Speaker 1: Pushkin, Hey everyone, Today, Broken Records producer Leah Rose talks
Speaker 1: to Adam Duritz, the lead singer of Counting Crows. Adam
Speaker 1: Durretz is no stranger to the spotlight. Counting Crow's nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three debut album, August and Everything After sold over
Speaker 1: seven million copies in the US. Singles released from the album,
Speaker 1: including Mister Jones around Here, dominated radio and MTV at
Speaker 1: the time, but all the exposure wasn't great for the band,
Speaker 1: and according to Durret's it led critics to focus more
Speaker 1: on Durrett's star studed dating life than the band's music.
Speaker 1: They've continued to release music over the last three decades.
Speaker 1: In this month, Counting Crows put out their latest album
Speaker 1: called Butter Miracle The Complete Suites. Today, we'll hear Adam
Speaker 1: Duritt's talk in depth with Lee Rose about his lifelong
Speaker 1: struggle with mental health and about how his disassociative disorder
Speaker 1: has him hacked his ability to connect with people off stage.
Speaker 1: This is Broken Record, real musicians, real conversations. If you
Speaker 1: want to see the full video of this conversation, visit
Speaker 1: YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast. Now Here's Leo
Speaker 1: Rose with Adam Durantz.
Speaker 2: So how is it feeling being back in the promo world.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's cool. I am excited. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 3: a I have a weird job, and it's not the
Speaker 3: kind of job that you expect to get to do
Speaker 3: for too long. Totally, you hope, but it doesn't usually
Speaker 3: work out this way. So I think it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: I mean it's been thirty two years since my first promos, really,
Speaker 3: and I'm still here. Yeah. I think that's very cool.
Speaker 3: I've been a rock star for a long time and
Speaker 3: I really dig it. So every time we go back
Speaker 3: to do this stuff, yeah, I get a little thrill. Oh.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know. It's like I'm still making
Speaker 3: records and people still want to talk to us about it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: We could be we could have self sabotized ourselves into
Speaker 3: the grave by now. We haven't and everyone could just
Speaker 3: be so bored that they don't want to talk to us.
Speaker 3: And that hasn't happened either. So yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was talking to Billy Corgan recently and he was
Speaker 2: saying that most bands, or most artists who get signed,
Speaker 2: it's expected that they have four years.
Speaker 3: Oh really, that's the math on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's already extremely difficult to get signed
Speaker 2: at all, but to have a career that spans three
Speaker 2: decades is pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 3: I think he overestimated that at four years. Maybe you'll
Speaker 3: spend four years on the label. But I mean, I
Speaker 3: would think the greatest graveyard for bands is signed bands
Speaker 3: like that. You get in there and then they just
Speaker 3: sheled you or they you know, nothing happens. I don't know,
Speaker 3: it seems like anyways, it's not great to not have
Speaker 3: that happen to you totally. Although isn't it cool if
Speaker 3: he is related to Bill Burr?
Speaker 2: But I mean to ask him about that because it
Speaker 2: feels like such a touchy subject. But they do look
Speaker 2: a lot alike.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's a touchy subject because he sprung
Speaker 3: it on them like without telling you.
Speaker 2: I'm Bill Burr.
Speaker 3: I'm Bill Burr. Yeah, yeah, which is weird. It's a
Speaker 3: weird thing to do.
Speaker 2: It's very like Jerry Springer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and uh, I can understand why Bill Burr would
Speaker 3: have been a little annoyed about that. But yes, fucking
Speaker 3: Bill Burr, I'd like to be related to Bill Burr
Speaker 3: was talking about all kinds of shit. I think that
Speaker 3: would be great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, that's the craziest thing. It's so funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: I love your connection to comedy too. I watched your
Speaker 2: uh you first have you only been on Rogan once?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, I watched that episode and I just
Speaker 2: thought it was cool. How just the connection you have
Speaker 2: sounds like you're friends with a lot of comedians, with
Speaker 2: Jeff Ross and some other guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jeff, I know Jeff Well. I was friends with
Speaker 3: Bob Sagett forever and Bob introduced me to Jeff and
Speaker 3: we became very close friends. We went and did a
Speaker 3: USO tour together. But also, for me, comedians are the
Speaker 3: that is the highest form of live performance to me,
Speaker 3: like they are they are the tightrope walkers. Like I
Speaker 3: love live performance. I love going to the theater. I
Speaker 3: love bands. I admire anyone that can go up there
Speaker 3: and really do it in front of people for real,
Speaker 3: and nobody does it like comedians because they are more
Speaker 3: depending on audience to any of us, I don't care
Speaker 3: what happens in the audience. But but I mean, I
Speaker 3: just think comedians are incredible. I've been obsessed with that
Speaker 3: my whole life. You know, growing up in San Francisco
Speaker 3: was a big comedy tea and I saw went to
Speaker 3: see comedy all the time as a kid, and you know,
Speaker 3: a young adult, and I've just always been obsessed with it,
Speaker 3: and you know, getting to know so many of these
Speaker 3: guys A huge fan of, like Alex Edelman and Microbiglia,
Speaker 3: guys who write these long form pieces that I think
Speaker 3: are so I've been obsessed with micro Biglia forever.
Speaker 2: You said that you don't care about the audience's reaction,
Speaker 2: you're sort of just, you know, I imagine you're just
Speaker 2: doing your own thing for you. But correct me if
Speaker 2: I'm wrong about that. But does it seem like in
Speaker 2: your conversations they care about the audience. Are they also
Speaker 2: sort of just in their own experience?
Speaker 3: Well, it's much more symbiotic, like when you're a community.
Speaker 3: I just shouldn't say I really don't care. It's not that.
Speaker 3: But I could play with a dead, silent audience. When
Speaker 3: the audience is really responsive, it's the most it's the
Speaker 3: greatest in the world. But if they're not, we could
Speaker 3: still play just as good as show. And in fact,
Speaker 3: you can't be too affected by it because the truth is,
Speaker 3: all you can really see is the first few rows,
Speaker 3: So everything after that. Let's say the first three rows
Speaker 3: are sleeping, but there's ten thousand people behind them, So
Speaker 3: you can't like decide to suck that night because you know,
Speaker 3: as a musician, you've got to be able to just
Speaker 3: play no matter what the audience is doing, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: But for a comedian, you need the response because the
Speaker 3: laps are the you know, the arc that the yes,
Speaker 3: it's part of the arc of the performance, and we're
Speaker 3: not dependent on that, so they have to ride that
Speaker 3: in a way that is I think terrifying, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, like I've done some like with Jeff and Bob.
Speaker 3: They both used to have me come play piano and
Speaker 3: we would banter yes you know, and it's incredibly satisfying
Speaker 3: get laughs, but terrifying because you don't you know, may
Speaker 3: not you know, And having done a comedy tour with Jeff,
Speaker 3: like where we were going to USO bases where it's
Speaker 3: like and we were going to launch stool and like
Speaker 3: the hospitals really where that where the first places people
Speaker 3: were transported and these these particular hospitals dealt with a
Speaker 3: lot of PTSD uh and a lot of like really
Speaker 3: traumatic shit. And it was a lot of the people,
Speaker 3: the doctors and the patients who were dealing with severe trauma. Wow,
Speaker 3: you know. And it would be like Colin Kane would
Speaker 3: do a set as comedian, Sarah Tiana would do a
Speaker 3: set as a comedian. The whole thing's hosted by Stewie Stone,
Speaker 3: and then I come on, and then Jeff and Robert
Speaker 3: Klein and so it's like funny, funny, funny death March,
Speaker 3: you know, Like, because I'm not a very good piano player,
Speaker 3: the only things I could play were like the most
Speaker 3: Maudlin status County Cross Hunt. Oh, but it was you know,
Speaker 3: I had to kind of like be fun too. I
Speaker 3: don't know, it was really challenging and cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Wow, that must have been such an incredible experience
Speaker 2: an experience. Yeah, I've heard you say that the place
Speaker 2: that you're most comfortable is on stage in front of
Speaker 2: an audience or playing with a band. When did you
Speaker 2: first realize that and what was that realization like? For you?
