Adam Duritz Meets World

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

00:00:21
Speaker 2: 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. It is beautiful.

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

00:00:44
Speaker 2: 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.

00:00:55
Speaker 1: You know.

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

00:01:00
Speaker 1: Use the.

00:01:02
Speaker 4: 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.

00:01:24
Speaker 3: To drop fake dead bodies out of these trees.

00:01:26
Speaker 4: Yes, So do you guys have or like a certain animal or plant that you've ever identified with or cared about.

00:01:35
Speaker 5: No, no, no, even even going back to like Save the Whales in the eighties, like you didn't care about dolphins or whales.

00:01:49
Speaker 6: Them.

00:01:49
Speaker 7: 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.

00:02:04
Speaker 8: I was a teenager.

00:02:06
Speaker 3: Oh I remember your wolf face? Yeah, I Lance.

00:02:11
Speaker 9: 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.

00:02:31
Speaker 7: The dolphins seemed confused if they're just swimming in a circle.

00:02:34
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know what dolphins do.

00:02:35
Speaker 9: But there was a point where then after he gave me the necklace, where it was like.

00:02:39
Speaker 3: Do I do I like dolphins? Am I had? Am I going to be a dolphin girl now?

00:02:43
Speaker 9: And then it was very nor lance and I also went horseback riding.

00:02:50
Speaker 4: But so he was trying to make you into a different animal girls.

00:02:53
Speaker 9: 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.

00:03:04
Speaker 7: Yeah, you guys have dogs.

00:03:06
Speaker 4: I don't have a dog. And way too many animals. So now I don't even get that.

00:03:16
Speaker 9: You know what, you know what I what I was as a kid that I we've never really talked about.

00:03:20
Speaker 3: I was a rat girl.

00:03:21
Speaker 4: We had rats.

00:03:23
Speaker 3: We had rats, many rats as a pet.

00:03:26
Speaker 7: Or you was just your home wasn't clean.

00:03:28
Speaker 3: No, no, we had rat as a pet.

00:03:30
Speaker 9: 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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.

00:05:54
Speaker 3: Back to the pet store and was like, this ham.

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

00:06:04
Speaker 3: 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.

00:06:20
Speaker 4: In Hamster, there's a.

00:06:23
Speaker 9: 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.

00:06:43
Speaker 1: I had the same thing.

00:06:45
Speaker 7: It sounds so weird, but I had a very traumatic experience the same kind of way. I had a gerbil named Charcoal.

00:06:50
Speaker 6: 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.

00:07:09
Speaker 7: 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.

00:07:19
Speaker 9: Because you don't want another gerbil to die, you know, left.

00:07:22
Speaker 7: 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.

00:07:30
Speaker 9: 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.

00:07:37
Speaker 3: If you want a good pet, here's a rat.

00:07:40
Speaker 9: 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.

00:07:50
Speaker 3: Joe kidding me?

00:07:54
Speaker 7: Are you just saying this?

00:07:56
Speaker 6: Now?

00:07:56
Speaker 2: We got to get two rats named one Joey and the other Stanky for keto, Are.

00:07:59
Speaker 7: You Joey the rat?

00:08:02
Speaker 9: I had Joey the rat, and I had him while we were on Boy Meets World?

00:08:07
Speaker 4: Made this connection.

00:08:08
Speaker 3: Joey was amazing. Joey also knew his name.

00:08:11
Speaker 9: 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.

00:08:28
Speaker 1: Could he also a Yes?

00:08:31
Speaker 3: Was he musical?

00:08:32
Speaker 4: Was he musically talented?

00:08:34
Speaker 1: And he started great?

00:08:34
Speaker 4: He started a great indie band, Kylie.

00:08:38
Speaker 9: 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.

00:08:58
Speaker 3: Well, I was rat girl.

00:08:59
Speaker 5: I was a total l So, getting back to my initial, yes, so I was a rack girl.

00:09:04
Speaker 4: Yes, I am a Redwood tree person.

00:09:06
Speaker 1: You are a.

00:09:07
Speaker 3: Joey the rat baby. That's now I know. Now, I know why he stands to me.

00:09:13
Speaker 9: So, Joe Cammel, Will's Will's spiritual friend.

00:09:21
Speaker 3: Welcome to pod meets World. I'm Daniel Fishl.

00:09:23
Speaker 4: I'm Redwood Strong.

00:09:26
Speaker 7: I'm wilfredll.

00:09:38
Speaker 9: 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 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 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 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 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.

00:11:22
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for being here with us.

00:11:24
Speaker 1: Hello you guys. It has been forever I know.

00:11:27
Speaker 9: 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.

00:11:44
Speaker 1: It absolutely has.

00:11:45
Speaker 4: It's like, let's go back to nineteen ninety six over and over and over again.

00:11:49
Speaker 9: 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?

00:11:59
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, of course, and parties at the house too, Yes, yeah, of course.

00:12:04
Speaker 7: 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.

00:12:11
Speaker 1: Will, how are you?

00:12:14
Speaker 2: 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.

00:12:33
Speaker 4: Love all of these songs. This album's going to be amazing.

00:12:35
Speaker 8: And then had to wait like a year for the album.

