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Release - Santana And Counting Crows Announce Oneness Tour 2024

Santana And Counting Crows Announce Oneness Tour 2024  

Tickets go on sale Friday, Feb. 16 at 10:00 a.m.

TAMPA, FL – GRAMMY winning Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitarist Carlos Santana alongside GRAMMY and Academy Award nominated rock band Counting Crows have announced they will hit the road together for the Oneness Tour this summer. Santana will perform high-energy, passion-filled songs from their 50 year career, including fan favorites from Woodstock to Supernatural, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this summer and will be highlighted all tour. Following three successful tours across the world, the Counting Crows return to the road with Santana and promises fans an unforgettable show filled with their timeless hits, including music off their most recent project Butter Miracle, Suite One.

Together, the two iconic bands will perform 29 shows across North America. Produced by Live Nation, the tour hit Tampa’s AMAILE Arena on Sunday, June 16 at 7:00 p.m.

Tickets will be available starting with a Citi presale (details below) beginning on Wednesday, February 14. Additional presales will run throughout the week ahead of the general on sale beginning on Friday, February 16 at 10:00 a.m. local time at Santana.com & CountingCrows.com

Citi is the official card of the Oneness Tour. Citi cardmembers will have access to presale tickets beginning Wednesday, February 14 at 10:00 a.m. local time until Thursday, February 15 at 10:00 p.m. local time through the Citi Entertainment program. For complete presale details visit www.citientertainment.com .

The tour will also offer a variety of different VIP packages and experiences for fans to take their concert experience to the next level. Packages vary but include premium tickets, commemorative ticket, exclusive merchandise item and collectible laminate. For more information, visit vipnation.com.

Delivered with a level of passion and soul equal to the legendary sonic charge of his guitar, the sound of Carlos Santana is one of the world's best-known musical signatures. For more than five decades—from Santana's earliest days as a groundbreaking Afro-Latin-blues-rock fusion outfit in San Francisco—Carlos has been the visionary force behind artistry that transcends musical genres and generational, cultural and geographical boundaries. Most recently, CARLOS, the feature documentary directed by Rudy Valdez and produced by Imagine Documentaries and Sony Music Entertainment celebrating the music icon’s life and career , premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and was released worldwide.

Counting Crows have enchanted listeners worldwide for more than two decades with their intensely soulful and intricate take on timeless rock & roll. Exploding onto the music scene in 1993 with their multi-platinum breakout album, August and Everything After, the band has gone on to release seven studio albums, selling more than 20 million records worldwide and is revered as one of the world's most pre-eminent live touring rock bands.

About Carlos Santana:

Santana has won 10 GRAMMY Awards and three Latin GRAMMY Awards, with a record-tying nine GRAMMY Awards for a single project for 1999’s Supernatural (including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for “Smooth”). He has received the Billboard Century Award (1996), was ushered into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (1998), received the Billboard Latin Music Awards’ Lifetime Achievement honor (2009) and was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors Award (2013). Among many other distinctions, Carlos Santana has been cited by Rolling Stone as No. 11 on their list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time;” and has joined the Rolling Stones as one of only two bands to have an album reach the Top 10 in every decade since the 1960s. In 2018, he released his first MasterClass, and celebrated two epic milestones the 50th anniversary of his legendary performance at Woodstock and the 50th anniversary of his masterpiece Abraxas . This year he celebrates the 25th anniversary of his groundbreaking album Supernatural. Santana’s most recent release, “Let The Guitar Play” (Feat. Darryl “DMC” McDaniels) , follows on the heels of his powerful, energy-infused Blessings and Miracles (2021) that features collaborations with Rob Thomas, Chris Stapleton, Steve Winwood and many others. The epic feature documentary CARLOS , produced by Sony Music Entertainment and Imagine Documentaries, is a celebration of Carlos Santana’s life and career. It had its World Premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and is now available to stream worldwide. Santana has been in residency in Las Vegas for over 15 years and will continue to perform at House of Blues Las Vegas where he recently celebrated his 10th anniversary in the intimate venue. For more information, please visit: https://www.santana.com/

About Counting Crows:

For more than two decades, the GRAMMY and Academy Award nominated rock band Counting Crows have enchanted listeners worldwide with their intensely soulful and intricate take on timeless rock & roll. Exploding onto the music scene in 1993 with their multi-platinum breakout album, August and Everything After, the band has gone on to release seven studio albums, selling more than 20 million records worldwide and is revered as one of the world’s most pre-eminent live touring rock bands.

In October 1996, the band's double-platinum sophomore studio album, Recovering the Satellites , debuted at No. 1 and further solidified their growing reputation as one of the leading American alternative rock bands in the world. A follow-up to their early success, Counting Crows went on to release This Desert Life (1999), Hard Candy (2002), Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings (2008), Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did on Our Summer Vacation) (2012), Echoes of the Outlaw Roadshow (2013) and Somewhere Under Wonderland (2014). In 2004, Counting Crows recorded the chart-topping “Accidentally in Love” for the animated motion picture Shrek 2. The instant success of the track earned them an Academy Award nomination for “Best Original Song” at the 2005 Academy Awards, a Golden Globe nomination for “Best Original Song” and a GRAMMY Award nomination for “Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.”

In September 2014, Counting Crows released their critically acclaimed seventh studio album, Somewhere Under Wonderland , which debuted at No. 10 on the charts and was heralded by The Daily Telegraph as “… the best collection of songs since their debut.” The album consisted of nine sprawling tracks around rich sonic tapestries, which yielded some of the most grandiose yet intimate songs Counting Crows had recorded to date. 2018 marked 25 years since the band's inception and sent Adam Duritz, Jim Bogios, David Bryson, Charlie Gillingham, David Immergluck, Millard Powers and Dan Vickrey back on the road for the “25 YEARS AND COUNTING” tour. In 2021, Counting Crows ranked No. 8 on Billboard’s “Greatest of All Time: Adult Alternative Artists” 25th - anniversary chart.

After seven years, Adam Duritz and Counting Crows released Butter Miracle: Suite One in May 2021 to rave reviews. The band also kicked off their first tour since 2018, “The Butter Miracle Tour,” from 2021 through 2023, with sell-out performances across North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

About Live Nation Entertainment

Live Nation Entertainment (NYSE: LYV) is the world’s leading live entertainment company comprised of global market leaders: Ticketmaster, Live Nation Concerts and Live Nation Sponsorship. For additional information, visit www.livenationentertainment.com .

For Santana, please contact:

Michael Jensen and Erin Cook (Jensen Communications, Inc.)

626-585-9575

[email protected] / [email protected]

For Counting Crows, please contact:

Jessica Sciacchitano and Kiara Marques (R&C PMK)

[email protected] / [email protected]

For Live Nation Concerts, please contact:

Monique Sowinski and Valeska Thomas

[email protected]  / [email protected]

TICKETS: Tickets for this event go on sale Friday, Feb. 16 at 10:00 a.m. at Ticketmaster.com. Ticket prices are $35.75, $45.75, $55.75, $75.75, $95.75, $145.75, $171.25, $296.25, $396.25 and $496.25. Prices do not include facility fee or service charges. Advanced parking passes are available at ParkWhiz.com. Visit amaliearena.com or call 813.301.2500 for more information. 