Speaker 3: It was more about being uncomfortable in the rest of
Speaker 3: my life generally, you know, and then finding that there's
Speaker 3: this thing I could do that made a place for
Speaker 3: me in the world. You know that, Like I had
Speaker 3: real concerns when I was younger with how I was
Speaker 3: going to take care of myself. You know, I knew
Speaker 3: that I was dealing with some pretty severe mental illness,
Speaker 3: even if I didn't know what it was then, and
Speaker 3: I didn't know how I was going to make that
Speaker 3: transition to being an adult. You know, It's one thing
Speaker 3: when you got to go to class every day, however
Speaker 3: difficult it is, But when you have to just make
Speaker 3: a life for yourself and you have all this handicap
Speaker 3: going on, all this different cult tea, you know, I
Speaker 3: didn't know how that was going to work. And then
Speaker 3: I found this thing I do that makes it all possible.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it was that writing songs gave
Speaker 3: me a way to process life, and it also was
Speaker 3: a way that other people were drawn to. I don't
Speaker 3: think I was comfortable on stage right away or anything
Speaker 3: like that. In fact, I know I was very uncomfortable
Speaker 3: on stage right away at the beginning. It took a
Speaker 3: long time, but I think it's some people. I think
Speaker 3: that comment really came out of someone asking me if
Speaker 3: I ever had stage fright, and I said no, man, Yes,
Speaker 3: I have rest of the day fright, you know, like
Speaker 3: like the stage is fine. I don't think I actually
Speaker 3: said like I'm more comfortable on stage, but it came
Speaker 3: from somebody asking me, though, do you ever get stage fright?
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh no, no, no, stage is fine.
Speaker 3: Stage is great. You know. It's like it's the rest
Speaker 3: of life that I have always struggled with. Stage is
Speaker 3: like I know what I'm supposed to do up there.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna improvise and you know, but I know there's
Speaker 3: like a map. I even have a set list. It
Speaker 3: tells me what's coming next, you know, like, and I
Speaker 3: am free to explore and expand on everything in that
Speaker 3: list of things. Not that it's easy or anything, but
Speaker 3: it's it's it's comfortable. I know what to do there.
Speaker 3: It's not it's not like walking into a party full
Speaker 3: of people and I have no idea what to say
Speaker 3: to people. But I do know what to do when
Speaker 3: I walk on stage, you know. And I'm not that
Speaker 3: I'm never nervous or anything, but it's such a I'm
Speaker 3: so much more comfortable there than I am in the
Speaker 3: rest of life that there's like no comparison. So stage
Speaker 3: fright is not much of a problem anymore. I definitely
Speaker 3: had it at times at first, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I can see why.
Speaker 3: My first few gigs I lost. The first three gigs
Speaker 3: I played in my first real band as an adult,
Speaker 3: I completely lost my voice that day of the show.
Speaker 3: I woke up with no voice, no idea why it happened.
Speaker 3: I had to chew I had to bring ginger root
Speaker 3: on stage, cut it up and chew it and swallow
Speaker 3: it during the show because it was the only thing
Speaker 3: that got my voice back. And it just happened for
Speaker 3: like three gigs right at the beginning of my career.
Speaker 3: That's a lot.
Speaker 2: And then it stopped, by the way, at the time,
Speaker 2: like three gigs is a lot.
Speaker 3: That's it was and out of nowhere, and especially when
Speaker 3: they're your first gigs. Yes, you know, I'd played gigs
Speaker 3: as a kid in a band, like when I was thirteen.
Speaker 3: But now I'm like in my mid twenties and I've
Speaker 3: got a band and we're playing my songs and I
Speaker 3: go to sing and no, I forget go to sing.
Speaker 3: I wake up that day with no voice, and I
Speaker 3: go through the whole day. I can't talk, I can't
Speaker 3: make it's the weirdest thing. It happened for three gigs
Speaker 3: and then it stopped, you know, so I know, so
Speaker 3: I I didn't feel like I was afraid, But that's
Speaker 3: some kind of weird psychosomatic reaction, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Was that something you've talked to your parents about when
Speaker 2: you were growing up, about feeling uncomfortable in any of
Speaker 2: like the mental illness you were experiencing. Were you open
Speaker 2: with your parents about that not?
Speaker 3: Early on, I just don't think I recognized it. I
Speaker 3: just thought that's what life was like, and it was weird,
Speaker 3: and I was awkward, and we moved around a lot
Speaker 3: early on, so I didn't know any It wasn't like
Speaker 3: everybody else in my class who knew everybody. They'd known
Speaker 3: each other since kindergarten. I had usually just gotten there,
Speaker 3: you know. That was true in first grade, third grade,
Speaker 3: fourth grade, fifth grade were all new cities, you know,
Speaker 3: and then seventh grade was a new school. So you know,
Speaker 3: it was a lot of experiences where I'd only known
Speaker 3: anybody for one or two years. So I just chalked
Speaker 3: it up to being shy, you know. It wasn't until
Speaker 3: I started having some more sort of hallucinatory experiences in
Speaker 3: the latter parts of high school that I realized this
Speaker 3: isn't supposed to happen, This is not that. This is
Speaker 3: weird and scary and kind of psychedelic and not cool.
Speaker 3: And then I went to some doctor and talk to
Speaker 3: my parents and yeah, but I was probably a junior
Speaker 3: in high school when that happened.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was started then with really you know,
Speaker 3: the more disturbing parts of it. Now I can look
Speaker 3: back on and see, Okay, that was happening to me
Speaker 3: in first grade. I can see what it was. The
Speaker 3: weirdness and the difficulty and being inside my own head,
Speaker 3: all the things that make up a dissociative disorder. I
Speaker 3: could see them now. Yeah, right back in first grade,
Speaker 3: you know. But I didn't. I didn't know that then.
Speaker 3: You know, you're not really thinking about that stuff. You
Speaker 3: just think you're not popular, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Have you are there any ways in which you apply
Speaker 2: the like you were talking about being on stage? You
Speaker 2: have a set list, so you have sort of a
Speaker 2: map of what you're going to do. Have you applied
Speaker 2: that to other parts of your life outside of performing,
Speaker 2: like as a way to live, as a way to
Speaker 2: sort of like write yourself.
Speaker 3: I make a lot of lists for things, but you
Speaker 3: know it's not you know, but everybody makes grocery lists.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Like, are you so much benefits from
Speaker 2: having like a schedule, Like is that feel?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I don't like that. I prefer to have open space
Speaker 3: and then make things in the schedule. But uh, but
Speaker 3: you know what I do do, Like, uh, I've always
Speaker 3: cooked since I was a kid, and like during the pandemic,
Speaker 3: I really started cooking again a lot because we were here.
Speaker 3: And one of the things I do do is I
Speaker 3: do a lot of research. When I want to find
Speaker 3: something I want to cook, I'll read a lot about
Speaker 3: it first, and then i'll like, you know, make the
Speaker 3: recipe from several other recipes often and I'll read it
Speaker 3: over a lot, you know, before I make it too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And the same way when we were doing the podcast,
Speaker 3: I would spend like a lot of research time researching
Speaker 3: all the stuff I want to talk about. When we
Speaker 3: had the Underwater Sunshine podcast talking about the music, because
Speaker 3: if we're going to do like a four part you know,
Speaker 3: like a four hour, five hour series on punk music,
Speaker 3: then I really need to have my notes and have
Speaker 3: it together which is how I started cooking again because
Speaker 3: when we couldn't do the podcast over the pandemic, I
Speaker 3: needed something to do with all that time, so I
Speaker 3: started cooking. Yeah, so I do do things like that,
Speaker 3: Like I'm not as comfortable just winging it totally. I
Speaker 3: mean I will wing it still, but it's I put
Speaker 3: a lot of preparation into the winging it. You know,
Speaker 3: I'll make my own recipe, but I'll put a lot
Speaker 3: of preparation into that recipe before I do it. Does
Speaker 3: that have.
Speaker 2: Any sort of overlap with the way that you write songs?
Speaker 3: No, not really at all. That's very that is wing
Speaker 3: I mean I do that a lot off the top
Speaker 3: of my head, and it's very inspiration based. I mean
Speaker 3: it's a lot of craft that goes into it too,
Speaker 3: But you really get in a groove with feeling stuff
Speaker 3: and then finding ways to expressing words and music those
Speaker 3: things you're feeling.
Speaker 2: Does it build over time with experience or is that
Speaker 2: is it more? Does the craft get to where it's
Speaker 2: at from studying?
Speaker 3: Well, you push yourself into the writing. You push yourself
Speaker 3: to find the ways to say things that aren't the
Speaker 3: obvious ways, the ways that are you so you look
Speaker 3: for the details in the feeling you want to express,
Speaker 3: you know, like saying I really like her or I
Speaker 3: love her or I love you isn't particularly meaningful. I
Speaker 3: mean a lot of people have said it. What does
Speaker 3: I love her tell you about me? Not much, you know,
Speaker 3: and not much about the situation, and not much about
Speaker 3: the relationship or anything. But if you say and all
Speaker 3: at once, I looked across a crowded room to see
Speaker 3: the way that light attaches to a girl, Well, now
Speaker 3: you've got this picture of someone in a room looking
Speaker 3: at someone and all those details. That communicates a lot
Speaker 3: of feeling, yeah, and also paints a picture that's very
Speaker 3: vivid of light hitting someone across a hospital room. You know,
Speaker 3: But you don't necessarily that line doesn't just pop up
Speaker 3: out of nowhere. You know, you have to think about
Speaker 3: you want to express this thing, So you think about
Speaker 3: the room you're in or the room you were in,
Speaker 3: and you think about the details, and how can I
Speaker 3: conjure this feeling, which is I liked her, yeah, but
Speaker 3: in a way that it's not just I liked her,
Speaker 3: because that doesn't really give anybody anything, you know. And
Speaker 3: then the craft is like disciplining yourself to do that.
