{"id":358180,"date":"2025-12-19T14:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T14:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/358180\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T14:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T14:31:07","slug":"the-counting-crows-story-told-through-their-deep-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/358180\/","title":{"rendered":"The Counting Crows Story, Told Through Their Deep Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

In honor of Ringer Films\u2019 new documentary, \u2018Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately?,\u2019 we\u2019re looking back on Adam Duritz\u2019s most underrated jams beyond \u201cMr. Jones\u201d <\/p>\n

There is a new documentary out on HBO Max this week about Counting Crows and their singer-songwriter, Adam Duritz. I\u2019m sure you have heard of them. The paradox of Counting Crows\u2014this is true of most \u201990s rock bands who aren\u2019t Nirvana or Radiohead\u2014is that everybody knows who they are but is aware of only one or two of their songs. And often not by the titles, just the most quoted lyrics. For the Crows, those tunes are \u201cMr. Jones\u201d (the \u201cI wanna be Bob Dylan\u201d song) and \u201cA Long December\u201d (the one where the guy hopes that \u201cmaybe this year will be better than the last\u201d). As noted in Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately?\u2014which was coproduced by Ringer Films as part of HBO\u2019s Music Box series\u2014they are also remembered for two extremely \u201990s pop culture artifacts, which for years provided fodder for uncreative stand-up comics and late-night talk show hosts: Duritz\u2019s uniquely public dating history (highlighted by dalliances with two Friends cast members) and his distinctive dreadlocks, which made him infinitely more recognizable (not necessarily in a good way) than the typical tortured poet in MTV\u2019s Buzz Bin. Duritz\u2019s hair even gets its own narrative arc in the film, with a distinct beginning (his abrupt embrace of locks initially shocked the other band members), middle (SNL made some cruel\/lame jokes), and conclusion (his girlfriend gently persuaded him to pivot in middle age).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Otherwise, director Amy Scott stays focused on their first two albums, 1993\u2019s seven-times-platinum debut, August and Everything After, and the not-quite-as-successful follow-up from 1996, Recovering the Satellites. For a film aimed at a general-interest audience, this approach is smart and logical\u2014the aforementioned songs, for one, derive from those records\u2014even though those albums account for only 25 percent of their studio output. Nevertheless, I\u2019ve been troubled by my own paradox (or maybe it\u2019s just a minor inconvenience): I am a working rock critic whose extensive knowledge of \u201cdeep-cut\u201d Counting Crows LPs has been professionally useless to me. For years, I have been prepared to impart observations about how the \u201cloud\u201d Side 1 of 2008\u2019s Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings informs the \u201cquiet\u201d Side 2. But I have had nowhere to put that information.<\/p>\n

Until now, that is. Have You Seen Me Lately? is just the excuse I need to pontificate on their music, career, and legacy. And, hopefully, this pontification will prove useful for viewers in search of more great Counting Crows songs. Here are six of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRound Here\u201d (MTV\u2019s Live From the 10 Spot Version), Across a Wire: Live in New York City, 1997\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most modern music documentaries fall into one of two categories\u2014\u201cnothing to prove\u201d and \u201cnothing to lose.\u201d A \u201cnothing to prove\u201d music doc is about an act that already has an established baseline of greatness in the wider cultural consensus that only the most hardheaded contrarian would dispute. Which means the subjects of the film have little to no incentive to reveal or concede anything that might undermine that consensus. (This year\u2019s Becoming Led Zeppelin typifies this trend, as does\u2014to a lesser extent\u2014the recently refurbished nine-part Disney+ doc The Beatles Anthology.) A \u201cnothing to lose\u201d music doc, meanwhile, is about an artist who was commercially popular in their prime but whose dubious critical standing is now ripe for revisionism. Which means the subject of this kind of film is motivated to speak about bad reviews, flop albums, and other foibles with greater-than-usual candor. (2021\u2019s Listening to Kenny G\u2014another Ringer Films doc\u2014is one of the better examples from this decade, though 2023\u2019s Hate to Love: Nickelback is the most overt \u201cnothing to lose\u201d music doc of recent years.)<\/p>\n

