For more than 30 years, Counting Crows have been one of rock’s most emotionally resonant and sonically adventurous bands. Formed in the early ’90s in Berkeley, California, they made an indelible mark with their debut album ‘August and Everything After,' a collection of songs that introduced the world to frontman Adam Duritz’s vivid lyricism and unmistakable voice. With a sound that blends alternative rock, folk and Americana, the band has earned a devoted fanbase and a reputation for dynamic live shows and deeply personal songwriting that spans generations.

Now, in 2025, Counting Crows are entering a bold new era with ‘Butter Miracle: The Complete Sweets,' out today (May 9th). Expanding on their 2021 EP, the new album is a fully realised song cycle that channels everything from British pop to rock and glam, all grounded in the introspective storytelling that defines their catalog. (READ OUR REVIEW HERE) In this conversation, Adam Duritz opens up about the making of the album, the band’s evolution and what continues to drive his creativity after three decades in the spotlight.

No problem, man, thank you.

Oh, thank you very much. I love this record, I'm really happy with it. There were such musical challenges in the first set of songs that now form the second half of the album. Those songs were so exciting to record and compose. This next half……. I sat on these songs because I was unsure of them for a couple of years and when I finally got the band to come to my house they started to make more sense when we started to play them live – I couldn't figure them out because I couldn't play them. My ambition for writing, at this point, was past my ambitions as a player. I knew how they should sound in my head but I just couldn't play them.

One by one the guys were like, ‘that just fucking rocks,' as we started playing them at my house. Two weeks later we were in the studio, it was so quick. We had such a blast playing them.

That had never happened before. It was a good thing, though, because the songs were really just half written at that point. ‘Spaceman in Tulsa' had a verse and a pre-chorus but I needed to leave it and come back. When I finally tightened it up it became so much more powerful and that ‘punch you in the face' chorus emerged.

‘Boxcars' was the bigger problem because I couldn't play it at all. It was hard to even finish the writing which made some of it a little stiff I think but ‘Under the Aurora' was the biggest problem of all. The chorus just wasn't what I wanted it to be, it wasn't up to the rest of the song, which I think is so good, musically. When I went back to it I re-wrote the whole chorus and swapped the verses around too. I wrote a whole different chorus which I think lifts the song.

I made those changes and most of the songs were as they are now, except for ‘Boxcars' which was unfinished. I had never had that kinda doubt before, though, and that doubt sat with me for a couple of years. There was a similar feeling around ‘Somewhere Under Wonderland' because I had started writing differently around that point – I realised that there was a way to express a lot of my feelings through fictional characters rather than just saying what had happened to me that day. A song like ‘Palisades Park,' for example, the characters aren't me but all the feelings are me. Realising that opened up this whole world of possibilities for songs but when you are used to one thing being how you measure quality and you do a different thing……. it can be unsettling and make you question yourself. You start to lack confidence in yourself.

With the ‘Butter Miracle' songs I couldn't play them so I didn't know how good they were so I sat on them for two years and then when I had written ‘With Love From A to Z' and I loved that song, I knew it had to be recorded. I knew it was part of a record but it then made me get up off my ass and start to wonder how the other songs were going to fit in around it.

Part of it was just the physical reality of, at that point of my life, I was spending a year and a half at a time out on tour. On tour I play piano not guitar so there wasn't one in my hotel room every night plus my voice was under such strain from playing 4 or 5 shows a week. I had to be really careful and learn how to keep my voice together. There wasn't a lot of extra time then to be writing or singing either because tour days are so busy – so it was really just the necessity of it. I had to change and learn how to write on a focused chunk of time because that's all I had. I didn't write 50 songs and chop them down to 10, which is what so many writers do, I worked on the ideas I had and focused on making them right.

When you transition from writing songs for the sake of writing to knowing that whatever you create is going to go out on a record, that focuses your thinking on whether they are good enough or not as well. I became very focused on quality when we started making records and then after a while it becomes the new normal and a habit, particularly when what you did last time worked.

Somewhat. It was kind of a gradual thing. I write more in my phone these days than a notebook although it can depend on the song and where I am. ‘With Love From A to Z' was written mostly in a notebook because I was at home and at the piano. I live in New York and spend a lot of time around town on the subway and so when you are working on something it's often running around in your head and so it's good to have a phone to hand to record any ideas that might pop in there. The notes app on the phone is a lot like a notebook I think and I use that a lot.

Part of the problem nowadays is that all of our handwriting has gone to shit! (laughing) We're all just not used to writing that way anymore.

(laughing) They're a mess!!! As I've said, I've started to write more in the voices of characters also, which is also a change. The feelings are still all mine. When I did it it was such an obvious tool that I was surprised that I hadn't used it earlier. My songs have never been a diary so why pretend that it was? I can express myself in the life of characters that go through different experiences than I do but who still feel the same way.