Speaker 3: I read a book by Steven Sonheim once and he
Speaker 3: mentioned that he always keeps a rhyming dictionary with him,
Speaker 3: and I was like, why would you do that? That's
Speaker 3: so hack, you know, and I consider him as good
Speaker 3: a songwriter that has ever lived, you know, And he said, well,
Speaker 3: it's just a tool. Why wouldn't you have a tool
Speaker 3: that gave you a bunch of ideas Because it just
Speaker 3: gives you a bunch of words that you might want
Speaker 3: to use. And one of those words, even the one
Speaker 3: that you don't use, might cause an image to pop
Speaker 3: up in your head that you do want to use
Speaker 3: later on, you know. And so I just thought, oh,
Speaker 3: it's weird. I'll get a rhyming dictionary and I keep
Speaker 3: them around now and they're really useful. And sometimes I'll
Speaker 3: just make lists of words at rhyme and then it'll
Speaker 3: inspire something else later in the song or right there.
Speaker 3: You know that there are a whole lot of different
Speaker 3: ways to apply craft. Sometimes you can feel like it
Speaker 3: should just be this feeling you get and that inspiration
Speaker 3: and that emotion that is really important. You want the
Speaker 3: writing to be like infused with feeling and inspiration. But
Speaker 3: you know, you can't always expect it to just happen
Speaker 3: off the top of your head. I've written whole songs
Speaker 3: off the top of my head, just jamming with the
Speaker 3: band and I'm singing to Mike, And what's gone on
Speaker 3: four track around here was written almost entirely off the
Speaker 3: top of my head. I just got the tape later
Speaker 3: and looked at it and it was all there. But
Speaker 3: you also sometimes you sit down and you work on it.
Speaker 3: This record, I wrote the first half the record on
Speaker 3: my friend's farm, and I went back there a year
Speaker 3: later and wrote the rest of it. And on the
Speaker 3: way home, I stopped in London because my friends in
Speaker 3: the band Gang of Youths were making a record and
Speaker 3: I had already sung on it once, but they had
Speaker 3: scrapped the record and they were re recording it and
Speaker 3: I needed to go sing on it again. So I
Speaker 3: stopped there and sang on a bunch of stuff. And
Speaker 3: then when I got home a little while after I
Speaker 3: got home, David Leo Pepe, the singer, sent me the
Speaker 3: record finished and it was so good. And then listening
Speaker 3: to it, I thought, you know, I didn't hit this
Speaker 3: bar on the stuff. I just wrote those songs aren't
Speaker 3: good enough. And this is never happening for my attack career.
Speaker 3: I've never second guessed a song like this. When I'm done,
Speaker 3: they're done. If they're not good enough, I usually throw
Speaker 3: them out. You know. It was clear to me that
Speaker 3: I had kind of misjudged. I thought that Virginia through
Speaker 3: the Rain was perfect, but.
Speaker 2: It's such a good song, eat aful song.
Speaker 3: But the rest of them, like Spaceman in Tulsa, it
Speaker 3: had too many sections, It went through too many permutations.
Speaker 3: I needed to. I went back to the drawing board
Speaker 3: and I really took that song and tuned it up
Speaker 3: and tightened it up. The song that became Under the Aurora.
Speaker 3: It wasn't a very good chorus. I kept all the
Speaker 3: verses in a slightly different order, but I wrote an
Speaker 3: entire new chorus for it, which is now now the
Speaker 3: song is called under the Aurora. The other chorus wasn't
Speaker 3: good enough. Box Cars. It was too hard for me
Speaker 3: to play, and I hadn't finished it. I had all
Speaker 3: the ideas in my head, but not the song. So
Speaker 3: I went back and reworked all that stuff and then
Speaker 3: sat on it. Because I think the act of realizing
Speaker 3: they weren't good enough. Really shook my confidence in them,
Speaker 3: and so they sat there for two years. It's why
Speaker 3: there was such a chunk of time between Sweet One
Speaker 3: and the Sweet Tooth, because I just I don't think
Speaker 3: I even sent them to the band. I didn't feel
Speaker 3: good about them, even after I'd reworked them and I
Speaker 3: thought they were great. I had a lot of doubts
Speaker 3: and I was a little embarrassed. And finally I wrote
Speaker 3: with Love for Me to Z, which is the one
Speaker 3: song I wrote here at home, and I loved that,
Speaker 3: and I looked at the other songs and I was like,
Speaker 3: I got to figure this out. And I called up
Speaker 3: Millard and Jim are bass player and drummer, and immera
Speaker 3: our guitar player, and I said, I need everybody to
Speaker 3: come to my house, like in the next for a week.
Speaker 3: Just come in the next few weeks. We need to
Speaker 3: set some time. I got a demo of these songs.
Speaker 3: I got to play them with you guys, because I
Speaker 3: can't tell I felt like I'd written a bunch of
Speaker 3: stuff that was a stretch for me to write and
Speaker 3: also passed my ability to play. I'm not a good
Speaker 3: enough player to play these songs well enough to judge them,
Speaker 3: and I needed the band here to play them, especially
Speaker 3: box Cars, which was so much a guitar song in
Speaker 3: my head the whole time, and I really couldn't even
Speaker 3: finish it until I had the guys here. And as
Speaker 3: soon as we started playing, we were like, oh, I
Speaker 3: love this song. Okay, Yeah, Spaceman is great, A to
Speaker 3: Z is great, box Cars okay, now it sounds great.
Speaker 3: That riff is great, you know, and Aurora Okay, it's
Speaker 3: not just long, it's gonna be great. You know, this
Speaker 3: is these are really cool. We got so excited we
Speaker 3: wanted to go in the studio right away. We went
Speaker 3: in like three weeks later, in like eleven days, we
Speaker 3: recorded the whole thing. Wow, And it went really quickly
Speaker 3: from that point on, but uh, it got delayed by
Speaker 3: two years. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Is that a feeling for you if you're going through
Speaker 2: like a crisis of confidence before that, when everything works
Speaker 2: out and you're with the band and you you crack
Speaker 2: the code you make everything work, is that just like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, thank god, it's it's not gone. I
Speaker 2: haven't lost it where.
Speaker 3: You never happened to me before? Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 3: but I lost it. But I just I had certainly
Speaker 3: lost confidence for most of my career. When I'm writing,
Speaker 3: I know it's good, and that's why otherwise I don't
Speaker 3: even finish it. You know, I know when a song
Speaker 3: is right, and I don't really I write most things
Speaker 3: in one sitting, you know, I don't really rework over
Speaker 3: months and months. This happened a little bit with the
Speaker 3: songs on Someone Under Wonderland because they were so different
Speaker 3: from anything I'd written before. But this was different. This
Speaker 3: was like I had had to rework the songs. They
Speaker 3: needed work, and then they got They got great, but
Speaker 3: I didn't know it. And then when we started playing them,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, this is great. Okay, thank god, Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is fucking We were all so excited that we
Speaker 3: did it all about four or five days and then
Speaker 3: we were in the studio two or three weeks later,
Speaker 3: like recording it.
Speaker 2: So cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it went really fast. I mean they you know,
Speaker 3: part of them was that they were like like box cars.
Speaker 3: It had its genesis in a way during the pandemic,
Speaker 3: because all of a sudden, there were these two years
Speaker 3: where I couldn't play, and at one point this riff
Speaker 3: kind of got in my head that went Corona a virus,
Speaker 3: Corona a virus, Corona a virus. No, no, no. It
Speaker 3: was like this metal riff that I was, like that
Speaker 3: earworm that got in my head, and I was running
Speaker 3: around the house singing it for like months at a
Speaker 3: time and driving my girlfriend crazy. And then when I worked,
Speaker 3: I mean, I never thought I'd make anything out of
Speaker 3: it because it was a joke. I thought the riff
Speaker 3: was awesome, but the song Coronavirus probably wasn't going to be,
Speaker 3: you know. And then when I was writing what became
Speaker 3: box Cars, you know, I had that chorus that mom
Speaker 3: and dad and a couple of kids, you know, and
Speaker 3: I had the verse music in this chorus, and one
Speaker 3: day I was like, oh man, I wonder if that
Speaker 3: riff would work here, you know. And so that this
Speaker 3: riff that I never expected to see the light of
Speaker 3: day under any circumstances because it was kind of a
Speaker 3: joke in my head became like one of the best
Speaker 3: guitarists I've ever written, you know, Like right here leading
Speaker 3: off that song, it's blistering. I'm always tempted to sing
Speaker 3: Coronavirus overrit.
