December 10, 2025 • 11 mins
So next year, Counting Crows return to New Zealand and Australia with “The Complete Sweets! Tour” - bringing decades of sing-along moments, deep cuts, and fresh energy to iconic theatres across both countries.
And yesterday, it was announced that their Auckland show in March has sold out… and now a second show has been added!
Joining us on the podcast is the lead singer from the Counting Crows - Adam Duritz!
PS: Counting Crows second Auckland concert is on Tuesday, March 24 at the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre.
General public tickets go on sale on Friday, December 12
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
We're talking to the lead singer from the Counting Crows.
Edam Durrance.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I am here, and how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
S Jerium and I here?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
How are you so good? Thanks for talking to us,
No problem. Where do we find you today?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I am in New York City at home.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Oh beautiful. I haven't never been to New York. I'd
love to go to New York.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
I feel like it would spoke me as someone from
a country with about forty three people in it.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
It's big, it's it's a small town though, it's a
it's a weird big city in that way. It's very
uh villagey, very college town lake. Everybody ox and takes
the subway.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
This meeting is being recorded.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Wow, okay, this meeting is being recorded. Jesus, Jesus coming
through Strong. Which part of New York? Are you in
the meat pecking District? No?
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I live down in Greenwich Village.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Ah, beautiful, beautiful. I've been there. Yeah, it's that's that's
a very very cool, cool part of the cool part
of the city.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah. I'm right on the border of the East Village.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, that's that's the night for me and I who
hasn't been there. That's like, that's like the Ponsonby of
New York City, pretty viby, little Adam and be like,
what the hell is the New York City doesn't make sense?
So you've been to New Zealand before, Adam, I feel
like I saw you open for the whole years ago,
(01:33):
like a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I always forget about that tour, but yeah we did.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
You've been touring for so long.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Where are some of the coolest places that you've been Uh?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Well, New Zealand is definitely one of them. I Mean,
Auckland's beautiful in its own but I have a friend
who has a cattle station up in the Coramandel and
I love going up there. It's incredible.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
That's one of the most beautiful parts of the country
of the coramandor I'm actually hitting there ever the.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Break, Yeah, it's I can't wait to go back and
to question for you.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
And I'm always interested in this for people who have
written massive hits, like how does your relationship So mister
Jones is a massive hit. You know you're gonna have
to play mister Jones wherever you go. That's the way
it goes.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
How does your.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Relationship change with a song like that, Like, how do
you feel about that song now? Is it different than
how you felt about it when you first wrote it?
Speaker 4 (02:26):
It?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Does? It changes?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
It come in and out of favor. Is it like
a child? What's it like?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
I mean, it changes the same way your relationship with
all your songs do, which is that you know your
life changes, and so you look at the songs in
a different way. You know, writing a song like mister
Jones about dreaming about being a rock star but also
knowing it's not going to be what you dream is
different when you're kind of just supposing that than it
(02:55):
is when it happens, or it is when you've been
doing it for thirty years, you.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Like none of them Like, I don't like the song
any less. I love the song, but you know, I
think of it differently now than I did when I
first wrote it, just because specifics of the song. I'm
living a different life than I was when I wrote it.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
You mentioned that some parts of what you thought being
a rock star would be like were different than what
it's actually like. What was the biggest difference from what
you thought it was going to be like being a
rock star?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Well, I mean I didn't really know what being famous
is going to be like, and I knew that when
I wrote it, Which is why you're supposed to know.
When the guy says, when everybody loves me, I'll never
be lonely, you're supposed to know that he's wrong, you know.
I mean that's kind of the thought, and I knew
that before.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I wrote it.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
But like, fame is such a weird thing. There's no
way to prepare for everybody looking at you like that,
you know. Like I've often said, fame isn't really something
you do. It's something other people do to you, you know,
And so that's a big change. Like when you live
through it, it's a whole different thing. But I mean
I was right about that, it was. You know, it
(04:06):
doesn't solve all your problems. It just makes you someone
everybody knows sort of or thinks they know, which isn't
fix you. You know, it just makes you.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Popular for a little while, just gives you a different
set of problems.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Are you still getting people camping outside your house off
to shows and stuff?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
No, thank god, But it's weird. You know, you get
mail from people and you realize, oh, people know where
you live. That's a strange feeling to get, like, oh,
they know exactly where I live. I'm glad they're not
camped out in front of my house.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
What kind of things did they send you?
