Adam Duritz on the counting of his anxiety in the new album: NPR

Adam Duritz, singer and main composer for having counted Crows, spoke with Morning edition About the group’s new album, Miracle of butter, complete candies!

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More than 30 years ago, Adam Duritz and his group Couenting Crows made their debut with “Mr. Jones”, a song about the desire to renown in the music industry. He did not know that the fame was going to be immediate – and a little frightening.

Count the first Crows album, August and everything afterFinally sold more than 7 million copies in the United States only and catapulted Duritz in the Pantheon of Rock’n’Roll storytellers.

He has since tried to manage this fame as best he can. His signature dreadlocks, which instantly recognizable, have long been shealed. He also slowed down his release from New Music.

On May 9, Counting Crows released his first full album in 10 years: Miracle of butter: Complete candies!

Morning edition The host Leila Fadel questioned Duritz on the long delay between the albums – and the curious title, to which he replied: “It’s a secret”. (He became more candid after that.)

This interview has been modified for duration and clarity.

Strengths of the interview

On the delay between Count Crows’s albums:

I was on my friend’s farm just before the pandemic. I hadn’t written for a while and I started writing this song, “The Tall Grass”. When I was almost finished, I extended the song. I thought at the beginning that it was a longer song, then I made, no, it’s a different song. But is it not interesting to see how they flow, from one end to the other? And I really intrigued myself by the challenge: what if I wrote a whole series of songs that flow like a long song with different movements?

We recorded it and we ran directly in the pandemic while we finished. He came out during this period (like the EP Miracle of butter, continuation). As soon as the pandemic was over, I returned to the farm and I started writing another half of the disc.

I stopped in London and sang on my friend’s record. They are in this group, Gang of Youths. They sent me the finished record, and it was so good! It just made me realize that the new songs I had just written were not really up to this standard. I returned and rewritten a lot of things. I have never done that before.

If I don’t think something really good, I don’t finish it. I had never rewritten something and I had so many doubts about it.

I sat on the songs for a few years without even playing them for the group. I don’t feel confident about this. And then I wrote “With Love, From Az”, which is the first piece of the disc. I loved it and I thought, okay, it must face a record. I have to understand what I do.

On the central theme behind the new songs:

There are many people, especially in American society these days, dealing with being dismissed to be different from everyone. Whether it is because you are black or white or trans or gay or hetero, anyway. If you don’t do what everyone thinks you are supposed to do as a group, there is a lot of ostracization. And it’s much more difficult when you are young; You have less stamp to manage this kind of thing.

Leila Fadel: I was wondering if that’s what “Spaceman in Tulsa” is.

Adam Duritz: Yeah, that’s really what “Spaceman in Tulsa”. These are things I experienced when I was a child – my friends, who all treated very difficult and somewhat traumatic things in the first parts of their life. And all of them came out of glorious people. The common denominator in each of them was art – finding a way to celebrate who they were, instead of simply hiding it.

But there are also a lot of trauma in there. And I think it’s a common thread for many people in the arts because you felt so different when you are a child. It is therefore a serious song on the difficulties and the sadness involved in this area, but it is also a fairly festive song on the search for a place for yourself and a life for yourself.

There are things in common with “Mr. Jones” in this sense, which consisted of dreaming of being a rock star, but also knowing that it would not be what you wanted to be. But it’s always a hell of a dream, do you know?

Fadel: When you wrote “Mr. Jones”, you were not yet a huge famous star. It really put you on the map, and it was a question of dreaming of this exact thing. Did you imagine that it would be the life you would have? Did you think it was going to be?

Duritz: I really imagined being a rock star. I mean, I had never even brought anyone from a record company and see a group in which I was. When I wrote this song, it was just a full dream of fiction, you know? It was just an idea, like, wouldn’t it be great?

But even then, I knew it wouldn’t do all that everything was wonderful. There is no panacea in life. Nothing solves your world for you. You still have to go and do it yourself.

I dreamed of being a rock star because I wanted to play music and make a life of it. Even if it is generally not what is happening. Even if you get a chance once in a million, it is finished in a year, most of them. None of us dreamed of being a stroke of people. But to be here 30 years, years later, it’s almost impossible. So, yes, it’s great.

Fadel: I want to ask questions about “Angel of 14th Street”. You have this line, “the angel of the sidewalk shouts / If God is dead, why am I here? He left a light for me? Did he leave a light for me?” And he repeats himself.

Duritz: I just felt that there was a real one in our society towards women – this real process of arrogant reflection, we know ourselves, the best to return to our culture in the last decade. I mean, obviously, it has always been there, but you thought you have been moving in a better direction for many years.

Admittedly, with the metoo movement, you had a lot – for the first time – exhibiting many people who victimized women. But at the same time, it also made you realize how widespread. Half of our race as Humans have messed up and mistreated and took advantage and, honestly, raped. And then said what to do with the other half. He attaches a disappointment to half the population of the world.

I was trying to imagine what it should feel to be a woman. When power speaks to you as if you didn’t matter.

Fadel: While I was listening to this album and I read the lyrics, I felt like I was putting words and melodies to these deep anxieties that so many people feel in this uncertain world at the moment. Did you realize that you were doing this?

Duritz: I mean, I thought I was probably putting words to mine.

You go through life with all these things in you. I mean, I remember so very well when I was a child, feeling like I have all that what is exaggerated in me. Where in my life will I use all this? Other people have other talents; I just seem to have this lot of feelings and I don’t know where to go with it.

And then the day I wrote my first song, it was like a bulb that was triggered. I suddenly realized: “Oh, that explains all my life! I understand!” All these things can go here and all these feelings make this powerful, moving and beautiful. I’m going to write songs. This is what I will do with my life.

When I wrote a song, I just knew who I was – well before the others of my friends did. I had been behind, and suddenly I was ahead.

I am again late when everyone started to find a job because finding a job as a songwriter is almost impossible! But I stayed with it. It took a while, but it was a huge revelation to realize that all these things that were stuck in me had in fact a place to go and had a reason. They were all part of whom I was going to become.

The audio version of this story was published by Olivia Hampton, the digital version was published by Majd al-Waheidi.