March 16, 2026 • 19 mins
Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz called in ahead of the band’s return to New Zealand for two Auckland shows. Adam talked about why he loves coming to New Zealand early to explore places like the Coromandel, the stories behind songs from the new album Butter Miracle, The Complete Suites!, and how songwriting often starts with the people and experiences that have shaped his life.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome, So Radio Hodakis Off the Record Podcast Off the
Record with Big.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Sandy's count and Crow's back here in New Zealand doing
a gig next Monday, sold out yig at the ki
Kanawa Theater and then a second show today Tuesday. So
please welcome to Radio Hodaki. Adam Durretz, how are you?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Thank you? I'm good, I'm good. I'm excited to be
back here.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah. Well, you spoke with Jerry and Maniah at the
end of last year and you were saying that Coramandel
is one of your favorite places to hang.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
It's part of the most beautiful places I've ever been
on Earth. It's so stunning. It's just like I don't
know whether I'm at the beach or in the mountains.
It's just it's just I've never seen anything like it.
It looks like the Fjords of like Sweden meets Hawaii
meets like I guess. Yeah, of course everyone probably says
Middle Earth, but it does look a little like it there. Yeah,
(01:00):
it's incredible.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's kind of Jurassic Yeah, some sort of wild way.
Do you fish? Do you like to fish at all?
Have you even been out in the boat and dropped
a line I haven't.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I mean I did a lot when I was younger.
I haven't fished in a long time. But there's so
much do that you can go diving for a last time.
I got some scallops off the bottom. I got muscles
off these lines that they said were okay to take them,
and I dove for a lot of sea urchin I
didn't get to. We were going to go out in
the boat and go fishing one day, but we never
did that.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, so maybe this time you've got a bit of
time before the gigs, just to tell are there other
parts of New Zealand that you've been to on your
journeys here that do you think are pretty cool?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Well Auckland, Wellington and christ Christchurch. But I got sick
twice in Wellington, once with COVID because you take a
flight all the way over from the other side of
the world and it's a peatrie dish and then you
arrive and you screw up your gig. And another time,
I don't know what happened. I just got the flu
or something and I just didn't have my voice. We
never let us back.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, it's just something about that long because a lot,
I mean a lot of musicians when they come to
New Zealand have to do that seventeen hour flight or
however long it is, and it is a Petri dish
up in there, and it's usually about it's not usually
the first gig, it's usually the second gig that people
tend to get sick because it just festas for a
little bit, a little bit of jeat leg, a little
bit of immune system hitting down.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Nailed the gig in Auckland and then got to Wellington
and what is wrong with me? And sure enough you
have COVID?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Nah to me. I went to San Francisco as soon
as our borders opened, and two days after land I
thought I had vertigo. I was like, had COVID for
my whole trip.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Oh, those are brutal. For a few years, you know,
we had like four or five tours in a row
where somebody in the band or the crew got COVID
at the first or the second gig. There's just no
avoiding it. It was just like because you got to
travel to get to the gig, and it's the first gig,
so you're not taking the bus, you're flying out, and
there was just like, what are we going to do
like you have to go out to all the gigs
(03:00):
a week or two early and sit there in Omaha
or something.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Have the rest of the band come out a week earlier.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
No, it's just me and our guitar player and my
wife Zoe and Tom are tour manager. The four of
us came out early. I've worked out this really cool
thing where I get I should go do promo. I
will work and I will go do promo in Australia
and New Zealand, which is kind of an Adam speak
for I will go two weeks early and hang out
(03:25):
in Australia and New Zealand because on tour a lot
of the time, because I'm the one who has to sing,
I got to keep my voice together, so I'm like
a monk. I don't see anything, I don't do anything
because I'm trying. I just want to be there for
the gig. But this is my one chance, you know,
I come down here early and do all this press,
and I earned myself a vacation in the Cormandel.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
You want that because a lot of times when you're touring,
you're only seeing the hotel and the airport and the venue. Really,
because it's like Banged Banged Bank. You've got your new album,
Butter Miracle The Complete Sweets. Yeah, yeah, did you know
what's the price of butter in America at the moment.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
That I don't know? Uh wait, I just wasn't the
story yesterday? It was like two dollars for a stick.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Butter here, and nine dollars for a block of butter, for.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
One large block or a whole package.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Because you know you have sticks of butter, yeah, cup stick,
So imagine three of those makes up sort of one
block of ours, so it's a little more expensive, kind
of expensive. The album called the Butter Miracle The Complete Sweets.