– AMALIEArena.com –

Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz on Taylor Swift, Bob Saget and trying to hit that high note in ‘Mr. Jones’

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In September 1993, Adam Duritz and his Bay Area folk-rock band, Counting Crows, released their debut album, “August and Everything After,” which went on to sell 7 million copies, spawned an inescapable radio smash in “Mr. Jones” and turned the dreadlocked Duritz into one of Hollywood’s most enthusiastic daters of actors (including, as the story goes, two “Friends” cast members in Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox).

Three decades later, Duritz is still attracting famous and beautiful women.

On a recent evening, Counting Crows played to a full house at the Troubadour as a means of drumming up excitement for a North American tour that circles back to Inglewood’s YouTube Theater for a show Wednesday night. Among those gathered to hear “Mr. Jones,” “A Long December,” “Round Here” and the rest was Cindy Crawford, whom the next morning Duritz insisted he doesn’t actually know.

“A million people came backstage and said, ‘Cindy Crawford’s at your show!’” the singer, 59, recalled with a laugh in an interview at his West Hollywood hotel. “I was like, ‘Huh, cool.’”

For the current tour, Counting Crows — with a lineup of original members, longtime players and newer recruits — are joined by the veteran emo act Dashboard Confessional, whose Chris Carrabba has become a close friend of Duritz’s in New York, where they both live. In May, Duritz and his girlfriend, filmmaker Zoe Mintz, went to see Taylor Swift’s Eras tour at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium with Carrabba and his wife.

Duritz’s verdict? “I was floored,” he said.

You sound surprised. Chris knows her really well, and I was a big fan when she started, but I hadn’t listened to her for about 10 years. My girlfriend is obsessed and she got us tickets and she made me a playlist — I couldn’t believe how good the “Folklore” and “Evermore” stuff was. A lot of big shows don’t interest me because it just seems like it’s people plus dancers plus whatever. But this was a work of art — like some combination of Broadway show and Universal theme ride.

I noticed at the Troubadour that you had a music stand with a binder on it. I assume it had song lyrics, but you never once looked at it. I’ve always had a binder with lyrics sitting at the back of the stage under the piano — just there if I need to look for something. Of course, it’s essentially useless because if I do need to find a lyric, I’m not gonna be able to get under the piano, flip through the binder and find it in time. But after COVID — I mean, two years was the longest I’d gone without playing a gig since I was a kid. And when we got into rehearsals for that tour, I was like, “F— hell, I got a lot of lyrics.” You know, “Palisades Park,” that’s like 10 minutes long. I’m like, “How did I write all this s—? Why did I write all this s—?” So I was just nervous that I wasn’t gonna remember stuff after those two years.

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Last night you let the audience take over for the chorus of “Mr. Jones.” What are you thinking in those moments? There’s something so galvanizing about an audience singing your song. But “Mr. Jones” — that’s a really high note. I often let the first one go to the audience, but there’s a part of me that thinks: I’m 59 now. They probably think I can’t hit that note anymore. I’m gonna sing the rest of ’em myself . But last night I had no voice — I’m just getting over a chest infection. I knew I wasn’t gonna hit it.

So the haters were right. In this case, absolutely.

I went back and read some old Counting Crows reviews in The Times. There’s one of a gig you played in Irvine in 1997 that says, “Duritz is one of the few who can make Jackson Browne and Morrissey seem cheery by comparison.” I’m assuming that wasn’t a great review.

It was not. But does that description square with how you thought of yourself at that time? Well, I had a pretty severe mental illness that I wasn’t talking about publicly back then. I spent a lot of time depressed, and clearly the writer got that. But it’s a weird thing as an artist to have your life judged solely by people who don’t know you — and with no sympathy, only ridicule. I got myself locked up at the UCLA Medical Center for a little bit [in 2001] because I was having some troubles and just needed to settle things down because I didn’t feel safe. And the day I checked in, Mariah Carey checked out, and I remember the media circus that went on with her and how people made fun of her. That stuck in my head.

How you feeling these days? Mental illness isn’t like breaking your leg. It’s closer to a handicap than it is to an injury. But at least if you realize what it is, you can spot it when it’s going on. You can go, OK, I’m not crazy — my mind just does this when this happens. And you don’t feel like you’re losing touch with reality. I started to feel safe talking about it around 2008, when we released “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings,” because I didn’t feel like I was circling the drain anymore. But I’m not a spokesperson for s—. I don’t really feel the responsibility to be everyone’s flag-bearer for mental illness.

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You worked at the Viper Room when you moved to L.A. Why was a well-known rock star tending bar? When I got home to North Berkeley from the end of the “August” touring — this is like January of ’95 — that first week was kind of a nightmare. There were kids literally camped out on my lawn. I knew [Viper Room owners] Sal [Jenco] and Johnny [Depp], and I got a phone call from them where they started to invite me to something. Then they’re like, “Whoa, what’s wrong?” I explained what was going on and they put me on hold. I’m sure I’ve fictionalized this somewhat, but in my memory they came back five minutes later and said, “OK, you have a reservation on the 7 o’clock flight from Oakland to Burbank. Someone will pick you up at the airport, and we got you a room at the Bel Age. It’s Kate Moss’ 21st birthday — the Viper Room is closed for the night and we’re having a party. You gotta get out of Berkeley.” So I did, and I kind of never went home again. Stayed at the Bel Age for a while, then got a bungalow at the Sunset Marquis. Eventually Shannon, one of the bartenders, found me this house to rent. I’d go to the Viper every night and hang out. They were the only people I knew, really. At some point, Shannon had to go to the bathroom or something and she’s like, “Can you handle this?”

Did you know how to make drinks? I learned.

Surely people knew who you were. Which is why it was all the better to be on the other side of the bar. I’m kind of shy, and it gave me something to do. People would come and talk to me and I didn’t have to be wandering around by myself in a crowd. I met girls and I met Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs and Tom Petty and the Hughes Brothers. Everyone that was doing something interesting in L.A. was there.

Yet you left L.A. in the early 2000s for New York. I came here from the Bay Area because the struggling artist’s town that I came from wasn’t happy with my success. And L.A. is a working artist’s town. I felt like somebody normal when I got here. But it kind of changed when reality TV came in. There was a culture of famous-for-being-famous that got really tiresome to me. I went to New York and just found myself having more interesting conversations. Mary-Louise Parker is one of my best friends since we were young, and she and Billy Crudup were together then. One night Billy and I went to see Noël Coward’s “Private Lives.” Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan were in it. And after the show, we went backstage and had drinks in Alan’s dressing room, then we all went out to dinner and Rosemary Harris came by the table at one point. It was this incredible experience with these older British actors who were really smart and cool, and I just thought, “If I moved to New York, I could have conversations like this.”

Whereas here you could hang out with the cast of “Laguna Beach.” Or, like, “That ’70s Show.” Who are actually really nice people. Well, the ones that aren’t in jail.

Counting Crows’ first few albums came out on David Geffen’s label. Ever meet him? Yeah, sure — he was great. After the band blew up, I was summoned out to his house. Got in the car, drove out to PCH, count up to 20,000 or 30,000 or whatever the address was. I ring the doorbell on this wall and eventually this butler guy opens the door: “Oh, Mr. Duritz, please come in.” All at once I see the bright greens of the lawn and the blue of the ocean, and there’s Geffen standing at the end of this long pathway. He greets me and we sit on this patio off to the side of the house and they bring lunch to us, which is like a seared tuna salad. I remember this so vividly because each vegetable in the salad was like the greatest vegetable that had ever been. I’m thinking, “Does he have specialized farming servants who pick each individual tomato?” Just an unreal explosion of salad-ness.

