As Counting Crows were getting set to record the songs for what became their debut album, 1993’s August and Everything After, Robbie Robertson offered some important advice at a time when they really needed it.
“Gary Gersh, our A&R guy, knew Robbie. He took us to meet him before we started making the record,” Adam Duritz tells UCR now. “You know, I was really nervous. We had not been a band for very long when we got signed — only a few months. I was really nervous about us going into a studio and everybody getting intimidated by being in a big recording studio and trying to play perfectly instead of good…and making this really sterile record. When we were talking to Robbie, I told him about my concern, and he said, ‘Well, why don’t you just go make a record in a house? That’s what we did. And then it’s not as intimidating. It’s your studio. It doesn’t have anything to do with anybody else, and everyone can relax.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, man, that’s a great fucking idea.’ That’s what we did for the first four records. We rented these houses and built our own studios.”
The encounter with the Band cofounder led to another incredible moment for the fledgling San Francisco group when they were asked to play at the 1993 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. They performed “Caravan,” honoring Van Morrison, who was being inducted that year. “I think we’re probably the only unknown band to ever play at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [inductions],” Duritz says now. “Robbie was the musical director and Van wasn’t coming. I think somebody on the board suggested Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers or something. Robbie said, ‘You know, there’s this band that’s recording their first record right now in the Hollywood Hills that I know and they would be great for this. We were right in the middle of making that album and we got the call on Sunday night. We were actually home for the weekend, we had gone back up to the Bay Area.”
“The rehearsals were Monday and the show was Tuesday. My dad picked up me and Immer [multi-instrumentalist David Immergluck] and Dave Bryson met us at the airport. We stopped at the Tower Records on the way to the airport and picked up a bunch of Van Morrison records, just so we could figure out what song we wanted to play,” he continues. “We listened to them when we got down there and chose ‘Caravan’ and rehearsed it that night. Rehearsals were the next afternoon. We walked into the rehearsal space and the band was Robbie on guitar, Don Was on bass, Jim Keltner on drums and Benmont Tench of the Heartbreakers on keyboards. They’re standing around the room.”
“When we walk up, we hear people playing ‘Roadhouse Blues.’ It’s the Doors with Eddie Vedder singing lead. Leaning against the wall, when we walk in that room to the rehearsal space, is [Eric] Clapton and Jack Bruce. Ginger Baker is late, which is right on schedule, to me,” he says. “They’re all just standing around the room. Springsteen’s there, because John Fogerty is getting inducted. Sly and the Family Stone were getting inducted by George Clinton. Cream was getting inducted, I mean, I’m probably the first person in my generation to see Cream, because they played that night. It was awesome. Etta James, Ruth Brown, all getting inducted. It was pretty wild and it was a cool, cool crowd to get to hang out with as a guy who’s a complete unknown kid.”
Listen to Counting Crows Perform ‘Caravan’ at the 1993 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions
What are Counting Crows Doing Now?
By the time August and Everything After was released in September of 1993, the band would officially begin a long journey to having their own big records. Though they were able to eventually grab the brass ring in a big way with their hit single “Mr. Jones,” the August album was anything but an overnight success. Constant touring and a pivotal appearance on Saturday Night Live in January 1994, where they performed the track and a shimmering version of “Round Here” from the album, helped August and Everything After find its way onto the Billboard album charts.
By May of that same year, “Mr. Jones” peaked at No. 5 on the singles chart and “Round Here” gave the band their second Top 40 hit as well. They continued to enjoy additional success through the ’90s and into the early part of the ’00s. Singles like their take on Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Accidentally in Love,” from Shrek 2, rounded out their run of radio hits.
In recent years, they teamed up with producer Brian Deck, who began working with the group as they were recording their fifth studio album, 2008’s Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings. He continues to be a part of their creative circle and produced 2021’s Butter Miracle, Suite One, an initial suite of four songs that took shape during the pandemic. As Duritz tells UCR now, it was just a challenge to write in that way, “these songs that flow through each other.” He had no plans to do anything further. But then, naturally, other thoughts began to creep in. “I started thinking, it’s only half of a record.” Having written the suite on a friend’s farm in England, he decided to go back to the same location a year later. Though he’d wrestle to complete a batch of songs he thought was strong enough, he got there in the end.
Now, the original suite has been paired with five additional songs to form Butter Miracle, the Complete Sweets!, a full album which was released in early May. The record features a mix of material that touches on many of the hallmarks of the group’s past work, but it’s arguably “Virginia Through the Rain,” a true Counting Crows song title if there ever was one, that stands as one of the major highlights of the album.
“I was actually on a train traveling down to see my sister. She lives outside of D.C. and it was raining,” he remembers now. “I just started thinking of this thing, you know, I can barely see Virginia through the rain. Wouldn’t that be interesting? Because there’s the fact that that’s a place and a name. I knew a girl named Virginia and I was like, ‘Oh, it’ll be interesting to write a song where it’s about both things, kind of. But the first thing I had was that line, ‘I can barely see Virginia through the rain.’ I went home and started working on it and then I didn’t really finish it, I think, until I got to the farm a while later when I was writing everything else. But I had the idea and maybe the music after that weekend, because I hummed some stuff into my phone on the train that day.”
Listen to Counting Crows’ ‘Virginia Through the Rain’
Duritz says completing the “Sweet Tooth” portion of the new album was an efficient process and that these new songs and the previous suite were the quickest recordings they’d ever done as a band. Though there was a “huge chunk of time” where he was sitting on the second group of songs, he’s happy he waited. “I’m glad I did, because they needed the work, and they’re great now,” he says. “I was [also] trying to figure out whether they should be a suite as well and whether I wanted to write connecting parts so that it was two different suites. But I just decided I loved them the way they were. And it didn’t need to be two sides of suites. There was no real reason for it except to do it.”
When Can You See Counting Crows Live?
The band will hit the road in June for The Complete Sweets! tour with the Gaslight Anthem supporting. That same month, a new documentary about the group will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately? tracks the emotional journey Duritz and the Crows took as a result of the unexpected success of their 1993 debut.
READ MORE: Counting Crows Set Summer 2025 Tour Dates
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