And then when I think of the Butter Miracles for
Fabio for a long time, I think he was advertising.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Out butter the guy from the book cover.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
From Yeah, how did you come up with that name?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
You know, I'm just thinking right now, this is the
the New Zealand dollars, about two thirds of the US dollars.
So if three sticks is nine dollars, it's actually six dollars.
And I guessed like two dollars a stick, so that's
about exactly the same. I kind of nailed the price
of butter. Yeah, look at that sorry, go on, what
were you're asking me? That was?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
That's great because I'm on tangents. I was asking how
you came up with the name but a miracle.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Uh, it's kind of a secret. I mean, I I
the band knows, and I know, but i've it's I
like that it's a surreal thing, and if I told
everyone the real reason, it would just be sort of
like a silly thing that would not be quite as
magical as whatever surreal butter miracle is.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, I unlike that. I think the buttle miracle New
Zealander is if we can get butter for five ninety
nine a block, nyling it.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
I hope it comes true. I bought a bunch of
groceries last night, and at first I was like, man,
this is really really expensive, because I was as soon
as I got in last night, I knew we were
driving up there to day, so I wanted to get
a bunch of groceries. And I had like Uber Eats
deliver a bunch of groceries, and I was thinking, man,
that it was really really expensive. But then I realized, okay, no,
I did the conversion, and I was like, Okay, it's
not that bad. Yeah, yeah, Okay, it's okay.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
What's your favorite? Kway into the mate pies. The mince pies, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I love, I love like because America, the only one
we really have is chicken pot pie. And I really
love chicken pot pie. But it was like something as
a kid that was one of my I don't think
I was a very good eater as a kid. I
was kind of picky. Only hot dogs, no hamburgers. But
I really love chicken pot pie. And we don't do
the other pies in America really, But when I would
go to England or somewhere else, they have like mince
(06:10):
pie and steak and kidney pie or guinness and lamb pie.
You know, like I really love those. I just I
really love the baked the crust baked pie stuff and
then having meat inside of it instead of I like
the sweet pies too, but yeah, I really love that.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Mostly it's like pumpkin pies.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, we have those, kind of I forgot about that
sweet pies. But the chicken pot pie is a completely
contained pies. Yeah it's got a crust on top too.
That's a lot better than the Our apple pies are contained,
but our pumpkin pies is I don't really like pumpkin pie.
I don't know why. It's like carrot cake. Carrot cake.
I like the icing, but that's because it's cream cheese.
(06:49):
It's good. Just why can't that cake not have carrots?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Just because it's got the lemon citrus icing, that's what.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Might it's delicious? Yeah, but you could do that without
the carrots and it would still be good, just a
plain cake, yeah, with icing.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So on you on your album? Is it a Spiceman
and Tulsa?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
How did that? How did that churn come about?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Well? I had a friend who grew up he's a
He was in a band in the nineties called the
Chainsaw Kittens. It's really flamboyant, like very Bowie esque kind
of rockstar guy. A lot of he's gay, and he
had like he would always wear gold lummey shirts and
like silver sparkly pants and he was a very flamboyant
(07:31):
little rock star and I loved him. And but he
grew up in Oklahoma, and I used to think, Man,
that has to have been rough growing up to be that.
That can't have been the most accepted childhood. And I
just was thinking about, like, I bet you know I don't,
I don't bet. I know this. For a lot of artists,
not just musicians, you grow up different from everybody else
(07:52):
around you, and and you wonder if he's ever going
to be a place where you're accepted and where you
feel like it's okay to be you, you know, And
there's a lot of trauma in childhood for people that
are more sensitive, and which is a lot of artists,
you know, other people too. But the nice thing is
that rock and roll or just art in general has
a place for people who are different, you know what
(08:13):
I mean. And for a lot of us, we found
out that actually it was okay to be us and
we could, you know, we could be exactly who we
wanted to be, and that was actually perfectly cool. And
so I just started kind of writing a song about that.