What’d you talk about? All kinds of stuff. He told me about leaving New York to drive up to Woodstock with Joni [Mitchell], then realizing the traffic was too much but she’s gonna write a song anyways. He told me about working with Jackson [Browne] early on. You know what really struck me? This is a guy who’s done a lot of great s— in his career. But in his mind the greatest thing he ever did was the Eagles. I like the Eagles, but I wouldn’t put them at the top. I’m a Flying Burrito Brothers guy, a Gram Parsons guy. But the Eagles sold a gazillion albums and made more money than all the other acts put together. And that was his greatest accomplishment because for him it’s not just a music thing but a business thing. It was his idea: “You guys aren’t gonna make it on your own — you should make a band together.” It’s like deciding you should do personal computers and starting Apple.

You were close with Bob Saget , who died last year. What was the essence of your friendship? I met Bob because my goddaughter’s godmother [Lori Loughlin] was on “Full House.” They’d all come to the shows early on. Everyone who knew Bob thought they were Bob’s best friend. He made you feel that way when you were with him, like you were the most important person in the world. It’s weird: I’ve had people in my life die before, but I’m never gonna get over this one. I’ll be in the middle of something and I’ll just wanna talk to him and realize I’m not going to. It’s kind of devastating.

You’ve got other friends in comedy. Ever try stand - up? I could never do it. It’s the most death-defying performance art there is. I’m in awe at the speed at which those guys’ minds work. I’m a smart guy, but I got nothing on that.

At the show last night you had a Badfinger T-shirt on. Now you’re wearing a Sunflower Bean shirt. How much thought do you put into your choice of band shirt? Last night I was going between a bright-red Big Star shirt, the Badfinger one and a Bowie shirt with the art from “Space Oddity.” I went with what looked good with my pink shoes.

Do you have a ton of band shirts? I don’t have anything else. My biggest bummer about getting on the plane to come here was that my girlfriend bought me a Taylor Swift “Midnights” shirt that just was a little too tight, so I didn’t bring it. I gotta lose a little more weight before I can wear it.

It’s good to have a goal. It’s literally what I’m working towards: to wear the Tay-Tay shirt.

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Adam Duritz

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About adam duritz.

For more than two decades, the GRAMMY and Academy Award-nominated rock band Counting Crows have enchanted listeners worldwide with their intensely soulful and intricate take on timeless rock & roll. Exploding onto the music scene in 1993 with their multi-platinum breakout album, August and Everything After, the band has gone on to release seven studio albums, selling more than 20 million records worldwide, and is revered as one of the world’s most pre-eminent live touring rock bands. 

In October 1996, the band's double-platinum sophomore studio album, Recovering the Satellites , debuted at number one and further solidified their growing reputation as one of the leading American alternative rock bands in the world. A follow up to their early success; Counting Crows went on to release This Desert Life  (1999), Hard Candy  (2002), Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings (2008), Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did on Our Summer Vacation) (2012), Echoes of the Outlaw Roadshow (2013),and Somewhere Under Wonderland (2014.)  In 2004, Counting Crows recorded the chart-topping “Accidentally in Love” for the animated motion picture Shrek 2. The instant success of the track earned them an Academy Award nomination for “Best Original Song” at the 2005 Academy Awards, a Golden Globe nomination for “Best Original Song” and a GRAMMY Award nomination for “Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.” 

In September 2014, Counting Crows released their critically acclaimed seventh studio album, Somewhere Under Wonderland , which debuted at No. 10 on the charts and was heralded by The Daily Telegraph as “… the best collection of songs since their debut.” The album consisted of nine sprawling tracks around rich sonic tapestries, which yielded some of the most grandiose yet intimate songs Counting Crows had recorded to date. 2018 marked 25 years since the band's inception and sent Adam Duritz, Jim Bogios, David Bryson, Charlie Gillingham, David Immergluck, Millard Powers, and Dan Vickrey back on the road for the “25 YEARS AND COUNTING” tour. In 2021, Counting Crows ranked #8 on Billboards’ “Greatest of All Time: Adult Alternative Artists” 25th anniversary chart. 

After seven years, Adam Duritz and Counting Crows released Butter Miracle: Suite One in May 2021 to rave reviews. The band also kicked off their first tour since 2018 “The Butter Miracle Tour” in 2021, with sell-out performances across North America and Europe. “The Butter Miracle Tour,” will continue in the Spring of 2023 with dates set in Australia and New Zealand.

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Matchbox 20’s Rob Thomas & Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz Reflect on Each Others’ Biggest Hits and Best Qualities

On July 12, Matchbox 20 and Counting Crows will launch a co-headlining tour, A Brief History of Everything. Ahead of the joint trek, the frontmen reflect on each other's most memorable hits.

By Zack Ruskin

Zack Ruskin

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Rob Thomas and Adam Duritz go way back (Thomas used to get Duritz comparisons when he was cutting his teeth).

On July 12, their respective bands, Matchbox 20 and Counting Crows , will launch a co-headlining tour, A Brief History of Everything. Ahead of the joint trek, the frontmen reflect on each other’s most memorable hits.

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Counting crows.

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ROB THOMAS ON COUNTING CROWS:

“Adam is best when he’s being wistful, and the song is vulnerable.”  — Thomas

“Mr. Jones,” 1994 “Right after [that song came out], they played at our local place [in Orlando]. We hung out with them after the show. I remember giving Adam our band’s demo. I don’t think he listened to it, but he received it very nicely.”

“Accidentally in Love,” 2004 “It’s not an easy thing to do, to write a cool song for an animated film [2004’s  Shrek 2 ]. When you’re doing something like that, there’s a kind of schlock to it. But if that song had not been in that movie, it would’ve just been considered this really great, happy love song.”

“If I Could Give All My Love” -Or- “Richard Manuel is Dead,” 2002 “I think that Adam is really best when he’s being kind of wistful. It fits his voice too. There’s a longing in his voice. I’ve always really appreciated him when he’s in that place where he sounds vulnerable and the song is vulnerable.”

“Sullivan Street,” 1993 “I feel like whenever we were on the road with them, they would have certain nights where they would open with ‘Sullivan Street,’ and certain nights where they didn’t. I loved it so much that no matter where I was in the building, if I heard them opening with ‘Sullivan Street,’ I would come running out, just so I could catch it live.”

“Palisades Park,” 2014 “[It’s] a song that should get a lot more love. It’s like something Springsteen would’ve done during his Darkness at the Edge of Town period. If there’s a moment where Adam could be Springsteen, it’s definitely ‘Palisades Park.’”

ADAM DURITZ ON MATCHBOX 20 :

“Rob’s good at capturing minutiae in lyrics, things that are offhand.”  — Duritz

“3AM,” 1997 “When Rob was [touring] solo, he’d play ‘3AM,’ and I got so knocked out. It’s a heartbreaking song, and he was playing it in this slowed-down, emotional way. It erased the studio version in my mind.”