Speaker 2: But you should. So you said, maybe this is a
Speaker 2: metal riff. Have songs ever come to you that are
Speaker 2: in just a completely different genre, like an EDM song,
Speaker 2: like a hip hop like anything? Like has something ever
Speaker 2: come to you and you're like.
Speaker 3: Oh, well, I mean in that, Like my abilities to
Speaker 3: play piano are pretty limited, and so often the idea
Speaker 3: I have in my head sounds nothing like what it
Speaker 3: sounds like when I play it. Like mostly I try
Speaker 3: and get off the piano as soon as possible. I
Speaker 3: want to teach it to the band and then get
Speaker 3: it away from what it started as you know, like
Speaker 3: Boxcars is a perfect example. It didn't sound very good
Speaker 3: on piano, but it was never supposed to be on piano,
Speaker 3: Like I often hear guitar but play piano, so I
Speaker 3: hummet to the guys and are all kind of There
Speaker 3: are songs that are meant to be piano songs the
Speaker 3: way I play them, and some of those songs I
Speaker 3: end up playing on the records, like A Long December
Speaker 3: or good Night La color Blind. I played Missus Potter's Lullaby.
Speaker 3: But often it's really not like what I've got going
Speaker 3: on is not where I want the song to go,
Speaker 3: you know, Like mister Jones is a guitar song. But
Speaker 3: I wrote that on piano, but it was never supposed
Speaker 3: to be on pian you know, like when you wrote.
Speaker 2: That, did it sound different? So if you're playing that
Speaker 2: on if you're playing Mister Jones, for example, on piano,
Speaker 2: how did that sound when you were singing it to
Speaker 2: the band? Is it the same melody?
Speaker 3: I don't know. The melody was probably the same. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, for the most part, the melodies are often
Speaker 3: the same. It's just the feel of the song all
Speaker 3: often have to describe to them. Like you know, hanging
Speaker 3: around was a piano song is always supposed to be
Speaker 3: done to a drum loop, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: And yeah, that that drum loop was always going to
Speaker 3: be really important.
Speaker 2: Have you always been a romantic person, like even when
Speaker 2: you were younger, before you started writing music.
Speaker 3: I don't know what's like a I mean, you.
Speaker 2: Seem very romantic. I mean, just the line that you
Speaker 2: just said about seeing a woman across the room and
Speaker 2: the light hitting her, like, that's very romantic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean that line is supposed to be.
Speaker 3: I mean that's sort of that's the point of that line.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like as a little kid, like you
Speaker 2: had feelings like that, like were you.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, when you're dissociative, you spend a lot
Speaker 3: of time pretty far back in your own head, and
Speaker 3: that can be pretty isolating. And I think connection is
Speaker 3: something that you really lack and that you really want,
Speaker 3: but it seems like such a long way from you
Speaker 3: to other people, and so I think that there's a
Speaker 3: yearning that goes with that for connection and closeness. That's
Speaker 3: a big part of my writing and a big part
Speaker 3: of me probably. I don't know if I would describe
Speaker 3: that as romantic. I mean, although that, you know, romance
Speaker 3: is certainly a part of you know, making connections, but
Speaker 3: it was I think music has always been about reaching
Speaker 3: out for me to other stuff, you know, and the
Speaker 3: connection is been really important, and the music provided me
Speaker 3: with a way of connecting with people that I didn't
Speaker 3: necessarily have otherwise.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from Adam Durretz after the break.
Speaker 2: Do you ever think about what your career would be
Speaker 2: like had The Counting Crows not blown up with the
Speaker 2: first two albums, especially the first album like out the Gate,
Speaker 2: like you guys were huge, If that would have happened
Speaker 2: on like in the middle of your career. Do you
Speaker 2: ever think about how things might have been different?
Speaker 3: Well, it seemed like that's what was happening. Like, I mean,
Speaker 3: we were out for a while as like we were
Speaker 3: like a college radio band for a while there. Even
Speaker 3: when we played on Saturday Night Live and mister Jones
Speaker 3: was kind of a radio hit already, the record wasn't
Speaker 3: even in the top two hundred. I mean, we weren't
Speaker 3: really blowing up at all, And that was kind of
Speaker 3: what we thought. I mean, everybody nobody really thought we
Speaker 3: were like this instant hit band like Nirvana was right then.
Speaker 3: You know, who were our label mates? You know that
Speaker 3: we had a three record deal. The talk was, you know,
Speaker 3: you hoped you maybe sl one hundred thousand records on
Speaker 3: that first record, and you you know, you got a
Speaker 3: chance to build a career. The model was probably like
Speaker 3: Ram who spent five records on indie label. You know,
Speaker 3: that's kind of what we thought was going to happen, Yeah,
Speaker 3: or what we not what we thought. That's kind of
Speaker 3: what we hoped was going to happen. But we played
Speaker 3: round here on Saturday Night Live and our career blew up.
Speaker 3: It was really that. I mean, the record jumped forty
Speaker 3: spots a week for five weeks and landed us at
Speaker 3: number two for the next couple of years. But it
Speaker 3: hadn't been before that we'd been out. It had been
Speaker 3: out for three or four months. We were touring, we
Speaker 3: were having things were going pretty well. I mean, mister
Speaker 3: Jones was doing okay on the radio, MTV played a
Speaker 3: little bit one hundred and twenty minutes. It all seemed
Speaker 3: pretty good, and then it just went through the stratosphere,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, But I mean it would have been
Speaker 3: cool in some ways because the backlash was pretty severe
Speaker 3: after after the first album, you know. Yeah, Satellites at
Speaker 3: the time was pretty disregarded. I mean, I think people
Speaker 3: really love it now and it's a really respected record
Speaker 3: in December, has become like a Christmas standard almost for people.
Speaker 3: But at the time, I was so excited about that record.
Speaker 3: I thought it was incredible. It was a real departure
Speaker 3: from August and we were really growing as a band,
Speaker 3: you know. But it was completely dismissed at the time.
Speaker 3: I mean, We've got some good reviews, but there was
Speaker 3: also a lot of people who were just really really
Speaker 3: sick of us. You know, do you.
Speaker 2: Follow that same arc with other artists that come out
Speaker 2: and blow up like someone like Drake, Like the backlash
Speaker 2: is inevitable if you get so big.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, there took a long time to happen with Drake,
Speaker 3: I mean, and there were people who didn't like Drake
Speaker 3: at the beginning too. It's very but you know, it's
Speaker 3: it was more like what happened to you like Atlantis,
Speaker 3: where it was just you get one album and you're done.
Speaker 3: You know, like after that, nobody's interested because they're so
Speaker 3: tired of you. I think that happens a lot to
Speaker 3: bands that are too on their first album. I really
Speaker 3: tried to shut down that record after Round Here. I
Speaker 3: told them I would no longer make any videos. We
Speaker 3: were done, no more singles, no more videos. And then
Speaker 3: the rest of the songs went up and down the
Speaker 3: charts anyways without us doing that. What happened was there
Speaker 3: did I had refused to do any more singles and
Speaker 3: any more videos, And then I forgot that I had
Speaker 3: given DGC this demo track for their Rarities record, like
Speaker 3: a year and a half before that. I had given
Speaker 3: them Eindstein on the Beach, and because we never played
Speaker 3: on recording Einstein for August and everything after. I thought
Speaker 3: it was a clever song, but not a great song.
Speaker 3: I had no interest in putting it on our record,
Speaker 3: and I completely forgot about it. Did you Se had
Speaker 3: asked me early on you have anything we can put
Speaker 3: on this Rarities record. I was like, yeah, take this thing.
Speaker 3: I'm not using it. And then when I told them
Speaker 3: no singles, because the next single would have been Ranking,
Speaker 3: which is what we always thought was the big single
Speaker 3: off the record, Mister Jones was like a humble h
Speaker 3: introductory track that was catchy, and round Here was a
Speaker 3: real statement of purpose that was going to define the band.
Speaker 3: And then we thought rain King will be the hit,
Speaker 3: which because these used to do that back in you
Speaker 3: put out introductory tracks, you know, and and I refused
Speaker 3: to put out Ranking after round Here was so big
Speaker 3: and the record was so big, I was like, no, no,
Speaker 3: no more. We need to put this down so we
Speaker 3: can have a career. And then and then they released
Speaker 3: the Rarities album and put I said on the beach
Speaker 3: to radio. So I was worried that Ranking was too pop,
Speaker 3: and what ended up coming out was way more pop
Speaker 3: than rain King. It was this demo I sat on
Speaker 3: the beach which was and that went straight to number one,
Speaker 3: like and then after that, every song on the record
Speaker 3: went up the radio charts on their own for a while.