It was beginning. It started off as kind of a
song about my friend Tyson, but it actually turned out
to be a song about me as well. And each
of the verse is about someone different, but yeah, it
(08:36):
kind of is about like it's okay to be weird, yeah,
in rock and roll, and it's actually good. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Well, I mean, look at Bowie. He was, like I
was saying, he was flamboyant, creative, and I think he'd
got to reinvent himself so many times and was accepted
in it.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, because he's magic on two feet. Man, He's just
everything hey.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Is and everyone kind of seed. Like when he died,
the world went to shit.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Certainly got a lot more plain didn't you, isn't it? So?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Are there any musicians that you were saying out and
around you, knows, as you're touring and you're having support
pans and stuff. Is there anyone that is sparking your
attention at the moment that maybe we haven't heard of yet.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Well, I don't know if they're big over here. One
of my best friends is in this Australian band, Gang
of Youth, and I think they're the best rock band
in the world. I think they're incredible. Their last few
albums have blown my mind. I don't know that anyone
is making albums as good as them, or as good
as them live. They're They're just extraordinary. I sung on
(09:38):
the last album and I'm going to sing on the
next one. I just got a text from him the
other day asking but also right now, you know, I
my friend Matt Coma is married to Hillary Duff and
he's a great songwriter himself. He's in this band called
Winnetka Bowling League, and he's genius. He's such a great
songwriter and producer and they just collaborated on her new
(10:02):
record and I was floored by it. It's so good
that as I was listening to it the day it
came out, I started texting him after the first song
because it's a song called weather in Tennis that I
just thought was so good. And then after the second song,
I had all these thoughts, so I texted him and
after the third song, I said, Okay, just so you know,
I'm not going to be bothering you all in that.
I don't know what you guys are doing, but I'm
(10:23):
not gonna be texting you about every song. And then
the fourth song was this song called Future Tripping, and
it was such a great song that I texted back,
I'm like, actually screwed that. I probably I am going to
text you about every song. You know, Hillary had this
childhood where she's like a child star in America, you know,
Lizzie McGuire and Disney Channel stuff, and she had a
career in music, but it was part of being a
(10:43):
child star, and she kind of put it behind her.
When I went to see her play a few months ago.
It was her first tour in eighteen years, you know,
and she's a grown woman now. They've had like three
or four kids, and she made this album. Her and
Matt wrote it and they co produced it, and it's
very much like a pop album about life as a
(11:04):
grown up. You know. It's definitely pop music, which isn't
normally my thing, but it's it's just such a thoughtful,
good record and it's so hooky and catchy. It's like
it's got everything I love about the best Taylor Swift albums.
And I would just recommend it to everybody. You meant,
I think that you would appreciate this album, but anyone
who loves music would appreciate this album. It's called Luck
(11:27):
or something I think is the name of it, and
it's just it's just a brilliant record, it really is,
you know. And I'm so like happy for her and
impressed that, like, you know, always get second chances for stuff,
but this is something she really really love making music,
and she made the decision, as a mother of four,
to come back and do it again. And it's blowing
(11:49):
up too. It's like number one, two or three in
a bunch of countries. And I think she's coming down
here next year or later this year. I don't know,
but I just I can't say enough to encourage people
to that out. I which two things. I would say,
Gang of Youths because they're geniuses, Winnecka Bowling League because
that's her husband, Matt's band and he's incredible, and uh
(12:10):
and the new Hillary Duff because it's just such a
good record, really, you know, well cool.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
That kind of answers. I was like, what's what's the
album that you're you've got on Roche At the moment,
I'm gissing it.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I've been listening to Hillary and Matt lately, honestly, the
because listening to Hillary can got me back into listening
to Winnecka Bowling League. And then Matt the other day
just sends me this text and it just says, hey,
I wrote this last night, kind of nervous. What do
you think? It's a song called New York, New York
and it was so good. I'm listening to it and
(12:41):
my wife got home and she's like, what are you doing?
And I'm like, She's like, what are you listening to him.
I just didn't want to stop in the middle of
the song. And when it's over, I'm like, I'm sorry,
I know that was rude, But Match just sent this
to me. It's his new song. He just did it
last night, like he wrote it and recorded it, you know,
in his stud at home, I guess. But she's like,
(13:02):
she said, play it again, and it was just it's ridiculous.
It was so good. It got me jealous of I mean,
I'm jealous of Hillary's because my album did not go
straight to number two, even though I think my ALM's
really good too, and hers did, and then her husband
is just dumping out songs like this.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It's a colab in the future.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Maybe we were talking about doing something because I actually
think he'd be really fun to work with produced because
he's got such a different style than I do, and
that might be really cool together.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
And when you when you are writing your songs, are
you sending them to met Like, do you have people
that you bounce them off for?
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah? I do. I mean we have like a group
of friends, my friend Dave Leo Pepe who's the singer
for a Gang of Use, Chris Carraba, who has been
one of my best friends forever who's the singer for
Dashboard Confessional, And then like my friend Sean Barna and
Matt Soo's we had like five or six of us
that we do actually when we're working on stuff, we
sort of send it to our friends and this is
(14:00):
what I've been doing. What do you think? You know?
