Bobbycast#400 - Adam Duritz on The Untold Story of Counting Crows + How 'Accidentally In Love' Ended Up in 'Shrek 2' + How He Wrote "Mr. Jones" When he Almost Quit Music + How SNL Launched Their Fame To the Point of Getting Mobbed + How He Discovered He Was a Good Singer As A Kid
The lead singer of Counting Crows, Adam Duritz (@CountingCrows) talked to Bobby about how he discovered he was a good singer and started a band at 13 but didn't write his first song until he was a freshman in college. He shared how songwriting took over his life so much that it affected his schoolwork and when he was one credit away from graduating college and didn't care to get his degree. He also talked about the years he spent struggling to make it in music that led him to go to Europe and quit for a little while. Adam also recalled what inspired their song "Mr. Jones" and how after they performed it on SNL their careers blew up and he started to get mobbed at places. Adam is very passionate about music and shared how he got asked to create a song for the 'Shrek' movie called "Accidentally In Love," and why he was so excited to have a song in an animated movie, and more!
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I went back to the lounge after class, and I sort of like, think, think that seems like the note I'm singing, tried to find a chord that went with it, you know, it's a really simple song. Took me the rest of the afternoon. I just cut the rest of my classes. But then I sort of like, Oh, I wrote a song. I can play it, I can sing it. Yeah, I'm a songwriter.
Episode four hundred. Mike and I've been talking for a while about the big special number of four hundred.
Yeah, it's a lot.
It's a lot, especially because this is a once a week show. Yeah, there's a lot of episodes. We want to do something really cool, So it's really cool for me. I'm a massive Counting Crows fan. Just love him, my favorite band of all time. I love Counting Crows so much. Never met him, seeing a concert many many, many times. Never met Adam Durretz and got to spend roughly an hour.
How long was this interview? Fifty minutes?
Dang, I don't even know if he thought he would say fifty minutes. And I've listened to so many interviews because I'm such a big fan. I've never heard him be so generous with his answers and just sit and be fun and talk. And I was surprised as a fan not how cool he was, but it is how open he was, yeah so and generous with his time. And this was a great, great deal for me because I'm always worried that people that I love like when I consume their art, that I won't love him after that. And I can separate art from artists, but I don't want to. We had almost got this during COVID. He was going to come to a bobbycast by somebody in his band got COVID, so they shut down anything with people.
It's very disappointing for me, but I understood it.
And then they were like, Okay, he's doing a tour because he's playing the Opry House in like fifty days, Like he's gonna come to the studio.
And I was like, are you serious?
And so you'll hear Amy and Eddie and stuff in this interview briefly because we're all sitting in here, and we played some of this on the radio show, but not all fifty minutes, but we want to put this up before the radio show. It's an hour long without Him's what are you gonna say, Mike, do.
You feel like, now after meeting one of your heroes, you think it's okay to meet your heroes.
I'm still hesitant and a little scared to do. But I even did it right?
Yeah, so.
Yes, But I have expectations that your heroes are also just humans too. And there have been people I've met where I'm like, oh, man, not as cool as I thought they were, but I still enjoy their music. So, and I talked to Adam Dirt's about four people that IVE always wanted to meet. He's one of them. But when I say always wanted to meet it, there's part of me that didn't want to meet him because I loved the feeling and the relationship I already had with them in the band and all the times that I listened to them in places that were big in my life. So I don't know, I think we should just hit it a few clips in case you don't know.
Who he is.
And if you don't know who he is, just stop listening to music forever, you know. I'm just gonna say it, mister Jones, here you go, so you can do accidentally in love the Shrek song I love, I mean I Love Long December.
It's we talked a bit about Big Yellow Taxi, which is a Joni Mitchell song which they had is a hidden track and they put Vanessa Carlton on it later.
No se the go.
You don't know what you got your list, But songs like the hits are like round here, but like for me, I love songs that aren't the hits because if you're that's your favorite band, you can't have a hit as your favorite song.
It's kind of the rule. Yeah, you know, okay, episode four hundred. Very excited. I hope you enjoy it. Here he is Adam Durretz of the County Crows. You're here for a couple of reasons. One, I have a mount rushmore my favorite people in the world who I haven't met, and it is David Letterman, it is Steve Martin, It's Howard Stern and Adam Durrettz. So three remain, but you check it off my list now I've.
Got all those except for Steve Martin.
You have at met Steve Martin, no seen him, but I've seen you on Letterman a bunch of times.
Did you guys have a close relationship? Uh, he's a really shy guy. He would come up and talk to me when we were on the show, and then he would he would say something like, hey, I'm you know, I'm really glad you're here. It's really it's really nice to have you, and then you walk off. And that's the first time we were on the show he came up and did that. I was sitting in the audience watching and he came behind me, and then this crew guy walks by and goes, wow, man, he's got to really love you. He won't talk to anybody. Oh that was a lot. Yeah, and and but he was always really nice. Just he just seems very shy. And I'm not great at like the social thing either.
So yeah, I'm very awkward when I don't have to be on like I if I'm doing stand up or doing this show, I'm a lot. But then when I'm not, I feel very just wallflower type because I feel like, why would he even want to hang out with me if I'm not doing what I'm selling? Lebrated at so at times they're like, man, you're so odd or I have like social anxiety at times, but same situation, it sounds like with you as you're like a front man of this major band that's all millions of millions of records.