Have You Seen Me Lately? falls into the latter camp. In the \u201990s, millions of people hated this band in ways that were only possible in a bottom-down, mass-media world that made avoiding ubiquitous hit songs like \u201cMr. Jones\u201d much more difficult. In the manner of all \u201cnothing to lose\u201d filmmakers, Scott attempts to explain and then nullify that dislike. Herein likes the central tension of this sort of doc: A \u201cnothing to lose\u201d film is structured in such a way to address the opinions of the very haters who are also the least likely to watch a documentary about music they despise, prioritizing that audience over those who never thought it possible to loathe an album as loaded with classic songs as August and Everything After is. (That said, \u201cnothing to lose\u201d movies are generally more interesting and entertaining than \u201cnothing to gain\u201d ones, for fans and agnostics alike.)<\/p>\n

What\u2019s nice about Counting Crows from a documentarian\u2019s perspective is that their \u201cpossibly risible\u201d aspects are pretty much synonymous with what\u2019s conceivably endearing about them. Take this live version of the first song from the first album, which I would argue is also their no. 1 track in terms of quality and overall modus operandi. This song is also, I acknowledge, really annoying if you can\u2019t stand this band.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Press play, and you\u2019ll see what I mean. On August and Everything After, \u201cRound Here\u201d sets an immediate tone for a record that synthesizes 25 years of rootsy, vision questy rock, from The Basement Tapes to Born to Run to The Joshua Tree to Automatic for the People. The plot centers on Doing Something to Change Your Life in the most melodramatic and transcendentally epic fashion imaginable, a feeling underscored by the anthemically jangly music. It sounds like Michael Stipe trying to rewrite \u201cThunder Road.\u201d Though when you scrutinize the striking but disjointed lyrics, the story starts to break down. (Why, for starters, would Maria leave Nashville to find a boy who looks like Elvis? Isn\u2019t that like leaving Los Angeles to find a girl who acts like Rachel Sennott?)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not that this matters all that much when you listen to \u201cRound Here.\u201d Especially if you put on a live version, which pumps up the melodrama and epic transcendence by several factors, sweeping up the lyrical plot holes in an overwhelming emotional surge. I am particularly fond of the electric rendition from Across a Wire\u2014not to be confused with the rearranged acoustic take from the VH1 Storytellers disc on the same double album\u2014as it reminds me of the bootlegs from the late \u201970s where Bruce Springsteen tried to turn the middle of \u201cBackstreets\u201d into a Van Morrison\u2013style spiritual breakdown. Counting Crows did the same to \u201cRound Here,\u201d most famously, on Saturday Night Live in 1994<\/a>, when Duritz\u2019s shouty improvisations elongated the song to the extreme irritation of the show\u2019s producers (one of whom, according to Duritz in the documentary, denounced him as a \u201cfucking asshole\u201d). But that was also the performance credited with breaking August and Everything After and transforming it into an alt-rock touchstone. From the start, what bothered some people about Counting Crows exhilarated a great many other people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In that sense, the Across a Wire performance is even riskier, grander, potentially more alienating, and (for all those reasons) better. It is, above all, a lot. And that a lot\u2013ness is key to the Counting Crows enterprise, for better or worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEinstein on the Beach (For an Eggman),\u201d DGC Rarities Vol. 1, 1994<\/p>\n