Cut of you? It's like your peers. It's not even
about so much, it's about like support, but it's also
just like kind of fun because these are the people
I that I admire and that they're but they're my peers,
you know, like, and we bounce things off each other,
and it's actually really nice. I didn't always have that,
(14:21):
but in just in the last like five years, we've
all been I think Dave was visiting me and they
Gang of Use lives in London, and he was visiting
me in New York, and he Chris and his wife
were up visiting and from Nashville, and so those guys
met and ever since then we've all been kind of
just like bouncing stuff together and like just just it's
fun to have. It's just really nice to have a
(14:42):
friend who not just one of your friends who likes
your music, but one of your friends who makes it
too and who understands. So when you get like your
thoughts back from them, it really means something. You know,
it's like because that's your real peers.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
You know, what was what was the song from your
latest album that you've got the most love for? For
you a crew of minds.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
It's probably with Love from A to z Uh, that's
I guess it opens the record. I keep forgetting it
opens the record because we started every concert with Spaceman
and Tulsa. But I wrote that kind of about life
with my wife and my wife in general, the in
a way I think if you asked me thirty years ago,
(15:22):
I would have told you that round Here was a
story in my life, and it really was, and it
summed up everything about me for a lot of years.
But and it's uh, it's like the most powerful song
in concert. But also it's yeah, it's got my wife's
name in it. Yeah, you know, I when a couple
of years ago I was thinking I thought of the
(15:42):
title before I wrote the song. I kind of had
the phrase I'll send it with love from A to z. Oh.
That's cool because my name starts with an A. Her
name starts with the Z. That's kind of it's that's clever,
and it's also like the double meaning of from me
to her and also from A to Z meaning everything
you know. And uh, I had this's like clever little
title in my head and I was I was like,
(16:03):
I really want to write this song, but I wanted
to live up to how cool I think the title is.
And when it finally came, when I finally wrote it,
I was like, oh, I was very all right. That
made it all the way. And it's funny because my
wife had then girlfriend had gone out with her best
friend that night and I was at home working, and
I was working before she left, but I didn't want
her to come in and bother me because it distracted me,
(16:24):
and then I won't it takes me away from what
I'm doing. But when she came home, she was like,
you know, I'm sorry. I don't want to bug you.
I'm like, no, no, no, I'm done. Now check this out,
you know, and I you know, And so her name's
right there in the title, and that that knocked her
out because she was a little annoyed with me because
I wouldn't talk to her much before she left. Because
I was I didn't want her to know what I
was in the middle of, you know, and distract.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And so she was your girlfriend then. But when you
wrote the song.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Or was she now? We weren't married yet.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah, so was that the song that got it over
the line to make write marry me?
Speaker 3 (16:56):
No, And I don't think that did it, but uh,
I would know. We've been together for like nine years
and we got married five months ago. Four months ago,
it was November. We actually we had gone down to
visit Chris and his wife, Bonnie. I can't remember what
we were down there for, but we went down for
a weekend to I think I was doing promo and
(17:17):
the last city for promo. We were traveling around the
country doing all this promo, and the last city was Nashville.
We were there for a whole weekend before the promo
was finishing on Monday, and so we were staying at
their house and we all went to dinner that night,
and Bonnie, Chris's wife, always sort of has always nagged
me about why aren't you guys married in a good way.
She's like the one person I can actually and then
(17:38):
I would talk to her about my fears and she
would actually listen and we could talk. So it was
like it was a good kind of nagging because she
would actually listen to my concerns about the idea. And
so we were at dinner and she brought it up again,
as she always does, and I was thinking about it
as we were sitting there, and I turned to Zoe
and whispered, you know, I actually think it's probably a
really good idea. What if we did get married? How
do you feel about that? She's like, I would love that. Like,
(18:00):
all right, me too. And then we went back to
having dinner and didn't tell anybody, and we were on
the drive home from the restaurant and I said, we
were in the car with Chris and Bonnie, and Bonnie
and Zoe are in the back seat, Chris and I
are in the front. I said, oh, by the way,
we got engaged. And they're like, oh my god, when
did that happen? I said during dinner And they're like, oh,
you're lying. And it took us the whole drive home
(18:20):
to convince them that I wasn't just full of it.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
That's so cute. Oh my god, I love it. Really
looking forward to your two gigs Monday, Yeah, Monday and Tuesday,
and you got some good old classics in the mix for.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Us, absolutely songs from all the records in the show.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Amazing. So you get tickets for the Tuesday night from
Live Nation dot co to insi it and thanks for
your time, Adam, it's been awesome.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you
and now the core Mandel.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, get some.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Fish Radio hodokes off the Record podcast. Why not subscribe
so they download automatically and don't forget to rate us
five stars. Thanks mate. Find out more about this podcast
and the people who make it at hodache dot co
dot nz.