Speaker 3: One at a time. It seemed like almost every song
Speaker 3: on the record was getting played on the radio over
Speaker 3: the next two or three years, so there was no
Speaker 3: controlling it after that. It just is I might as
Speaker 3: well have just put out ranking because it would have
Speaker 3: been probably better for us and not. You know, but
Speaker 3: after a while, you can't blame people. Your radio stations
Speaker 3: will play it to death because they get their advertising
Speaker 3: dollars from playing popular things. So if you're too popular,
Speaker 3: it's not a surprise that people are sick of you
Speaker 3: at a certain point, because it's like they have no choice.
Speaker 3: When it was radio and not Spotify, you had no
Speaker 3: choice what you heard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So did you have a mentor at that point,
Speaker 2: someone in the music industry who you could talk strategy with,
Speaker 2: or you could just sort of try and figure out
Speaker 2: the best way to approach all of this.
Speaker 3: No, we had really good managers. It's hard to find
Speaker 3: anyone who doesn't want to chase success though, Like it's
Speaker 3: hard to tell someone no, we're not putting out any
Speaker 3: more singles because our album's doing too well, and have
Speaker 3: anyone think you're anything but out of your fucking mind. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. I mean, because they want
Speaker 3: to hit while the iron is hot. They want to
Speaker 3: make the money right now, and they are not as
Speaker 3: concerned our managers were. But your record company is not
Speaker 3: concerned with your career. They're concerned with selling records, and
Speaker 3: you know, so it was really hard to tell people, no,
Speaker 3: I don't want to do anymore. I didn't get a
Speaker 3: lot of positive responses from that, right, but I I
Speaker 3: was sure it was the right thing to do. And
Speaker 3: I was right, you know, because we got backlash, But
Speaker 3: you know what happens. It's hard to complain too much
Speaker 3: about any success. It's hard enough to have that, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was very very happy with our career anyways,
Speaker 3: and I just was so excited about the next record
Speaker 3: and making Satellites, And it was kind of a rude
Speaker 3: awakening to have it come out and get such a
Speaker 3: you know, the backlash to hit it. We hadn't had much,
Speaker 3: We barely had any bad reviews before that.
Speaker 2: Does it make you salty when people change their mind
Speaker 2: about albums collectively, Like if when something first comes out,
Speaker 2: people are kind of like, ah, these guys are overexposed.
Speaker 2: But then ten or fifteen years later it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I love this album. Does that piss you? I mean,
Speaker 2: how do you like? Does that?
Speaker 1: Pa? Like?
Speaker 3: I'm glad at all the sort of re examination of
Speaker 3: recovering Satellites, because I always thought it was a great record.
Speaker 3: It was annoying that it was. It wasn't just Satellites.
Speaker 3: People were so sick of us that for ten years
Speaker 3: at that point we didn't get People were more reviewing
Speaker 3: who I dated than or who they thought I dated
Speaker 3: than they were reviewing our concerts.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean that lasted from like ninety six when we
Speaker 3: were courted, when we released Satellites, all the way up
Speaker 3: through the first really good reviews we ever got again
Speaker 3: were ten years later when we were released Saturday Nights
Speaker 3: and Sunday mornings. You know, it was all through Satellites,
Speaker 3: this desert life and hard candy. Like was hard to
Speaker 3: buy a good review, and it was hard to buy
Speaker 3: a good concert review even There was just a lot
Speaker 3: of smack talk, a lot of really yea dish is
Speaker 3: in random notes, in jokes about us in Rolling Stone
Speaker 3: and random notes and concert reviews about girls they thought
Speaker 3: I dated, some of whom I've never met in my wife,
Speaker 3: you know, And there was a lot of that for
Speaker 3: like ten years. It was a bummer because I thought
Speaker 3: we did great work, Like I think that Recovering the
Speaker 3: Satellites and This Desert Life and Hard Candy are great records,
Speaker 3: and now people go back to them and talk about
Speaker 3: all these songs they love. But in that ten year
Speaker 3: period from like ninety six to two thousand and seven,
Speaker 3: there were like no good reviews.
Speaker 2: How do things ultimately turn around?
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it turned around during Saturday nights
Speaker 3: and Sunday mornings. It turned around, like yeah, I remember.
Speaker 3: One thing I remember is that Rolling Stone came. It
Speaker 3: reminded me because Brian Hyatt's going to actually interview me
Speaker 3: for this record for Rolling Stone, and he wrote a
Speaker 3: piece about us, I think, during Saturday nights and Sunday mornings,
Speaker 3: and it was the first piece anyone had written on
Speaker 3: us in Rolling Stone since August and everything after. There
Speaker 3: had been like a few live reviews and we had
Speaker 3: gotten mentioned in random notes, but there had never been
Speaker 3: an article in ten years. I don't think, And so
Speaker 3: I remember, I just remember that it happened. At that point,
Speaker 3: I was like, WHOA. I think the Internet had changed
Speaker 3: a lot, and there was a lot of a lot
Speaker 3: of bands had come up that were hugely influenced by
Speaker 3: us and talked about it quite vocally. A lot of
Speaker 3: punk bands and a lot of emo bands were really
Speaker 3: influenced by Counting Crows, you know, like Dashboard Confessional. This
Speaker 3: Coarraba was very vocal in talking about how much he
Speaker 3: loved our band and how influenced he was. He covered
Speaker 3: Angel of the Silences, the guys in Panic at Disco
Speaker 3: would cover around here, and you know, they talked about it.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of indie bands who came up
Speaker 3: talking about Counting Crows. There was a tribute album made
Speaker 3: that was all punk bands, Wow bands like Between the
Speaker 3: Buried and Me, you know, so like and by the Internet.
Speaker 3: It had really expanded by that time, so there was
Speaker 3: also a lot of public locations on the Internet like
Speaker 3: Absolute Punk and uh. I just remember a lot of
Speaker 3: reading a lot about us in those magazines as the
Speaker 3: bands with a whole generation of bands came up that
Speaker 3: loved our band, yeah and were very vocal talking about it.
Speaker 3: And it kind of came from the bottom up. It
Speaker 3: wasn't like Entertainment Weekly or Rolling Stone. It was absolute
Speaker 3: punk net. Yeah, but also a lot of internet indie rock.
Speaker 3: There were there were znes that were online got It,
Speaker 3: that came up and they they talked about us a lot.
Speaker 3: The first really good reviews I started reading happened on
Speaker 3: online and in indie magazines.
Speaker 2: Sounds like it was just sort of like a changing
Speaker 2: of the guard, like a new generation of people coming in. Yeah, discovery.
Speaker 3: But also I think it was that there there had
Speaker 3: been that the music media industry. The media for music
Speaker 3: industry was very gate kept in the years before that.
Speaker 3: You had radio and you had uh, you know, Spin,
Speaker 3: Rolling Stone, whatever, few magazines and Entertainment Weekly and people
Speaker 3: that wrote about music. But then all of a sudden
Speaker 3: you had thousands of yeah, you know, and like now
Speaker 3: you have podcasts. You know. Before suddenly there was all
Speaker 3: these people that weren't like they didn't they didn't come
Speaker 3: up with that attitude. They were just music fans who
Speaker 3: started their own magazines or their own podcasts or their
Speaker 3: own you know, fanzines online, and suddenly they they thought
Speaker 3: about things very differently. They just I just think there
Speaker 3: had been a real old guard kind of media industry
Speaker 3: that was suddenly expanded into you know, yeah, like you guys,
Speaker 3: you know, like podcasts didn't exist back then. So you
Speaker 3: have all these people who have their opinions. They don't
Speaker 3: come from like five people. They didn't come right from,
Speaker 3: you know, like a journalist who worked at one of
Speaker 3: four magazines who wrote music reviews. There used to be
Speaker 3: you know, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, people,
Speaker 3: and a couple other you know what I mean. That
Speaker 3: was it, And now there's a whole mega media industry
Speaker 3: that comes from everywhere else. You know, it's it's everybody.
Speaker 3: Every man and every woman has their own soapbox now yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and their own outlet, so that that gatekeeper is not
Speaker 3: there anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome. I thought it was really awesome. I
Speaker 2: heard you. I don't know where it was, but I
Speaker 2: heard that you were a women's study major in college.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was for the first few years. I was
Speaker 3: an accident, you know.
Speaker 2: I was that like the easy, the easy major to
Speaker 2: get into.
Speaker 3: No, it was really hard. It was. It was the opposite.
Speaker 3: It was by far the hardest series of courses I've
Speaker 3: ever taken in in my life.