Early on in Have You Seen Me Lately?, Counting Crows guitarist David Immergluck recounts the first time he met Duritz and how they immediately got into an argument after Immergluck dismissed Springsteen, a common attitude among underground musicians in the Human Touch\/Lucky Town era of the early \u201990s. The following day, Duritz purchased every Springsteen album from the used vinyl section of a local record store and delivered the stack to Immergluck, imploring him to give the Boss another chance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The story is instructive for two reasons: It illustrates that Duritz was a student\u2014a savant, really\u2014when it came to listening to (and then composing) heartland rock songs. And it indicates that this was true at possibly the least forgiving time for heartland rock in the history of contemporary pop music.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No matter their tremendous success at the time, Counting Crows were woefully out of place in the music world of the early \u201990s. This is most apparent when you listen to DGC Rarities Vol. 1, a venerable \u201cCD wallet\u201d staple composed of acts signed to Geffen Records that put Counting Crows in the company of alternative\u2019s biggest stars. In accordance with the times, several tracks critique the very idea of appearing on a corporate music sampler like DGC Rarities Vol. 1: Sonic Youth\u2019s \u201cCompilation Blues,\u201d Nirvana\u2019s \u201cPay to Play,\u201d that dog.\u2019s \u201cGrunge Couple,\u201d and Beck\u2019s \u201cBogusflow,\u201d a pious piss-take of Pearl Jam that seems hilariously misguided in retrospect given the source\u2019s eventual Grammy-magnet status.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ultimately, none of those songs garnered as much airplay as \u201cEinstein on the Beach,\u201d an outtake Duritz deemed unworthy of the debut album that subsequently became one of 1994\u2019s top hits on Billboard\u2019s modern rock chart. It didn\u2019t get left off August and Everything After because it wasn\u2019t good enough (it\u2019s super catchy) or because it was so good Duritz had to leave it off for \u201cpunk rock\u201d reasons. (Have you heard the rest of August and Everything After?) It\u2019s possible \u201cEinstein on the Beach\u201d was a little too bouncy to fit the debut\u2019s dour mood. Mostly, though, the issue was that Counting Crows had too many good songs to fit on one record. They didn\u2019t need another hit. But they otherwise had no larger philosophical opposition to bringing tuneful earworms that normal people might enjoy (and snarky guys like Beck might subtweet) to radio.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOmaha\u201d (Demo), August and Everything After (Deluxe Edition), 2007\u00a0<\/p>\n

That \u201cnormie-friendly\u201d mentality is singled out in Have You Seen Me Lately? as the spark of the eventual anti\u2013Counting Crows backlash. And it really was important in shaping the trajectory of their career. But other factors, I would argue, were more critical.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back to Duritz, the heartland rock savant: The documentary covers the celebrated demo tape that got Counting Crows signed to Geffen. It upended convention by including more than a dozen tracks, which is four or five times more than a typical demo. Many of those songs ended up on August, although those versions sound quite different from the original recordings. As Duritz says in the film, he first had to mold the backing musicians on August to match the sound in his head. That meant forcing guitarist David Bryson to ditch the effect pedals that made him sound like John Squire of the Stone Roses so that he could instead emulate the elemental Byrds-inspired tones of R.E.M.\u2019s Peter Buck. Duritz similarly instructed keyboardist Charlie Gillingham to trade out his synthesizer for a B3 organ and bassist Matt Malley to adopt a chunkier, earthier style rather than the jazzy, fretless bass he preferred.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

You understand the need for that heavy hand when listening to the demo for \u201cOmaha,\u201d which is closer to Britpop than the majestic, accordion-driven number that eventually appeared on August. By the time they were making the album, they had assistance from T Bone Burnett, a one-time Bob Dylan associate who in the \u201980s and \u201990s became the go-to producer for prestige proto-Americana acts like Los Lobos, Elvis Costello, and Duritz\u2019s future duet partners the Wallflowers.<\/p>\n

Burnett\u2019s goal, as expressed in Have You Seen Me Lately?, was to take a demo that sounded like an album and make an album that sounded like a demo. The austere, classy sheen he applied to August and Everything After was crucial to its wide demographic appeal as the alternative album that teenagers and their boomer parents could enjoy together. It was also at the heart of what critics didn\u2019t like about Counting Crows\u2014their quasi\u2013tribute act tastefulness, that careful sonic curation that made them sound like \u201cClassic Rock: The Band,\u201d and the way those gestures felt like sucking up to old people.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their 1993 appearance at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a fill-in for absent inductee Van Morrison didn\u2019t exactly discourage that criticism. That gig might be what caused Robert Christgau to liken Duritz<\/a> to \u201cthe dutiful son of permissive parents I hope don\u2019t sit next to me at Woodstock.\u201d Jim Greer of Spin similarly fretted that their rise<\/a> signaled \u201ca kind of musical conservatism on the part of the listening public that we\u2019d rather not have to acknowledge.\u201d David Browne of Entertainment Weekly was more precise with his criticism<\/a>, astutely pointing out that \u201cCounting Crows\u2019 nostalgia is not for rock of the \u201960s or \u201970s, but for its \u201980s incarnation\u2014that overly refined white-guy roots rock promulgated by everyone from Los Lobos to John Mellencamp to lesser bands like the Bodeans.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