Welcome, So Radio Hodakis Off the Record Podcast Off the
Record with Big.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Sandy's count and Crow's back here in New Zealand doing
a gig next Monday, sold out yig at the ki
Kanawa Theater and then a second show today Tuesday. So
please welcome to Radio Hodaki. Adam Durretz, how are you?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Thank you? I'm good, I'm good. I'm excited to be
back here.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah. Well, you spoke with Jerry and Maniah at the
end of last year and you were saying that Coramandel
is one of your favorite places to hang.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
It's part of the most beautiful places I've ever been
on Earth. It's so stunning. It's just like I don't
know whether I'm at the beach or in the mountains.
It's just it's just I've never seen anything like it.
It looks like the Fjords of like Sweden meets Hawaii
meets like I guess. Yeah, of course everyone probably says
Middle Earth, but it does look a little like it there. Yeah,
(01:00):
it's incredible.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's kind of Jurassic Yeah, some sort of wild way.
Do you fish? Do you like to fish at all?
Have you even been out in the boat and dropped
a line I haven't.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I mean I did a lot when I was younger.
I haven't fished in a long time. But there's so
much do that you can go diving for a last time.
I got some scallops off the bottom. I got muscles
off these lines that they said were okay to take them,
and I dove for a lot of sea urchin I
didn't get to. We were going to go out in
the boat and go fishing one day, but we never
did that.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, so maybe this time you've got a bit of
time before the gigs, just to tell are there other
parts of New Zealand that you've been to on your
journeys here that do you think are pretty cool?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Well Auckland, Wellington and christ Christchurch. But I got sick
twice in Wellington, once with COVID because you take a
flight all the way over from the other side of
the world and it's a peatrie dish and then you
arrive and you screw up your gig. And another time,
I don't know what happened. I just got the flu
or something and I just didn't have my voice. We
never let us back.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, it's just something about that long because a lot,
I mean a lot of musicians when they come to
New Zealand have to do that seventeen hour flight or
however long it is, and it is a Petri dish
up in there, and it's usually about it's not usually
the first gig, it's usually the second gig that people
tend to get sick because it just festas for a
little bit, a little bit of jeat leg, a little
bit of immune system hitting down.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Nailed the gig in Auckland and then got to Wellington
and what is wrong with me? And sure enough you
have COVID?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Nah to me. I went to San Francisco as soon
as our borders opened, and two days after land I
thought I had vertigo. I was like, had COVID for
my whole trip.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Oh, those are brutal. For a few years, you know,
we had like four or five tours in a row
where somebody in the band or the crew got COVID
at the first or the second gig. There's just no
avoiding it. It was just like because you got to
travel to get to the gig, and it's the first gig,
so you're not taking the bus, you're flying out, and
there was just like, what are we going to do
like you have to go out to all the gigs
(03:00):
a week or two early and sit there in Omaha
or something.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Have the rest of the band come out a week earlier.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
No, it's just me and our guitar player and my
wife Zoe and Tom are tour manager. The four of
us came out early. I've worked out this really cool
thing where I get I should go do promo. I
will work and I will go do promo in Australia
and New Zealand, which is kind of an Adam speak
for I will go two weeks early and hang out
(03:25):
in Australia and New Zealand because on tour a lot
of the time, because I'm the one who has to sing,
I got to keep my voice together, so I'm like
a monk. I don't see anything, I don't do anything
because I'm trying. I just want to be there for
the gig. But this is my one chance, you know,
I come down here early and do all this press,
and I earned myself a vacation in the Cormandel.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
You want that because a lot of times when you're touring,
you're only seeing the hotel and the airport and the venue. Really,
because it's like Banged Banged Bank. You've got your new album,
Butter Miracle The Complete Sweets. Yeah, yeah, did you know
what's the price of butter in America at the moment.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
That I don't know? Uh wait, I just wasn't the
story yesterday? It was like two dollars for a stick.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Butter here, and nine dollars for a block of butter, for.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
One large block or a whole package.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Because you know you have sticks of butter, yeah, cup stick,
So imagine three of those makes up sort of one
block of ours, so it's a little more expensive, kind
of expensive. The album called the Butter Miracle The Complete Sweets.
And then when I think of the Butter Miracles for
Fabio for a long time, I think he was advertising.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Out butter the guy from the book cover.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
From Yeah, how did you come up with that name?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
You know, I'm just thinking right now, this is the
the New Zealand dollars, about two thirds of the US dollars.