But then are you like that when you're just in public as well? I mean, I'm still me, but i mean the thing about being on stage is I'm that's kind of where I'm supposed to be. I'm I'm most comfortable there because I know what I'm doing and I kind of feel like I was born to do that. So when I'm on stage, I'm really comfortable because I'm doing the thing I'm best at life at best in life at whereas you know, hanging out talking to people, it's not as easy. Yeah, I still wish i'd hung out with Steve Martin. Howard I've known for thirty years. Howard I've known forever, Like no, I'm known. Yeah, yeah, you like him? Oh, Howard's fantastic. He's a great guy. Is he like that too?
Seems like he on on airs big and bold, and then off areas just like normal.
And yeah, he's a lot shyer in real life too, but he's also like you know, it's funny, he's still himself.
You know.
I met because a friend of mine runs this whole kind of physical medicine center, kind of a gym thing in New York, and so I always went there to work out and Howard did too, so we'd like we had this eleven am kind of workout group with me and him, our friend Marco Battaglia, who was playing for the Bengals then he's a tight end for the Bengals, and and Matt Schneider who was playing he was a defenseman for the Rangers, and the four of us would all work out with our friend Pat, same weights, no different place.
Yeah, I mean I had the big ones. Marco couldn't keep up for the stage. For you, when did that become? You said you're good at it? Were you naturally drawn to the stage to be a performer? Were you performing at seven, eight, nine years old? Yeah, it might have been showing off at home, but no, not really. We were just talking about this in there because one of our managers worked for kiss It for a while, and Uh, I realized I'd never told my torm manager. He's been my tormentorer since nineteen ninety four.
But you know, the when I was a kid, you know, I had Destroyer the record, the kiss record, and at one point I sang Beth to some girls behind Hebrew school and the response was good, it's very good response, and I thought, oh, yeah, this is this is probably good for me. And I started a band right after that. Like I was thirteen, I guess with some friends, uh and uh yeah, but it was kiss and fat. That's my first thing. I sang that some girls behind Hebrew School and I was like, oh shit, yeah, this is this is really good. You're just back there and you just start singing to them, like just how does that come about? Yeah? I don't remember this is it was good. I was twelve thirteen, but at some point it like it really Somehow I managed to work my way into it and the response was overwhelmingly positive and not just like oh that's good, but oh it's this is a good thing to do in front of girls and they like it. Yeah. Y all you really needed in life is find something really good to do in front of girls, and then you know life will pay off. Yeah. I'm still looking for whatever it is that I do.
So with you and a lot of my friends that have been successful in music, they kind of went through different phases musically, Like I have one friend who's massive and country music now, but he was in like a metal band for a long time, and so he had went through all these different seasons we'll call them that. Did you do that as a teenager, late teens, early twenties? Did you do music that wasn't really what we know you for now? Like were you ever in a thrash band?
No? But I funk bands, and but I don't know if they were funk bands. We just played a lot of different music. I mean, I grew up in you know, growing up in Oakland and Berkeley, we had some really good FM radio stations, case An especially, and they played kind of everything. You know, you could be listening to the Stones and then the Sex Pistols and then Willie Nelson and then some Miles Davis song. Case Ann seemed to play everything, and I just thought that's what music was, Like, I really just thought this is all what it's everything, and so, you know, I was supposed to be growing up in Oakland. There's a lot you know, p funk and earth Wind and Fire is really big. But there's a punk scene in San Francisco too, And I just kind of listened to everything and sort of played anything. Some of the bands that played covers, we played covers by anybody, but it was never into any particular scene. I was just kind of liked music, liked playing all of it, you know, experimented with different kinds of stuff when I started writing finally, but it was all just kind of.
Me at sixteen seventeen years old. Did you know you wanted to do or you could even do music as a career.
No, no, it was I didn't write my first song until freshman fall term in college. But as soon as I did that, like, you know, I think a lot of life is trying to figure out who you are and what you are. You're very unformed as a kid, you know, and I mean basically you just do homework and try to meet girls. It's all that, you know, it's socialized and homework. But when I wrote a song, it was like a light switch clicking. I just oh, I'm a songwriter. And you know, when I was eighteen, I just oh, I'm a songwriter. That's what I do in life. And then every day all I did was write songs. Was that song about your sister? It was? Yeah, it was a called good Morning, Little Sister. You know. There was a lounge across the hall from my dorm room, and uh, there was a piano in it, and I was in like some class in college. I start my sister was home. When she's sixteen, it's a tough time to be a girl. And uh, I just started writing a song about her, you know, kind of humming it to myself and writing lyrics on while I was in class. And I went back to my room and I thought, you know, I wonder if I could figure out how to play this, because I could kind of play piano lessons as a kid. I took piano lessons when I was a little kid, but I don't think I got much out of it. It was more that in that first band I was in when I was like thirteen, the guitar player taught me how to make a major and a minor chord, and once you can do something that sounds good, you can just kind of play sort of rudimentary. So I went back to the lounge after class and I sort of like think, think that seemed like the note I'm singing, tried to find a chord that went with it. You know, It's a really simple song. Took me the rest of the afternoon, Like it'll probably take five minutes to write it now, but it took the whole day. I just cut the rest of my classes. But then I sort of like, oh, I wrote a song, I can play it, I can sing it. Yeah, I'm a songwriter. I realized it right then, And then all I did was write songs after that for you know, all the time.
So were you naturally pretty good at music at hearing it, or were you just so driven to be good at it because you saw what the rewards could be, Like where do you kind of fall on that scale?