While it should be noted that the Mexican American band Los Lobos is hardly a \u201cwhite-guy\u201d outfit, the argument that this kind of music was \u201can artistic dead end\u201d\u2014as Browne put it\u2014tracks, at least in terms of critical perception. Although Duritz\u2019s creative blossoming, manifested in the thoroughly against-the-grunge-grain sound of August and Everything After, was considerable enough to overcome that, at least for a time.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnna Begins,\u201d August and Everything After, 1993<\/p>\n

The pearl clutching over \u201cmusical conservatism\u201d has abated since the early \u201990s, as it\u2019s become more or less accepted that rock artists\u2014like those in blues, folk, and country, the bedrock origins of the genre\u2014are in constant dialogue with the music\u2019s past. That tide started to turn right after August and Everything After, when cross-generational collaborations between old and young rockers became common\u2014Neil Young toured with Pearl Jam, David Bowie made an album with Trent Reznor, Hole covered Fleetwood Mac for the Crow: City Of Angels soundtrack, and so on. It\u2019s why MJ Lenderman can play \u201cA Long December\u201d in concert now<\/a> without music critics lining up to berate him with their dog-eared copies of Joe Carducci\u2019s Rock and the Pop Narcotic in tow.<\/p>\n

Yet Counting Crows were never fully reclaimed. I can still recall a tweet from 2017<\/a> that remains stuck in my craw\u2014a truly wild statement to type, I realize\u2014that was for a Pitchfork article in which staff members listed their most formative teenage albums. The idea, I think, was that many of these choices were now considered embarrassing. (What we used to call \u201cguilty pleasures\u201d before that term became outmoded.) In the tweet, however, Counting Crows were singled out as an especially humiliating example.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2013, I wrote a column for Grantland<\/a> in which I tried to explore why that perception of Counting Crows persists, and it went viral for reasons that proved to be largely exasperating. A lot of people missed the point, in part because the headline (which I didn\u2019t write) likened Counting Crows to Nirvana in a manner that was distractingly provocative. (One detractor concluded<\/a> that my article represented \u201cthe sort of contrarianism that would make even veteran Slatepitchers quail in their boots,\u201d which I assure you made sense as a diss 12 years ago.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

The crux of my thesis pertained to how Duritz\u2019s songs are realistically sad, which is different (and thornier) than songs that are tangentially sad. (Basically anything by Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, and other romantically tragic figures whose music always circles back to the circumstances of their creators\u2019 mythic lives and deaths.) I\u2019ll just restate my central point here, which uses \u201cAnna Begins\u201d as an example:<\/p>\n

It describes a scenario that occurs in nearly everyone\u2019s life at least once (if you\u2019re lucky) between the ages of 16 and 23: A person falls in love with a friend, the friend is interested in possibly reciprocating, they consummate their feelings, it doesn\u2019t work, and the relationship is ruined. The song is so direct and plainspoken that it hardly seems like art;\u00a0it just sounds like dialogue that\u2019s been transcribed from a million arguments between emotionally exhausted parties:<\/p>\n