Speaker 3 (04:43):
You know, they want me to mail them stuff like
pictures that I'll sign. They want me to mail them pictures.
They want me to give them tickets. They want to
know if I've gotten the old dreadlocks saved up. They
can have just saw lines of stuff that And.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
What are you doing with your time? Most of the time,
you're still recording music. Obviously you're touring at certain times,
Like how's all of that if that changed over time
in terms of your percentages of what you're doing. Are
you doing a whole lot of other things as well?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Not right now?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I mean, I just got home from eight months of touring,
so I'm kind of just trying to relax. My girlfriend's
in a play that opens tonight, so I'm gonna go
see that. I've been helping her run lines, you know,
for a few weeks there. It was kind of busy
because I was cooking stuff for Thanksgiving and I trying
(05:39):
to think what else I was doing. I had to
go away for a couple of gigs just one offs.
So you know, I'm just trying to relax right now
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Are you wandering around with music and you hit all
the time? Are you one of those guys that's got
chord progressions or jingles, melody or melodies or other people's
music and your head like all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
All the time. But it happens a lot. Sometimes I'm
more willing to pay attention to that. Other times I
just kind of hummed up to myself. I think I
have a lot of music in my head a lot
of the time. I just don't always want to work
on it. Once I start working on something, I get
obsessed with doing it, and I don't always want to
do that because then you'd like, oh, okay, I've got
(06:21):
to write this, I gotta finish it, we got to
go in the studio, we got to make another record,
and you know, like right now, I don't really want
to do that. I kind of want to relax for
a little bit. Let Zoe be the star, you know,
gonna follow her around, I'm running lines with her a lot,
and gonna go to the show and watch her tonight.
I don't want it to be all about me at
(06:42):
the moment. I've still got some work to do musically.
We just we stopped in Belgium on the way home,
Emma and I and we recorded some stuff with the
Dutch band Bluff, who we've done singles with before in
Dutch and English, and we need to go in the
studio and finish up this song that we did together.
And then there's a re release of Recovering the Satellites
(07:02):
coming up, and we're there's a track we never finished
back then. We're going back to try and do something
with that. So I've got little bits of work to do,
but I'm trying not to get too caught up in
it because we've been so since COVID ended. We've been
just like on the road so much, and it's you know,
I need to take a little time and not get
burnt out right now?
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Yeah, how do you do? How do you do that
on the road? Because you know you're in planes, trains
and automobiles. You're giving so much yourself at every show.
What are you doing between to make sure that you
still get a bit of joice to give?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
All Right?
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I sit around a lot in hotel rooms trying to
be quiet, uh, and cause I got to make it
to every show. And when I was younger, I went
out a lot more, but it was harder on my voice.
Now that I'm older, I really got to take care
of my voice. So it's a lot more boring now.
But the shows are so cool. Like to me, getting
up on stage and playing is still the greatest thing
(07:57):
in the world. So that's so important to me that
I just want to be You know, you got to
be careful getting worn down. Like twice I came to
New Zealand and got really sick because I was working
too much right before it. Once I was at south
By Southwest for two weeks putting on a music festival.
Once I think we've just been doing a lot of
promo right after COVID and I got COVID last time
(08:19):
we were in New Zealand. So you got to be
careful about that stuff where you miss shows. And I
don't like to miss shows.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And I know that once upon a time you really
knew how to send it. Are you still capable of
sending it when the situation demands it, you know, in
terms of you pay, in terms of the partying.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Nah, But I don't.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I don't really care. I think a lot of times
you're out there, you just really want to meet girls,
you know, And I don't care about that right now.