It's more of the driven thing. I'm not I'm not a good piano player. I can't play by ear at all. I got to kind of figure it out or just fumble it out. But it wasn't even so much the rewards, except the reward of like, oh this is who I am. You know, you kind of run around in life feeling things and not knowing where to put it, feeling like you have things to say, or like you have all this stuff to express, but you have no idea how to do that, you know, because what do you need to be in school plays unless you write songs. Either you're in a cover band or you're in school plays or something. It didn't really seem like there was a line of expression there. But then when you write a song, it's like, oh, this is I can take all this stuff in here and I could put it out here. You know. It's like you turn your liquid thoughts into something solid and suddenly it's this place where you can express yourself. And I just did it all day every day after that, Like I cut class a lot, and I just I couldn't get out of that lounge across the hall from my room. Yeah.
I was gonna ask if it was a distraction once you found what seemingly is the most positive thing that you had ever found, that you loved writing music and creating music and was at a distraction from school. And I guess it was because that's all you focused on, or it felt like you were focusing on.
Yeah, I mean I did it all day, all the time. I just wanted to. I don't write nearly that much now, but back then I wrote like I couldn't stop, I couldn't get myself away from the piano. I just did it all day every day, just pumped out songs for a while. There. I think it's like, you know, you just suddenly I was defined, like before any of my friends, I knew what I was all behind again after that, when they all got jobs and I had no way to get I didn't know how to turn this thing into something that could actually support myself. So there's you know, years of landscaping and construction work and dishwashing. I worked in a video store, you know, all through my twenties. I knew what I was before any of my friends. But I spent ten years after that, you know, just doing everything I could to keep going while while I tried to like figure out how to make something to that. Did you finish school? I didn't turn in my thesis. I'm missing one paper from Berkeley.
So does that mean you're like a few hours like credit short? Yeah, and why haven't you done the thesis? Why have you read the paper?
Well, in me, I'll write you on right now. I like, I'll just get on chat GPT and knock it out. And that's not going to work at Berkeley. That's the best things department in the country. They catch that. No, I you know what, in my mind, I've kind of written several thess and they've sold briskly.
They I let you write write the paper though for that you don't care to have the degree.
No.
I mean, look, I really respect my education. I cal I learned to be I was an English major there. I learned to be a writer there. It was very hard and I a lot of what I am as a songwriter comes from that. Uh So I have a lot of appreciation for it. But I didn't turn in my thesis, So I'm not sure I should have a degree. I mean, I am sure I shouldn't because I didn't. I didn't finish. You write it out the lunchbox. You relate to this. Yeah, it feels good, man. I feel like I've experienced life. So he's short to one credit, like one class, and so I feel like, you know what I mean, like we went out, we did we took what we learned, and we made something out of our lives, and so we really now we're in this together. Yeah, I have a problem with it. I feel like, you know, there are people that did finish all their stuff and they got the degree. I have a lot of respect for my school, so you know, they taught me a lot, but I didn't turn in the paper. So I'm okay with not having the degree. It worked out for me. This degree is not that important. The education is. I mean, I don't think i'd be where I am without that education, and so yeah, I have a world of appreciation for what I went through in school. I wish they could have been I did get into a situation where once you start writing songs, it's very different the mindset than writing essays, and the songwriting started to bleed into how I wrote essays, and I had teachers while I'm writing these very expressive, almost semi poetic essays, is going on. I don't know what you're talking about, Like, you need to write me a second paper. This is I got several incompletes where they then demanded I have to write a second paper to explain the first paper, and that only got me in more trouble because somehow I was probably fairly obnoxious about the explanatory paper. Did you ever almost quit music? Though?
Because you had to grind it out doing all of these jobs, like again mowing And that's what I had to do too. I had to do a lot of the waiting tables. Did you ever almost quit?
Yeah? After my first real like adult band. Uh, you know, it's hard, you're you're you play with your friends, but you got to kind of argue with them. You end up fighting over a lot of stuff. It's part of being in a collaborative art forms. It's a lot of fighting and disagreements. And I felt like I got really separated from all my best friends, and uh I got kind of turned off to sort of the reality. Look, look, when hobby is something you do for fun, like art is not fun, it's not supposed to be. It's work. But it's hard for people to realize that at first. And that's kind of something everyone who wants to be involved in art has to kind of go through. Is a moment where you sort of think at first, you think, oh, this isn't fun anymore, and so you don't either you and you don't like it, and so if it's hobby, you stop, but you have to kind of get over at hump. And I went through that after that first band, you know, when it broke up and I sort of didn't like the taste of my mouth on it. I kind of I went to Europe backpacking, and uh, I was gonna trying to cut make a break and quit playing music, and I was gonna come back and get on with my life. I was about twenty five. I guess so you quit in your head at least for a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And I went backpacking around Europe with some friends. But the night before we left, I got together with the bass player from my old band, Marty Jones, actually mister Jones, and he took me to another friend of his, who's Dave Bryson, who's I started counting crows with, and we were Dave had a little a studio and we worked on some music and came up with some stuff that was really good and uh, and then I left for the trip. It was just kind of a fun night to do it. While I was over there, Emmer, our guitar player who's been my best friend for all these years we lived together back then he had he was he had on Campra van Beethoven. Uh, and they were on I got a letter from him that he was on tour with ten thousand Maniacs, who's huge right then they were getting ready to play the Greek Theater, and like Natalie Merchant, yeah yeah, and uh, I just not screw this man, Like I can't believe he's playing the Greek theater and touring with ten thousands. I got to get back and start a band and I started decided to go back.
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So you mentioned Marty Jones.
That's mister Jones, You guys kind of imagining what fame is like or what celebrity is like. How long did you write that song before that actually happened?
