Adam Duritz Meets World

We love Mr. Feeny, but now it’s time for Mr. Jones! Rider helped Will and Danielle become Counting Crows superfans back in the day, and now lead singer Adam Duritz, an important musician even in Shawn Hunter’s life, hangs out with the gang 30 years later. 
 
Adam shares unbelievable stories from his life as a rock star, from writing his first song to partying & eating ribs with Rider and Danielle to what REALLY happened during their iconic SNL performance.
 
All that AND we find out how that Adam hasn’t even met most of his storied dating history - in what can only be described as the most “stroftibrite” episode of Pod Meets World yet…

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
So I have this.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I have a redwood growing outside of my office here
when I when I moved into my house, there were
two redwoods, and you don't really they don't really grow
in Los Angeles. There's not many of them but there,
and one of them is really struggling because it's too hot,
there's too much sun. But this other one right outside
of my office is thriving. It is now twenty feet tall.

(00:41):
It is beautiful.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
It's feeding off your energy.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah right, well, so yeah, you know, you guys know,
I literally grew up underneath giant redwood, Like we have
hundreds of them on on our property, and so I
grew up climbing these trees, just playing under them.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
You know.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I used to like I used to climb one tree
in particular to read in it, and I would.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Use the.

Speaker 4 (01:02):
Tree poets and there's the there're these beautiful, ancient, endangered species.
But I realized, like I have a very intense identification
and dedication to a species of plant, you know, And
I mean for an atheist, this is like the closest
I have to a spiritual connection used.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
To drop fake dead bodies out of these trees.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
Yes, So do you guys have or like a certain
animal or plant that you've ever identified with or cared about.

Speaker 5 (01:35):
No, no, no, even even going back to like Save
the Whales in the eighties, like you didn't care about
dolphins or whales.

Speaker 6 (01:49):
Them.

Speaker 7 (01:49):
I just don't identify with I hope a dolphin has
a good life. I'm never you know, I wish the best,
foresaid dolphin or whale, but I don't identify with them.
You know, like the gas station shirts you can get
that have the whales and the wolves and stuff like that.

Speaker 8 (02:04):
I was a teenager.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Oh I remember your wolf face? Yeah, I Lance.

Speaker 9 (02:11):
Lance gave me a necklace in the nineties that was
three dolphins swimming in like a circle. And it was
one of those things you could do on your touristy
vacation where you would pick an oyster and then you
get to pop it open and see if there's a
pearl inside, and so then the dolphins have their swimming
in a circle and you put the pearl in the
middle of it.

Speaker 7 (02:31):
The dolphins seemed confused if they're just swimming in a circle.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Well, I don't know what dolphins do.

Speaker 9 (02:35):
But there was a point where then after he gave
me the necklace, where it was like.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Do I do I like dolphins? Am I had? Am
I going to be a dolphin girl now?

Speaker 9 (02:43):
And then it was very nor lance and I also
went horseback riding.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
But so he was trying to make you into a
different animal girls.

Speaker 9 (02:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think he wanted me
to like have a thing. It was going to make
it easier to buy me gifts. Yeah, but no, I
mean I like, I like dogs.

Speaker 7 (03:04):
Yeah, you guys have dogs.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
I don't have a dog. And way too many animals.
So now I don't even get that.

Speaker 9 (03:16):
You know what, you know what I what I was
as a kid that I we've never really talked about.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
I was a rat girl.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
We had rats.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
We had rats, many rats as a pet.

Speaker 7 (03:26):
Or you was just your home wasn't clean.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
No, no, we had rat as a pet.

Speaker 9 (03:30):
So the story how we rats is actually it's one
of my it's one of my favorite childhood stories because
it's terrible and my So we went to the pet
store and my mom was like, oh, we should get hamsters,
and so we got two hamsters. Yeah, so we got
two hamsters. My brother picked a hamster and I picked

(03:52):
a hamster. The hamster my brother picked was was a
little chunky and cute as can be and all gray,
and he was like wild and not super kind, like
you know the balls you could put a hamster in
and they go running. When you tried to get him
out of that thing, he'd bite you and he'd every
single time he'd bite the tip of my finger and
I'd bleed. So his we kind of I was like,

(04:13):
that hamster's a jerk. I don't like that hamster. My
hamster was cream and she was yetle and she's so
sweet and I loved her and she never bit me.
So they didn't tell us that there's any reason to
not put the male and female hamster together, and we
weren't really thinking about that. We had one big cage

(04:37):
that then had a tube that connected to another cage,
so they each had their own space. And the way
our rooms were set up, my brother and my rooms
were right next to each other, and there was like
a linen closet in the hallway right outside our rooms,
and that's where the hamster cage lived. Well, one night
we heard all this commotion and my brother, who's four
years younger than me, Chris, yelled from his room Danielle,

(04:59):
and I said, yeah, and he said, I can't sleep
the hamsters are making so much noise. And I said, okay,
no problem, I'll get up and close your door. So
I got up and I closed his bedroom door, and
then I went into my room and I closed my
door and we went to sleep. The next morning, I
wake up to the sound of my brother screaming, and
my hamster is sitting in the corner of her little

(05:20):
side and she's like this, and she's cleaning her face
and she is covered in blood, my little white cream
hamster covered. Then she had eaten the head of my

(05:42):
brother's hamster. So we panicked. We were like, oh my gosh,
what is this. And my mom just picked up the cage,
put him in the car and then brought him.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Back to the pet store and was like, this ham.

Speaker 9 (06:00):
Or decapitated this hamster. We do not want these anymore.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
And they were like, oh, yeah, you can't put them together.
Do not tell you that, obviously, not, I have to
tell you. My brother then drew murder hamster art for years.

Speaker 4 (06:20):
In Hamster, there's a.

Speaker 9 (06:23):
Picture of a bed with him sleeping in it, with
z's coming up from his head, and then a bloody
massacre going on right outside, and he for years blamed
himself because he said, when when I couldn't sleep and
they were making all that noise, had a scream for help,
screaming for help, and I just wanted to sleep.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
I had the same thing.

Speaker 7 (06:45):
It sounds so weird, but I had a very traumatic
experience the same kind of way. I had a gerbil
named Charcoal.

Speaker 6 (06:50):
I was going to say, you ate your roommate, no ird,
this gerbal named charcoal And we got cats and I
heard I was like eight or nine years old and
I was downstairs and I heard a crash upstairs, and
I was too scared to go up and check what
it was.

Speaker 7 (07:09):
And my cats had knocked over their things age and
killed the gerbil. And so to this day, any noise
I go and check, I'm like.

Speaker 9 (07:19):
Because you don't want another gerbil to die, you know, left.

Speaker 7 (07:22):
Behind Gerbils on my watch are going to die. So
that same thing where it's like, had I just checked,
I would have been fine.

Speaker 9 (07:30):
Well that's how we ended up with rats, is that
the people at the pet store said, to be honest,
hamsters are disgusting creatures.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
If you want a good pet, here's a rat.

Speaker 9 (07:40):
And my mom was like, the tail and they were like, yeah, yeah,
you just need to get past the tail. But they're
actually great pets, and so we did. We got a
We got a rat named Joey and he was spectacular
the rat.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
Joe kidding me?

Speaker 7 (07:54):
Are you just saying this?

Speaker 6 (07:56):
Now?

Speaker 2 (07:56):
We got to get two rats named one Joey and
the other Stanky for keto, Are.

Speaker 7 (07:59):
You Joey the rat?

Speaker 9 (08:02):
I had Joey the rat, and I had him while
we were on Boy Meets World?

Speaker 4 (08:07):
Made this connection.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
Joey was amazing. Joey also knew his name.

Speaker 9 (08:11):
He could do it so Joey could sit up on
his hind legs and grab the top of his cage
and then he'd pull himself up and so with his head,
he'd pop the top of his case. He'd popped the
lid off of his cage, and then he could pull
himself up and he'd run out, and we'd come home
and Joey would be missing, and we'd go Joey and
he'd come running out from wherever he was.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Could he also a Yes?

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Was he musical?

Speaker 4 (08:32):
Was he musically talented?

Speaker 1 (08:34):
And he started great?

Speaker 4 (08:34):
He started a great indie band, Kylie.