Speaker 2: Where'd you go to college?
Speaker 3: The first couple of years at Davis and then at Berkeley.
Speaker 2: Oh sweet, I went to Berklyn too.
Speaker 3: So it was I had. I was brought up in
Speaker 3: very much like a women's lib household. My mother was
Speaker 3: an early member of NOW in the early seventies, you know,
Speaker 3: like we went to NOW meetings, you know, and NOW
Speaker 3: sell librations in Houston when we lived in Houston during
Speaker 3: that week when Billy Jean King was playing Bobby Riggs
Speaker 3: and we had that first issue of Miss magazine that
Speaker 3: came out of was it in Life magazine? The pull
Speaker 3: out with Glorious Stein, And you know, I was brought
Speaker 3: up in that very much. And I but I had
Speaker 3: a lot of budding heads with my mom as a kid.
Speaker 3: And she had left to go to medical school when
Speaker 3: I was like fifteen, so she was away a lot
Speaker 3: of that time. And when I was applying to college
Speaker 3: or I just got into college, I remember having a
Speaker 3: big argument with her one day about something. She called
Speaker 3: me a chauvinist about it, and I was like, fuck you,
Speaker 3: I'm not a Schouvenis. And I went upstairs and I
Speaker 3: was filling out my course things, and I I think
Speaker 3: I picked this my sixth choice, Social History of American
Speaker 3: Women in the Family. I wasn't going to get it,
Speaker 3: and I was like, see, I'm not shown I'm taking
Speaker 3: women's studies courses, so fuck you, you know. And then I
Speaker 3: went up for orientation week and I spent the entire
Speaker 3: time getting stoned and drunk and didn't get into some
Speaker 3: of my other classes and never bothered to try and
Speaker 3: switch the courses. So I ended up in Social History
Speaker 3: of American Women in the Family, which I had never
Speaker 3: intended to take. I will say this on my pot.
Speaker 3: I don't think I was ever a chauvinist, but I
Speaker 3: was totally full of shit proving it to my mom
Speaker 3: by that course. But I ended up in the course,
Speaker 3: and it was incredible. It was like two hundred women
Speaker 3: and four guys in the class, you know, And I
Speaker 3: had probably more of a background in that stuff than
Speaker 3: any of the other guys, because I literally had grown
Speaker 3: up in the movement. But I didn't know all the stuff.
Speaker 3: I hadn't read the literature, you know. You read The
Speaker 3: Feminine Mystique by Betty for Dan and The Yellow Wallpaper
Speaker 3: by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and you know, I was I mean,
Speaker 3: it's a whole half of our society that is, you know,
Speaker 3: flopped especially. I mean it was different, somewhat better than
Speaker 3: but you know, it's still Reagan time, so that the
Speaker 3: promise of the era and the early seventies hadn't really
Speaker 3: come about. In the early eighties. When I was in college,
Speaker 3: it was just so good. It was really hard. We
Speaker 3: had to read an enormous amount, we had to write
Speaker 3: an enormous amount, and I basically, I mean it was
Speaker 3: bullshit me taking it in the first place. But I
Speaker 3: took every single course offered. I only stopped being a Women'
Speaker 3: studies major because I realized I was writing songs, and
Speaker 3: I became an English major. I was getting straight a's
Speaker 3: in my English classes, and I realized it was just
Speaker 3: too easy. I took that my freshman year fall term,
Speaker 3: I took women's studies class. I took a women in
Speaker 3: poetry class. I read Carolyn Foschet's poetry, which is hugely
Speaker 3: and I got the first RAM record and those things,
Speaker 3: and I wrote my first song. I love all those
Speaker 3: things together because they very much informed. My sister was
Speaker 3: sixteen and at home, my mom was off at medical school.
Speaker 3: Sixteen is a hard time to be a girl, and
Speaker 3: she was struggling with it, especially with your mother out
Speaker 3: of town. And my first song was written about, like,
Speaker 3: you know, the difficulty she was having. It was very informed,
Speaker 3: it was very informed by like everything I was reading
Speaker 3: and thinking about, and you know, I was just But
Speaker 3: once I started writing songs, I started writing every day.
Speaker 3: It's all I did was write songs. And I realized
Speaker 3: that I couldn't do that really at Davis. I'm not
Speaker 3: I can write, but there I couldn't start a band.
Speaker 3: The bands that were all cover bands, they played at
Speaker 3: frat parties or anything I really wanted to do. I
Speaker 3: needed to go to Berkeley and I also needed to
Speaker 3: go there for the English to become an English major,
Speaker 3: to learn to really write.
Speaker 2: I thought, did you graduate?
Speaker 3: I did not turn in my thesis. I'm missing one paper.
Speaker 2: Oh man, come on.
Speaker 3: I was writing my thesis on HD Hill to do Little,
Speaker 3: the the poet who was an expatriate living in London
Speaker 3: during the Blitz. She had the poem called the Walls
Speaker 3: Do Not Fall, and it was an epic poem. I
Speaker 3: was writing my thesis on that and it just wasn't
Speaker 3: very good at all. I knew it wasn't very good.
Speaker 3: The more I wrote songs, the harder it was for
Speaker 3: me to write essays. It's a very different style of writing.
Speaker 3: Like one comes from this wealth of feeling and then
Speaker 3: you try and find ways to hone it down into
Speaker 3: a craft, and the other one comes from a bunch
Speaker 3: of thought processes and an idea, and then you support
Speaker 3: the arguments in an essay and they're kind of backwards
Speaker 3: versions of each other. And the more I became really
Speaker 3: like I spent all day writing songs for two or
Speaker 3: three years there, the harder it was to write essays.
Speaker 3: I just couldn't think that way very well anymore. And
Speaker 3: like to this day, I don't write songs with ideas,
Speaker 3: Like I don't have an idea for a song and
Speaker 3: then write it really, I mean, not like a theme.
Speaker 2: I might have a line starts with a line usually.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I don't have like an idea like whenever
Speaker 3: I try and do that right thematically, it's terrible. Ever
Speaker 3: since I started writing songs, I can't write that way,
Speaker 3: and I was really struggling with it. At that point
Speaker 3: I had this I had was all done except for
Speaker 3: you know, as an English major, Brookeley, you needed to
Speaker 3: write a thesis and it just wasn't very good. And
Speaker 3: so I went to run professor, and I said, look,
Speaker 3: I need an extension on this. I'm gonna have taken
Speaker 3: incomplete because it's I just this. I'm not a turn
Speaker 3: this in. It's not very good. You know, it's probably
Speaker 3: I probably would have passed. I'm sure it was a sea.
Speaker 2: That's a paper, but it wasn't fine.
Speaker 3: It was a weird way to sum up your college
Speaker 3: experience by getting a C, you know, or something like that.
Speaker 3: And so she said, look, just you know, you need
Speaker 3: to just try and do it right away. Because people
Speaker 3: if they get it done in the first semester after,
Speaker 3: they tend to get it done. If they don't, they
Speaker 3: tend to not get it done. So I understand, just
Speaker 3: get it done, and I never did.
Speaker 2: So were your parents upset with you?
Speaker 3: No? I mean, I don't know. I mean not now.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, look, I wanted to learn to
Speaker 3: be a writer, and I did. I mean, and I
Speaker 3: owe it all to Berkeley and Davis. But they were great.
Speaker 3: I mean they taught me to be a writer, and
Speaker 3: I am. And many of my thesis I've written since
Speaker 3: then have sold briskly, you know, Like I mean, I
Speaker 3: feel like I got everything out of them in a
Speaker 3: really good way. And I really It's come up before
Speaker 3: about honorary degrees from them and stuff, and I like to.
Speaker 2: Say, I owe you an honorary degree, but.
Speaker 3: I don't really want it. It came up and I
Speaker 3: sort of said no because I feel like it's not respectful.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I really respect my time there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I didn't graduate. I didn't turn in my thesis,
Speaker 3: and so I don't really think I should get a degree.
Speaker 2: I wonder if you can still turn it in.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I'm not going to. I mean,
Speaker 3: I really, I really it worked. I really I respect
Speaker 3: college and I got everything out of college, like say,
Speaker 3: most English mixtures, don't, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 3: I don't know how it works out for them, but
Speaker 3: not like it worked out for me, Like it's been.
Speaker 3: I have the utmost respect for everything I got out
Speaker 3: of Berkeley, and I have me too, But you know,
Speaker 3: I feel fine without the degree. It worked out great,
Speaker 3: you know, like I'm the very rare English major who
Speaker 3: actually is a professional writer, you know, and very successful. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I got it all from them.
Speaker 1: After one last break, were back with the rest of
Speaker 1: Lea Rose and Adam Durretz.
Speaker 2: Are you a short story reader?