“Push,” 1997 “I always loved that song because it was complicated. You’re taking the role of someone dominating another person, who’s not necessarily a sympathetic character. It’s hard to pull that off.”

“Unwell,” 2003 “I’ve dealt with mental illness in my life. ‘Unwell’ always resonated with me because of that. The ‘all day staring at the ceiling’ part of it [speaks to] spending a lot of time by yourself — especially because we tour so much.”

“Long Day,”1996 “’Long Day’ is one of my favorites of all of their songs. I just love the toughness of it. The guitars are so heavy. I love the drive of it. They’re willing to let the guitar punch through on that song. It almost pummels you.”

“If You’re Gone” (2000) “It’s just such a brilliant piece of writing to me. He’s really good at capturing minutiae in his lyrics, just things that are off-hand. More than big statements about how things are, sometimes the tiniest little statements about what’s on the wall in a room or the way someone stumbles over their words when they’re trying to tell you something — those things are such important parts of songwriting. I think he’s really good at that stuff.”

This article originally appeared in the July 1 issue of Billboard.

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'That is magic': Counting Crows' Adam Duritz talks about writing latest album, new tour

Adam Duritz was visiting a friend's farm in the west of England when he got the sudden urge to play piano.

"I hadn't written in a long time," he recalls. "So I rented a keyboard. A friend of mine drove it down from London, and I started playing a little bit. A couple days later, I wrote the song 'The Tall Grass.'"

The next day, he was messing with "The Tall Grass" just to see if it was really done when he started experimenting with singing the final lyrics over different chords.

That's when he found himself singing a line that wasn't in the song.

"Bobby was a kid from 'round the town."

At first, he thought, "Well, maybe it's a longer song," like a "Palisades Park," the eight-minute epic that opened what was then the latest Counting Crows release, 2014's "Somewhere Under Wonderland."

It wasn't long before he realized that the bit about the kid from 'round the town wasn't part of "The Tall Grass" at all. It was the first line of a new song.

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Duritz began to see a bigger picture for the album

"But I couldn't help thinking how cool it sounded flowing right out of 'The Tall Grass,'" Duritz says.

"I was just like, 'That is magic .' I thought, 'What if I wrote a bunch of songs where the ending of one is the beginning of the next and they flow like one long song?' And immediately, I was just feverishly excited about that idea."

That's how Duritz came to write the aptly titled "Butter Miracle Suite One" in which the songs do flow into each other like the second side of "Abbey Road" or the suite that end Bruce Springsteen's "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle."

Counting Crows' tour starts Aug. 7 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The band is scheduled to play Phoenix's Arizona Federal Theatre on Sept. 12.

The first two songs of "Butter Miracle Suite One" were written on that English farm in August 2019. Back on the farm two months later, he wrote what he believed to be the next two movements in his suite, "Angel of 14th Street" and "Monday School." 

But he was certain "Monday School" reminded him of something else.

"I kept feeling it was something I had accidentally stolen," he recalls.

He asked his bandmates if the song reminded them of anything and they all said it didn't.

"I'm like, 'Are you sure? Does it sound like something by Elvis Costello?'"

Suitably convinced he hadn't accidentally stolen "Monday School," he sent the four songs off to their producer, Brian Deck, who loved the idea of the suite.

So Duritz asked, "What about 'Monday School?'"

Deck said he really liked that song and found it very catchy.

Duritz asked "Is it reminding you of anything? Like, I don't know, Elvis Costello?"

Deck replied "Oh, yeah, it's 'Miracle Man'," referring to the second song on Costello's iconic debut, "My Aim is True."

So Duritz tossed that song and wrote what he believes to be a better song to take its place and bring the suite a climactic finish, "Bobby and the Rat-Kings."

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'Butter Miracle Suite One' is not a concept record

There are two things Duritz says he's always envied in other performers. One is the ability to get an entire audience to sing along to every word. 

"I've always wished I wrote things that were more like that," he says. "The other thing is I want to see people in the audience air-guitaring sometimes. But I don't write things that are that way either."

"Bobby and the Rat-Kings" is the sound of Duritz trying to do both those things at once coming out of the ending of "Angel of 14th Street," which has a huge ending.

"So I wanted to crash down into something with big, Who-like power chords," Duritz recalls.

"But my attempt to make power chords sound like the Who ends up sounding like something off 'The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle' in some ways. It does not sound like a Who song. But those power chords are killing it, I have to say."

Despite the songs on "Butter Miracle" all flowing like a suite, it's not a concept record. 

"There's not really an attempt to have a plotline that runs through them," Duritz says. "I was more trying to visit my various impressions and feelings about different things."

There is, however, one recurring character named Bobby who appears in "Elevator Boots" and "Bobby & the Rat-Kings," two songs that involve a character's relationship with music.

But as Duritz says, they look at that relationship from two distinct perspectives. 

"Elevator Boots" is sung from the perspective of a traveling musician for whom people, places and towns are very temporary, fading in and out, with music as the only constant in his life. 

In "Bobby & the Rat-Kings," that same fictional band is a device with which to touch on how important Duritz feels it's been to have these bands that just meant everything to him as emotional touchstones providing the soundtrack to key moments in his life.

It makes sense that music would emerge as a recurring theme.

As Duritz says, "The most important thing in my life has been music, obviously — starting as a fan, an obsessive music geek as a kid, and then at a certain point, being someone who makes it and writes it."

'I composed it to work a certain way'

Duritz has felt pretty good about every record Counting Crows have ever made, from "August and Everything After," the multiplatinum debut that spawned the breakthrough singles "Mr. Jones," "Round Here" and "Rain King," to "Somewhere Under Wonderland."

By that point in the process, Duritz says, "they're always right where I want them to be."

But this time, Duritz says he felt especially ecstatic.

"I didn't really know if it was gonna work until we finished it, mixed the last song and clipped them together," Duritz says. 

"I composed it to work a certain way. I conceived it to work a certain way. We played it with that in mind. But I didn't really know until I heard it at the end, because there was no way to hear it ahead of time and see whether it really worked."

Hearing the assembled pieces play out as a single piece of music, Duritz says, "may have been the most satisfying moment in my career."

Now that "Butter Miracle Suite One" is out there and he's heading out like Bobby & the Rat-Kings to promote it, Duritz says the plan is to perform the suite in its entirety, assuming all goes well at rehearsals before the tour launches.

"One of the exciting things is usually at this point, you don't have any new surprises left for you as a musician," Duritz says. 

"But we still have this unexplored experience ahead of us, of playing these songs as a whole. We didn't record them by playing them as 18 minutes straight. We would record each song and go into the first verse of the next song. Then we'd stop. Because we wanted to make sure the transitions were there. But we didn't play it all together."

No sooner had they finished piecing it together in the studio than someone asked him "Do you think you'll do another one?"

As Duritz recalls that conversation, "I thought … 'Yeah!'"

In fact, he spent another month this summer on that same farm in the west of England working on another four-song suite. 

"I don't quite have it all figured out," he says. "And they're not finished. They're not tightened up. But they are the germ of another suite."

So what exactly is a butter miracle?

"Oh, I'm not gonna tell you," Duritz replies, with a laugh. 