Speaker 9 (08:38):
Yeah, but he ain't got no, he is so well,
I can't believe this. Yes, and then I had and
then I had rats named Jedediah. I named them after
Tapega's dad. I had Chloe and Jedediah. And we had
a rat named Laser. My brother named him Laser, but
then we figured out it was a girl, and so
then we changed her Lazy.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
Well, I was rat girl.

Speaker 5 (08:59):
I was a total l So, getting back to my initial, yes,
so I was a rack girl.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Yes, I am a Redwood tree person.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
You are a.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Joey the rat baby. That's now I know. Now, I
know why he stands to me.

Speaker 9 (09:13):
So, Joe Cammel, Will's Will's spiritual friend.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
Welcome to pod meets World. I'm Daniel Fishl.

Speaker 4 (09:23):
I'm Redwood Strong.

Speaker 7 (09:26):
I'm wilfredll.

Speaker 9 (09:38):
It would be hard to describe a young writer strong
without including the words counting and crows. At some point
in your explanation, you see young writer and old soul
new and was set with his favorite things, carrying a
book in his monstrous Jinko jeans pocket, giving a white
rose to a girlfriend at age twelve, Then every year

(10:00):
after turning me against my mother and praising culture shifting
albums like August and everything after, and recovering the satellites
from his favorite band and his love for the Bay
Area musicians. Claiming a hometown very close to his own
was infectious, turning Will and I into super fans as well,
so much so that at some point in my early

(10:21):
twenties I jumped on staged and danced as they played.
But we will not focus on that for now. Their
lead singer, one of the most talented songwriters of the decade,
if not our generation, has come up multiple times on
this podcast, and for good reason. The spirit of the
Counting Crows has a very similar spirit as Boy Meets World.
Both had heart and substance and an ability to speak

(10:44):
to fans beyond just the tropes of our time. The
Grammy and Academy Award nominated singer has survived the test
of time with his body of work and eventual collaborations,
speaking to listeners just as much now as he did
when he first debuted with the absolute classic Mister Jones.
He's still touring today, selling out stops all over the world,
but today we're gonna make him talk about something he

(11:06):
never thought he'd even think about again in this life.
For more than three minutes, Boy meets World. We're honored
to welcome a true muse for us cast members and
someone I'm hoping will be Writer's new best friend, The
Counting Crow's lead singer, Adam Durretz.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for being here
with us.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Hello you guys. It has been forever I know.

Speaker 9 (11:27):
Right wow, So we would be remiss if we did
not acknowledge that between you Adam being here on the
podcast with us and Lisa Loebe doing one of our
live shows, this podcast has quickly become a bit of
a make a wish for writers musical dayste.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
It absolutely has.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
It's like, let's go back to nineteen ninety six over
and over and over again.

Speaker 9 (11:49):
Yes, and give writer all of his make all of
his ninety six streams come true. So do you remember
Adam Ryder coming to a lot of the shows and
me coming to a lot of the shows?

Speaker 1 (11:59):
Oh? Yeah, of course, and parties at the house too, Yes, yeah,
of course.

Speaker 7 (12:04):
I think I only met you once. So they were
younger than me and they went out off on their
own to all the cool concerts and stuff, and you, hello.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Will, how are you?

Speaker 2 (12:14):
We were just rewatching an episode and I realized, like, oh,
that was the episode where I left taping to go
see my first Counting Crows concert, which was the Hollywood
Grand Concert where you go wow really yeah, where you
guys played all the Recovery and the satellite songs for
the first time, And that was my first concert, and
I remember just being like, I.

Speaker 4 (12:33):
Love all of these songs. This album's going to be amazing.

Speaker 8 (12:35):
And then had to wait like a year for the album.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
I remember that, So that was really cool. Yeah, we
were getting ready to like do make the record. Yeah,
it was great.

Speaker 8 (12:43):
Yeah, a great way to get introduced to all the songs.
But anyway, we were just watching that and I was like.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
Sixteen, yes, yes, ninety six.

Speaker 9 (12:50):
Well, and writer's real life love for you guys became
a character trait of his fictional self. He wrote Counting
Crows on Sean's folder that I then, yeah, there's Counting
Crows and Strofty right, the words you tried to make happen.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
Counting Crows written on a.

Speaker 9 (13:06):
Sean notebook that you're holding up in the school hallway,
and it was mentioned to be the Counting Crows was
Shawn's favorite band. So did you know at the time
that you and your music was actually influencing Sean from
Boy Meets World at all?

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Was that in your zeitgeist at all?

Speaker 1 (13:26):
No, I don't think so. Until I met Ryder, I'm
not sure. I remember. One thing I do remember was
that the show was like simultaneous with us, Yes, like
I think you went on the air. Maybe it was
the same fall that we went on tour for our
first album, Like, yes, so I think we left in

(13:47):
August of ninety three or something, and you went on
tour in September of ninety or like. The show went
on that year. I remember that and knowing about it,
So maybe I did, which is that would be the
reason I would know that well. I mostly remember me
being Danielle and Ryder though a few years later. Yeah,
it was a weird thing back then that people don't

(14:09):
take into account that before all the streaming and things
being out on DVDs, touring and primetime did not mix,
you know, like shows that were on TV. You just
like I mean, for all the talk about friends in
our band, I had never seen the show because I

(14:30):
had been on tour the whole time the show was
on the air.

Speaker 9 (14:32):
Right, And when would you have been able to watch
Primetime TV. You know, you're like on stage at the
same time that shows are airing.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
Exactly, so like the whole television from that period, Like
I had never seen Seinfeld until way later. I think
it was around the same time as well, because I
didn't see Seinfeld until it was like I had a
DVD box set years later because I missed the entirety
of the run on television. Wow.

Speaker 9 (15:03):
Well, we the three of us talk a lot about
the experience of auditioning for a part on a show
and then a month later you're on primetime TV for
an audience of seventeen million people. And while researching your career,
it's amazing you had a pretty similar situation. You had
been in a few bands and then you formed Counting
Crows and pretty quickly you were in like a bidding

(15:24):
war between labels and mister Jones being one of the
first songs you recorded.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
How did you then deal with that change in your life?

Speaker 6 (15:33):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (15:33):
Freaked out?

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (15:34):
Mostly mostly, I just I mean I was a very
shy person. I you know, I was dealing with a
lot of mental illness too before then that I you know,
wasn't talking about publicly, and you know, I had the
social disorder, which you know, keeps you at a sort
of distance from the world. So I was very hesitant

(15:57):
around people you know, and then I was only all
the people in the world you know, are looking at you.
I found that to be very strange and uncomfortable. But
you know, a lot when the other side of it
is that when you're in a band, a lot of
your life is spent in this bubble on the road
where you are with people you do know. Early on

(16:18):
we were mostly an opening band, but I had a
good introduction to like all the new people at first
as an opener for Suede and the Cranberries and then
Cracker for a long time, you know, as they were
all having success and we were the opening band, so
I would you know, I got a chance to kind

(16:39):
of work my way into it slowly because it was
about I don't know, five or six seven months until
it really blew up. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (16:49):
Well, you've been very vocal about the dissociative disorder, and
I didn't realize that you were dealing with that before
you had success as well, because the for our listeners
who may not know what it is, but it's where
you feel very distance your mind is very distance from
the reality that you are experiencing, and it causes a
lot of memory loss, right, Like you don't have a

(17:11):
lot of strong memories from certain times of your life.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Well, it can do that. It just kind of you
just kind of live at a distance from things at times,
and you know, it can blur out parts of your
life a bit. But you know, I didn't talk about
it back then because while it was a real problem
for me, I didn't want to, like, you know, I
didn't want to be a public circus, you know. But

(17:36):
also it's you know, it wasn't the entirety of my life.
It was just part of what was going on.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
You know.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
I was enjoying getting to be a rock star. I
mean it was pretty cool, honestly.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
I mean especially because you know, you dream about this
your whole life. You're in your bedroom by yourself. I mean,
you guys all know this because you want to be
an actor. But it seems like, how is anyone even
going to know who I am? You know, like your
bedroom in my case, in Berkeley or San Francisco, and
you you writing songs, But it's not like how's the
world's supposed to hear that, and then they do, you know,

(18:09):
and that's it's really cool, you know, it is it's
and you know it's that's thirty years ago now, the
first album, it was thirty years this year. Yeah, so
I mean I've spent more of my life in this
life than not, you know, which is I mean, it's

(18:32):
really cool. It is everything I ever wanted.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
You've also you've explored this a lot on a conscious
level in the songs themselves, you know, I mean there's
the irony of like the lyrics to mister Jones, but
then also just throughout your career, you know, you missus
Potter's lullo By and more like when I Dream of Michaelangelo.
You always you talk about this tension between the artist
and the audience's identification with with the artists, and you know,

(18:57):
for us, it's it's kind of simple. We can be
like we're not our characters, right, Like that's a different person.
And while there's a lot of crossover, you know, we
look the same as Soundless, but it's it's but for you,
you're actually you know, you are creating characters and narratives
within your stories. But for the most part, it's it's
a confessional point of view, it's it's you're writing about yourself.
So I mean, yeah, when people confuse you with your character,

(19:22):
does that feel I mean, what.

