Counting Crows is one of Bobby Bones' favorite bands of all time. They stopped by the Bobby Bones Show studio for a performance of "Spaceman in Tulsa," and "Washington Square" as well as have a conversation about their career.
Whenever Counting Crows tours they are always including their song "A Long December." Adam Duritz shared they saw Taylor Swift in concert and she performed "The 1," which is a favorite song of his. So he started working on a cover of that song backstage by himself, and then played it on stage one night to morph it into "Along December." Now it's a standard in their setlist. He shared that their set list can always change, they allow their band and team to request adding songs back in whenever they want to perform it. Duritz girlfriend wanted him to play "Butterfly Song" because it was her favorite of theirs, so they added it in the setlist and fans ended up loving it. So that particular song has been in their setlist for years now, however when they first released the song, they had only played it live twice. One night he surprised fans with a performance of "Live Forever" with Oasis and fans went crazy.
Duritz admitted they often don't hear people covering their songs because "they are weird," but one time he was in a bar and heard someone cover "Round Here." Duritz was really impressed, but the artist didn't know he was in the bar. Duritz said since he shaved off his dreads, he gets to be more secretive out in public. Back in the AOL days, Duritz used to be on message boards talking to fans because he could do it without the press. Then Twitter came out and he loved connecting with fans on there, but he hasn't been great about keeping up with social media these days. Before voice notes were a thing, Duritz would always use notebooks. He has piles of lyric books, spiral binders full of them, but now the notes function in his phone is better. At one point in his career, he used the app called Recorder to create songs and he managed to do their whole record All My Bloody Valentines with that app,
While the band has many albums, Duritz said he doesn't write much anymore. He used to write every day for 10 years before joining the band and touring, but ever since he will just sit down and write 10 songs for a record. Their most recent record, Duritz has been changing the way he writes. He had the whole record in his head, but he couldn't play it or write it so he called everyone up the studio, described it, and it came to life. Bobby also asked about who was responsible for putting him as background vocals on "Sixth Avenue Heartache." Duritz was bartending at The Viper and he was talking to Jake of The Wallflowers about how their new record didn't showcase who they are. Then 6 months later, Duritz got a call from producer T-Bone about being on the song. He also shared their first and only appearance on Saturday Night Live didn't go smoothly. Counting Crows were trying to decide between being on SNL or Letterman for their first television appearance. They actually told SNL no for a long time because SNL wanted them to play "Round Here" after "Mr. Jones," and they'd have to edit their songs for time. So Duritz kept saying no, until SNL agreed to play it how they wanted. When Counting Crows showed up for the appearance, SNL changed it to how they originally wanted it. Counting Crows said they were going to leave and not do the set, it got fought about for a week. Counting Crows ended up playing the set as they wanted, and the performance on SNL changed their career. They went from not being in the Top 30 to being in the Top 2.
Before Duritz left the studio, Bones told them about him thanking them in his first book Bare Bones. Duritz was really sweet and touched by the gesture, it made him tear up.