"I really like the surreal nature of that title. It has a reason for being that title. But if I tell everybody what it is, it's still kind of cool, but it sort of limits it. It gives it all this grounding and takes it out of how bizarrely nonsensical it is. And I just like it's sort of surreal nonsensical-ness."

Guitarist David Bryson, with whom Duritz founded Counting Crows in 1991, asked that same question.

"I'm like, 'OK, I will tell you, but you have to promise me never to tell anybody.'"

So his bandmates know the story now. But that's it. 

"I have kept it a pretty good secret," Duritz says, "if just for that reason, because I ended up loving the title so much more the more surreal it was."

Counting Crows

When: 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 12. 

Where: Arizona Federal Theatre, 400 W. Washington St., Phoenix.

Admission: $48.50 and up. 

Details: 800-745-300,  ticketmaster.com .

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley .

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

Santana and Counting Crows: Oneness Tour 2024

Counting crows, concert information.

GRAMMY-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist Carlos Santana alongside GRAMMY and Academy Award-nominated rock band Counting Crows have announced they will hit the road together for the Oneness Tour this summer. Santana will perform high-energy, passion-filled songs from their fifty-year career, including fan favorites from Woodstock to Supernatural, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this summer and will be highlighted all tour. Following three successful tours across the world, the Counting Crows return to the road with Santana and promises fans an unforgettable show filled with their timeless hits, including music off their most recent project Butter Miracle, Suite One.

Together, the two iconic bands will perform 29 shows across North America including a stop in Cincinnati, Ohio at Riverbend Music Center on Friday, June 28.

The tour will also offer a variety of different VIP packages and experiences for fans to take their concert experience to the next level. Packages vary but include premium tickets, commemorative ticket, exclusive merchandise item & collectible laminate. For more information, visit vipnation.com.

Delivered with a level of passion and soul equal to the legendary sonic charge of his guitar, the sound of Carlos Santana is one of the world's best-known musical signatures. For more than five decades—from Santana's earliest days as a groundbreaking Afro-Latin-blues-rock fusion outfit in San Francisco—Carlos has been the visionary force behind artistry that transcends musical genres and generational, cultural, and geographical boundaries. Most recently, CARLOS, the feature documentary directed by Rudy Valdez and produced by Imagine Documentaries and Sony Music Entertainment celebrating the music icon’s life and career, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and was released worldwide.

Counting Crows have enchanted listeners worldwide for more than two decades with their intensely soulful and intricate take on timeless rock & roll. Exploding onto the music scene in 1993 with their multi-platinum breakout album, August and Everything After, the band has gone on to release seven studio albums, selling more than 20 million records worldwide, and is revered as one of the world's most pre-eminent live touring rock bands.

About Carlos Santana:

For more than five decades - from Santana’s earliest days as a groundbreaking Afro-Latin-blues-rock fusion outfit in San Francisco - Carlos Santana has been the visionary force behind artistry that transcends musical genres and generational, cultural, and geographical boundaries. To date, Santana has won ten GRAMMY Awards and three Latin GRAMMY Awards, with a record-tying nine GRAMMY Awards for a single project for 1999’s Supernatural (including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for “Smooth”). He has received the Billboard Century Award (1996), was ushered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1998), received the Billboard Latin Music Awards’ Lifetime Achievement honor (2009), and was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors Award (2013). Among many other distinctions, Carlos Santana has been cited by Rolling Stone as #11 on their list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time;” and has joined the Rolling Stones as one of only two bands to have an album reach the Top 10 in every decade since the 1960s. In 2018, he released his first MasterClass, and celebrated two epic milestones the 50th anniversary of his legendary performance at Woodstock, and the 50th anniversary of his masterpiece Abraxas . This year he celebrates the 25th anniversary of his groundbreaking album Supernatural. Santana’s most recent release, “Let The Guitar Play” (Feat. Darryl “DMC” McDaniels) , follows on the heels of his powerful, energy-infused Blessings and Miracles (2021) that features collaborations with Rob Thomas, Chris Stapleton, Steve Winwood, and many others. The epic feature documentary CARLOS , produced by Sony Music Entertainment and Imagine Documentaries, is a celebration of Carlos Santana’s life and career. It had its World Premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and is now available to stream worldwide. Santana has been in residency in Las Vegas for over 15 years and will continue to perform at House of Blues Las Vegas where he recently celebrated his 10th anniversary in the intimate venue. For more information, please visit: www.santana.com

About Counting Crows:

For more than two decades, the GRAMMY and Academy Award-nominated rock band Counting Crows have enchanted listeners worldwide with their intensely soulful and intricate take on timeless rock & roll. Exploding onto the music scene in 1993 with their multi-platinum breakout album, August and Everything After, the band has gone on to release seven studio albums, selling more than 20 million records worldwide, and is revered as one of the world’s most pre-eminent live touring rock bands.

In October 1996, the band's double-platinum sophomore studio album, Recovering the Satellites , debuted at number one and further solidified their growing reputation as one of the leading American alternative rock bands in the world. A follow-up to their early success, Counting Crows went on to release This Desert Life (1999), Hard Candy (2002), Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings (2008), Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did on Our Summer Vacation) (2012), Echoes of the Outlaw Roadshow (2013) and Somewhere Under Wonderland (2014.) In 2004, Counting Crows recorded the chart-topping “Accidentally in Love” for the animated motion picture Shrek 2. The instant success of the track earned them an Academy Award nomination for “Best Original Song” at the 2005 Academy Awards, a Golden Globe nomination for “Best Original Song” and a GRAMMY Award nomination for “Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.”

In September 2014, Counting Crows released their critically acclaimed seventh studio album, Somewhere Under Wonderland , which debuted at No. 10 on the charts and was heralded by The Daily Telegraph as “… the best collection of songs since their debut.” The album consisted of nine sprawling tracks around rich sonic tapestries, which yielded some of the most grandiose yet intimate songs Counting Crows had recorded to date. 2018 marked 25 years since the band's inception and sent Adam Duritz, Jim Bogios, David Bryson, Charlie Gillingham, David Immergluck, Millard Powers, and Dan Vickrey back on the road for the “25 YEARS AND COUNTING” tour. In 2021, Counting Crows ranked #8 on Billboard’s “Greatest of All Time: Adult Alternative Artists” 25th-anniversary chart.

After seven years, Adam Duritz and Counting Crows released Butter Miracle: Suite One in May 2021 to rave reviews. The band also kicked off their first tour since 2018, “The Butter Miracle Tour,” from 2021 through 2023, with sell-out performances across North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Ticket Information

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While supplies last. Ticket prices include parking and are subject to price increase based on demand and applicable Ticketmaster fees. All events are rain or shine. Dates, times and artists subject to change without notice. 4-Pack Special Offer not valid day of show. Limit 8 tickets per person.

Riverbend Music Center does not endorse using any secondary ticketing sources and cannot resolve any issues involving them . Please note that Artist VIP packages do not include access to venue amenities including VIP Parking, The First Star Club & Restaurant, and VIP Patio.

All guests entering the venue are subject to a metal-detector screening, visual inspection, and bag inspection conducted by Riverbend Music Center/PNC Pavilion security personnel. The purpose of the inspection is to detect prohibited items and is for the safety of our guests and our staff.