Speaker 9 (19:23):
Is that like?

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Well, I mean I am my characters. There's no confusion.
I mean, these songs are all about me. Every one
of them is about me, you know. And and also
you know, and I think you you build a career
on something like that, and people identify with it, you know,
they they because you know, you're talking about things you
feel and things you go through in your life. And sure,

(19:47):
some of the things are you know, not everybody gets
to be a rock star or something, but a lot
of it is just human expression and feelings and what
human beings deal with when they try to like relate
to each other. And I think that's what most of
my songs are really about. And you know, the the
the confusing part of it, I think for people is

(20:08):
that I totally understand why people relate to all the
things in the songs, but just not the same thing
as knowing me, you know, because you're getting a very
specific amount of information that I'm willing to share with you,
right and and it's not the same thing as knowing
a person. But I get why everybody wants to be

(20:30):
pals because I'm the same way. You know, I want
to be friends with all my idols too. But yeah, no,
it's a it's a weird thing. The and I mean,
I explore it from both sides because certainly, you know,
when you arrive in Hollywood and you discover that that
TV and those movie screens are more windows than walls,

(20:50):
you know that you can actually go through them and
meet those people and date them or whatever. When you
discover that, you know, it brings up a whole bunch
of confusing things for you as well for myself, because
you know, I realized that I was meeting all these
you know girls I dreamt about or or imagine meeting,

(21:10):
but your your picture of them is a character on
a screen, you know, not a person. And you know,
so like Missus Potters especially, is about you know, what
are you doing fantasizing about fictional characters who look like
the real people that portray them, but aren't the real
people that portray them, you know, And it's a I

(21:31):
found that to be kind of a fascinating subject. I mean,
just because I realized I'm getting sucked into this I'm
like self consciously doing this thing that I know is crazy,
and yeah, no, it's a you know, pretty people people.
You know, what are you gonna do? You know, I've

(21:52):
been a geek, you know, I was a geeky kid.
You know, I like Star Wars and yeah, there's all
these girls. It was very confusing to me and fun
and yeah, you know, somewhat disappointing.

Speaker 9 (22:09):
But Will Will literally went through the exact same thing.
Will has tried to convince us. I think he has
at this point that he was a nerdy, dorky kid
that girls did not like, and then he moved out
to LA and started Boy Meets World, and all of
a sudden he was able to date famous actresses and

(22:30):
how to urge.

Speaker 7 (22:31):
Yeah, it's really bizarre when you go from you know,
painting miniature figures and reading your fantasy novels to people
in magazines wanting to date you. It's just it's and
so you're the natural thing you do is you question
if it's real, because it's like, why, how can how
can this suddenly be happening on a Tuesday when last
Tuesday I was was specifically told not to show up

(22:54):
at the party because nobody wanted me there, So I mean,
did you feel that same thing where you're you love?
It's this weird balance of loving what you're doing but
also questioning it every step of the way.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Well, I mean, fame is a hell of a glow up,
you know. I mean, it really does. It does make
us all look a lot better. But I think part
of it is that it's also like this affiday that
you come with. You know, because you walk up to
someone that you don't know at a party when you're younger,
and it's like they have a whole world of skepticism,

(23:26):
justifiably so, you know, and when you're famous, suddenly it
comes with like, well, okay, I might want to meet
him too, right, but then you still have to they
have to like you over time. Nobody's sticking around for well,
I mean, I guess some people do. But mostly what
I thought that what I saw it as at the end,
is that mostly it's it's an opportunity to meet people.

(23:50):
You still have to be yourself and it is it
is real. Uh, It's just you know, it's not real
right at first, but that's just you know, the chance
nothing's real. When you meet people, you're always putting on
your best self. In any dating situation, we spend the
beginning of our relationship being absolutely the best version of ourselves,
and then you know, then you are who you are.

Speaker 7 (24:10):
You know.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
I have friends who do this, unfortunately in marriage, where
they're like the best husband ever, like ever possible for
a while, and then it's like then they become themselves
and they're still a good person, but it's inevitably a
disappointment after the servant they were for a while, you
know what I mean. It leads to some really really
relationship problems.

Speaker 9 (24:30):
You know, Yeah, my husband just started very mediocre, so
that I am never disappointed. He just is like, listen,
it's not age, it's not getting any better than this.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
And now I'm just not disappointed because I know.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
I started a five.

Speaker 7 (24:44):
You're a good genius, honestly, absolutely genius.

Speaker 9 (24:47):
It's the same reason why when I get older, I
am not going to tell anybody i'm younger. I'm going
to say I'm five or ten years older than I
really am. Like you look great, yeah, I'm like I'm
sixty two. I'm sixty two. I'm definitely not going to
go down.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
Well.

Speaker 9 (25:00):
It is really interesting because entertainment is the only field where,
whether you're an actor or a musician, suddenly your dating
life and your personal life it becomes a major focal point.
Like I don't know who my dentist dates or who
my accountant dates. And yet you know, so much of
your folklore, Adam was around your dating relationship, and yet

(25:22):
you were releasing absolutely classic albums. Did it ever bother
you that that there was that major distraction from the
music you were creating.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
Well, yeah, because I also felt like, well a lot
of it was fictional. I have dated people I've never
met in my life. More some women than i've never
met still never met in my life, are part of
these like Google alerts that pop up on my phone
about past dating histories, you know. And I felt like
at the time also, you know, inevitably after a successful
first record, there's always some kind of backlash. It's just

(25:53):
there's no way around it, you know, because radio is
going to play you as much as they can because
that's their that's how they make their money. And you know,
at some point you're just going to annoy the set
of everybody. Yeah, you know, you get sick of that song.
And I felt like after the first album. We spent
about three albums where I do feel like they were

(26:13):
kind of disregarded, and there the touring reviews and the
album reviews had more to do with my dating life
or my imagined dating life than they did with the
records themselves. You know. It's it's one of the real
disappointments in my career that Recovering the Satellites and This
Desert Life and Hard Candy got kind of disregarded. Those

(26:34):
three records in a lot of ways, you know, and
they're some of my favorite of our work. You know,
I really thought we got better and better right then,
but it really wasn't until Saturday nights and Sunday mornings
that the press came back around. You know.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
Well, I think part of.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
That is because August was such a huge hit. I mean,
you guys were out of the gate, like, you know,
next level kind of success. And I also remember that
there was this thing, you know, in the nineties, which
is thankfully not a thing anymore, but this whole notion
of selling out, you know, like and that was it
was so it was so negative to be a sellout.

