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April 5, 2026 \u2014 12:54pm<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n Save this article for later<\/p>\n Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.<\/p>\n Got it<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n Adam Duritz, lead singer and songwriter of Counting Crows, discovered his life\u2019s work one day at uni when he sat down at a piano and found himself, almost instinctively, writing a song.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was life-changing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m gonna probably do this the rest of my life\u2019. It\u2019s a strange thing to do \u2013 you have all these feelings and then one day it occurs to you [to write them down].\u201d<\/p>\n Duritz, now a genial 60-something and shorn of the dreadlocks from the band\u2019s early years, is quick to point out that he was not writing good songs. He was a student at Berkeley; it would be years before he was in a working rock band, years after that before he had an outfit he could call his own, and then more time as he finally began crafting songs that could get a record deal. But his course was set.<\/p>\n Now, almost 35 years later, Counting Crows are still going. Duritz is grateful to be back playing in Australia and happy at the reception. He says he and his bandmates still regret an ill-fated 2004 Australian outing, during which his grandmother died and he made the painful decision to go back home to be with his family.<\/p>\n \u201cWe really love it here,\u201d he says earnestly. \u201cBut I had to be there for my mom, so I left the tour. Everyone was very understanding at the time. But that will just kill you in a country when your gigs are cancelled. It was hard on the promoters and hard on my colleagues. It\u2019s taken a lot to build us back up.\u201d<\/p>\n Counting Crows appeared in the wake of the breakthrough of Nirvana in 1991. In the late 1980s, the radio and record industries were famously indifferent to new sounds. Duritz was playing in several different bands that had gained some traction in the local San Francisco scene, but little beyond that. But in the wake of Nirvana\u2019s Nevermind, things started moving very fast.<\/p>\n Labels made a sudden 180 \u2013 and went on the hunt for newer, weirder stuff. A lot of them liked the ingratiating but complex song constructions Duritz was producing. In the end, Duritz chose Geffen, home of bands such as Nirvana and Sonic Youth.<\/p>\n Counting Crows\u2019 first album, August and Everything After, became a hit. Duritz has a distinctive tenor, laced with sadness, that gives even his upbeat songs a touch of melancholy. But from the start he used it with a surprising sophistication. Even on the group\u2019s first single, Mr Jones, you can hear him confidently humming and sha-la-laing with an abandon that recalled Van Morrison. That song, and just about every other tune on the band\u2019s first three or four albums, had torrents of evocative lyrics and engaging and sometimes dramatic song constructions.<\/p>\n Counting Crows toured for 18 months in the wake of the band\u2019s success. Duritz has spoken frankly about how the frenzy exacerbated his mental health problems. He found his Berkeley home too overrun with fans to be enjoyable. He decamped to Los Angeles and fell in with the celebrity scene centred around Hollywood\u2019s notorious Viper Room nightclub.<\/p>\n The band\u2019s second album, Recovering the Satellites, saw him exorcising some of stardom\u2019s demons. In the years since, he has delivered solid material, right up to last year\u2019s oddly titled Butter Miracles, The Complete Sweets!.<\/p>\n One of that album\u2019s best songs is Spaceman in Tulsa, which begins as a reflection on the life of a gay musician \u2013 a friend of Duritz\u2019s named Tyson \u2013 but in typical Duritz fashion finds personal reverberations in the mix as well.<\/p>\n \u201cI was writing about art, in my case rock \u2019n\u2019 roll,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can go through a lot of shit in your life as a young person that\u2019s really traumatic and really scarring. And you can wonder how there\u2019s ever going to be a place for you in the world. For Tyson, it was being a flamboyant gay man; for me, it was dealing with a lot of mental illness and other difficulties.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a song, in other words, about anyone who finds their calling in random places \u2013 like a piano at a uni dorm. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things people go through,\u201d he says earnestly. \u201cAnd then you find out there\u2019s a place for you. Rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, or any art form, has a place for the oddballs. There\u2019s a world out there where you can live, where it\u2019s OK to be you.\u201d<\/p>\n Counting Crows play Enmore Theatre on April 6 <\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"Adam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/5115bf9e534120544db8c47874fcada41e92d7a3.jpeg\")
Adam Duritz, sans dreadlocks, is still leading Counting Crows. Mark Seliger<\/p>\n![\"Duritz](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/23a8b352d6abb872d88b77262d8719f177517590.jpeg\")
Duritz playing Byron Bay\u2019s Bluesfest in 2013. Photographic<\/p>\n
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