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Counting Crows Finally Record Title Track to ‘August and Everything After’

By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

Two months ago, shortly after the conclusion of their European tour, Counting Crows entered London’s AIR studios and recorded “August and Everything After” with the London Studio Orchestra. That doesn’t mean they played their 1993 debut LP of the same name, but rather an outtake from the sessions that gave the album its title. The missing title track has taken on near-mythic status amongst Counting Crows fans over the past quarter century, but frontman Adam Duritz never truly finished the song until just a few months ago when Amazon Music approached him about teaming up with an orchestra. You can hear the completed track right below.

“August and Everything After” was one of many lyric ideas in the notebook of Adam Duritz back when the band first entered the studio in early 1993, but his efforts to record the nine-minute song never went anywhere. “It was just me on the piano, which was probably a bad arrangement for it,” says Duritz. “There were holes in the lyrics and that really weighed it down. The whole thing was just lumbering. We had to toss it.”

The title, however, stuck around his mind and became the name of the album. “I was born in August,” says Duritz. “The record was about everything that happened after that. I loved the title more than I liked the song, quite honestly. But we did include some of my handwritten lyrics to it on the cover since I didn’t want to include anything that we were actually using.”

The song remained little more than a rumor among Counting Crows fans until a random show at San Francisco’s Warfield in December of 2003 when the band attempted to play it live. Duritz felt the result was “kind of meh,” but it became a popular bootleg in the fan community. Two years later, when they played the Walt Disney Concert Hall with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, they decided to give it another go. By that point, he’d actually lost the original cassette of the demo and had to ask fans online to send him an MP3 so he could decipher the lyrics.

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That seemed to be the end of the “August and Everything After” saga since it dropped out of their live repertoire for the next 13 years, but in late 2018 Amazon Music approached them about recording “A Long December” with a symphony as an Amazon Music exclusive for the month of December. That idea didn’t appeal to Duritz (“that song wouldn’t benefit from an orchestral arrangement”), so he countered with the idea of finally getting a proper rendition of “August and Everything After” on tape. His only condition was that composer Vince Mendoza — who they worked with at the 2005 Hollywood Bowl show — oversee the session.

“I loved Vince’s arrangement of the song,” says Duritz, who rewrote about a third of the lyrics before the session. “He conceived of this kind of bizarre instrumentation of our band band with just bass, drums and pedal steel. Then there’s a 22-piece string section and one woodwind, a big oboe. It all fit together perfectly. We played live and got it in just five or so takes.”

The session came after a long year of live work for Counting Crows, who haven’t taken a break from the road since 2011. This year, however, they’re finally staying home. No shows are planned beyond a handful of festivals and other special gigs. Duritz is using the free time to write material for the follow-up to the band’s 2014 LP Somewhere Under Wonderland . “Capitol did a magnificent job promoting that record and it still barely did a blip,” he says. “Making an impact on the culture takes more these days than just sending an album out to radio and putting videos on YouTube.”

He’s not sure how he wants to get out the next album, but he knows it’s time for a change. “We need to branch out,” he says. “It’ll be interesting to see how this partnership with Amazon goes. If it goes well, maybe they’ll be interested. I want to look into as many options as I can.”

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Counting Crows' Adam Duritz: despair, hope, and hunting rabbits

Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz on mental illness, dairy produce, romance, the band’s new EP Butter Miracle, Suite One, and shaving off his dreads

On Counting Crows’ 1993 album August And Everything After , band leader Adam Duritz announced his quietly devastating songcraft, sketching broken lives in small towns and hollow dreams of fame with an eloquence worthy of Bruce Springsteen . 

True to the sentiment of breakthrough hit Mr. Jones , stardom hasn’t always suited the singer, who is open about his struggles with mental illness. But Duritz says this year’s Butter Miracle, Suite One , the band's four-song EP, which has shades of The Band and Mott The Hoople , is the product of the happiest period of his life.

Apparently you wrote these songs on a friend’s farm in the West Country  

Yeah. I went over there in August of 2019, planned to stay a couple of months. Shaved my head the day I got there, totally on a whim. Sometimes my girlfriend was there as well, but a lot of the time it was just me and two dogs. I’d go out and feed the chickens, get the eggs in the morning. We’d hunt rabbits sometimes. It’s weird, because I’ve always been such a city kid, but I like the solitude sometimes. One day I rented a piano from London and just started writing The Tall Grass . 

Why did you shave your head?  

I guess I’d been thinking about shaving my dreads for a while. I was just washing my face, and I grabbed the clippers. Then I went and shocked the shit out of my girlfriend. I haven’t had a haircut in thirty years. Today I’ve got a bit of a Wolverine thing happening. 

What subjects did you write about?  

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It’s still a lot of the same themes, like living with the wreckage of your childhood, and the things that have been difficult for me in my life. I was also delving into the things that comforted me in all the years when things were really hard. And that was music. 

Elevator Boots looks at it from the perspective of someone in a band, the joy and desperation of that life. And then Bobby And The Rat-Kings looks at it as a fan, and how much music defined my life. These songs are about despair, and they’re about hope.

You sounded quite troubled when we last spoke, in 2007

Oh, I was a wreck. When we were in the middle of [2008 album] Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings , I thought that was the end for me. I really felt like I was losing my mind. Mental illness is a hard thing to deal with. Sometimes it feels like you’ve got a grip on it, and sometimes it feels like you’re losing your grip. 

You’re happy in your personal life now. Did you worry that love would ruin your songwriting? 

Not really. When I’ve been in romances, I’ve often written a lot of my best stuff. The difference with this [relationship] is that it’s lasted. Truthfully, for most of my life I just didn’t think being happy was particularly important. I felt like making a mark in the world, making art, leaving something behind. That was all that mattered, and happiness was overrated. Which is maybe a dumb and ignorant young person’s thought. 

Why ‘Butter Miracle’?  

It was just a surreal little title that was absolutely correct for this record. The sleeve art is of a woman carrying a very threatening butter knife, too.

Butter Miracle, Suite One is out now via BMG

Henry Yates has been a freelance journalist since 2002 and written about music for titles including The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Classic Rock, Guitarist, Total Guitar and Metal Hammer . He is the author of Walter Trout's official biography, Rescued From Reality , a music pundit on Times Radio and BBC TV, and an interviewer who has spoken to Brian May, Jimmy Page, Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie Wood, Dave Grohl, Marilyn Manson, Kiefer Sutherland and many more. 

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10 Albums Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz Thinks Every Music Fan Should Own

Duritz also talks Counting Crows’ new project Butter Miracle Suite One

Crate Digging is a recurring feature in which we take a deep dive into a genre and turn up several albums all music fans should know about. In this special edition, Adam Duritz of Counting Crows shares his picks. Get tickets to Counting Crows’ upcoming tour dates here .

Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz spends much of his time devouring new music. “There’s this record store in London that Immer [Counting Crows guitarist David Immerglück] and I would visit every time we were on tour in England,” he recalls to Consequence over Zoom. “We would spend one to two full days in that store. They would play us stuff we had never heard and we would buy everything.”

The UK holds a special place in Duritz’s heart, as both an obsessive music fan and a bandleader. In fact, Counting Crows’ new project Butter Miracle Suite One , out today (May 21st), found its birthplace across the pond. “A lot of the time it was just me, alone on my friend’s farm, with his dogs, and a small piano I had driven down from London,” Duritz says.

