notice you had been doing that?
Duritz: I imply, I believed I used to be in all probability placing phrases to mine.
You undergo life with all these things inside you. I imply, I do not forget that so vividly as a child, feeling like I’ve obtained all these things pent up within me. The place in my life am I going to make use of all this? Different folks produce other abilities; I simply appear to have this bunch of emotions and I do not know the place to go along with it.
After which the day I wrote my first tune, it was like a lightweight bulb going off. I instantly realized, “Oh, that explains my complete life! I get it!” All of these things can go right here and all of these emotions make this highly effective and shifting and exquisite. I will write songs. That is what I will do with my life.
After I wrote a tune, I simply knew who I used to be – manner earlier than any of the remainder of my mates did. I would been behind, and instantly I used to be manner forward.
I fell behind once more when everybody began really getting jobs as a result of getting a job as a songwriter is sort of not possible! However I caught with it. It took some time, but it surely was an enormous revelation to comprehend that each one these issues that had been caught inside me really had a spot to go and had a motive. They had been all a part of who I used to be going to turn out to be.
The audio model of this story was edited by Olivia Hampton, the digital model was edited by Majd Al-Waheidi.