THE CROW AND THE CORKMAN

Security is tight at Dublin Castle as cast and crew prepare for the Counting Crows show on the final night of the Heineken Green Energy Festival. Within moments of passing through the gates of the city s newest ancient open-air venue, it becomes clear that a dog-eared delegate s laminate is not enough to get myself and Hot Press shootist Cathal Dawson as far as the nearest Portaloo, let alone backstage. Thankfully, the security staff are as reasonable as they are efficient. Besides, the vigilance is unsurprising when a casual glance at the guestlist glimmering on a laptop in the production office yields names like Aidan Quinn, and you almost fall over Courteney Cox on the way out of the cafeteria.
Another luminary you nearly fall over is Kieran Kennedy. Which would normally be ideal he s one of the musicians you re here to interview but when you ve given the Cork-born rocker s latest promo single a less-than-glowing notice in a recent issue of Hot Press, things can get a little . . . fraught. In fairness, though, Kieran eschews any serious animosity in favour of a few good-natured jibes, quoting the more choice lines from the review with relish. But then, as if the encounter wasn t excruciating enough already, another factor enters into play. He remembers.
Allow me to explain. One of the last times I met Mr. Kennedy was in 1989, after a Black Velvet Band show at The Bridge Hotel in Waterford. On that night of wanton carousing, the road of excess did not lead your humble correspondent to the palace of wisdom. Instead, it resulted in the disgorging of everything bar my stomach lining into the toilet bowl in the bathroom of the Kennedy suite. The ravages of the eight years of rock n roll that have elapsed since the unfortunate episode have not dimmed the singer s powers of recall. Ah yes, he grins roguishly, Vomit-Man! Maybe I should do a review of you that night!
Anyway, Kieran and his band are playing tonight as special guests of Counting Crows mainman Adam Duritz. I m here to investigate the bond between the two artists. I ve also met Adam before, in the more formal surroundings of a London hotel when the band were doing press for the Recovering The Satellites album last autumn (I left his bathroom relatively unsoiled). Today the chief Crow is in jovial form, once again debunking the media-myth of the singer as a weird n beardy brooder.
When you sit down with Kieran and Adam, their common qualities become apparent. Both are sallow-skinned, dark-haired rock n roll traditionalists with a penchant for acoustic soul music and scuffed, comfortable threads. Both are serious about their work without being humourless. Both have had stormy relations with the press. Both know how to dress for this freakishly cold May weather (I m enviously eyeing Kieran s jacket, a kind of dead flamingo with sleeves, as a draught whips through the gullies and caverns of the backstage area.) Discounting the accents and height discrepancies, the two could almost be related.

So, how come you gentlemen know each other?
Kieran: Tom Mulally (Crows tour manager and Cork legend) is a friend of mine. I went to San Francisco to hang out with Tom and I met Adam about three or four years ago.
Adam: Tom and I were off tour for a while and we had a house together in Berkeley. Kieran came by and stayed for a while.
Were you aware of each other s music?
Adam: I d heard of Kieran because of Maria McKee who always talked about the Black Velvet Band cos she was living over here. When I was making my first record I was friends with her and she used to talk about her friends that she had in Dublin.
Kieran: She used to be here a lot more than she is now, actually. She s moved back to LA I think.
Adam: She s moved back to Mars for a little bit!
So Adam, why did you request Kieran to open the show for you over here?
Adam: Well, initially we were going to have Cake on for the whole tour, then they said they weren t going to get together for a few gigs and Tom said How about Kieran? Fine with me.
What do you find daunting about each other?
Kieran: Daunting? (laughs) His hair, man! I wish I had hair like that!
Adam: I want that accent!
Although you re both working musicians you have different lifestyles. Kieran, you re a father of three for instance, and Adam, you have to put up with a lot of tabloid bullshit that Kieran doesn t. How would you fare if you swapped places?
Adam: I don t know if Kieran would be terrified about all that, but I d be terrified being him.
Kieran: You d be a lot poorer!
Adam: I don t know, it s a lot different growing up here, or in Cork.
You ve never considered doing the family thing?
Adam: Oh no, I would, certainly.
Kieran, is it a struggle to balance the rock n roll life with domesticity?
Kieran: No. I leave it all to Maria. It s easy! No, I ve been doing it for ten years now, it s easy. It s hard minding kids, that s really difficult. It s much easier to go and play music. It s hard work sometimes, but it s fun as well.
Adam: I never thought I was the kind of person who d want to have kids, but in the last two, three years I ve really changed my opinion about that. I ve spent a lot more time around some kids, had some godchildren, spent a lot more time around them as they were growing up over the last four or five years.
Kieran: Guidechildren?
Adam: Godchildren.
Kieran: Oh. Right.