Butter Miracle Suite One , the band’s first release since 2014, is a four-track, nineteen-minute whirlwind through the life of a music fan called Bobby and his band The Rat Kings. From the sparse waltzing chords of “Tall Grass” to the very last bars of “Bobby and the Rat Kings,” it’s an emotional ride, filled with heartfelt honesty. The album depicts amusing snippets of a life on the road, and proves that sometimes, rock ‘n’ roll is the only thing holding you up.

“Maybe there’s a little of Bobby in me,” Duritz explains. “With ‘Tall Grass,’ it starts very simply, and it builds into something more melodic. There’s this line, ‘I don’t know why. I don’t know why.’ Then I changed chords and started singing, ‘Bobby was a kid from around the town,’ and I thought, ‘Well, hang on, that’s a different song,’ and it just flowed so well.”

Indeed, the songs offer glimpses of a world sometimes glamorous but often misunderstood by many. As a listener, immersing yourself in these five tales of someone reaching for a dream — and making it happen — feels like picking up a novella and devouring the well-worn pages that others have read before you. “I thought, ‘What if I wrote a suite of songs, so that the end of one was the beginning of next?’, and I was really excited about it,” Duritz says.

Below, Duritz takes Consequence through the records that he feels everyone should own. Naturally, Duritz recommends everyone pick up a copy of Butter Miracle Suite One ; otherwise, here are 10 records that have excited and influenced him over the years.

Big Star — Number 1 Record (1972)

“Nothing affected me as much as Big Star. It was only a few years after The Beatles. They sound like this mix of The Beatles and Cheap Trick and this thing that we don’t know exists yet because you’re not going to hear it until college radio in the ‘80s, when people start singing these songs with a vulnerability and realness that is just very different from the way they sang before then, except that Big Star was doing it before then. There is no Replacements, there is no REM, none of those bands exist without Big Star. They were massively influential and they changed me as well. This was a very important record, not when it came out but in many years that followed. It is what my life is all about. Records have had an impact in ways that other things haven’t.”

Gang of Youths — Go Farther in Lightness (2017)

“It flipped me out how good this record was. David Le’aupepe, the lead singer and I, started corresponding and I went to see the show. It’s one of the best shows I’ve seen in a decade — it transported me. After the show we went backstage and really hit it off. Dave is one of my closest friends now, along with Chris Carrabba [of Dashboard Confessional] and our friends Seán Barna and Matt Sucich. We sing on each other’s records; I sang all over the new Gang of Youths record, and then they scrapped it. I’m going to have to go back after the pandemic and sing more. I’m happy to be in the studio with those guys, I think they’re the best band on the planet right now. Their live show, the song-writing, the passionate performances, the power of that live show, I haven’t seen anything like that since some of my early Springsteen shows. There is an emotionality and a punk sensibility.”

The Negro Problem — Joys and Concerns (1999)

“This is the kind of record The Beatles would have made if they were current in 1995. There’s strings and horns like you’d see with a band like The Left Bank. Melodies that are impossible to get out of your head. It’s all told from the perspective of this black kid who grew up in L.A. and then went to live in Berlin. It’s a very unique voice. He’s brilliant, maybe one of the best songwriters I’ve ever known. While no one was listening to the records, critics were saying he’s the best songwriter alive and I don’t disagree with them. The records he made as Stu and as The Negro Problem are impossibly good and I’m still obsessed with them. I keep multiple copies of all his records and if friends are over and we’re talking about music, I’ll just give them to them. He’s as much influenced by Sly Stone as Paul McCartney and Burt Bacharach. He’s a musical polymath and he’s got it all in him.”

Seán Barna — Cissy (2018)

“This is amazing glam, it’s somewhere between Bowie and Mott the Hoople, the experience of a young man being gay in America. It really reminds me of The Velvet Underground, of Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie. It really blew me away, it’s a unique perspective. It’s one of the best records of the last five years. Cissy was a huge influence on Butter Miracle . We were about eighty percent done with our record, apart from backing vocals. I sent Dave Drago — who produced both records — the record, and for the next month over the phone and on Zoom, he and I did all the background vocals for this record. Cissy is important. People should hear it. It’s about his life as a gay man but it’s for everyone, it’s about loving people. It paints a world about living in New York at that time that is so fleshed out and powerful. It has a real sense of the time and the place and the people.”

De La Soul — 3 Feet High and Rising (1989)

“It doesn’t matter whether you like hip-hop or not, this record is so melodic it doesn’t matter. It’s the most creative use of sampling, in same way that Van Gough or Monet paint. It’s a patchwork tapestry of a million songs. They were in New York, making music about life in New York. It’s really for everyone. They’re telling you about their life but it doesn’t shut out anybody else. 3 Feet High , when I first got it, I couldn’t take it off. I was planning a trip around Europe and earning money landscaping. For eight hours a day, I did nothing but listen to this cassette, until it wore out and I had to buy another one. It’s like in a Dixieland jazz band, where all the instruments seem to be soloing but it fits together somehow. [This record] made a change in my mind about how you could write and how bands could play — it changed the way I wanted to create music.”

Rickie Lee Jones — Pirates (1981)

“Pirates was huge to me because in the same way Springsteen captured New Jersey, Rickie Lee Jones made these huge soundscapes, she captured Hollywood and the maybe drugged-out and heroin-ed out L.A. of the time, in a way that was truly magical. You can hear it in Palisades Park , how much we picked up from her. You hear in Butter Miracle Suite One , that ambitious melding together of material. I got so much from her; in her band there’s jazz and swing but there’s also incredibly fragility in her vocal, you could hear the cracks in her voice, it taught me so much about singing. I wanted to make records that were worlds that you could get lost in. That’s what you get on Pirates .”

Miles Davis — Kind of Blue (1959)

“ Kind of Blue is the best record anyone’s ever made. He’s bizarre, because most people don’t break new ground in their career, you can be a great artist and never break new ground. He did it six times in his career, completely new movements in music. The band on that record — Cannonball Adderley, Wynton Kelly, Coltrane — it’s incredible. The songs are musical ideas. They never rehearsed them, he just sort of told them the ideas and the chords involved and they started playing. Part of it is the strength of the soloists too, certainly when you’ve got Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and Miles on a record. It’s also about the groove and the rhythm. It is impossibly listenable — so easy to listen to and yet so avant-garde. It is effortlessly and infinitely timeless.”

Dashboard Confessional — A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar (2003)

“This is the album that really brought emo to the world in a lot of ways. They [Dashboard] brought Gil Norton in for that one, who produced Recovering the Satellites for us. I remember thinking, ‘This band worked with Gil, I wonder what it’s like?’ Then being really blown away by his willingness to really put it all out there. Chris Carrabba had been writing acoustically by himself and writing these incredibly emotional and heartfelt songs at a time when I think most of music had moved into a sort of cynical vibe. He brought back earnestness and unapologetically brought back baring yourself. It’s a true and detailed portrait of those nights when you fall in love; those nights when you stay up all through the night with someone out in the world. It’s an amazing work to me and it very powerfully brought back that it was cool to really feel things again. I remember I was watching the band from backstage and it’s like this wall of people singing every word, you can’t even hear the band. It’s life-changing, like music should be.”

