Corvus in glory

Adam Duritz has a love-hate relationship with the internet. The Counting Crows singer is psyched that he gets to communicate directly with fans and give away his music for free. At the same time, he acknowledges that the democratising powers of the web means any asshole with an opinion gets to stand on a figurative street corner with a megaphone.

He discovered this to his cost in 2008 when Counting Crows announced they would delay their European tour until it became clear whether or not mankind was hurtling towards a second Great Depression. The idea that a musician would base a career decision on currency fluctuations horrified fans, who proceeded to vent their spleen all over message boards and blogs.
“People have all sorts of opinions nowadays, about things they just don’t know anything about,” he rues. “I kind of don’t care, most of the time. I know I’m a decent person. I’m good to the people around me. Beyond that, I refuse to worry. We can all make comments today and the media picks it up. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Back in the day people would say these things to their friends and that would be it. Now it gets everywhere. It has become a snake that eats itself.”
Those same fans may – or may not – have an opinion on Counting Crows’ first album in four years. Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation) is a covers collection wherein Duritz & Co. tackle tracks both popular and little known, by artists such as Teenage Fanclub, The Faces, Travis and Fairport Convention. Does Duritz worry that, by declining to include original material, he may antagonise devotees craving new songs from the band?
“I don’t care,” he shrugs. “They like us ‘cos of what we’ve done. And we’ve always done what we wanted. It’s like that thing they say about politics – you elect your leaders to lead, not to follow polls. If you want to tell a band what to do... well, you have a jukebox for that. Or you can go order fast food. Bands are not there for you to order them around. The great thing about bands is that they will surprise you – with things you didn’t know you wanted.”
Some of the artists Counting Crows have covered are properly obscure. If you draw a blank at the mention of Coby Brown, Tender Mercies and The Romany Rye, be assured you’re not alone. Duritz didn’t conceive of the project explicitly to promote overlooked bands but if Underwater Sunshine turns a spotlight on some of his favourites, great.
“I know some actors and they’re always bad-mouthing other actors. ‘This guy sucks, that thing’s shitty.’ Musicians just want to shove records down your throat. All they want to do is tell you about great albums you don’t know about. There’s nothing we like more than informing you about all these great acts you should be listening to!”
Underwater Sunshine is a milestone in so far as it’s Counting Crows’ first release since parting from Geffen. Duritz doesn’t want to badmouth the label, insisting the group always had complete creative freedom. However, he makes no bones that it was the industry’s antediluvian attitude towards the web that prompted him to go it alone.
“We had freedom from the beginning. There was a big bidding war for this band. We chose who we went with. We traded away the money – and there was a lot of money – for the ability to do what we wanted. We had that from our first album. That being said, it seemed insane to me that people were telling us that we couldn’t use the internet the way we wanted. You had this amazing way to reach all these people – far more than you’d get paying some radio station a couple of thousand grand to maybe play our record.”
Though he’s friendly, Duritz can make for a difficult interviewee. He rambles and occasionally seems not to understand straightforward questions – he claims not to remember the bru-ha-ha over the 2008 tour postponements. Maybe it has something to do with the rare condition he suffers called dissociative disorder. “Sometimes it seems as if ‘reality’ isn’t real ,” he says. “It makes it seem as if the world isn’t happening around you. You have to concentrate really hard to feel part of it. I suppose it’s a social anxiety disorder. I’ve always had it. But over the past five six years it’s gotten worse. Earlier in the decade it was really bad. It’s not much fun.”