I'm very settled, so I don't really need to do
that as much. I got a wine cellar full of
wine whenever I want to get drunk o Me and
a couple of friends own a winery, so I always
have booze available. But you know, I don't I don't
(09:01):
need to socialize that way as much.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I read a really interesting thing about you a while
ago that after the release of your debut Counting Crow's
album massively successful, that I think this is right, you
went you went back and worked as a bartender for
kind of a reality check.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Nah?
Speaker 3 (09:23):
It wasn't for a reality check. It was just less
crowded on that side of the bar. I was bartending
at the Viper Room for years.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yes, the Viproom met Trot.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Where have I heard of that?
Speaker 3 (09:36):
I went to LA and the only people I knew
worked at the Viper Room, So I was hanging out
there all the time, and it was just less crowded
on the other side of the bar, And so I
would be hanging out back there with friends and at
one point one of them is like, hey, do you
know how to work the register? And I said yes,
And Shannon said, well, I gotta go to the bathroom
and have a cigarette. Can you just run the bar
(09:56):
for a while? And I just said sure, you know,
And by the time she got I'd made so much
fucking money I'm sorry in tips for her that she
was just like, you got to do this all the time. So,
I mean, I wasn't really getting paid. I was just
hanging out. It was where I went every night anyways,
and it was just more comfortable on the other side
of the bar, and I was with people I knew,
(10:18):
and I met lots of people. It was just exciting.
It was fun, but it was the last thing in
the world it was was a reality check I was working.
It was the most star studded place I've ever been
in my entire life.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
You guys have got so many hurts. How do you
decide the sittlist? Who comes up with it?
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Me and Immer do it every night right after dinner.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Usually is run it on the back of a napkin.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
No, we got a We got a pile of like
old set lists and a list of songs, and there's
one paper that's a list of cover songs that we've played.
I don't know who made that list because half the
stuff on it we've never played in our lives. Since
it's a useless piece of paper, I do it on
the back of that piece, but it's weird superstition. I
don't like to do it anywhere else, so I always
(11:03):
do it on the back of that piece. Emma and
I sit talk about it and we make a list.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Well, looking forward to seeing it, Adam when you come
down here. Best of luck with everything, and I'm lovely
to chat to you.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Thanks so much, man, I cannot wait to come down.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Coming out on
We're talking to the lead singer from the Counting Crows.
Edam Durrance.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I am here, and how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
S Jerium and I here?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
How are you so good? Thanks for talking to us,
No problem. Where do we find you today?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I am in New York City at home.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Oh beautiful. I haven't never been to New York. I'd
love to go to New York.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
I feel like it would spoke me as someone from
a country with about forty three people in it.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
It's big, it's it's a small town though, it's a
it's a weird big city in that way. It's very
uh villagey, very college town lake. Everybody ox and takes
the subway.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
This meeting is being recorded.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Wow, okay, this meeting is being recorded. Jesus, Jesus coming
through Strong. Which part of New York? Are you in
the meat pecking District? No?
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I live down in Greenwich Village.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Ah, beautiful, beautiful. I've been there. Yeah, it's that's that's
a very very cool, cool part of the cool part
of the city.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah. I'm right on the border of the East Village.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, that's that's the night for me and I who
hasn't been there. That's like, that's like the Ponsonby of
New York City, pretty viby, little Adam and be like,
what the hell is the New York City doesn't make sense?
So you've been to New Zealand before, Adam, I feel
like I saw you open for the whole years ago,
(01:33):
like a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I always forget about that tour, but yeah we did.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
You've been touring for so long.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Where are some of the coolest places that you've been Uh?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Well, New Zealand is definitely one of them. I Mean,
Auckland's beautiful in its own but I have a friend
who has a cattle station up in the Coramandel and
I love going up there. It's incredible.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
That's one of the most beautiful parts of the country
of the coramandor I'm actually hitting there ever the.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Break, Yeah, it's I can't wait to go back and
to question for you.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
And I'm always interested in this for people who have
written massive hits, like how does your relationship So mister
Jones is a massive hit. You know you're gonna have
to play mister Jones wherever you go. That's the way
it goes.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
How does your.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Relationship change with a song like that, Like, how do
you feel about that song now? Is it different than
how you felt about it when you first wrote it?