Oh while, I mean, I'm mister Jones is from sort of the middle version of Counting Crow. It was probably about nineteen ninety ninety one, something like that.
And so did you guys write it like, Man, this to be awesome or this isn't gonna happen.
We really can see this happening to us. Oh no, I mean Marty's dad, David Serva, is one of the few Americans. He had left America and gone to move to Madrid, and he's one of the few American guitar players to ever make it in this flamenco scene in Spain. He's a brilliant flamenco guitar player and he had a huge career in Madrid, which is pretty rare. And he came back to America at one point for a visit and he played some shows with his old Flamenco troop in the city in the mission San Francisco, and so we went to see them one night, and then we all went out drinking afterwards and got pretty wasted, and we ended up in this one bar a New Amsterdam on Columbus Street, and you know, we were sitting at the bar and it's all these really beautiful Flamenco dancers and we're not really getting anywhere with them, and in the corner of the bar, I'm looking over and Chris Isaac's drummer, Kenny Dale Johnson is in the corner at this booth with like three girls sitting there with him, and I'm just thinking, man, you got to get our shit together, man, because like, if we were rock stars, it would be a lot easier to talk to women. Everything would be better, you know, it would be kind of great. I just thought that was kind of funny, the thought of it, because you know, you it's not just because the girls in a corner. You know, you dream about things like if you're gonna write songs. You dream about being able to do that with your life and support yourself, and you know, we're spending this evening with this Manco troupe and David Serva his dad is like a famous guitar player over in Spain, and Kenny's in the corner, and you know, it's just what we wanted to do with our lives, plus the girl thing. But it also occurred to me how silly that is. It's like, nothing like that solves all your problems in life. It just doesn't work that way. You know. It may be great for some things, it's not going to fix who you are. And I got home at night and I was sort of thinking about, like how the whole thought process was so funny to me in it and I wrote the song? Was it one of those that fell out? Yeah? Pretty much? Really. I mean I don't know, you know, well anything wrote it all that night, anything in front of in front of five hours? It was almost like falling out. Yeah. I think most of my songs back then were probably less than five hours. I get really determined and just sit there and do it until it's done.
Whenever I think about me in college and those really formative years for me listening to music, I probably listened to more than any other body of music the across the Live Wire You Guys's Live Album, I mean, I could tell you now my favorite band, uh Counting Crows.
I can do every even spoken part of that.
You know, some people have movies some people and for mine it's that And even at the end, I like to think Dog's eye view.
You know you're doing the the river.
It's so But I listened to that so much that if you were to say, what's the music you listened to in those formative years, it made you musically who you are today. If I ask you that question, what did you listen to so much at eighteen to twenty two or twenty three, You're like, yep, that's what reminds me of those years.
I listen to a lot of Rim Youtwoe probably the time, still probably listening to a lot of Jackson five. That's my first record. I don't think I've really stopped listening to that Roxy music around then too, Jay Gile's band p Funk. I don't know, it's hard to remember it right. At that one time, I was thinking of you two and Rim because I specifically remember there's a few things in my mind that are Needledrop records where I literally remember when you put the needle on the record and how it started and I have very clear memories of like being that freshman year in college and listening to Chronic Town that first rim ep and War putting the needle down, and hearing Sunday Bloody Sunday. Like I remember those two really, And I remember going to the Roxy Music concert right around in that last tour. Do you ever see Jackson five? Yeah, that's my first concert too. Do you remember it? Were? You told a lot about it now vaguely. I was probably about six. It was a rodeo in Texas and they played at it. I went one day and saw the Jackson five. My sister went the next day with my parents and saw Sonny and Chaer.
I would have Rodeo was still doing that too, by the way, same kind of deal where it's somebody different and awesome every single day.
Yeah. I mean, I'd have been happy with either one of those. But the Jackson five that was. I have vague memories, but I'm sure they're really mixed in with TV clips of the Jackson five. You know, I'm sure it's not really a memory because it's a long time ago.
Now.
If you get famous, there's all the social media that comes at you. And I've had different smaller ish type events where it's just like wow. But when you blow up in the nineties and two thousands and fame is not able to get to you through those means. How does fame get to you if you're allways on the road moving around?
Is it just crowds? Is it just people? Well it you know, it's weird. We'd been on the road for a while before it happened, really, and it had been building. You know. We played Saturday Night Live in January of ninety four and we weren't even in the top two hundred. I mean, mister Jones was kind of a hit on the radio, but it wasn't making any impact anywhere the record, Like I said, it was two fourteen or something. But we played Saturday Night Live and it jumped forty spots a week for five weeks, and we ended up in the top I don't know, thirteen, then six, and then two for the next two years. So but I didn't really see, you know. We were on the road on our own for a while at Christmas, and we seemed to be a kind of a hot indie band for a little bit, and then we went back to opening for Cracker and then in April, we went to Europe for our first European tour and we were gone for the month of April, and we flew back from Europe and landed in New Orleans right before JazzFest. And I'd been going to jazz Fest for years, so I'd spent a lot of time in New Orleans as a fan. Yeah, yeah, because we weren't before the band. Really, this was my first time at JazzFest after the first record was out, and I went to the festival the first day after we got there and got mobbed. I the things that had been building that spring and winter had happened. It had kind of all coalesced while we were in Europe, so I didn't realize it.
Were you surprised by the mobbing? Yeah, scared the crap out of me. It's just like when someone waves you and you wave back when you realize they're somebody behind you.