(27:15):
Do you remember feeling like worrying about that or how
you wrestled with that in the nineties.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Only worrying about like the perception of it, because the
idea of it seems so stupid, Like it's in every
other aspect of life, fame, entertainment, everything else. People are
just supposed to do the best they can. We love
to watch celebrities and sports heroes and hip hop heroes
on super Bowl commercials and everything else. Selling great even

(27:48):
then for those people, But just for rock and roll,
we were supposed to be I don't know what. Everybody
else in their careers is just trying to do the
best they can. You're trying to make the money. That's
why everyone else in the world's career is about, you know,
and meanwhile we're supposed to not do any of that.
I always felt it was so silly, like it's so

(28:10):
hard to succeed in a band. The business is so bad.
The ability to support yourself and to have success for
more than a couple of years is so nearly impossible.
To deny yourself like one part of the possible earnings
seems so silly to me, like nobody else's thought of

(28:32):
that way. I remember, at one point, you know, we
got to radio, had gotten so genre specific in the
early two thousands that it was very There wasn't really
any genre that was right for us. We were just
like a bunch of different stuff. You know, our music
didn't fit any particular groove, and you know, it was

(28:54):
getting very hard for us to get played on the radio.
And we were getting ready to release hard Candy and
Coke came along our diet home I can't remember which
one it was and said, Hey, we really like that
song American Girls. We want to put it on a
on a commercial and we're going to put that commercial
on TV all summer long. Wow. And the record comes
out I think in the end of the summer of
the fall, and so like your single will be out

(29:15):
there on TV the entire summer. Its great for you,
And I thought, we've never done that, but that you know,
it seems like a really good idea, you know, like
we should and we did. But there was a lot
of like backlash about selling out about it. God fuck,
I like die coke. I drink it all. I used
to drink it all the time, you know. Uh, so
it isn't really selling out, it's just it's something I

(29:37):
actually used. But it kind of got slammed at that moment,
and I remember thinking, wow, that was what is the
point of that? Like, what do you all expect us
to do? We're just everyone's trying to earn a living.
You're right, only as you can't.

Speaker 4 (29:50):
It's specific. It was specific to the era.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
I mean, I think it's gone now hopefully, But it
was also that you're right that it's very specific to
rock and roll, right like and but there's something about
that early nineties vibe too, like the grunge era, and
like you know, all of those all of all of
you guys were sort of grouped together as this like
anti establishment in some ways, it was a retro vibe,

(30:12):
you know, which is so funny now to think about. Like,
like when August and everything after came out, I remember
like a lot of the reviews were like, oh, this
is a throwback to the seventies or you know, this
is like a and yet now, of course the music
is so so associated with the nineties, you know, the
same way that, like our careers are so associated with
the nineties. How do you feel about the nineties now?

Speaker 8 (30:32):
Like as an era?

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Man, I lived through it. I never really think about
eras myself, like it always seems like this sort of
false value bucket we throw things into for grouping of time,
you know, like and we make judgments about it. You know,
like when I was growing up, the sixties were cool.
The seventies were bull right, you know, it's not the

(30:55):
seventies were kind of great. I don't know, they were weird,
and more of the vibe of the sixties took place
in the seventies and took place in the sixties, you know.
And then you know, I remember, you know, being a
little older, and the seventies were cool, and now the
eighties were and so shallow. But I look back on it.
In the eighties is the birth of college radio and
the birth of like indie rock and roll, And it

(31:18):
always seems like just this kind of that seems like
a way of selling things we get. We take a
group a block of time, and we lump it together
and we say, all these people were this way, all
these people were this way. It's like there's a real
fascination now with every age group having its own gen or.
Some people are baby boomers, some people are zoomers, some

(31:41):
people are are like millennials, and it's like a I
realized my generation kind of doesn't really have that where.
I mean, you could call us baby boomers, but baby
booms has to do with like people who were born
after World War Two, you know, Like I mean, I'm
born in the sixties. It's clearly not You call it
whatever you want. It just didn't seem like that that

(32:01):
stuff existed. I never even thought of it until what's
the name's book gen X came out? Generation was that.
I can't rember who Douglas Copewan wrote that book. It
all seems kind of I don't know, that's silly to me.
It's just like I have great memories of the nineties

(32:22):
and the time I spent, but only in the fact
that there are years I have to think about which
records came out when. Okay, well, Desert Life came out
in ninety nine, so that's the last record from the nineties.
Then we have the two thousands, which I remember having
a lot of fun on the millennium. I think we
threw a big party. But you know, I never really
thought much about it, except at the time I got

(32:42):
to be a rock star and there was a lot
of other cool bands playing great music. I loved touring
during that period. It just seemed like everywhere I went
there were other friends in town from wherever. It was
just like a really magical period. I moved to Hollywood
in the middle of that period and really loved that
for a long time too, you know.

Speaker 9 (33:03):
Yeah, I mean Your August and everything after was released
on a label called DGC through Geffen Records, and it
was you were alongside like Nirvana, Teenage Fan Club, Sonic Youth, which,
like I don't mean to sound like a get off
my Lawn, but like you would be hard pressed to
find a more influential time in rock music.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
What are what are some of your favorite.

Speaker 9 (33:25):
Memories of being around those guys and and and just
being mixed with those other artists.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
Well, you know, we went to Geffen or DGC. There
were several labels at Gavin David Geffen company was DGC
and it was kind of the indie arm of the
company at the time, and it was it was kind
of a boutique label. And I think we went there
in the end because we felt like they were really patient.

(33:54):
They didn't they didn't really care about whether we had
a hit right away. I mean, I don't think anybody
at the rec company thought this album was going to be.
They loved the record, but they didn't naturally think it
was going to be a huge success. We were hoping
for a couple hundred thousand records at best that would
be great. But I thought it was going to be
kind of like a campfire where we all got to
hang out with each other, and that was actually the case,

(34:14):
like we did. I met all those bands back then
at barbecues over our A and R Guys house. The
first record actually ended up being on was Maria mckey's record.
She was on the label too, and I got to
go sing on her record at the time, and the
Jayhawks were in her band, so I got to know
those guys too, and they ended up they and Maria
do all the background vocals that I don't do on

(34:37):
August on the first record, either the background vocals are
me or they're Maria McKee or the Jayhawks, And you know,
we all you know, I knew Kurt and the guys
in Nirvana and Sonic Youth, and you know, they were
all really nice to me. We were all very different musically,
but that didn't seem to matter. We were all like
and that tends to not matter among musicians. They don't

(35:01):
really tend to be about I'm about this kind of music.
People tend to be about, yes, I'm about this kind
of music, but musicians just tend to like music. And
that was my experience then too, is that it was
just a lot of great indie rock musicians who we
got to hang out with and it was really cool.
I know.

Speaker 7 (35:20):
These are kind of the basic questions you probably get
in a lot of interviews, but they're the ones that
I love. And it's stuff like who were your influences
growing up? Like what were the bands that you listened
to when you were a kid?

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Well, it was a bunch of different kinds of stuff,
you know. I grew up in Oakland, you know, and
Oakland was really a big funk in soul Town. So
early on there was a lot of like earth Wind
and Fire, the Commodore's p funk. But at the same time,

(35:53):
the radio station I listened to at the time growing up,
Kasan played everything. You know, they were really free form radio,
so you could hear, you know, the earth Wind and Fire,
followed by George Jones country music, maybe a little bit
of Miles Davis and then sex Pistols. You know, it
would they would play anything, so I kind of grew

(36:14):
up listening to everything. So at the same time as
I was really into Earth Wind and Fire, I was
really into Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson and you know,
all the kind of like new wave and early punk stuff.
It was kind of like a real melting pot for
me listening musically, you know. I certainly loved a lot
of bands like Well the Band. I don't know that

(36:39):
Dylan was the thing early on, but I got really
into going through like the Rolling Stone Record Guide and
looking for five Star records and then buying them to
teach myself about music.

Speaker 6 (36:49):
You know.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
I remember when I first bought it, the pictures in
there were all five Star records, So I remember getting
Al Green's Let's Stay Together because it was a picture
in there, and being floored by that and this Lightton
Hopkins record, you know, and I was just really into
like trying to educate myself. At one point I went

(37:10):
one by one and bought all the Rolling Stones records,
like at the US shop in Berkeley and listened to
them from the beginning, you know, England's newest hit makers,
all the way up through I guess Tattoo you came up,
came out my senior year in high school. You know,
I just kind of was really obsessed with music and
obsessed with like learning all I could about it. I

(37:32):
loved El Fitzgerald.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Did you have a particular moment, I mean, was it
with Connen Crozer? Does it predate that where you feel
like you found your voice as a musician as a songwriter.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Well, it started when I wrote songs, because before that,
you know, I like to sing, and I really loved music.
I was pretty obsessed with it, but I didn't know
where to go with that. I mean, I guess you
could go be in musicals, but that wasn't really the
center of our culture anymore. It didn't seem like and
I didn't really like, you know, I acted when I
was younger. I was a young conservatory at ACT in

(38:05):
San Francisco, but I didn't really love it. I like performing,
but it just wasn't me. And when I was a
freshman in college, I wrote my first song and that
sort of changed everything.