Adam: In the last couple of years I think my minds really changed about that. But the experience of saying it is entirely different to doing it, so . . .
Kieran: I think it kind of happens by accident, It s kinda hard to plan for kids. It s like writing a song, it just kinda happens.
And you have to live with it.
Adam: Yeah, you get found out!
Okay, on the subject of writing songs: would you rather be unhappy and produce great work or be content and produce mediocre work?
Adam: It makes me happy when songs turn out good.
Kieran: It s not that you have to be unhappy to write great songs, that s not true. That s an old myth, I don t need that. (To Adam) Do you believe that?
Adam: I don t know, I hate that idea. I think in the last couple of years I ve gotten my life a lot more where I would want to be, or heading in the right direction. This album, half of it s about being very frustrated and very anguished, but the second half of it s more about coping with it and feeling a little better about things. I m hoping the next album will be more about contentedness, but I dunno, maybe it ll suck! I ve no idea! I hate to think that your life has to be the fodder, that you have to sacrifice having a life just to make records.
Kieran: Well, you go through periods where you are happy, of course everyone does, or periods where you re unhappy, and that makes up the substance of your work. I don t know if you re happy that you write a happy song . . .
Is it harder to write a happy song?
Adam: It is a little bit, because, I don t know if you re less likely to be trite when you're sad, but you re less like to get caught at it. Maybe it s cos when you agonise over things you actually really edit it and make it a helluva song. I ve only written a couple of songs that I d consider really hopeful and happy. December is hopeful and it s optimistic. Wistful.
Kieran: I think as a songwriter, when you sit with a guitar or a piano you tend to write slower types of songs with a more reflective feel. I would tend towards that. Whereas with a band situation when you bring in the core of a song it would be easier to make it faster.
Is there ever a point as a songwriter where it just gets too personal and you can t put a line in the song?
Adam: Sure. For me, I m trying to really bare it, trying to expose things. But I m sure there are lines where I ve decided... well, I ve written no songs about masturbation. Course I never have!
Kieran: Born a Catholic?
Adam: Jew. There s guilt, but not so much over masturbation!
Kieran: I saw Paul Simon on TV saying that he stopped the censorship in his head and just wrote it down, the song is finished, come back a year later, pick it up and say That s kinda cool or whatever.
Are there any real outlaws left in rock n roll anymore?
Kieran: Us!
Adam: Well, what does that mean? For the last five years all it s taken to be an outlaw is a distorted guitar and I don t buy that anymore. It might ve been new when Bob Mould was doing it with H|sker D|. But in the last couple of years you could wear a flannel shirt, hang out and drink coffee and pretend to be an outlaw, but it doesn t make you in the least bit original at all. To me the original thing is to be honest and be yourself, and that s the unique part. If you just sound like somebody else . . . To me, I sound like me. If you listen to Kieran he sounds like Kieran. That s the most unique, and therefore most outlaw thing you can do. I get accused of being self-obsessed and self-absorbed and I fully am cos I think that s what I m supposed to do. Of my high-school class, nobody else does what I do. And that in itself . . . (to Kieran) How old are you now?
Kieran: 35.
Adam: See, now, we re still doin it. I m 33. There s nothing wrong with doing other things but . . . I m unique. More unique than most. There s so many bands out there . . .
Kieran: It seems very hard to be yourself in this day and age and it seems to be gettin harder because there s so many definitions and so many little boxes which things fit into really neatly. Like microchips into slots.
Adam: With a career like this you just never know what s going to happen to you. We ve both been doing it for about the same amount of time and my band has this huge success right now, but that s kind of just dumb luck. I think our band is great, I love our band, but like, who knew? Mr. Jones just went somewhere that nobody can ever expect their song to go. Certainly not when I wrote it.
Kieran: I had the Black Velvets for like, six or seven years, had a bit o success, and now I m startin all over again. It s like fifteen or twenty years ago, I m just starting again, but hey, it s cool, I m doing it.
Adam: You need to have to play music. Then it s never a life wasted, there s no disappointment, you play music and let the chips fall where they fall. The records you make don t disappear, the work you do doesn t go away.
Kieran: Tombstones.
Would you rather work with a genius who is a pain in the arse or a mediocre artist who works really hard?
Kieran: If that was your only choice, then I d work with the genius who was really difficult to work with.
Adam: I d kick his ass!
Kieran: That s the thing about Ireland and America. In America a lot of artists have a certain genius and then they also have a work ethic, a plan, a way of going about it and staying with it and a consistency. Whereas in Ireland you have geniuses, but a lot of people just go Ah, fuck it. I m too tired today . Or get lost in some kind of mist. It s the weather. I don t know what it is, but it s there y know?