Speaker 3: Not anymore? Really? I used to a long time ago.
Speaker 2: What do you read now?
Speaker 3: Oh, I read a lot of crap now. I used
Speaker 3: to read a lot of history and a lot of fiction,
Speaker 3: and I mostly just read sci fi and stuff now
Speaker 3: because I mostly use my reading on the treadmill. Oh,
Speaker 3: I work out. I read on the treadmill, and I.
Speaker 2: Work out, like do you run or walk and read
Speaker 2: both and read a book?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I use my I use my kindle. I
Speaker 3: mostly just read sci fi when I'm reading books. Now
Speaker 3: I don't really. That was another problem I had. I
Speaker 3: started to have more problems in the latter part of
Speaker 3: my forties. I had a lot of trouble reading some
Speaker 3: of the dissociative stuff fucked with my ability to focus
Speaker 3: that way, and so I didn't read anything at all
Speaker 3: for a number of years, really, And then I got
Speaker 3: back into it on the treadmill. And now I read
Speaker 3: a ton none of which is you knowature, great literature.
Speaker 3: But I read all I do. I read all the
Speaker 3: time now, constantly, And then I get on the treadmill
Speaker 3: and I come up again, read more and get on
Speaker 3: the treadmill and read, and yeah.
Speaker 2: Nice. It seems I could be hard to run and read, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it is. But it works for me somehow.
Speaker 3: You know a few years ago when Bob when Sagitt died, Yeah,
Speaker 3: my girlfriend came to me and said, that was really scary.
Speaker 3: I wish you would be a little healthier, you getting older,
Speaker 3: and I wish you would I would just feel better. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I was like, you know, and after years of
Speaker 3: not taking that shit seriously, I started getting on the
Speaker 3: treadmill every day, and for like three or four years now,
Speaker 3: I've been every day and going to the gym. And
Speaker 3: but the book, the reading really helped it. Like I
Speaker 3: found that it really worked for me. But I can't
Speaker 3: think too much about what I'm reading. I just I
Speaker 3: just want to plot. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, whatever works, I mean, whatever gets you on the
Speaker 2: treadmill and keeps you on there is a good thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I read books about music sometimes.
Speaker 3: I read like I read Joe Boyd's book White Bicycles
Speaker 3: on it here. It's a fantastic book about that.
Speaker 2: Oh I haven't heard of that.
Speaker 3: He was the producer who produced a parrot work convention
Speaker 3: in Nick Drake, a lot of different stuff, Richard and
Speaker 3: Linda Thompson and a lot a lot of different and
Speaker 3: he wrote this great book about life and the music,
Speaker 3: kind of in the English folks. Even though he's an American.
Speaker 3: He's actually the sound guy. Did you see a complete unknown?
Speaker 2: I did not?
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, he's he's the sound guy at at Newport
Speaker 3: who refuses to turn down. That was actually Joe Boyd.
Speaker 3: They don't identify him in the film, but I know
Speaker 3: they do in the credits, and it's him.
Speaker 2: Oh, very cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm waiting for it to come on streaming so I
Speaker 2: don't have.
Speaker 3: To hear it's so good. I hate, hate, hate movies
Speaker 3: about music. I hate they're always such bullshit and they're
Speaker 3: always like, oh, he he's this what he's terrible with people?
Speaker 3: Unlet's show you know it's so good. I was prepared
Speaker 3: to hate it, and it's just so fucking good. Wow,
Speaker 3: it is so great. I don't I can't believe it is.
Speaker 3: I still can't believe it's that good a movie, and
Speaker 3: it is. I've seen it twice now, Wow, two movies
Speaker 3: I've seen recently that blew my mind? Were that and
Speaker 3: becoming led Zeppelin the documentary see.
Speaker 2: That either it's actually playing it at the near me.
Speaker 2: I want to go see it in a theater.
Speaker 3: It should go. It's so good and they're both good
Speaker 3: for the same reason. They both play full songs. The
Speaker 3: movie does too. The movie like actually plays songs like
Speaker 3: real performances that are great.
Speaker 2: But is it shall Amy singing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, fucking bizarre that it's any good. Yeah, him and
Speaker 3: a girl Monica Barbara who plays Joe Bias. Yeah, they're
Speaker 3: both so good, and they're so good together. Ed Norton
Speaker 3: as Pete Seeger is it's you've never seen Ed Norton
Speaker 3: in a role like this, and he's fucking great. The
Speaker 3: guy that plays Woody Guthrie Scoop McNairy, who does the
Speaker 3: almost he's a mute at that point in his life
Speaker 3: for the most part because he's been so sick and
Speaker 3: so it's mostly with his eyes. He's it's just such
Speaker 3: a good movie. You gotta see it. I'm those two
Speaker 3: movies for music fans are like, Wow, Like what a
Speaker 3: lush treat. Both those movies are. They're so they give
Speaker 3: so much.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: They don't think of you as having no attention span, Yeah,
Speaker 3: which is a way I think a lot of movies
Speaker 3: about music think you have the attention span of a
Speaker 3: four year old. Yeah, you know, and these ones do
Speaker 3: not treat you like that, and they're really good. I
Speaker 3: tell you, I fucking hate movies about music.
Speaker 2: Do you like docs though? Music docs?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah? Some docs more yeah, but very few. But
Speaker 3: so many docs are just like so they're there bench
Speaker 3: a lot of people who make documentaries. There benchmark for
Speaker 3: how to make great documentary is behind the music. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's okay, it should not be. That shouldn't. But this,
Speaker 3: like that Depinely movie, it's fucking great. It's benchmark is
Speaker 3: closer to get.
Speaker 2: Back, Get Back with incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so is this. You're You're gonna blow your
Speaker 3: mind when you see it. Like there are at least
Speaker 3: four maybe five full song performance is in that movie.
Speaker 2: That's awesome, Like full songs, like aren't they incredible?
Speaker 3: They're so good? Like did you come.
Speaker 2: Away with like any new takes on Zeppelin after seeing it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of idea. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm a fan, but I mean I hadn't watched you know,
Speaker 3: the song remains the same as not the Greatest concert movie.
Speaker 3: And I had seen that and been like, you know,
Speaker 3: but I have a lot of Zeppelin bootlegs, so I
Speaker 3: know how good they were, but I had never seen
Speaker 3: this footage like this, where like, holy shit, the first song.
Speaker 3: My girlfriend is not a huge zeppein fan or anything.
Speaker 3: She went to the movie with us and they got
Speaker 3: through playing the first song, which is I don't know
Speaker 3: if it was Heartbreaker or a Whole Lot of Love whatever.
Speaker 3: The first thing in the documentary is on some Dutch
Speaker 3: TV show or something. I don't know what it was,
Speaker 3: but it was over and she turned to me and
Speaker 3: she's like, holy shit, they're great. What a fucking band.
Speaker 3: And I was like, I know, unbelievable. One of the
Speaker 3: songs is days It Confused, ten minutes long. They played
Speaker 3: the whole fucking thing.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And the footage they get all this great oudhood footage
Speaker 3: they got great, Like they don't have footage with John Bonham,
Speaker 3: but they have a great interview with him. It's a
Speaker 3: really long interview and they play it throughout the movie
Speaker 3: over stuff, and there's scenes of the other guys in
Speaker 3: the band sitting watching footage with the director while he
Speaker 3: plays this bonhom interview and they're they're really moved by
Speaker 3: seeing him and it's just fucking It's only about the
Speaker 3: first the time from when they're kids leading up to
Speaker 3: the second record, but it is sublime for a music fan,
Speaker 3: it's like the real deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that when you see a doc and
Speaker 2: it sort of gives you a whole new perspective on
Speaker 2: a band that's that legendary. That's that's why I love
Speaker 2: Get Back because it was like I saw the Beatles
Speaker 2: in a whole different way. I understood them in a
Speaker 2: way that I you know, there's such an institution. It's
Speaker 2: hard to have new feelings or revelations about the Beatles.
Speaker 3: You've heard every song so many times that you know
Speaker 3: every last inflection, and so it doesn't give much to
Speaker 3: you because listening to a Beatles song is often more
Speaker 3: like remembering than hearing. Yes, you know, because you already
Speaker 3: have a memory of every inflection in the song. So
Speaker 3: to see them, yes, sitting around in a room, to
Speaker 3: see how close they all are and how they fight,
Speaker 3: but how good friends they are, how loving Paul and
Speaker 3: John at each other. Yeah, but how loving John is
Speaker 3: with Yoko, and how loving Paul Is with Yoko that
Speaker 3: like all these legends of all the wedding heads and everything,
Speaker 3: all the bitterness, you realize that some of that is
Speaker 3: just like a bad day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, to see George's yearning, like I want
Speaker 2: to contribute more than I'm allowed to. My voice isn't valued,
Speaker 2: like you see all of this, and Ringo just kind
Speaker 2: of like hanging back.