So if three sticks is nine dollars, it's actually six dollars.
And I guessed like two dollars a stick, so that's
about exactly the same. I kind of nailed the price
of butter. Yeah, look at that sorry, go on, what
were you're asking me? That was?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
That's great because I'm on tangents. I was asking how
you came up with the name but a miracle.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Uh, it's kind of a secret. I mean, I I
the band knows, and I know, but i've it's I
like that it's a surreal thing, and if I told
everyone the real reason, it would just be sort of
like a silly thing that would not be quite as
magical as whatever surreal butter miracle is.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, I unlike that. I think the buttle miracle New
Zealander is if we can get butter for five ninety
nine a block, nyling it.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
I hope it comes true. I bought a bunch of
groceries last night, and at first I was like, man,
this is really really expensive, because I was as soon
as I got in last night, I knew we were
driving up there to day, so I wanted to get
a bunch of groceries. And I had like Uber Eats
deliver a bunch of groceries, and I was thinking, man,
that it was really really expensive. But then I realized, okay, no,
I did the conversion, and I was like, Okay, it's
not that bad. Yeah, yeah, Okay, it's okay.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
What's your favorite? Kway into the mate pies. The mince pies, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I love, I love like because America, the only one
we really have is chicken pot pie. And I really
love chicken pot pie. But it was like something as
a kid that was one of my I don't think
I was a very good eater as a kid. I
was kind of picky. Only hot dogs, no hamburgers. But
I really love chicken pot pie. And we don't do
the other pies in America really, But when I would
go to England or somewhere else, they have like mince
(06:10):
pie and steak and kidney pie or guinness and lamb pie.
You know, like I really love those. I just I
really love the baked the crust baked pie stuff and
then having meat inside of it instead of I like
the sweet pies too, but yeah, I really love that.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Mostly it's like pumpkin pies.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, we have those, kind of I forgot about that
sweet pies. But the chicken pot pie is a completely
contained pies. Yeah it's got a crust on top too.
That's a lot better than the Our apple pies are contained,
but our pumpkin pies is I don't really like pumpkin pie.
I don't know why. It's like carrot cake. Carrot cake.
I like the icing, but that's because it's cream cheese.
(06:49):
It's good. Just why can't that cake not have carrots?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Just because it's got the lemon citrus icing, that's what.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Might it's delicious? Yeah, but you could do that without
the carrots and it would still be good, just a
plain cake, yeah, with icing.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So on you on your album? Is it a Spiceman
and Tulsa?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
How did that? How did that churn come about?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Well? I had a friend who grew up he's a
He was in a band in the nineties called the
Chainsaw Kittens. It's really flamboyant, like very Bowie esque kind
of rockstar guy. A lot of he's gay, and he
had like he would always wear gold lummey shirts and
like silver sparkly pants and he was a very flamboyant
(07:31):
little rock star and I loved him. And but he
grew up in Oklahoma, and I used to think, Man,
that has to have been rough growing up to be that.
That can't have been the most accepted childhood. And I
just was thinking about, like, I bet you know I don't,
I don't bet. I know this. For a lot of artists,
not just musicians, you grow up different from everybody else
(07:52):
around you, and and you wonder if he's ever going
to be a place where you're accepted and where you
feel like it's okay to be you, you know, And
there's a lot of trauma in childhood for people that
are more sensitive, and which is a lot of artists,
you know, other people too. But the nice thing is
that rock and roll or just art in general has
a place for people who are different, you know what
(08:13):
I mean. And for a lot of us, we found
out that actually it was okay to be us and
we could, you know, we could be exactly who we
wanted to be, and that was actually perfectly cool. And
so I just started kind of writing a song about that.
It was beginning. It started off as kind of a
song about my friend Tyson, but it actually turned out
to be a song about me as well. And each
of the verse is about someone different, but yeah, it
(08:36):
kind of is about like it's okay to be weird, yeah,
in rock and roll, and it's actually good. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Well, I mean, look at Bowie. He was, like I
was saying, he was flamboyant, creative, and I think he'd
got to reinvent himself so many times and was accepted
in it.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, because he's magic on two feet. Man, He's just
everything hey.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Is and everyone kind of seed. Like when he died,
the world went to shit.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Certainly got a lot more plain didn't you, isn't it? So?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Are there any musicians that you were saying out and
around you, knows, as you're touring and you're having support
pans and stuff. Is there anyone that is sparking your
attention at the moment that maybe we haven't heard of yet.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Well, I don't know if they're big over here. One
of my best friends is in this Australian band, Gang
of Youth, and I think they're the best rock band
in the world. I think they're incredible. Their last few
albums have blown my mind. I don't know that anyone
is making albums as good as them, or as good
as them live. They're They're just extraordinary. I sung on
(09:38):
the last album and I'm going to sing on the
next one. I just got a text from him the
other day asking but also right now, you know, I
my friend Matt Coma is married to Hillary Duff and
he's a great songwriter himself. He's in this band called
Winnetka Bowling League, and he's genius. He's such a great
songwriter and producer and they just collaborated on her new
(10:02):
record and I was floored by it. It's so good
that as I was listening to it the day it
came out, I started texting him after the first song
because it's a song called weather in Tennis that I
just thought was so good. And then after the second song,
I had all these thoughts, so I texted him and
after the third song, I said, Okay, just so you know,
I'm not going to be bothering you all in that.