Speaker 7 (38:17):
You know.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
It was like a bell or like a light switch
going off in my head, you know, like, oh, I'm
a songwriter. And that was like, I mean the hardest
thing about shifting from childhood to adulthood is how you
identify yourself. You know, we're kids. We do things that
we're told to do and then we go around, but

(38:40):
as far as accomplishing anything, it's mostly stuff that people
tell us to do. You know, you guys worked really young,
so it's different for you. But you know, you got
your homework and you'd like to meet girls, and those
are kind of the two things of life. And you
start to get into college and into being an adult,
and you're like, well, what's going to happen with the
rest of my life when it's choices that I get

(39:01):
to make for mysel for myself, And that's a pretty
confusing moment. And I remember like being in I think
a chemistry class, and you know, my sister was still
at home. My mother was off in medical school, so
my sister was home alone with my dad. She was
sixteen or fifteen, and it's a that's a pretty you know,
difficult time in a girl's life. Things are changing, and

(39:25):
you know, she was struggling with me being gone and
my mom being gone. And I wrote this song. I
started humming to myself in class, and I hummed this
melody and I wrote these lyrics to it, songs called
good Morning, Little Sister. I got out of class and
I had this thing written, and I'm like, well, I
went back to my dorm and there was a like

(39:45):
a lounge across the hall from my room, my freshman dorm,
and there was a piano in there, and I went
in there. I locked the door, and I sat down
at the piano and I, I can't really play piano,
but I know how to make a major on a
minor chord, So I like hummed the song to myself
and I poked at the piano until i'd find a
note that I was singing, and then I would try
and figure out a chord that goes with that. It

(40:06):
took me the whole rest of the day, like three
or four hours. The song would take fifteen minutes. Now
it's really simple. But at the end of it, I'd
written a song, you know, and it was literally like
a light bulb going off my head and I thought, oh, yeah,
I'm a songwriter. And I knew what I was before
any of my friends did. Like I mean, I fell
behind again when we all got out of there and

(40:27):
started getting jobs, because it's very hard to get a
job as a songwriter. But you know, it changed everything
in my life that day, Like that moment was the
biggest defining moment in my life because before that, I
was a kid, and then I was a songwriter, and
I knew that I knew what I was, what I
was going to do with my life. I didn't know

(40:49):
how I was going to do it, but I knew
who I was and what I was and it was
a very weird feeling, especially as it became clear how
hard that was going to be.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Yeah, I was going to say, because I mean, writing
is one thing, sharing it with the world and getting
it out there is such a struggle too.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
I mean, yeah, getting anyone to hear it, you know,
Like I mean I was. I started school at UC Davis,
and I was there for my first couple of years,
and then I transferred down to Berkeley because all I
was doing was writing songs, and I realized, if I
really want to do this, I have to be back
in the Bay Area. I had a lot of years

(41:27):
after that of trying to figure out how to get
anyone to hear my music. But the start was moving
back to the Bay Area. But I spent you know,
almost ten years in the clubs, you know, before anything happened.
Really I was. I was eighteen when I wrote my
first song. I was twenty seven the first time anyone
from any record company came to see a band that

(41:49):
was in Wow twenty eight when we got signed. I
was twenty nine when the first record came out. So
you know, it wasn't like I mean, I had put
in years in bands, in the clubs and the barrier,
you know, which is maybe great because I feel like
I'm a eight to no or whatever, like I don't

(42:11):
have anything I regret that I put out in our career, Whereas,
like you know, maybe I wouldn't feel the same if
I had been releasing stuff earlier, you know, but when
I wasn't as ready, I guess.

Speaker 7 (42:31):
So I have a question for you, because I was
obsessed with television the way it sounds like you were
obsessed with music. So I found a lot of my
music through what i'd watch on TV. And I remember
I'd heard of you from writer obviously, but the first
time I really saw you was your appearance on Saturday

(42:51):
Night Live.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
I'm so glad you're going to talk about that. I
remember that so well.

Speaker 7 (42:55):
I do too, and you guys just killed it. And
I I remember right then watching that going, oh, I
have to get this album, like I have to find
this band. Did you notice a shift in either was
it record sales, popularity, whatever due to that appearance on SNL.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Oh, yeah, it made our career. Yeah, without a doubt.
We and I have to give them props for this too,
because they booked us to play that show before we
were anything. Our record was, as I remember, at two
hundred and thirteen on the charts. The night we played
Saturday Night Live, we weren't even in the top two hundred.

(43:32):
Marcy Klein saw us open for Cracker at Irving Plaza
and Cracker we had a great show, and Cracker also
we'd have no career without them, pushed us back on
stage for an encore. Wow, you know as an opening band,
you know, which doesn't happen. And she booked us right
after that, or like started talking to us about booking

(43:54):
us because there were two shows. Letterman also was offering
us slots at the time, and so was Saturday Night Live.
And we went through a bunch of negotiation on what
we would play and who's going to play with us,
And it took a while and ended up Saturday Night
Live kind of gave us what we wanted first. But
when we played that show, we weren't even in the
top two hundred and it literally, and I know joke
about this, the record jumped forty spots a week for

(44:16):
five or six weeks, so we landed at number two,
and we were at two for the next couple of years.
We never went to number one, but yeah, it was
entirely due to Saturday Night Live. And then a few
months later that was like the first week of January
of ninety four, and we played it. Mister Jones was
released on MTV the week between Christmas and New Year's

(44:41):
that year, which you don't release things during that period,
nobody does because there's no charts, Yeah, and so people
avoid it, and we thought, well, what if we put
the single out then instead, like, with nothing else going
to MTV that week except our song, maybe they'll play
it a bunch mostly one hundred and twenty minutes the

(45:01):
first time it played. But you know, so my point
is like, it's not like mister Jones was a big
hit or something. Right, We played Saturday and Live and
we played round here first, and that kind of made
our career, you know that. Literally it was like two thirteen, one,
seventy one, thirty something, ninety something, fifty something, sixteen thirteen,

(45:22):
six two, and then we spent a couple of years
at number two after that.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
That is just insane.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Yeah, we didn't even notice it though, I mean, because
it was just record sales. It wasn't doing anything for us.
We played our first headline shows in clubs in the
Northeast the weeks after Saturday Night Live. Then we went
back to opening for Cracker, and then we were getting
ready to go play European tour, and we played Letterman
right before we left. Uh, and while we were playing Letterman,

(45:51):
Rolling Stone had called that day. I think, unless I'm
pushing all these things together, it's been a long time.
My memory is that my managers came to me Letterman
show and said, Uh, Rolling Stone wants to put you
on the cover. You're going to Europe next week. They're
going to send David Wilde to write the piece on

(46:12):
you and Mark Selliger to take the pictures, and they're
going to meet you in Paris, you know, And then
we went to Europe.

Speaker 9 (46:21):
All those years of buying Rolling Stone and studying it
and researching it and now they're asking you to be
on the cover and they're going to write an article
about you.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
And my first response was because he asked me about it,
and I said, okay, can I think about it? He
looked at me. I'm like, okay, no, I'm sorry. Of course, yeah,
it's fine, but like, but legitimately I was scared about it.
I mean I had two minds of it as a
rock musician, of course, or as anyone really at that

(46:53):
by that time, because it wasn't really a music magazine anymore.
By that you have to say yes to being on
the cover Rolling Stone because they there's no point to
your career otherwise it's going to make you huge, you know.
But all I could think of was, you know, it's
hard to portray it nowadays because we don't really have
news stands anymore. But they used to be on every

(47:14):
corner in every major city and there'd be these racks
and Rolling Stone would be like, you know, there'd be
twenty of them up there and you could see and
whoever's on the cover, it's like your face is on
every street corner in America. And I was thinking about
what that would be like and it seemed scary to me.
It seemed like everyone will be looking at me. How

(47:34):
this is different from just like playing a club, you know.
I was nervous about that.

Speaker 6 (47:40):
You know.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
I was also right about that it was going to
be very strange, and it was strange for me. But
you can't say no to that. It'd be stupid, you know. Otherwise,
why try to have a career that lasts, you know.