He's just a fictional dude. When I was writing the suite, specifically ‘Elevator Boots' and ‘Bobby and the Rat Kings' they are really different sides of the same thing. One is looking at my life in music from the perspective of someone in a band and the other is looking at it from the perspective of a fan. When I was writing ‘Spaceman in Tulsa' it made sense to use the same name for completions sake – I've always liked to re-use names in my songs and keep the thematic flow tighter that way, I think it makes things more interesting for the listener too.

Absolutely and before that too. If you are music fan you can't escape the influence that British music had on America and vice-versa too. I feel like we are very much like two countries that bounce influences off of each other and it's been that way for a long time. It's been a fruitful relationship that has fed into each other in amazing ways.

All of these songs, except for ‘With Love From A to Z' were written in England and it definitely sinks into your head, especially on ‘Under the Aurora' where I was just enjoying playing with the words and sounds whilst I was coming to the realisation that I had written this entire record there. The choruses were re-written here in America but the verses were all written in England and I enjoyed playing with the lingo and the cadence of them. The verses are essentially a post-apocalyptic lark about living life in England! (laughing) The chorus was then rewritten in a post pandemic America with people angry, hurt and upset about issues like the killing of George Floyd and I needed to find a way to reconcile the two.

Oh yeah – it will be! We haven't played any of these new songs live yet except that Immer and I have been bouncing around doing a live acoustic version of ‘Spaceman in Tulsa' in a few places. Rehearsals start this weekend so we will be getting round to all that stuff!

‘Boxcars' came from a groove and a chorus I had but I was really struggling with the verses. The funny thing about that song….. I'm sure that all songwriters do this but I walk around all day singing ridiculous shit in my head! (laughing) Stupid songs about our cats, you know? Dumb stuff that annoys the shit out of my girlfriend. During the pandemic when we were locked in our houses for two years and not playing shows there was this one song I had in my head about the coronavirus that was built on a huge ACDC style riff – I would walk around the house all day singing to myself, right? Well, time passes and I'm working on ‘Boxcars' – a song like that really needs a riff and one day I'm coming out of the chorus and I play this riff and I'm asking myself what that riff is and I suddenly realise it's that fucking coronavirus song! (laughing) The last thing I ever thought would make a comeback was that! (laughing) I was fucking Angus Young, man, it was great! That's my Angus, Keith Richards and Chuck Berry moment all rolled into one!

That's the song in this batch that was perfect – I didn't change or rewrite a note of that song. That's Charlie (Gillingham) on the piano on there. He is so good on this record – the interplay between him and Immer on this whole record is fantastic. Immer's guitar and Charlie's piano on ‘Virginia…..' is so stunning. That song is perfect – it's so spare and sparse – even when we played it here, at my house, we seemed to have this telepathy where we could leave these holes and these silences in the song that felt like we were walking on a tightrope and walking off into open air. I'm really proud of that song – to me it feels close to a song like ‘Butterfly in Reverse' in that it's not a normal piece of pop music.

I don't know. I still want to play it. I really loved playing the suite – it was such an epic thing to be able to do. I'll probably concentrate on the first half of the record now but…. fuck it… I don't know, everything changes every night, who knows? Everything also changes if the record is a hit as well, man. Then everybody wants to hear those songs more and it becomes easier to be able to play the suite again. ‘Tommy' was not a hassle for The Who to play, right? The audience was excited to hear it.

When you are at this stage in your career, it can be heavy lifting if the audience isn't into it. I want to play what I want to play but it makes it easier if it takes off…. who knows. I love really playing the suite and I don't just want to play ‘Elevator Boots' because I feel like it is so much more cooler when it comes out of ‘The Tall Grass' – it feels a little mid-tempo without it to me.

Oh yeah, wow! I love that record. I've never been a huge fan of playing whole concerts based around one album. I love all our records but if I play a whole show based around ‘… Satellites' what happens to ‘I Wish I Was a Girl'? What happens to the suite? There's so many songs we have now it feels hard to not play some. It also kinda bums me out that people might want us to do that for ‘August…' and they might want us to do it for ‘… Satellites' but I really really love ‘This Desert Life' and then it starts to become about which albums would people NOT come out to see us do, right? I'd rather just play songs from all the records I think.

I don't know if there is an album cycle that I've enjoyed above any of the others because they all come with their own ups and downs. I love ‘This Desert Life' but the public response to it was kinda disappointing. I can tell you this, over all these years, the songs that the guys in the band request the most to play are mostly from ‘This Desert Life.'

I think because that record is so quirky and weird and interesting – we were playing with different sounds and styles at that point – it's so entertaining to play. ‘High Life,' ‘St Robinson,' ‘I Wish I Was a Girl,' they are all so great to play and so creative. ‘Speedway,' ‘Colorblind,' – these are all songs that the band loves to play. These are the songs that we always come back to that we want to play. ‘Kid Things,' even – these songs are so complex and interesting to play that the guys never get tired of playing them.

The song that I always want to play is ‘A Long December.' I've never got tired of that song and that's not true of anything else I've ever written, I don't know why! (laughing)