They're waving at Yeah, somebody are running to them. Somebody wanted to pick her and an autographed or something. And then the crowd just gathered and gathered and gathered and gathered and didn't stop. And then later that night we played Tippatinas and you know, fit's about eight hundred one thousand people in Tipatinas and there were two thousand people outside on the neutral ground in the street. They kind of had to close off the street and we went outside after the show they had to open They opened like they had the wall doors that slide out, I think, and they opened them up so the crowd outside could hear too. We went outside to play a couple of songs acoustically for them after the show, and there was just massive And that's when I realized, like it happened while we were in Europe, and so whatever build up there was going to be, we missed it, and it just we just landed in this thing. Isn't that crazy?
It was.
Really weird. I mean that the next, you know, a few months were very strange. I remember being on tour and being in Birmingham and having a day off and deciding there was like a movie theater about four blocks from the hotel and I walked down and I was watching this movie. There's no one in the theater but me. It was weird. It's like an afternoon matinee or something, and this guy comes walking down the aisle and then walks up the row and sits next to me, and I was like, hey, a whole empty theater says right now. He said, hey, I'm a really big fan. I was like, thanks, man. He said, do you mind if I sit here. I'm like, look, I'm just trying to watch movie. If you don't mind, I just I just want to watch a movie, you know. And he got up and left, and about forty five minutes later, saw a guy come down the island, come down the road to me again, and I was like, god, damn it, and but it wasn't the same guy. It was the guy that was working the concession stand out there, and he said, hey, are you in counting crows? And I said yeah, and he goes listen. I don't know what's going on, but there was some guy in here before and for the last half hour he's been on the payphone in the lobby calling people. And there's a huge crowd outside. You know. If you want to get out of here, there's like a door at the bottom, like a alley exit. And I said yeah, thanks man, and I snuck out the alley and walk down the street and then I heard this noise behind me and I turned around. There's this massive crowd of people out the front of the theater and they all start running and I ran, like I just ran down the street, got to the hotel, like ahead of this crowd. It was just a little while after jazz Fest.
You didn't even have the infrastructure to be because it all happened.
While you were gone.
You didn't know you landed, it's here, and you didn't have security. You didn't have anything to make make sure you're even safe.
No, never really got any of that stuff either. We never really I had a lot of friends in bands who had security. We never really got security out with us or any of that stuff. It just seemed like you could sort of avoid It didn't seem to make sense to me. Walking around with some huge guy next to you. It seemed to invite more attention than anything else. I never really got into that, even now at the over the Hill Age. Now, I mean, I don't know, I never really did the security thing, but yeah, I mean I was just completely unprepared. But there's the truth is everybody's unprepared. There's no way to be prepared for that because it's just like everybody start It's not like you really do anything. Everybody else just starts acting really weird, and there's no way to prepare for that. It's just like waking up on Mars. You know you could. You'll get used to the gravity after a while, but it takes a bit.
What's the best Counting Crow song ever? In your opinion? I don't know your opinion. It's a very vague, open quite but what comes to mind first?
Well, I think Palisades Park is probably the thing I'm proud of st of. But I also think that Long December is a perfect song. Long December is the only song I've never not wanted to play like I don't I'm happy to play that every night. I have been happy to play that every night. I don't think I can say that about any other song. There's no other song we play every night, but I never mind playing Long December. There's something perfect about it and timeless, and I'm really proud of. Like the Pallisads Park was really hard to write, and it's a pretty epic thing. I'm really proud of. Its complicated, it's a height of my art form. But Longcember is perfect. Did you feel that way when you fish Long December? Yeah? It almost more than any other song. That one kind of wrote itself. It just felt like I knew where to go with the chords. I knew exactly what it was supposed to sound like. The entire song was written and recorded in under twenty four hours. Just that's like take six. Do you know overdubs, do you write melody or lyric first?
Or how does your brain work with music? Because you know, a lot of my friends have like have this idea, this is the lyrics. Well some offriends was to go and they'll just attach the words after they do the melody. What is your process. I've never written lyrics first for a song. Always melody first.
Or music first. It usually starts with either the music's there first or the music and the words come at the same time. But yeah, I've never written lyrics first because I don't think i'd be able to. Like, to me, there's nothing without the music, so the lyrics kind of are born at it the music.
So like when you wrote along December, unless you did it at the same time, you know, duh, piano's playing and you don't really have your it's just music, and then you back listen to it and you're then you attach n.
I think I just did that at the same time I got the I mean, I may have written, once I had the music down written the rest of the words, but I'm I think I got that verse right there. I'm a super fan.
You probably can't tell, like, I'm so cool right now and like just chill, and I'm also you know, just cool, playing it cool, right.
I guess you ever weirded out by super fans? You ever weirded out by people that are too fan too fan of you? Yeah? Cool, That's why I'm playing it cool, you know, Yeah, I'm playing it cool.
Well.
Also, it's like I kind of feel like I always want to tell people you should listen to some other stuff because there's I mean, for me, I love music. It's been my whole life. I've I spent you know, the first half of my life as a you know, the first twenty years is just a fan of everything. I just love music. And then I started making music, which is great too, And I remain someone who's obsessed, geekily loves music and I just want to shake people sometimes and go, now, yeah, this is great. I love my records, but you should check out these guys. These guys are great, and these guys and these guys and these guys, and there's just so much. I don't think I could spend all that time listening to one thing. I just I love I think our band is great, but it's mostly just that I kind of want to like sit them down and say, you seem really great, you obviously have great taste, you like us that you know you should check out these guys.