Speaker 9 (47:51):
So the time that you were on Saturday Night Live,
the cast was Chris Farley, Norm MacDonald, Adam Sandler, David Spade,
just some of the most incredible comedians of all time.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
What do you remember most about that night?

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Uh, it's a mixed bag. I mean, the cast was great.
They're just really nice people, all of them. I really enjoyed.
Sarah Silverman and Jennie Garoppolo were on it too right then,
but they were struggling a lot. They were really weren't
very good to women back then, and like I remember
hanging out at the Paramount later that night and the

(48:28):
two of them were just really bummed out about like
it's hard to get their stuff on the show. Yeah,
you could make dick jokes, but you couldn't make Sarah
Silverman jokes, you know what I mean, Like she was
much more risque, and they really struggled with getting stuff
on it. But that's not the cast fault, that's the
right And we struggled a lot that week. We had

(48:51):
made a lot of agreements with Saturday Night Live about
what we were going to play, about playing the entire songs,
and they kind of went back on everything. Right, we
got there and changed everything we'd agreed on, and we
fought about it all week. We eventually, in the end
had to threaten to leave that afternoon.

Speaker 4 (49:10):
Yeah, I remember hearing about this. It was because they
didn't want you to play round here?

Speaker 6 (49:15):
Was that what?

Speaker 1 (49:15):
They didn't want us to play it first, even though
that was the agreement, and I was very set on
that being the first song that the world heard from us,
you know, I thought it was the most important song.
And they wanted us to edit the songs down, which
we had agreed not to do because I didn't like
editing songs. And I mean, in the end, actually having

(49:36):
allowed us to play around Here and as well as
it went, they came back later on and asked me,
can you please cut down mister Jones right before we
were going to go play it, and so I did.
I think I think I cut the last verset, the
last double chorus in half. I don't remember exactly, but
I think I did think it was only fair to
do that. But it was a rough week because they

(49:58):
kept threatening out. You know, they're a big the company, NBC.
It's big, and that's the biggest show for bands, and
you know, they don't really have much of a hesitation
about bullying you.

Speaker 7 (50:10):
And yeah, you're just lucky to be here, kid kind
of thing.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Basically we were, but I can be very stubborn, and
we had a deal and we didn't. I mean, they've
never had us back, let's put it that way. But
the show made our career, and without a doubt, it
absolutely made our career, you know, like I think it.
I just remember very clearly the influence that had on

(50:35):
record sales in the month and a half after that.
You know, we went to play Letterman right before we
played Saturday Live and we played round Here again, and that,
to me is probably still our best ever television performance,
that Letterman performance. But we were great on Saturday Night Live.
We crushed it. Yeah, and I couldn't be more thankful
to them about the effect they had on our career.

(50:57):
While my memories of it are pretty because I would
have loved to enjoy Saturday Night Live too, but it
was it's a rough week, you know. It was I'm
just this like young nobody, you know, and I I
don't know how to deal with a network. Yeah, and
like Lauren Michael's and the and I'm very scared I'm

(51:21):
ruining our career. But I was also very determined to
get our career off to the right start.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Well, I think a big part of your staying power
has been has been obviously the live shows and your
approach to live shows in particular. I mean I talked
about it when we talked about mentioning Counting Crows on
en Boy Meets World. I talked about, like, how my fandom,
you know, it was like I like the first album whatever.
But once I started seeing you guys.

Speaker 4 (51:45):
Live, what it was for me was, Oh, every night's different.

Speaker 8 (51:49):
You know that that that that you allow improvisation or
you you seek improvisation every night, and then you have
this inner textuality with other songs riffing on you know,
used to be sort of humor now at Springsteen, you know,
but you were always you know, where did that come from?

Speaker 1 (52:06):
I think that people I saw growing up were that way.

Speaker 7 (52:11):
You know.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
I feel like, you know, Ram would play obscure Velvet
Underground songs. Well obscure then because no Velvet Underground kind
of disappeared. Now there are you know, icons, but at
that point they were in the eighties, they were kind
of a forgotten band, you know. And I got introduced
to all this music by them, by like the big

(52:32):
star songs they played. And you know, when I saw
I had a lot of you know, I saw Van
Marrison a few times when I was a kid. He
clearly improvised a lot on stage. I saw Miles Davies,
he did the same thing.

Speaker 7 (52:46):
You know.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
It was a lot of music that I really liked
that did that. But you know, it's also part of
what in our minds for a lot of years, we
associated seeing the bands we loved with music being different
from the records, because that's what live music was. It

(53:08):
wasn't until I think, really MTV came along that we
associated seeing that people perform and hearing the record. You know,
I mean, you had Elvis movies before that kind of
and you know, Beatles movies but you didn't really think
of it that way, like when you thought about going
to a concert, it was going to be different and

(53:30):
you look forward to that, you know. But the MTV
kind of trained us in a lot of ways to
think we could watch the band and it would be
exactly the same as we were listening. And that's nothing
wrong with that. There are people who do it really well.
And I guess there was TV too, now that I
think about it, At Sullivan and most people you were
lip syncing, So it did exist before MTV, but that

(53:51):
was on TV, you know. I don't know. Maybe my
theory doesn't really work. I like it. It's an interesting one,
damn it. The mistake I made right now was calling
myself on that.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
You should have just let it out.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
Person who should point out you're wrong is yourself. I
don't know. I grew up thinking that's what music was,
you know, and I really liked that, and so when
I started to play music, it wasn't like it actually
wasn't right when I started to play music. The very
first gig of our first tour, we drove up the tour.

(54:27):
We were going to be opening for Suade, and the
middle band was the Cranberry's. They ended up blowing up
midway through that tour, but Swade was the headliner and
we were the third band. And the first gig we
played was that the Town Pump in Vancouver, and I
think it was just Cranberry's that night, and we drove
all the way up from Berkeley, twenty four hour drive
up from Berkeley, and that afternoon before the show, we

(54:51):
did sound check and then we went a few of
us went over to the Lake Victoria and we were
sort of looking at the shores of the lake. It
was pretty and we were just trying to figure out
what to do before the show. And I turned to
like the guys who were there in the band. I
think it was Charlie and I don't remember who else
was there, Dan maybe, and I'm like, hey, when we

(55:12):
get done with the solo, the guitar solo and mister Jones,
I'm gonna go like this and everybody come down and
they said why, I'm like, I don't know, I'm gonna
do something. What are you gonna do? I don't know,
Just follow me. It's gonna be cool, you know, I'll try,
you know, And it was just like they all looked

(55:32):
at me like okay, well all right, let's try it.
And then we did it that night and it was great,
and like, you know, we're the opening of three bands,
and we start playing these shows where we're like taking
the songs apart in the middle. Yeah, and you know,
you only have a half hour set, so you can
only play a few songs. But we started doing these
ten minute versions of like Ranking in a thirty minute

(55:55):
set or around here. Later. I don't remember how soon
we started doing around here, because I know it started
with Ranking, you know, and people sat up and took notice,
you know, and people got, oh, this is really cool,
you know, because especially the people that are seeing you
at that point either have sought you out because they
have the record and they're really interested, or they're just
like indie music fans because they're there ce Suaye, you know,

(56:18):
and they're in a club, you know. And nobody's complained
about it until the next summer when we were huge,
and the fans that came in were like, play mister Jones,
that's all, and.

Speaker 4 (56:32):
Make it sound exactly the same album tricks, right.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
I mean, I still think we get a lot of
complaints still, I mean not a lot, but like, you know,
I'll be looking through the the mentions and the stuff
on Instagram after shows and they'll there'll be someone every
once in a while who's like, they just ruined song
after songs tonight. How are we supposed to sing along

(56:57):
if he doesn't even know how the song goes? First
thought is, don't worry about singing along. I can do
it better than you, right, But you know, I understand
enjoying singing along at shows. You know, when I go
when I go to see Dashboard Confessional, my friend Chris's band,
the entire audience sings along the whole time and it's awesome.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
Yeah, but I my songs.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
Aren't as They're not like, I don't know why they're
They're just different in that Well maybe it's just that
I'm screwing them up. It could be that too.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
When the ground, I mean, I think that you know
that that live quality that's sort of like, oh, every
night is going to be a little different where we
don't know, you're you're having an experience, you're discovering the
song live. That I mean, that was what always attracted
me to you guys, you know, and I think that, yeah,
you're going to lose some people.