Speaker 3: And but how he is, how every time they start
Speaker 3: was a bizarre song idea. Ringo has the perfect fucking beat.
Speaker 3: He's just there. I don't know, you know, if you're
Speaker 3: a musician or not, but like, one of the hardest
Speaker 3: things about being in a band is if you have
Speaker 3: a drummer, it is so hard to work on new materials.
Speaker 3: Don't have a drummer who is good at that that
Speaker 3: particular skill of keeping the beat but not getting in
Speaker 3: the way as a drummer, and therefore stalling new material
Speaker 3: because you don't know what to play yet and everything
Speaker 3: you're doing is fucking it up. Ringo is there every
Speaker 3: time with something original and cool and like they're writing
Speaker 3: and he's supporting and the songs take off because he's
Speaker 3: so good and so easy, I know. But when he
Speaker 3: comes in it's like like get back itself. Who would
Speaker 3: to think to go? You would think do get back?
Speaker 3: But he's like dun who thinks to do like a
Speaker 3: fucking marching beat like that? But he does. And it's
Speaker 3: so good. It's the Epple movies like that because you
Speaker 3: really get to see them play and they're really good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're so good. Robert Plant is just like incredible.
Speaker 2: I mean all of them are incredible.
Speaker 3: It's blistering stuff, like it's crazy good.
Speaker 2: Oh that's awesome. Are you speaking of a fellow English major?
Speaker 2: Are you a big Paul Simon fan?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, Like I mean, to me, what's your favorite album?
Speaker 3: Hearts and Bones? It's it's to me it's the one
Speaker 3: of the best written albums I've ever heard in my life.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's Grace fans great.
Speaker 2: All his albums are great.
Speaker 3: Hearts and Bones. I don't really love the first song.
Speaker 3: It's called Allergies and it's Al Daimiola playing guitar on it.
Speaker 3: But everything after that is the best. The songwriting on
Speaker 3: that record is Yeah, you should listen to it. Man.
Speaker 3: Hearts and Bones is and he's made a lot of
Speaker 3: great records and written a lot of great songs. I
Speaker 3: go back to that record all the time because the
Speaker 3: depth of the writing on it, it's just peerless to me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I hear that documentary about him is so good. Everyone's
Speaker 3: told me that it's really really good. Oh, I had
Speaker 3: it came out like a year ago or two years ago. Here,
Speaker 3: it's amazing. Why did you ask just.
Speaker 2: Because Paul Simon is a I know maybe Simon and
Speaker 2: Garfunkle were both English majors. And also you mentioned Graceland,
Speaker 2: and I love Graceland, and I also feel like Graceland
Speaker 2: is very much like a Berkeley album, Like I don't know,
Speaker 2: has a Berkeley vibe to me?
Speaker 3: I get that. I love that record, I think, But
Speaker 3: I he's got so many That first record, the Paul
Speaker 3: Simon record that has Mother and Child Reunion on it. Oh,
Speaker 3: that's an incredible record. Yeah, I mean yeah, he's yeah,
Speaker 3: so good. He's a peerless songwriter to me, like as
Speaker 3: good as it comes. But that record Hearts and Bones
Speaker 3: is very underappreciated to me, I think because the first
Speaker 3: song is not a great song, but everything else is.
Speaker 3: I mean I I studied that a lot, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that in Graceland, I really studied a lot. There was
Speaker 3: a great box set when they put Graceland out. They
Speaker 3: had this like a spiral binder in it that had
Speaker 3: a bunch of stuff that songwriting. He also talked about
Speaker 3: like rhyming and how he would work, and he would
Speaker 3: make lists of words that rhyme to even ideas for
Speaker 3: later in the song too. I remember really thinking about
Speaker 3: that as I read. I think that came out as
Speaker 3: well as the Sondheim book. When I was working on
Speaker 3: the songs for Somewhere Under Wonderland and I was trying
Speaker 3: to write in a whole new way for myself, less
Speaker 3: just autobiographical plots, more about how I feel, but with
Speaker 3: other characters, as opposed to trying to make everything about
Speaker 3: my life. Could I could? I realized I could write
Speaker 3: how I felt without making it a plot line from
Speaker 3: my life, you know. And so I wrote songs like
Speaker 3: Pallisades Park and you know, And I really studied that
Speaker 3: Graceland lyric book and all the stuff, all the scribbling
Speaker 3: he does in the margins, with all the different rhymes,
Speaker 3: and really thinking about how to like how to brainstorm
Speaker 3: ideas for writing. I don't know that's a great record,
Speaker 3: I say, Hearts and Bones, because I it's not as
Speaker 3: innovative as Graceland by any stretch of the imagination, but
Speaker 3: the pure songwriting on it is just maybe the strongest
Speaker 3: group of songs anyways. It's just I just think it's incredible, awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, has it been satisfying seeing so many people connect
Speaker 2: with your music and hearing you know, over the past
Speaker 2: three decades people come up to you and tell you
Speaker 2: how much they've connected to your songs and what they
Speaker 2: mean to them.
Speaker 3: I think it's more me connecting with them. For me,
Speaker 3: that does happen what you're talking about, but I always
Speaker 3: feel really awkward. Yeah, I think it's more about like
Speaker 3: the feeling of me connecting with everybody, like when I'm writing,
Speaker 3: when I'm on stage, me connecting with the band, Like
Speaker 3: it's more about, yes, me connecting with them than them
Speaker 3: connecting with me. For me, it works both ways, though,
Speaker 3: you know, Like the fact that I can talk about
Speaker 3: myself and that does connect me to other people is
Speaker 3: really cool that it's something that is so personal to
Speaker 3: me can become personal to everybody. But that's like, but
Speaker 3: I'm still working from the it's personal to me perspective
Speaker 3: because inevitably, other people's connections to me, aren't. They're their connections,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. They're in their heads and
Speaker 3: they're connecting with a picture of me, not actually with me.
Speaker 3: But it allows me to actually connect with people in
Speaker 3: a way that feels important. And but the wall of
Speaker 3: connection coming back is often more disturbing than anything else,
Speaker 3: kind of yeah, you know, because it's overwhelming, and it's
Speaker 3: also it's a lot of it takes place with a
Speaker 3: character inside their heads that's a version of me that
Speaker 3: isn't actually me. They have deep, deep connections to a
Speaker 3: version of me, but it's not actually me. And I
Speaker 3: don't know them at all, so they I don't have
Speaker 3: any connection to them, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 3: I have not thought them, I don't know them at all,
Speaker 3: So like, but they have this very real, deep connection
Speaker 3: to me that means the world to them. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: it and it has provided solace and joy and a
Speaker 3: million other feelings throughout their life. I've been present and
Speaker 3: for all these parts of their life for them, but
Speaker 3: I wasn't actually there at all. So for me, it's like,
Speaker 3: I don't know what you're talking about, but I wasn't
Speaker 3: there for that I was over here.
Speaker 2: Have you had that experience with anyone who you really admire,
Speaker 2: any musicians who you feel extremely close to, and then
Speaker 2: you've met them, and it's just sort.
Speaker 3: Of have a lot of trouble talking to my idols.
Speaker 3: I have trouble forming sentences with certain of my idols,
Speaker 3: who are the nicest people in the world, but I
Speaker 3: can't always think of anything to say. Yeah, there are
Speaker 3: people who have been great to me my entire career,
Speaker 3: who I've known for decades, and they have been nothing
Speaker 3: but nice to me, and I cannot form sentences around them,
Speaker 3: and we're not friends because of that, you know, Like
Speaker 3: it's a weird thing. Yeah, I mean, because I'm probably
Speaker 3: a lot more hesitant and careful about that. I don't
Speaker 3: come up with the expectation of knowing them because I don't,
Speaker 3: and I'm alter hyper aware of that because I've been
Speaker 3: on both sides of it, So like, I don't, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't show up to Bruce Springsteen House expecting to
Speaker 3: be Bruce's best friend, even though Bruce is the nicest
Speaker 3: guy on earth. You know, he's the nicest, kindest guy,
Speaker 3: one of the nice people I've ever met in my life.
Speaker 3: And I have a deep connection to that stuff. But
Speaker 3: it's not real, you know what I mean. I can't
Speaker 3: show up to his house. Yeah shame.
Speaker 2: You probably could, but you won't.
Speaker 3: We'll try. I'll try at some point.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Thank you Adams so much, and thank you and
Speaker 2: have fun on tour.
Speaker 3: Ah, we will, thanks so much.
Speaker 1: You can hear the latest Counting Crow's album, Butter Miracle,
Speaker 1: The Complete Suits, as well as our favorite Counting Crow
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