It does not bother me to say this isn\u2019t love\u2028
Because if you don\u2019t want to talk about it then it isn\u2019t love\u2028
And I guess I\u2019m going to have to live with that\u2028
But I\u2019m sure there\u2019s something in a shade of gray\u2028
Or something in between
And I can always change my name if that\u2019s what you mean<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if I ever said those\u00a0exact\u00a0words to a woman, but I\u2019ve said something\u00a0like\u00a0those words. And hearing Duritz sing them never fails to make me cringe a bit. Not because it makes me think about Duritz and the circumstances of his life, but because it makes me think about\u00a0my\u00a0life, and not a particularly good part of my life. This is Duritz\u2019s unique talent as a songwriter: He vividly re-creates the feeling of your lowest of personal lows\u2014the\u00a0\u201cit\u2019s 4:30 a.m. on a Tuesday and it doesn\u2019t get much worse than this\u201d<\/a>\u00a0moments that many of us would just as soon forget.<\/p>\n

Put another way: Many critics (as well as casual listeners) have what the film writer Will Sloan recently called<\/a> \u201ca contempt for weakness.\u201d He was referencing Quentin Tarantino\u2019s recent comments about Paul Dano\u2019s deliberately pathetic performance as Daniel Day-Lewis\u2019s wormy foil in There Will Be Blood, but the phrase could just as well apply to an artist who\u2014more than any songwriter I can think of\u2014authentically plumbs the depths of how gross and hopeless and unattractive being in a miserable place in your life can be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These are not feelings many of us wish to wallow in, and we tend to resent those who invite us to do so, regardless of the art form. We would rather those feelings be presented in an elevated, handsomely desolate package that makes sadness seem aspirational. It\u2019s the very thing that makes distinguishing bad art from good art that evokes unseemly emotions such a challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeedway,\u201d This Desert Life, 1999<\/p>\n

Have You Seen Me Lately? ends after the release and disappointing reception of 1996\u2019s Recovering the Satellites, gamely making a case that the album is an underrated gem. I would go one step further and call it the best Counting Crows LP and one of the great unsung masterpieces of alt-rock\u2019s \u201cend times\u201d period in the mid-\u201990s. It\u2019s certainly the record I would recommend as an entry point for younger listeners. While August and Everything After is their greatest \u201csongs\u201d record, Recovering the Satellites sounds more like it came from a band, while also benefiting from having fewer overly familiar hits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The knock against Recovering the Satellites at the time was that Duritz fixated too much on complaining about his rock-star fame on the album, which allegedly made the songs unrelatable. But that criticism willfully disregards how people listen to music. It\u2019s like arguing that \u201cA Long December\u201d is emotionally resonant only for people who have also slept with Courteney Cox. Few songs ever have literal relatability for an audience; we simply zero in on whatever stray lyric hits home and make the whole song about that. In the case of Recovering the Satellites, Duritz\u2019s broader themes\u2014heartbreak is unavoidable; loneliness is constant; dislocation can be felt anywhere, even in a crowded room\u2014couldn\u2019t be more universal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the documentary points out, the second Counting Crows record went double platinum, hardly a failure by most standards. It also didn\u2019t exist in a vacuum. Recovering the Satellites was released on the same day in October of 1996 as Life Is Peachy, the second album by Korn. That record also eventually went double platinum. But Korn and the n\u00fc-metal scene it spearheaded were ascendant, while the old alt-rock world that never fully embraced Counting Crows was rapidly fading away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Have You Seen Me Lately? had been 10 minutes longer, it might have included the spectacle of Duritz and his bandmates appearing at Woodstock \u201999, the least Counting Crows\u2013appropriate setting for a Counting Crows concert ever. It\u2019s a handy metaphor for where they were just four months later, when they put out their third album. This Desert Life sold worse than the first two records even though it\u2019s nearly as good musically, although that scarcely mattered. Funnily enough, the late \u201990s were a more amenable time for a white rock singer with dreadlocks. But in every other sense, clearly, Counting Crows were out of their element. To their credit, though, they didn\u2019t hire a DJ or invite Jonathan Davis to do guest vocals. They just plowed ahead with making prototypical Counting Crows songs like \u201cSpeedway,\u201d one of Duritz\u2019s most unsparing depictions of depression, which is really saying something. Whereas \u201cRound Here\u201d is about a woman who goes out into the world in search of something that might exist only in her imagination, \u201cSpeedway\u201d uses a road trip as an allegory for a journey into self that winds up going nowhere. The protagonist isn\u2019t just leaving a place, but rather his very sense of self. \u201cSometimes I\u2019m floating away,\u201d he sings. But it doesn\u2019t sound like floating. It\u2019s more like sinking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cVirginia Through the Rain,\u201d Butter Miracle, the Complete Sweets!, 2025<\/p>\n