Speaker 4 (57:43):
But I think, you know, it's it's worked out. You know,
you guys are still here.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right, and it's like
something is working because it's thirty years on and plenty
of people came to shows this summer. You know, we
played sixty shows this summer and there's a lot of
people there.

Speaker 9 (57:59):
We were in the same places you once. Yeah, we
were in Raleigh, North Carolina the same night you guys
were in Raleigh, and we found out you were doing
a show walking distance from where we were, and we
tried to get in at the last second and not
a ticket to be found.

Speaker 3 (58:14):
I couldn't get couldn't get in.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Oh, you were at the convention. Yeah, yeah, I remember
that day because Chris went over to the convention because
he's seriously geeky too, and Kaba went over to the
convention to sort of geek out with people, you know,
Star Wars, Star Trek. Really, he's really into that. Like
last was it last year? I think it was last year.

(58:38):
Chris called me and he said, I'm coming up to
New York for a weekend. I'm doing this thing. I
don't know if you want to go with us. And
I'm like, what is it. He goes, well, it's a
little embarrassing, but you know, you know me, And I'm like, yeah,
what is it? He goes, We're going to a podcast.
We're going to a Star Trek podcast. Really, all right,

(58:59):
I'll come with you him and his brother and we
all went. It was this podcast called the Greatest Generation
and they go every podcast they go through a different
episode starting I don't think they did the original Star Trek.
I think they started with the Next Generation and they're
going theoretically going through all the shows, but they have
these live ones where they just do the movies. Okay,

(59:20):
So we went to one of the live ones at
the Bell what's that place in the Bellhouse in Brooklyn,
and we saw we went to hang out with these
We went and talked to the guys and hang out
with them and had a few beers, and then they
did their podcast on Star Trek four, which was my
favorite of the old Star Trek movies. Great movie The
Whales and the twentieth Century San Francisco.

Speaker 6 (59:43):
Yep, so.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Yeah, yeah, great movie. So they did this hysterical podcast
on it. Me and Chris went to it with his
brother and it was awesome and I you know, so yeah.
I remember that day because Chris there was like a
tunnel that connected actually through the basement to the convention

(01:00:07):
to our gig, and they went to it.

Speaker 9 (01:00:09):
We just crashed it.

Speaker 7 (01:00:13):
We would have crashed it if we could.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
We tried.

Speaker 9 (01:00:15):
We walked by, we stood outside for a little bit,
listened to a little bit of the music, and left.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
We tried to get in, but we just couldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
We don't have each other's numbers anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
No, I texted.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
I texted Emmy because I'm still in touch with Emmy,
So I texted him and he was like, let me try,
let me try.

Speaker 8 (01:00:29):
But then it was like five minutes before the show
was like.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Emberdn't come to Ah. I wish I'd known. I would
have absolutely worked it out to get you guys in.
That's a shame.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
I have another industry question for you.

Speaker 9 (01:00:40):
The biggest story this month has been the surprising resurgence
of Creed from the Texas Rangers championing them through the
World Series and now they've reunited for a tour and
it seems like they have like the perfect amount of
camp and nostalgia going into the next year.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
So my question for you is creep get a bad rap?

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Well, I think yeah, I mean, there's no such thing
as anything but that. Look, I mean, we're just it
doesn't matter whether you're a big Creed fan or not.
Somebody is and they enjoy the music, you know, like
they enjoy the music. And people like music because they
like music, you know, and they should be able to

(01:01:23):
enjoy that music. It's really dumb to me this thing
we do where our you know, music's different from other
art forms that we literally wear it on our chests, right, yeah,
you know, although this is a fresh pinch shirt, so
maybe it's actually maybe it's actually a TV show show.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
You correct yourself way too much at them.

Speaker 7 (01:01:39):
Just go with it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
I mean, I feel like we define ourselves by the
music we like in ways we don't with other art forms.

Speaker 7 (01:01:47):
And and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
And then we put down other people for the music
they like. And it just seems so silly to me.
It's just whether their music is great or not, whether
the band is like howe, we have to stratify who's
the best. There's still some guy who was sitting at
home in his bedroom writing these songs that meant something
to him, right, and he chose to express himself in
that way, and so he did, and the way the media,

(01:02:12):
like Lynch mobs certain bands and then everybody else jumps
on it too. I watched this documentary a little while
ago about the Begs, you know, and.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
So good, and you know, there there were such a
huge influential band, meshing different kinds of music and making
this incredible like music out of it. The disco music
was so good and and then that became this thing
that divided people, and you realize, like they One of

(01:02:43):
the great things in that movie was they did an
interview with one of the ushers at Kimiski Park where
they had to burn the disco record celebration, and that
people are bringing in records that he's like, this isn't
a disco record, this is a soul It's like Stevie Wonder,
you know, it's and he realized that, Oll, it's not
really just about disco. It's about black meat music and
gay music and everything that was sort of like not

(01:03:04):
cool for white guys in middle of I don't know what,
but the Beg's Meanwhile, we're off on the biggest tour
in the world. They get home and they realize no
one nots to ever hear anything from you again. You know,
like you're You've gone from being the biggest band bar
none in the world to anathema, like no one even
wants to like admit to liking you ever again, and

(01:03:26):
that's kind of the end of their career, which sucks.
I mean, that's so stupid, and it's just it has
to do a lot with what radio does, which is
play it until you're sick of it. And that's part
of what happens. You know, radio plays till you are
sick of it, and you have no control over that.
The best possible situation is that they play you, and
the worst possible situation is they play you too much,
and then.

Speaker 6 (01:03:48):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
But I was sort of I'd forgotten about all that
when it happened, and it was appalling to watch it
again and see what a lynch mob it was. Yeah,
you know, and uh, how to disupport that.

Speaker 7 (01:04:00):
Is because we were a television show. We hear from
our fans all the time. We grew up with you.
It's super important to us and it meant something in
our childhood, so very briefly bringing it to television, did

(01:04:21):
you have a Boy Meets World in your life. Was
there a show you grew up watching that was really
important to you?

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Yeah, I mean there were lots. I mean the ones
that stick out the most in my mind were like
All in the Family when I was a kid, it
was really and the Jeffersons, they were really like, you know,
good Time, those those sitcoms, the Norman Lear Ones, Mary
Tyler Moore Show, you know, those were so brilliant and
so like culture changing to me at the time. And

(01:04:50):
then soon after that, I got really obsessed with Hill
Street Blues, you know, and and the beginning of his shows,
which are so many good shows that Stephen Boschko made,
and such a huge influence on everything after that too,
you know, like television changes massively because of those shows
and specifically Hill Street Blues.

Speaker 6 (01:05:10):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
And then but the other thing that really hit me
after that was Ken Burns. I still think in a
lot of ways is my favorite filmmaker, you know, and
that he made I guess they're movies, but they were
all made for TV. You know, the Statue of Liberty,
one that features Carolyn Fourchet, who was the poet I
was reading when I wrote my first song and had
a huge influence you know, that Civil War documentary. Later on,

(01:05:35):
the Jazz and the Baseball ones, which were so powerful
to me, you know, and he just continued making them
for years and years still to this day. Their brilliant work.
The Vietnam one is incredible, Pat too. Yeah, the Prohibition
one's really good. It's a little briefer, but it's really good.
Jack Johnson one had a big effect on me because

(01:05:55):
it becomes part of the beginning of Palisades Park, which
is about Jack Johnson's fight with Jim Jeffreys in Reno
in whatever that was nineteen hundred and nineteen ten, you know,
like that's the beginning of Palisades Park. Yeah, those shows
were really really big to me. You know, it changes
weirdly when we go on tour because then I just

(01:06:18):
for a few years, it's almost impossible to see anything.
Until I made friends who gave me, Like Nev Campbell,
I told her I really wanted to see Party of
Five because I hadn't seen it and I heard it
was really great, and she got me the She had
the studio print all of them up on VHS tapes
and gave me like three boxes of podcast and they

(01:06:40):
did the same thing for me for the X Files
and we would watch them in the back of the
bus on tour.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
You know, that's amazing.