You know. I had a real problem with and I loved Hard Candy your album, but I'd have to skip to the like you go to the hidden track. I could hold that the forward button down on the CD player that finally would get to do it finally come up, and it would be the Jonny Mitchell song Ohyah they gellow Taxia is they hidden track? When I first bought the record, and I was like, I only knows about this song just because any of my other friends are lame and they don't spend the time holding that button down. You gotta hold you can't push it, you gotta hold it like middle so it skips or you have to just let it play forever to get to it. And it was like boom, it starts, and I'm like, you guys don't even know what You're missing I'm Cooler than You boom, and then it comes out as a single and you had a Vanessa Carlton And then I remember the video she wasn't even with you guys, and I was hurt which part that she wasn't with you in the video because they probably recorded it two different times.
She was probably on tour. We were on tour. Yeah, I just I don't know how I felt about that. How did that come about?
Because I felt, as a hardcore fan that I was the one that knew the secret that nobody else knew, and then everybody got letting it on the secret.
We had kind of this hip hop acoustic version that we did of Big Yellow Taxi Guy couldn't earn the name right then, and then we wanted to try and do like some remixes of it, and so we went try and find some people like Pharrell, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. I really wanted to do it with Jimmy Jam, but they were busy when we were doing it. They couldn't do it right then. You know, it was like an acoustic track we recorded. It was just going to be hidden on the end of the record. And when we decided to do a remix version of it. It kind of came sort of late. Ron Fair, who was an A and R guy at Geffen then but had also just finished producing Vanessa's first album, and I had heard some of it because he had mixed it with Jack Joseph Puig right before we mixed Hard Candy, so Jack was playing me stuff from it and I thought it was really good. But we had to leave for like some tour in Europe right after we were done with that, and Ron called me and said, hey, I have an idea for I know you're trying to find someone to remix this song, so you're actively looking for someone else to be on the track. Yeah, because we wanted to do not someone to be on it, but we wanted to do a remix of it. So we never got to do that kind of stuff, like working with hip hop producers to take our music and just change and do something different with it. And Ron called and said, I have a really good idea for this. Would you mind if I sent it to you? Could I try and do this? And I said sure, go ahead, and he sent it to me and it was actually really good, so I said, yeah, let's work on this, so he started doing it, but I had to leave to go to Europe about you know, a little while before. We had a tour in Europe before the record was coming out, so we were out of the country and Ron med ICs in London. He'd almost finished it and we laid down some more tracks. I changed the ending and sang some stuff on it, and then we wanted to have some woman sing on it as well, and we were talking about Norah Jones. We were talking about some different people. I suggested Vanessa because I knew I couldn't be there, and I thought it would be pretty intimidating for someone to sing on one of our tracks, and I didn't want someone to do some kind of flat, boring version of it. But Vanessa had just finished doing a record with Ron, so I thought she'd be really comfortable in the studio with him, even though she was a kind of an unknown artist. I said, why don't you do it with Vanessa? This gro so a thousand miles I had hit yet. I don't think it had. The record wasn't out yet because they were mixing the same time we were, so maybe it had just come out. I'm not sure, but it wasn't the monster hit. No, she I don't think anyone knew who she was. I just thought, I need to find someone who'll be comfortable without me being there, so they'll let go and really sing. And I knew she could really sing. I was just afraid someone will be too shy and they would do bland stuff, and so I suggested this woman he'd just worked with. So he went and did that. But then Geff and got on this. They needed to turn the record in right away and they didn't have time to finish that, so we At first it was not supposed to be a single. It was supposed to be a single like a year later. So that's why we put it as a hidden track. So we put it out on the first pressing and hidden. And the idea was, after we go through all the other singles on a record, if we want to put out Big Yellow Taxi, there'll be another pressing. We'll actually list it on the record, it won't be hidden anymore. But then two weeks notice came along the movie and said we want to use this song in our film and we want to put it as a single. We'll make a video, we'll do all this stuff and so the song came out long before it was supposed to the problem with that is it was still a hidden track on the record, so no one knew it was there.
Except for me, who got mad that my secret was input out. You're the only one I should have told everybody, because the problem was.
How did you How did you know, Bobby that there was a hidden.
Track, because it wasn't every freaking second of the whole album over and over again and it says the time remaining on it. Yeah, It's like I just held it down to get to the end of the track and then it would start.
I Mean. The idea for me was always that people forget your CDs on and that it would just like surprise them, you know. Uh. The problem was the song came out and it was a massive hit, but it didn't do anything for the record because it was still hidden. So people would come to the store and they didn't buy hard candy because it's not on the record, you know. So it was actually I get why Geffen was so excited about having the movie to promote it, and they were really in a rush to put out another single, but it sort of backfired on them because backfired on all of us because it didn't do anything for the record. It was a massive hit that did nothing for our record at all because no one knew it was it was still yeah. I mean, it was supposed to be out a year later, when it wouldn't have been hidden on a different pressing, and Vanessa would have been on it by then and all that stuff, but none of that happened.
I got five questions left the Shrek song, which is how a lot of kids would know you accidentally in love. Was that written purposefully for that movie or was it a song that you guys or that you had already had somewhat and thought this will be right, let's, you know, turn it into that. How'd that come now? That was written for the movie? I got a call about doing it.
