FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
How does your garden grow?
Relaxed and ready, Counting Crows bury the bone
and recover the sound that made them famousCounting Crows with guest
Wednesday, September 3
Jubilee AuditoriumIt's been a good summer for Counting Crows.
Or, at least, guitarist David Bryson sounds like a relaxed and happy guy. Bryson is outside his home in Berkeley, California with a cordless phone. He tells me he's gardening while we talk about the band that started nearly 10 years ago as a coffee house duo with himself and singer Adam Duritz.
The affable Bryson seems to be the antithesis of Duritz, the Counting Crows' emotionally-charged frontman. Duritz, with his deeply expressive vocals, is, according to Bryson, much like the tormented poet his singing voice portrays.
"He really is," offers Bryson, choosing his words slowly and carefully. "He's a great guy, we're all great friends, but, I want to say, his life is heart. He's a very emotional guy, really a tormented artist, it's not an act. He's fairly up and down, and that's one of the things he has to live with.
"But it's because of that - I think - he's the talent that he is. I get that when I listen to him and that's what inspires (the band) to do what we all do."
The music public was first introduced to what the Counting Crows do with the band's debut August and Everything After. The album was released in '93, but took close to a year to get any attention. According to Bryson, the delayed reaction gave the band some time to prepare for their imminent success and, maybe, the rest of the industry a chance to get ready for them.
"It was delayed, but when it came, it came quickly," Bryson says of the fame. "It gave us time to tour and I think we were more prepared for what was needed once it started to hit, like Saturday Night Live and Letterman. If that had happened right out of the box, I don't think we'd have been able to do good performances.
"I actually think that those were some of the better things this band has ever done, the SNL thing. We turned it up three notches, we played beyond what we were capable of. I don't think we would have pulled that off had it happened right after the album was released.
"When we released our record, there wasn't much out there like what we were doing. It could have failed because of that. But as luck would have it, I think people were ready for something kind of different. We just happened to be that different thing, not to take credit for starting some trend or something...."
Bryson saves some of the credit for August and Everything After's producer, the legendary T-Bone Burnett. His touch likely played a big part in making the band stand out from the crowd and help them reach the wide audience they did. Bryson also agrees that T-Bone's style helped the band find the feel and spaciousness within songs.
"He's great, he's a producer who believes in feel being the number one thing. You gotta put your heart into it and it's gotta feel good. T-Bone doesn't believe in technical proficiency, you know, like Yngwie (Malmsteen)," he laughs. "There's no points for speed and perfection, there's just points for heart. I think that's something we all learned from him."
The band went with a different producer - Gil Norton - on their latest disc, Recovering the Satellite, but certainly not because they weren't totally satisfied with Burnett's work. It was just another step in the progression of a band that many have questioned in the area of staying power.
"The idea was, if we learned this much from him at one time, let's see what we can learn from somebody else as opposed to trying to get more out of T-Bone. I think it was a smart thing, in hindsight."
But that doesn't mean T-Bone didn't play a role in the recording of Recovering the Satellite. In fact his statement that, "recording studios reek of despair" might be a telling sign as to why Counting Crows sophomore release was recorded in the same manner as their first and why the band is happy with the outcome. Lugging a portable studio and some personal possessions into a home on the hills of Hollywood, they lived and recorded the album in the same place.
"We got the idea partly from T-Bone and also from Robbie Robertson... he was talking about Music From Big Pink (The Band's classic album) and how they set it up in a house, how it's just the way to do it.... We liked the idea so much that we committed ourselves to always making our records that way. We actually bought part of a mobile recording studio and that's how we'll make the third album as well. It's a lot more relaxing than being in a studio.
"When you work in a studio, you feel like you're going to work," Bryson says. "But when you're in this house, you feel like you're a part of something that's happening. I think that any musician who tried this would say it's the way to do it."
I picture Bryson humbly weeding his garden as we finish up the interview. He seems satisfied with the fruits of his labors and, more importantly, relaxed.
A good summer, indeed.
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