Speaker 9 (01:06:46):
I wonder if she had to pay like five hundred
dollars to get me, had to pay at the end
of the season, Adam. Believe it or not, we would
work on the show all season, and then at the
end of the season, they would say, for the lolow
price of like three hundred and eighty dollars, you can
have a copy of each episode you did on these

(01:07:06):
VHS tapes. And we would pay the money and we'd
get them on VHS.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
That's not that they really get you, coming and gone.
I mean right, that's how they get you.

Speaker 4 (01:07:15):
That's how they get you.

Speaker 9 (01:07:16):
Disney.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
Yeah, man, it's like those studios. It's like there's so
much You realize that too when you're in a band.
Once you start working with a movie or a TV show,
there's just so much more money involved and therefore so
many more executives, and therefore it cost them less to
just sick a lawyer at you for something. It's just
like it ends up always being I love having my
music in movies and on TV, but it's always a

(01:07:38):
bit of a chore. And a headache because you got
to defend yourself the whole way through it.

Speaker 9 (01:07:42):
Yep, that's exactly right. My last question for you, you
guys have been on the road NonStop lately. What can
fans expect from Counting Crows in the future. And do you,
you know, need anybody to jump on stage with you
like I did thirty years ago and.

Speaker 3 (01:07:55):
Then just you know, dance on stage.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
We always need that. We haven't done it much in
a while, just with the other bands, but yeah, we
used to do that with hanging around and everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
We all jumped up, We all jumped up there.

Speaker 7 (01:08:08):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
That's kind of based on the fact that we had
all our friends in the studio clapping on that song.
Originally it was everybody at the house recording on it,
I mean clapping when we did the song. Uh, I mean,
I'm writing a few songs. I was just working last
night to get the second half of the suite done.
I think hopefully we'll get recording later this year. And
then we were just talking the last couple of days

(01:08:31):
about going out this coming summer and whether to do
it or not and how to do it, and I mean,
ablell just keep doing what we're doing. I guess it
seems to be working and I don't really have any
other employment. Surprised how little there is out there for
aging rock and rollers.

Speaker 4 (01:08:52):
You know.

Speaker 9 (01:08:53):
Well, we would love to make it out to a
show and and we'll invite Will along this time.

Speaker 7 (01:08:58):
Will, I'd like to come again.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Writer.

Speaker 7 (01:09:01):
Writer especially uh brought your band into my life. I
tried to reciprocate with my my growing up band, which
is Who's Gerdo. I've tried over and over. So I'm
trying to get more Bob Mulled into their lives as
much as I can. It's amazing, it's amazing. So but
they then Writer introduced me to Counting Crows and it's
been Uh. It was a great, great addition to my

(01:09:23):
my musical career.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
So I loved it.

Speaker 7 (01:09:26):
One more one more, very very very very brief thing.
Writer used to tell me back in the day, you
made a hell of a set of ribs using was
it Doctor Pecker?

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (01:09:34):
Yeah, So I'm gonna need that recipe at some point.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
I don't. I haven't done the Dr Pepper part of
the recipe in a long time. It's really good, though,
because the idea was that since you don't have a smoker.
You boil it a bit before you do the the grill.
I have been working on my ribs over the years,
tried coming up with an oven version, and I've been
I have not re included the doctor pepper part yet.

(01:09:59):
I've just been cooking it in the oven. But I
will say I got that recipe from Gibby Haynes of
the Butthole. Surfers used to have barbecues on sunset on
Sundays in front of the Viper Room when I was
martining there, and so Gibby taught me to make the
doctor Pepper ribs. We did it on Sunset Boulevard in
front of the Viper Room.

Speaker 4 (01:10:18):
That's the only time I've ever had crawfish was at here.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Please.

Speaker 4 (01:10:22):
You had to crawfish boil once, and I remember that.
I have done Mart's cracking the heads. Oh yeah, I
tried it. I'll never do it again.

Speaker 7 (01:10:30):
I want the ribs. I want the rib recipe. Yeah
that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
Well, Adam, I'll figure out how to do it.

Speaker 9 (01:10:36):
Thank you so much for taking time out of your
day and joining us. And you know it goes without
saying how important you were in writer's life. Throughout the nineties,
but also just to all of us, and it's an
honor to have gone through the nineties right alongside you.
We all celebrated our thirtieth anniversary this year, you with
August and everything after in us with Boy Meets World.
And it's really nice that we're both still here and

(01:11:00):
able to talk about the the impact that we had
on people and still doing what we love to do.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
So thank you for being here with us.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
It's so nice to see you guys again. I have
to say, it's really great to see all of you.
Thank pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:11:11):
It was really nice seeing you. Hopefully we'll see you soon.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):
Thanks you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
Thanks Adam, Bye bye bye.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Wow. So cool. Such a nice guy.

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
What a great dude.

Speaker 4 (01:11:33):
Yeah, always has been the nicest guy.

Speaker 6 (01:11:37):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
It's it's it's so funny when somebody is like, you know,
writing songs for their tortured constantly.

Speaker 4 (01:11:42):
Yeah, but then you actually talked to him.

Speaker 7 (01:11:44):
He's pretty happy, pretty nice.

Speaker 4 (01:11:46):
I'm sure he has his down moments, but those are
the moments that he writes the songs about. But you know,
for the most part, life is good.

Speaker 3 (01:11:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:11:52):
Well, and he'd like he talked about you know, he
understands why people relate to it so much, even though
it seems like, you know, when you hear of some
be talking about because we talk about it in the
movie industry all the time or the TV industry where
it's like let's do a let's do a story about
a famous person, you go, well, that's not relatable. But
the actual struggle of fame and life changing those things

(01:12:16):
are actually super relatable and so exactly like you said,
where he wrote songs about a very specific sliver of
his life that he was willing to let you in on,
and it happened to be aspects of life that everyone
can relate to.

Speaker 3 (01:12:29):
It's just it's really interesting.

Speaker 9 (01:12:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:12:31):
I also just love hearing you know, it's like for
you know, doing music for ten years before you have
that moment.

Speaker 4 (01:12:37):
But of course, as far as the world is concerned,
you're an overnight success.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
That happened.

Speaker 4 (01:12:42):
No, that's never the case. Whenever you hear about an
overnight success, there is probably ten years of struggle. Now,
when you're talking about child actors, that's a little different.
You can't you can't just be sitting on a porch
somewhere and somebody finds you. But that doesn't happen musically now,
it doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
It doesn't happen almost in any other capacity, Like it's
really specifically too kid actors. But yeah, I've always thought
about that, like you know how much. And also just
like it's so interesting to hear about there's so especially
with rock and roll or music in general, there's so
much glamor and excitement and but the reality is like
the day to day life of being a musician is
so much work.

Speaker 3 (01:13:16):
Like toy now, I mean, and we're little tour we're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
Can you imagine being on tour for nine months a
year the mad scene.

Speaker 4 (01:13:24):
No, And if you're like the lead singer or the
lead musician, you're doing every every night.

Speaker 8 (01:13:28):
It just takes so much energy.

Speaker 7 (01:13:30):
And yeah, I couldn't imagine but him just going and
not even really knowing how to play the piano, but
going in picking out the notes and then going, oh,
I'm a songwriter. I mean that's amazing to me.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
Yeah, it's in credit.

Speaker 8 (01:13:40):
I've never heard that story. It's really cool.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
I love it, very cool.

Speaker 9 (01:13:43):
Well, thank you all for joining us for this episode
of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us
on Instagram, Pod Meets World Show. You can send us
your emails Pod Meets World Show at gmail dot com
and we have merch missed the march and me pod
Meets Worldshow dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:13:59):
Thank you all for joining us writer send us out.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
We love you all. Pod dismissed.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
Podmeets World is an iHeart podcast producer hosted by Danielle Fischel,
Wilfridell and Ryder Strong executive producers, Jensen Karp and Amy
Sugarman Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor,
Tara Subasch, producer, Mattie.

Speaker 4 (01:14:18):
Moore engineer and Boy Meets World Superman Easton Allen. Our
theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us
on Instagram at Podmets World Show or email us at
Podmeats World Show at gmail dot com