Speaker 4 (02:26):
It?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Does? It changes?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
It come in and out of favor. Is it like
a child? What's it like?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
I mean, it changes the same way your relationship with
all your songs do, which is that you know your
life changes, and so you look at the songs in
a different way. You know, writing a song like mister
Jones about dreaming about being a rock star but also
knowing it's not going to be what you dream is
different when you're kind of just supposing that than it
(02:55):
is when it happens, or it is when you've been
doing it for thirty years, you.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Like none of them Like, I don't like the song
any less. I love the song, but you know, I
think of it differently now than I did when I
first wrote it, just because specifics of the song. I'm
living a different life than I was when I wrote it.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
You mentioned that some parts of what you thought being
a rock star would be like were different than what
it's actually like. What was the biggest difference from what
you thought it was going to be like being a
rock star?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Well, I mean I didn't really know what being famous
is going to be like, and I knew that when
I wrote it, Which is why you're supposed to know.
When the guy says, when everybody loves me, I'll never
be lonely, you're supposed to know that he's wrong, you know.
I mean that's kind of the thought, and I knew
that before.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I wrote it.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
But like, fame is such a weird thing. There's no
way to prepare for everybody looking at you like that,
you know. Like I've often said, fame isn't really something
you do. It's something other people do to you, you know,
And so that's a big change. Like when you live
through it, it's a whole different thing. But I mean
I was right about that, it was. You know, it
(04:06):
doesn't solve all your problems. It just makes you someone
everybody knows sort of or thinks they know, which isn't
fix you. You know, it just makes you.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Popular for a little while, just gives you a different
set of problems.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Are you still getting people camping outside your house off
to shows and stuff?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
No, thank god, But it's weird. You know, you get
mail from people and you realize, oh, people know where
you live. That's a strange feeling to get, like, oh,
they know exactly where I live. I'm glad they're not
camped out in front of my house.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
What kind of things did they send you?
Speaker 3 (04:43):
You know, they want me to mail them stuff like
pictures that I'll sign. They want me to mail them pictures.
They want me to give them tickets. They want to
know if I've gotten the old dreadlocks saved up. They
can have just saw lines of stuff that And.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
What are you doing with your time? Most of the time,
you're still recording music. Obviously you're touring at certain times,
Like how's all of that if that changed over time
in terms of your percentages of what you're doing. Are
you doing a whole lot of other things as well?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Not right now?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I mean, I just got home from eight months of touring,
so I'm kind of just trying to relax. My girlfriend's
in a play that opens tonight, so I'm gonna go
see that. I've been helping her run lines, you know,
for a few weeks there. It was kind of busy
because I was cooking stuff for Thanksgiving and I trying
(05:39):
to think what else I was doing. I had to
go away for a couple of gigs just one offs.
So you know, I'm just trying to relax right now
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Are you wandering around with music and you hit all
the time? Are you one of those guys that's got
chord progressions or jingles, melody or melodies or other people's
music and your head like all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
All the time. But it happens a lot. Sometimes I'm
more willing to pay attention to that. Other times I
just kind of hummed up to myself. I think I
have a lot of music in my head a lot
of the time. I just don't always want to work
on it. Once I start working on something, I get
obsessed with doing it, and I don't always want to
do that because then you'd like, oh, okay, I've got
(06:21):
to write this, I gotta finish it, we got to
go in the studio, we got to make another record,
and you know, like right now, I don't really want
to do that. I kind of want to relax for
a little bit. Let Zoe be the star, you know,
gonna follow her around, I'm running lines with her a lot,
and gonna go to the show and watch her tonight.
I don't want it to be all about me at
(06:42):
the moment. I've still got some work to do musically.