Adam: It s hard to tour over there. It s just so big. Touring is such a grind to go around America. It took three hours to cross Ireland today it s 3,500 miles across America. It can be really daunting for bands who come from England or Ireland or anywhere to come to play in America cos you could drive around England being NME s version of The Beatles but when you get to America you re not The Beatles and then you gotta go from Boston to LA that s fuckin brutal. That drive from Denver to Las Vegas takes you 40 hours. But there s a lot of lame-ass, lazy fuckin American bands too. Actually I don t notice that there s a problem with Irish bands in America. Bands that ve made it from over here in America have all been Irish, for whatever reason. Some of those English bands actually only have three good songs. Like we toured with Suede for a while and I thought Suede was great but it was on their very first album, they were God over in England, and I don t think they had a whole album worth that. Half the show was awesome, though, phenomenal. I m a huge Blur fan, I love The Great Escape, but unless you re a big Kinks fan and you re really, really into that sorta thing, I m not sure that translates to American audiences that well.
Kieran: That s a good album, isn t it?
Adam: I love that album. Whereas the new one, which is much less English to me and much more sort of Seattle-sounding, seems to be doing much better over there. I heard the new one and I didn t like it as much. But I m a big Blur fan.
Kieran: And you toured with The Cranberries, did you?
Adam: Yeah, they were on the tour supporting Suede. That was wicked cos The Cranberries went through the sky while that was going on. That was a weird tour to be on. My own inclination was more towards Suede s kind of music at the time but it was weird to watch it happen, it was kind of hard cos people would leave early.
What do you think about when you re onstage?
Adam: I try and be as gone as possible up there. People are always asking me Could you say hello to me onstage? and I m like Man, I can t even remember my name onstage. I could not remember to say hello to you. I try and be gone, y know, and if things distract you it takes away from that.
What kinds of things distract you?
Kieran: Slow songs where people are talkin . You kind of go Ooh!
Adam: Weird monitor stuff. Last night at the concert (in Leisureland, Galway) there were more people than we thought there was going to be and I had moved the barrier flush from the stage because I thought You don t need a barrier space for 800 people . And in the last three or four days we sold six or eight hundred more tickets. And when I first got onstage I was thinking Wow, great, there s all these little kids up at the front row but little by little through the show they were getting crushed to death. I lifted a bunch out myself last night, we had to carry about 20 kids out of the crowd and that was partially my fault because if I had not moved the barrier it would ve been so much easier for security to do it. That s distracting, watching some little kid getting pushed into a bar. That was flipping me out last night. It s fucked cos you know they want to stay so bad, they ve gotten the front row but they don t wanna leave, but then you see them get scared cos it s a thousand people pushing them forward. That s harsh.
Kieran: It s also frightening when you have really heavy security and they re getting really heavy with people in the audience. That s really weird, I really hate that shit.
Which matters most critical respect or money?
Adam: This is going to sound shallow as shit but I would ve said respect for sure a few years ago you re talking about critical respect right? Not just anyone s respect?
Yeah.
Adam: Well, in the last few years, I mean, nothing personal, but I ve realised what a pile of shit that is. Some critics are great, some critics I could sit around all night and discuss music with, but some guys don t know shit, they re some kinda pissant there to take the piss out of someone or turn someone into the next Beatles. You can t have your life or your own self-respect depending on judgement from somebody else, so if I had to choose at this point I d probably take money.
Kieran (to Adam): This guy (indicating me) wrote a review of my single out at the moment, it s a track for radio, and he says it was like a potted Plant and thought that was a compliment! I was going Hello? A potted Plant ? A compliment? (laughs) There s this guy called George Byrne, he s a critic here in Dublin who just loves slagging off Dublin bands, every band he has a go at. And he gets personal. It s just funny. I guess you have those guys in San Francisco as well, Adam?
Adam: A lot of these guys don t have the ability to analyse music. The best they can do is compare it to someone else, which is cheap analysis at best. They re not music lovers, they re seamsters with a pen or a typewriter. I ve spoken to a lot of them and they don t know shit about music. They ve got some combination of Lester Bangs and Hunter S. Thompson but they don t really know music. I don t think you can be a rock critic without using your heart.
Kieran: I think jealousy comes into it a lot with journalism. A helluva lot. The guy really wants to be up there doing it instead of down here writing about it. It s very important to do what you want to do.
Adam: This may be the only life you get, you might as well not waste it.
Kieran: You reach the age of 60 and go I spent 40 years doing something I didn t want to do, I shoulda done, y know, my dream .
Adam: The trick is you can always do it. Sometimes the rigours of life demand that you don t get to follow that, but if you get a chance to, nothing wrong with doing it. I ve got a lot of respect for the people who do. No disrespect to the people who don t, because sometimes you just can t, but . . .
Kieran: Just fuckin do it, man! n