The most insightful parts of Have You Seen Me Lately? involve Duritz discussing his mental health, specifically dissociative disorder, a condition that made him feel detached from reality during some of the most unreal moments of his life and career. As he related in an interview I did with him back in 2012<\/a>, \u201cThere was a part of me that thought it didn\u2019t matter if I was ever happy, because I was making music and making a mark and I was going to be remembered and that seemed to be everything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the time of that conversation, Counting Crows hadn\u2019t put out an album of original material in four years. They seemed adrift. Their two aughts-era records, 2002\u2019s Hard Candy and 2008\u2019s Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, have some excellent songs. But the only music that gained wider traction\u2014the Oscar-nominated Shrek 2 soundtrack smash \u201cAccidentally in Love\u201d and the frankly atrocious Joni Mitchell cover \u201cBig Yellow Taxi\u201d\u2014also happened to be their most aggressively inconsequential.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By the early 2010s, Duritz appeared not only disinterested in writing more Counting Crows songs but also wary about how doing so might affect his fragile emotional state. \u201cI\u2019ve said a lot of stuff about my life over the last 20 years. I\u2019m not sure I have to tell anything else about my life,\u201d he said flatly. \u201cIf I stopped and didn\u2019t say anything else about my life from now on, I still will have said plenty.\u201d<\/p>\n

He’s apparently changed his mind since then. While his creative pace has slowed considerably\u2014this year\u2019s Butter Miracle, the Complete Sweets! comes 11 years after the more than respectable Somewhere Under Wonderland\u2014he also seems more comfortable being Adam Duritz now than he ever has. That rings true of \u201cVirginia Through the Rain,\u201d a gorgeous ballad in a long line of Counting Crows songs related to Duritz\u2019s favorite meteorological phenomenon. Rain imagery, for starters, is soaked throughout August and Everything After. It\u2019s there in the song titles (\u201cRain King,\u201d \u201cRaining in Baltimore\u201d), as well as in the lyrics of \u201cRound Here\u201d (\u201cI walk in the air between the rain\u201d), \u201cAnna Begins\u201d (\u201cThis time when kindness falls like rain\u201d), and \u201cOmaha\u201d (four separate times as \u201cgathered rain,\u201d \u201cbucket of rain,\u201d \u201csummer rain,\u201d and \u201cearth and rain\u201d). And it pours like a tsunami on scores of subsequent songs, from \u201cHave You Seen Me Lately?\u201d to \u201cAmy Hit the Atmosphere\u201d to \u201cGod of Ocean Tides.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The cynical view of all this lyrical precipitation is that \u201crain\u201d is an awfully easy word to rhyme. It\u2019s also a useful tool for a quintessentially sad troubadour constantly grasping for mournful allusions. But it just makes me think of the late, great music critic Ellen Willis, who once observed that John Fogerty\u2014the original \u201crain king\u201d of heartland rock, known for \u201cHave You Ever Seen the Rain?\u201d and \u201cWho\u2019ll Stop the Rain\u201d\u2014was a fatalist who constantly referenced the weather in his songs because it\u2019s \u201csomething you can\u2019t do anything about.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

I suspect that Adam Duritz, at this point, has a similar attitude about his band\u2019s strange but indelible place in rock history. If you still don\u2019t get the appeal of Counting Crows, well, he\u2019s been here before. But after all this time, he deserves a little more.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Steven Hyden<\/p>\n

<\/a>Steven Hyden is a writer, podcaster, and author of six books, including \u2018There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen\u2019s \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.\u201d and the End of the Heartland.\u2019 You can find his work at Uproxx.com and his Substack, Evil Speakers.