I went over to you know, DreamWorks Amblin Spielberg studio there and I sat with the director and Michael Austin, I think, and they showed me basically the whole movie, scene by scene and the ones that weren't finished. They showed me storyboards for it, and we talked it through, and they showed me the scene they wanted and kind of told me the flavor. There was a Weezer song on there, originally just as a temp track, I think, so I took home a little DVD of it and went to work on it and wrote it for the movie. When you watched it was Chris Farley, the voice of Shrek before Mike Myers when you saw it, because he died obviously and they had to change it. No, it was Mike Myers then. I'm pretty sure. I thought that was a really great thing. I mean, there are very few things in our culture that are timeless, you know, like not much last generation after generation. But like my grandmother saw snow White, my mom saw snow white. I saw snow White. If I have kids, they'll see snow White. I mean, the one thing in our culture that is multi generational that lasts forever is a really good animated movie like that. You know that stuff is timeless and it's a chance to be part of something. I mean, you have Miles Davis covering Someday My Prince Will Come, that it spans all cultures. I thought that was. As soon as I got the offer, my whole thought was, this is exactly what I want to do. This is like being a really good Disney film. It was obviously really good, you know, I saw it. I thought it was fantastic, you know, and also has a chance to, you know, get new fans who are younger, and you know, I was so excited to do that because it'll be there forever, and I'm really proud of the song, and I think the movie's fantastic.
The Bobby cast will be right back. This is the Bobby cast.
We talked about before you came in the tour, and we'll get back to that in just a second. And I've seen you a bunch, Eddie and I went to your show when you were here last time.
We were the ones who were cheering. Where were you standing up? Going?
Yeah?
It was us.
So for a long time, every show we would go to, it seemed as you would change melodies of the hits. Is it because you played them so much and you were like, I just can't keep singing it over and over again.
No, I think I did that from the beginning. I think it's always seemed like it just seemed like living things, you know. I feel like the songs are you know, it's it's a it's like a coffee filter and you pour your life through it every day, you know, they're all different, I mean, and my perspective on mister Jones when I wrote it as something I was like aspirational about, is certainly different than my perspective now having actually lived everything in that song for thirty years. Oh that's weird. Yeah, you're right, you know, I mean, And that's true of all the songs, because they're just things you felt and feel, and so you know, you experience them a little differently every day. I always felt like this stuff was just I do think it's why I'm not bored, because I've never really Someone said to me a while ago that we should re record all of our records like Taylor Swift did, because then we'd have all the publishing and we wouldn't have to pay not publishing, we'd have all the record rights, we wouldn't have to pay the record company anything on it. But I have no idea how those records go. I haven't sang them that way since I recorded them that way. You know, they're kind of I don't think we'd be very good at that.
I thought the last show, though it was pretty I felt like there was an effort to like be right or maybe I've just heard you sing life so many times that I just feel like that's normal or natural. I didn't feel like there was a lot of change, did you ever, No, I didn't. I feel like it was awesome.
Yeah.
And when you play a song like Isin on the Beach, which I only had like a bootleg version of it, is it weird that everybody knows this song?
I don't know I have. That's a song I played, we played once in concert. I mean, it's basically a demo from before we were at BAD. It was never even attempted for the record. I played it once in concert at this little club in San Francisco, screwed it up and never played it again. That's it. I don't think it's ever been played since that first time. Yeah, it's I think it's a clever song with great melodies, but I've never loved it. Doesn't do anything for me like inside, So I like it a lot as a fun clever It was me trying to write a pop tune. It was like an exercise, but I've never I've never played it again. That's almost your radio head creep. Well they played Creep way more times than what but forever we're doing it.
So Okay, Look I'm gonna mention the tour again, I mean, and so many of the cities that we're on. I'm going to read some of these off, but everything from you know, Syracuse, Boston, there's so many shows, Raleigh obviously, the Nashville show. You're doing here, and you go to Countycrows dot com to see all the shows, New Orleans.
I mean, it's all of these cities that we're in.
You guys, it's an excellent show, but it just seems like it's so much on the road. And when if I tour, When I tour, I get to go do Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then I come back home. I get to do this job. You ever been on the road so much? You're like, why do I even have a house? Well, I know why I have a house because I'm on the road so much. It's really good to have a place to come home too. I think that the weekend thing would be fantastic. That's what Taylor Swift is doing. She's playing weekends. I think that sounds like wonderfully relaxing. But we're not playing stadiums. You know, we can't do that because we can't we can't afford to do that, but I also like I spent a lot of my life on tour. I love playing shows. I love you know, the people I know best in my life, my band and my crew, A lot of the same people have been there for thirty years, you know, and that's like family, you know.
I mean, I'm happy in that life. It's exhausting, for sure, but it's a job. You know, it's work, but it's definitely pretty satisfying. I mean, look, I was a kid, look like I said, singing Beth to some kids behind school. It's a pipe dream at that point. It is actually how I've managed to support myself in my life. And even after the pipe dream, Stilly is after I wrote my first songs, I spent ten years in the clubs, you know, like really not knowing if I was going to be able to take care of myself, and I've been able to, and not just myself, but a whole group of people that work with us. I guess I just I'm very satisfied with it and proud of it. And yeah, I don't know, uh, there are with anything. There are just times when I'm exhausted, like when I just would rather be home, But it's also a life I'm really used to, you know, and I I still love playing shows, you know, I really do.
County Crows Banshee season tour with the Dashboard Professional, which he's coming in a couple of days. I'm big Chris. Yeah, Yeah, we were talking. He's he's uh. He told me he's coming in like a week or something. Yeah, I was talking with him last night. He's coming up to visit me in about a week.
Me and Chris and his wife, my girlfriend Emma, our guitar player, and somebody else. We're all going to see Taylor Swift in New York together. They're kind of stay with us.