The Blue Nile — A Walk Across the Rooftops (1984)

“I didn’t know this at the time, but they were actually hired to create something on a new synthesizer system to show how good it was. They made this whole album that was so good people signed them and they put it out. It was possible to get really tired of synthesizers in the ‘80s, music was changing. There were a lot of cool things about New Wave and synthesizers were really cool but it was possible to use them in a boring way. The Blue Nile Came along and it was like painting cinema on tape. The first song is ‘I Walk Across the Rooftops.’ He paints these portraits of cities at night, which have always affected me. He paints this portrait of Dublin from the sky and it’s so powerful. My thought at the time was, ‘Oh, this is what synthesizers are for this is what they should be used for. This is like an orchestra but it’s three guys.’ People think the album will be cold, because it’s a synthesizer record, but it’s not — it’s warm and moving. It’s like The Beatles without the guitars.”

Margaret Glaspy — Emotions and Math (2016)

“Aside from being a great songwriter and a really unique, great singer, she is an outrageous guitar player. She’s outrageous and incredibly original and daring. She’s as good a guitar player and as original a guitar player as anyone nowadays. She doesn’t play anything like Jack White, but I would very much compare her to Jack White in terms of the originality and the melodicism that is integral. She’s like PJ Harvey mixed with a different kind of Jack White.”

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COUNTING CROWS add new dates to the BUTTER MIRACLE 2023 Australian Tour due to overwhelming demand

Melbourne and sydney shows sell out.

3 January 2023 The Rockpit

Acclaimed rock band   Counting Crows,   headed up by the charismatic Adam Duritz, have today added 2 new dates to their forthcoming Australian tour,   The Butter Miracle Tour 2023 . With the original dates in Melbourne and Sydney now totally sold out, Counting Crows will play a second show at   Melbourne’s Hamer Hall on Thursday, April 6 , with a further show set down for the   Enmore Theatre, Sydney on Tuesday April 11 .

Tickets for these new dates on sale as at Wednesday, December 14 – For complete VIP, tour and ticket information, visit:  livenation.com.au

The Butter Miracle Tour will take in Adelaide at Hindley Street Music Hall on March 30 followed by Palais Theatre Melbourne on April 4, Hamer Hall Melbourne on April 6, and Enmore Theatre Sydney on April 9 and 11. Counting Crows will also play Bluesfest, Perth on April 1 and Bluesfest , Byron Bay on April 8.

This Australian tour follows the release of the band’s latest record  Butter Miracle Suite One,   a four-track, nineteen-minute suite featuring hit single Elevator Boots, available   now .

Counting Crows have enchanted listeners worldwide for more than two decades with their intensely soulful and intricate take on timeless rock & roll. Exploding onto the music scene in 1993 with their multi-platinum breakout album,  August and Everything After , featuring   Mr. Jones; a song that made a huge impression on Australian audiences, the band has gone on to release seven studio albums. Selling more than 20 million records worldwide, and is revered as one of the world’s most pre-eminent live touring rock bands. In 2004, Counting Crows recorded the chart-topping   Accidently in Love   for the animated motion picture Shrek 2. The instant success of the track earned them an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song at the 2005 Academy Awards, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song, and a GRAMMY Award nomination for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.

Over the last 30 years, the masterful song writing from frontman Adam Duritz put the band at No.8 on Billboard Magazine’s 2021 Greatest Of All Time: Adult Alternative 25th Anniversary Chart.

THE BUTTER MIRACLE – AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2023

HINDLEY STREET MUSIC HALL, ADELAIDE – THURSDAY MARCH 30

BLUESFEST, PERTH – SATURDAY APRIL 1

PALAIS THEATRE, MELBOURNE – TUESDAY APRIL 4 – SOLD OUT

HAMER HALL, MELBOURNE – THURSDAY APRIL 6 – NEW SHOW

BLUESFEST, BYRON BAY – SATURDAY APRIL 8

ENMORE THEATRE, SYDNEY – SUNDAY APRIL 9 – SOLD OUT

ENMORE THEATRE, SYDNEY – TUESDAY APRIL 11 – NEW SHOW

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Call it dread head redemption.

Adam Duritz is rocking out without his locks out. Counting Crows’ lead singer is making headlines again after appearing on Australian TV sans his trademark dreadlocks — even though he got rid of them four years ago .

The buzz began after the 58-year-old showed up on Today Extra with the alt-rock group’s guitarist, David Immergluck, to promote their new Butter Miracle Tour , the Daily Mail reported.

“The dreads are gone, but the boys are back for their first national tour in seven years,” announced show co-host Sylvia Jeffries.

She and co-host David Campbell then questioned the bandmates on how it felt to do a comeback tour after a seven-year hiatus from performing Down Under.

Want to see Counting Crows live? Get tickets here.

“Everything back on the road is great,” replied Duritz, who — jarringly — was seen rocking a beard and mustache but no dreads.

Needless to say, viewers were flabbergasted by the vocalist’s uncharacteristically square-haired countenance. Indeed, it marked a cosmetic 180° for Duritz, who famously rocked the untamed mane throughout the 90s, when his band dominated the charts. Formed in 1991, the Crows signed to Geffen records, whereupon they broke into the international scene with the release of the hit single “Mr. Jones” in 1993.

The unlikely heartthrob notoriously dated some of the 90s biggest stars, including Wynona Ryder and Courteney Cox.

Perhaps most infamously, the “Hanginaround” singer also enjoyed a brief fling with Cox’s “Friends” costar Jennifer Aniston in 1995, although he claims the two “never even slept together.”

“She was really nice, really funny, really pretty, those were pretty good requirements for me, and also she liked me,” said Duritz while describing his alleged past “Friends”-ship in 2021. “It didn’t last very long, but she’s a nice girl.”

Duritz rocked the ropey ‘doo up until 2019 when he decided to free himself from “lockdown,” much to the chagrin of many fans . “Oh yeah, I flew to London and shaved my head! Anarchy In The UK indeed motherf- -kers!!!” the rock icon wrote in an Instagram post along with a selfie of himself with a fresh buzzcut.

However, the singer had previously admitted his luscious locks were in fact extensions, later telling Billboard he was “getting tired” of the dreads and had been thinking of sporting a new hairstyle for a while now.

“I’m getting used to it,” he said. “It’s weird because I have accomplished a lot in my life, and every single bit of it was done with those on my head.”

Thankfully, unlike the Biblical Samson, cutting his hair didn’t appear to sap his powers. In the aforementioned interview, Duritz and bandmate Immergluck said they boast a wide demographic of fans who attend their concerts, a phenomenon they attribute to the “Shrek effect.”

Duritz recalled how their 2004 hit “Accidentally In Love” came about when DreamWorks asked Counting Crows to pen a song for “Shrek 2’s” opening scene.

“I went to Amblin [studios] and I sat with the director and one of the producers and they showed me almost all the movie, about seven-eighths of the movie, and a few scenes that are storyboarded,” he described. “And they told me what they were looking for and sent me home with a new DVD of that scene and I worked on it and some of the guys in the band helped out.”

The duo, who have been collaborating for 40 years, hope to extend their appeal with the aforementioned Australian tour, which kicks off in Adelaide on March 30. Later, the Crows will perform stateside in 56 cities for their Banshee Season tour , starting June 13.

And now, their Top 40-friendly sound has a “mane-stream” frontman to match.

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