On the road with Counting Crows

By Genevieve Hassan
Entertainment reporter, BBC News

Counting Crows' singles include Mr Jones, Rain King and American Girls

"I'd like to do a tour where everyone else tours, but I stay in one place," says Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz.

It has been 15 years and five studio albums since the band first hit the UK charts with their multi-platinum album August and Everything After, but they have recently parted ways with their record company to pursue the "limitless possibility" of the internet.

They are about to begin another UK and Ireland tour, but Duritz says it is far from being his favourite part of the job.

"I really love playing the gigs, but it's only an hour of your day which means you spend a lot of time doing things like sitting around staring at the wall, or in the backstage room, or a bus, or a plane - none of which are nearly as exciting, so I get a little tired of that," he says.

"I like home and family and friends, so I've never been a fan of a life spent away from that.

"I'd rather have a relationship and kids but I don't know how touring works with that kind of lifestyle."

Losing touch

Duritz has dated Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox and Winona Ryder

There's another reason why a life on the road doesn't sit too well with the singer - he has a dissociative disorder, which makes the world seem like "a hallucination", and for which the best remedy is routine.

"The problem is that touring is made up of the unfamiliar and you leave behind all the things that might have grounded you," he explains.

"On tour you lose touch with things that made you grounded back home and that causes me problems because I lose my base when I'm gone, then I don't really have a great grip on it when I get back, because life has moved on without me."

But life on the road for Counting Crows isn't the world of glamour, luxury and private jets some stars would have you believe.

"You don't have much time to see things - you get to one place, do a gig, go back to a hotel at midnight then go to the next place the next day," Duritz says.

"Touring is your own business, you run it yourself," he adds, saying the band ride buses from place to place and stay in "reasonable hotels".

"So you could have a private jet if you wanted to, but that's coming off your bottom line. If you want to be extravagant and wasteful then you can, but then you're just being extravagant and wasteful."

Snooker tables

There are no rock star demands to compete with Van Halen's backstage request of a bowl of M&Ms with the brown ones removed, or Lady GaGa's demand for "non-sweaty cheese on ice".

"We have a rider that says you have to have this many bottles of water, fruit, beers and tequila available, but we pay for it - so we could cover the floor in gold if we wanted to, but we'd have to pay."

The singer is quick to defend other band's touring lifestyle, however: "You've got to live the way you want to live. If you make the choice to spend your life away from home, you've got to do what you need to make it liveable.

The band are on tour until the beginning of August

"When we were on tour with the Rolling Stones they have a whole different concept of 'backstage' which is far superior to ours and I congratulate them for. It's a palace and it is awesome - they have things like snooker tables."

What about the perception that it would be cool to hang out backstage with the band?

Duritz is fairly stoic: "I am the band, so for me I'm like, 'Oh cool, I'm with me…'

"Being backstage is usually just a dumpy little room - it's not meant to be anything else."

But despite its drawbacks, the singer still maintains that performing will always be "something incredibly special" to him.

"I don't mean to paint a gloomy thing - you've got to remember that you walk on stage every night and share this thing with people that's absolute magic."

Part of the Counting Crows' particular magic is that they do not decide upon a set list until after their soundcheck, so their concerts are different every night.

"It's not a grind on stage because we're not playing the same songs we played the night before. You get the show we want to play and get something that night that only happens between us and you.

"I've no idea what's going on in a show myself, but I trust our ability to bring it every night.

"On my worst possible night or even when I'm feeling as bad as I could possibly feel, my misery is still going to be really entertaining to you because that's going to pop through the songs.

"My ideal is that you come to a show with all these expectations and none of them are met, yet you'll still love it and it's even more than you would've expected it to be."

Counting Crows' tour begins on 7 May in Belfast and finishes on 27 May in Newcastle.