Do you have to pay for those tickets. Yeah, they didn't give you to those tickets for free. I got tickets.
I'm fine. I got youpy. You got it to buy. It's a business too, you know, especially at that level. It's like you can't be giving out tickets to everybody because it's just too hard after a while. I get that. But I'm happy to sport. Although I'd still like to play weekends and be that successful. We've never gotten to quite be that successful. It does seem like a good life. It's fifty six dates. It is kicking off June thirteenth. You can go to Countingcrows dot com a quick note whenever you did the last ep the Butter Miracle. I liked them.
When it came out all at once, I was like, this is the longest song I've ever heard, because the whole thing came out and it was all just connected. And then later it'll But I remember calling Eddie and goes, there's a twenty minute song out. You've got to listen to it, and he's like really, And then I called him back and I was like, wait, apparently it was all just tracks one twenty minute song.
Let's commit to it now. Well it is.
It's like it's four songs, but they flow together. Yeah, but all of it was so long. It's felt like a twenty minute song. It was all supposed to feel like a twenty minute song. I mean in a good way.
I was trying to do something like the second side of Abbey Road or The Wild the Innocent, that first side of that. I just wanted to write something that really flowed that way. It's pretty cool in concert too. It works. I men't even sure it would work. I wrote it to work. But until you're done recording it and you get it all together. I didn't know if it was going to work. That's the most satisfied I've ever been was that when we put it all together and it worked, as when The Sweet worked, I was about as happy as.
I've ever been about anything creative. Do you ever go back and hear an old track and go man Sonically? I wish I would have done it a different way.
The only things that do that for me A little bit on the first album, The first album has a little bit of a sheen to it that I don't always I love those songs, and I think some of them got better playing them live. All the other records and this stuff I like exactly how it sounds. The first album, which I know is everybody's favorite, but and I love the songs and the work we did on it. It's just some of the stuff I didn't know enough about making records then. Is my first record, and a little bit of that one I think is better. Those songs got better live and I learned how to sing them a little better after that. The rest of the records, know, I love the way it all sounds. Everything. Are you a loser if you were an artist's shirt to their concert. Oh no, I don't think so. I don't either. But some people think you're a big loser if you do that. It looks really bad. It looks like an idiot when you do that. I don't know if you should be wearing your own shirt at your concert, although my tour manager is constantly saying to me, know, if you wore that stuff on stage, we'd sell merch. But no, I think you know you kind of got it, don't you. I mean, you're gonna go there, You're gonna buy a shirt and you put it on. Yes, I don't know. It's been a while since now, I know. I go to concerts and wear band shirts. I went to Gang of Use a little while ago. I was definitely wearing a Gang of Use shirt for sure. There you go. It's over. That's over, Eddie.
Question before we go, Okay, Adam, So I saw you in Houston. I mean this is probably early two thousands, and speaking of security, we snuck our way back in there and we made it to your meet and greet and so. But on the way to your meet and greet, I saw.
We had a meet and greet you did? You were playing with live it wasn't him, dude somebody before the show? Before the show, yes, okay.
And I saw a really big dude, you know, like this guy's not normal?
Who is This is Dennis Rodman and he was back there? What was that like?
And who, like, has just come to one of your shows where you're just like, this is graze?
I never knew as a fan, Dennis, Oh this is that's like ninety nine, that's a while. Dennis was good friends with the guys in Live and so I knew him through them. And he had this thing like robmin TV back then, and it was like really early internet kind of thing that he had where he had a bus and a bunch of strippers and he would drive around the country filming like internet content and uh, it was pretty wild. And he he would like he toured with us for a while, like he came out to visit Live and then they had their own bus, so they just traveled around with us for a while, like coming to shows and hanging out. I mean, Dennis is a fantastic guy. He's amazing, you know, he's really different. I kind of love how unique he is, and he can be kind of like brash but also kind of sensitive and I always I haven't seen him in a lot time, but I loved that guy. He was just wild and fun. You know, we'd go out and do stuff, go to bars. He loved to go to strip clubs, so we do that sometimes. Went to one in Atlanta once, like the Cheetah, and he got an argument with a car in the parking lot and I said it again, he got an argument with a well, he got an argument with a guy, but the guy had a car and the guy tried to drive the car at Dennis. So Dennis just punched the car, got it punched out the car, a moving car. I will say it was a very impressive moment. I was like, it just doesn't seem like he's gonna win that confrontation. But I gotta tell you, he did punch the car and he won, and you don't you rarely see that. But yeah, I mean Dennis. I just thought he was a fantastic guy, like completely unique and out of place in the NBA in a lot of ways and just didn't care, just did his own thing. Yeah. I loved that guy. I haven't seen him in years. He was really a good friend with the guys in life. But I loved hanging out with him. He was crazy at Counting Countingcrows dot Com. The tour, it's almost sixty dates. I will be at the one here. You're playing at the Opry House, which is super cool. But basically every city we're in you're in really been cool to sit with you. I really appreciate the thank you like this has been you know, I mean I might appede a little. I'm just saying it. It's okay. Yeah, the last few drops are for the underwear.
You know. I had to be put alphabetical and stood in line next to Fred Durst.
I don't know if I've stood in line. I mean I knew Fred back then, but Durret's Durst. Yeah you think class you guys would be called right after each right in front of him. Okay, there it is best question ahead. Its great. It all night for that one.
All right, you guys go check out the tour Counting Crows Countingcrows dot Com.
Adam, thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Thanks you guys, Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production