We just we stopped in Belgium on the way home,
Emma and I and we recorded some stuff with the
Dutch band Bluff, who we've done singles with before in
Dutch and English, and we need to go in the
studio and finish up this song that we did together.
And then there's a re release of Recovering the Satellites
(07:02):
coming up, and we're there's a track we never finished
back then. We're going back to try and do something
with that. So I've got little bits of work to do,
but I'm trying not to get too caught up in
it because we've been so since COVID ended. We've been
just like on the road so much, and it's you know,
I need to take a little time and not get
burnt out right now?
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Yeah, how do you do? How do you do that
on the road? Because you know you're in planes, trains
and automobiles. You're giving so much yourself at every show.
What are you doing between to make sure that you
still get a bit of joice to give?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
All Right?
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I sit around a lot in hotel rooms trying to
be quiet, uh, and cause I got to make it
to every show. And when I was younger, I went
out a lot more, but it was harder on my voice.
Now that I'm older, I really got to take care
of my voice. So it's a lot more boring now.
But the shows are so cool. Like to me, getting
up on stage and playing is still the greatest thing
(07:57):
in the world. So that's so important to me that
I just want to be You know, you got to
be careful getting worn down. Like twice I came to
New Zealand and got really sick because I was working
too much right before it. Once I was at south
By Southwest for two weeks putting on a music festival.
Once I think we've just been doing a lot of
promo right after COVID and I got COVID last time
(08:19):
we were in New Zealand. So you got to be
careful about that stuff where you miss shows. And I
don't like to miss shows.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And I know that once upon a time you really
knew how to send it. Are you still capable of
sending it when the situation demands it, you know, in
terms of you pay, in terms of the partying.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Nah, But I don't.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I don't really care. I think a lot of times
you're out there, you just really want to meet girls,
you know, And I don't care about that right now.
I'm very settled, so I don't really need to do
that as much. I got a wine cellar full of
wine whenever I want to get drunk o Me and
a couple of friends own a winery, so I always
have booze available. But you know, I don't I don't
(09:01):
need to socialize that way as much.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I read a really interesting thing about you a while
ago that after the release of your debut Counting Crow's
album massively successful, that I think this is right, you
went you went back and worked as a bartender for
kind of a reality check.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Nah?
Speaker 3 (09:23):
It wasn't for a reality check. It was just less
crowded on that side of the bar. I was bartending
at the Viper Room for years.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yes, the Viproom met Trot.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Where have I heard of that?
Speaker 3 (09:36):
I went to LA and the only people I knew
worked at the Viper Room, So I was hanging out
there all the time, and it was just less crowded
on the other side of the bar, And so I
would be hanging out back there with friends and at
one point one of them is like, hey, do you
know how to work the register? And I said yes,
And Shannon said, well, I gotta go to the bathroom
and have a cigarette. Can you just run the bar
(09:56):
for a while? And I just said sure, you know,
And by the time she got I'd made so much
fucking money I'm sorry in tips for her that she
was just like, you got to do this all the time. So,
I mean, I wasn't really getting paid. I was just
hanging out. It was where I went every night anyways,
and it was just more comfortable on the other side
of the bar, and I was with people I knew,
(10:18):
and I met lots of people. It was just exciting.
It was fun, but it was the last thing in
the world it was was a reality check I was working.
It was the most star studded place I've ever been
in my entire life.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
You guys have got so many hurts. How do you
decide the sittlist? Who comes up with it?
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Me and Immer do it every night right after dinner.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Usually is run it on the back of a napkin.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
No, we got a We got a pile of like
old set lists and a list of songs, and there's
one paper that's a list of cover songs that we've played.
I don't know who made that list because half the
stuff on it we've never played in our lives. Since
it's a useless piece of paper, I do it on
the back of that piece, but it's weird superstition. I
don't like to do it anywhere else, so I always
(11:03):
do it on the back of that piece. Emma and
I sit talk about it and we make a list.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Well, looking forward to seeing it, Adam when you come
down here. Best of luck with everything, and I'm lovely
to chat to you.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Thanks so much, man, I cannot wait to come down.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Coming out on
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