I don't know what you guys are doing, but I'm
(10:23):
not gonna be texting you about every song. And then
the fourth song was this song called Future Tripping, and
it was such a great song that I texted back,
I'm like, actually screwed that. I probably I am going to
text you about every song. You know, Hillary had this
childhood where she's like a child star in America, you know,
Lizzie McGuire and Disney Channel stuff, and she had a
career in music, but it was part of being a
(10:43):
child star, and she kind of put it behind her.
When I went to see her play a few months ago.
It was her first tour in eighteen years, you know,
and she's a grown woman now. They've had like three
or four kids, and she made this album. Her and
Matt wrote it and they co produced it, and it's
very much like a pop album about life as a
(11:04):
grown up. You know. It's definitely pop music, which isn't
normally my thing, but it's it's just such a thoughtful,
good record and it's so hooky and catchy. It's like
it's got everything I love about the best Taylor Swift albums.
And I would just recommend it to everybody. You meant,
I think that you would appreciate this album, but anyone
who loves music would appreciate this album. It's called Luck
(11:27):
or something I think is the name of it, and
it's just it's just a brilliant record, it really is,
you know. And I'm so like happy for her and
impressed that, like, you know, always get second chances for stuff,
but this is something she really really love making music,
and she made the decision, as a mother of four,
to come back and do it again. And it's blowing
(11:49):
up too. It's like number one, two or three in
a bunch of countries. And I think she's coming down
here next year or later this year. I don't know,
but I just I can't say enough to encourage people
to that out. I which two things. I would say,
Gang of Youths because they're geniuses, Winnecka Bowling League because
that's her husband, Matt's band and he's incredible, and uh
(12:10):
and the new Hillary Duff because it's just such a
good record, really, you know, well cool.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
That kind of answers. I was like, what's what's the
album that you're you've got on Roche At the moment,
I'm gissing it.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I've been listening to Hillary and Matt lately, honestly, the
because listening to Hillary can got me back into listening
to Winnecka Bowling League. And then Matt the other day
just sends me this text and it just says, hey,
I wrote this last night, kind of nervous. What do
you think? It's a song called New York, New York
and it was so good. I'm listening to it and
(12:41):
my wife got home and she's like, what are you doing?
And I'm like, She's like, what are you listening to him.
I just didn't want to stop in the middle of
the song. And when it's over, I'm like, I'm sorry,
I know that was rude, But Match just sent this
to me. It's his new song. He just did it
last night, like he wrote it and recorded it, you know,
in his stud at home, I guess. But she's like,
(13:02):
she said, play it again, and it was just it's ridiculous.
It was so good. It got me jealous of I mean,
I'm jealous of Hillary's because my album did not go
straight to number two, even though I think my ALM's
really good too, and hers did, and then her husband
is just dumping out songs like this.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It's a colab in the future.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Maybe we were talking about doing something because I actually
think he'd be really fun to work with produced because
he's got such a different style than I do, and
that might be really cool together.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
And when you when you are writing your songs, are
you sending them to met Like, do you have people
that you bounce them off for?
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah? I do. I mean we have like a group
of friends, my friend Dave Leo Pepe who's the singer
for a Gang of Use, Chris Carraba, who has been
one of my best friends forever who's the singer for
Dashboard Confessional, And then like my friend Sean Barna and
Matt Soo's we had like five or six of us
that we do actually when we're working on stuff, we
sort of send it to our friends and this is
(14:00):
what I've been doing. What do you think? You know?
Cut of you? It's like your peers. It's not even
about so much, it's about like support, but it's also
just like kind of fun because these are the people
I that I admire and that they're but they're my peers,
you know, like, and we bounce things off each other,
and it's actually really nice. I didn't always have that,
(14:21):
but in just in the last like five years, we've
all been I think Dave was visiting me and they
Gang of Use lives in London, and he was visiting
me in New York, and he Chris and his wife
were up visiting and from Nashville, and so those guys
met and ever since then we've all been kind of
just like bouncing stuff together and like just just it's
fun to have. It's just really nice to have a
(14:42):
friend who not just one of your friends who likes
your music, but one of your friends who makes it
too and who understands. So when you get like your
thoughts back from them, it really means something. You know,
it's like because that's your real peers.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
You know, what was what was the song from your
latest album that you've got the most love for? For
you a crew of minds.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
It's probably with Love from A to z Uh, that's
I guess it opens the record. I keep forgetting it
opens the record because we started every concert with Spaceman
and Tulsa. But I wrote that kind of about life
with my wife and my wife in general, the in
a way I think if you asked me thirty years ago,
(15:22):
I would have told you that round Here was a
story in my life, and it really was, and it
summed up everything about me for a lot of years.
But and it's uh, it's like the most powerful song
in concert. But also it's yeah, it's got my wife's
name in it. Yeah, you know, I when a couple
of years ago I was thinking I thought of the
(15:42):
title before I wrote the song. I kind of had
the phrase I'll send it with love from A to z. Oh.
That's cool because my name starts with an A. Her
name starts with the Z. That's kind of it's that's clever,
and it's also like the double meaning of from me
to her and also from A to Z meaning everything
you know. And uh, I had this's like clever little
title in my head and I was I was like,
(16:03):
I really want to write this song, but I wanted
to live up to how cool I think the title is.
And when it finally came, when I finally wrote it,
I was like, oh, I was very all right. That
made it all the way. And it's funny because my
wife had then girlfriend had gone out with her best
friend that night and I was at home working, and
I was working before she left, but I didn't want
her to come in and bother me because it distracted me,
(16:24):
and then I won't it takes me away from what
I'm doing. But when she came home, she was like,
you know, I'm sorry. I don't want to bug you.
I'm like, no, no, no, I'm done. Now check this out,
you know, and I you know, And so her name's
right there in the title, and that that knocked her
out because she was a little annoyed with me because
I wouldn't talk to her much before she left. Because
I was I didn't want her to know what I
was in the middle of, you know, and distract.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And so she was your girlfriend then. But when you
wrote the song.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Or was she now? We weren't married yet.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah, so was that the song that got it over
the line to make write marry me?
Speaker 3 (16:56):
No, And I don't think that did it, but uh,
I would know. We've been together for like nine years
and we got married five months ago. Four months ago,
it was November. We actually we had gone down to
visit Chris and his wife, Bonnie. I can't remember what
we were down there for, but we went down for
a weekend to I think I was doing promo and
(17:17):
the last city for promo. We were traveling around the
country doing all this promo, and the last city was Nashville.
We were there for a whole weekend before the promo
was finishing on Monday, and so we were staying at
their house and we all went to dinner that night,
and Bonnie, Chris's wife, always sort of has always nagged
me about why aren't you guys married in a good way.
She's like the one person I can actually and then
(17:38):
I would talk to her about my fears and she
would actually listen and we could talk. So it was
like it was a good kind of nagging because she
would actually listen to my concerns about the idea. And
so we were at dinner and she brought it up again,
as she always does, and I was thinking about it
as we were sitting there, and I turned to Zoe
and whispered, you know, I actually think it's probably a
really good idea. What if we did get married? How
do you feel about that? She's like, I would love that. Like,
(18:00):
all right, me too. And then we went back to
having dinner and didn't tell anybody, and we were on
the drive home from the restaurant and I said, we
were in the car with Chris and Bonnie, and Bonnie
and Zoe are in the back seat, Chris and I
are in the front. I said, oh, by the way,
we got engaged. And they're like, oh my god, when
did that happen? I said during dinner And they're like, oh,
you're lying. And it took us the whole drive home
(18:20):
to convince them that I wasn't just full of it.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
That's so cute. Oh my god, I love it. Really
looking forward to your two gigs Monday, Yeah, Monday and Tuesday,
and you got some good old classics in the mix for.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Us, absolutely songs from all the records in the show.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Amazing. So you get tickets for the Tuesday night from
Live Nation dot co to insi it and thanks for
your time, Adam, it's been awesome.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you
and now the core Mandel.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, get some.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Fish Radio hodokes off the Record podcast. Why not subscribe
so they download automatically and don't forget to rate us
five stars. Thanks mate. Find out more about this podcast
and the people who make it at hodache dot co
dot nz.
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