00:12:37
Speaker 1: I remember that, So that was really cool. Yeah, we were getting ready to like do make the record. Yeah, it was great.

00:12:43
Speaker 8: Yeah, a great way to get introduced to all the songs. But anyway, we were just watching that and I was like.

00:12:48
Speaker 4: Sixteen, yes, yes, ninety six.

00:12:50
Speaker 9: 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.

00:13:04
Speaker 3: Counting Crows written on a.

00:13:06
Speaker 9: 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?

00:13:24
Speaker 3: Was that in your zeitgeist at all?

00:13:26
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 had been on tour the whole time the show was on the air.

00:14:32
Speaker 9: 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.

00:14:39
Speaker 1: 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.

00:15:03
Speaker 9: 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 war between labels and mister Jones being one of the first songs you recorded.

00:15:29
Speaker 3: How did you then deal with that change in your life?

00:15:33
Speaker 6: Uh?

00:15:33
Speaker 1: Freaked out?

00:15:34
Speaker 3: Yeah?

00:15:34
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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.

00:16:49
Speaker 9: 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 lot of strong memories from certain times of your life.

00:17:14
Speaker 1: 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 also it's you know, it wasn't the entirety of my life. It was just part of what was going on.

00:17:40
Speaker 4: You know.

00:17:41
Speaker 1: I was enjoying getting to be a rock star. I mean it was pretty cool, honestly.

00:17:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course.

00:17:49
Speaker 1: 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, 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 really cool. It is everything I ever wanted.

00:18:34
Speaker 2: 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, 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, does that feel I mean, what.

00:19:23
Speaker 9: Is that like?

00:19:25
Speaker 1: 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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.

00:22:09
Speaker 9: 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 how to urge.

00:22:31
Speaker 7: 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 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.

00:23:05
Speaker 1: 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, 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. 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.

00:24:10
Speaker 7: You know.

00:24:10
Speaker 1: 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.

00:24:30
Speaker 9: 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.

00:24:40
Speaker 3: And now I'm just not disappointed because I know.

00:24:43
Speaker 1: I started a five.

00:24:44
Speaker 7: You're a good genius, honestly, absolutely genius.

00:24:47
Speaker 9: 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.

00:24:59
Speaker 1: Well.

00:25:00
Speaker 9: 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 you were releasing absolutely classic albums. Did it ever bother you that that there was that major distraction from the music you were creating.

00:25:31
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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.

00:26:51
Speaker 4: Well, I think part of.

00:26:52
Speaker 2: 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. Do you remember feeling like worrying about that or how you wrestled with that in the nineties.

00:27:22
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

00:29:50
Speaker 4: It's specific. It was specific to the era.

00:29:51
Speaker 2: 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, 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?

00:30:32
Speaker 8: Like as an era?

00:30:34
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

00:33:03
Speaker 9: 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.

00:33:23
Speaker 3: What are what are some of your favorite.

00:33:25
Speaker 9: Memories of being around those guys and and and just being mixed with those other artists.

00:33:33
Speaker 1: 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. 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, 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 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 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.

00:35:20
Speaker 7: 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?

00:35:32
Speaker 1: 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, 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 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 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.

00:36:49
Speaker 6: You know.

00:36:49
Speaker 1: 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 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 loved El Fitzgerald.

00:37:34
Speaker 2: 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.

00:37:43
Speaker 1: 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 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.

00:38:17
Speaker 7: You know.

00:38:18
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

00:41:01
Speaker 2: 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.

00:41:07
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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.

00:42:31
Speaker 7: 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 Night Live.

00:42:52
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you're going to talk about that. I remember that so well.

00:42:55
Speaker 7: 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.

00:43:11
Speaker 1: 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. 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 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 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 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 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, six two, and then we spent a couple of years at number two after that.

00:45:28
Speaker 3: That is just insane.

00:45:30
Speaker 1: 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, 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 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.

00:46:21
Speaker 9: 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.

00:46:31
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 this is different from just like playing a club, you know. I was nervous about that.

00:47:40
Speaker 6: You know.

00:47:40
Speaker 1: 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.

00:47:51
Speaker 9: 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.

00:48:01
Speaker 3: What do you remember most about that night?

00:48:06
Speaker 1: 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 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 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.

00:49:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember hearing about this. It was because they didn't want you to play round here?

00:49:15
Speaker 6: Was that what?

00:49:15
Speaker 1: 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 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 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.

00:50:10
Speaker 7: And yeah, you're just lucky to be here, kid kind of thing.

00:50:14
Speaker 1: 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 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. 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 ruining our career. But I was also very determined to get our career off to the right start.

00:51:26
Speaker 2: 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.

00:51:45
Speaker 4: Live, what it was for me was, Oh, every night's different.

00:51:49
Speaker 8: 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?

00:52:06
Speaker 1: I think that people I saw growing up were that way.

00:52:11
Speaker 7: You know.

00:52:11
Speaker 1: 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 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.

00:52:46
Speaker 7: You know.

00:52:47
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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.

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

00:54:03
Speaker 1: 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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.

00:56:32
Speaker 4: Make it sound exactly the same album tricks, right.

00:56:36
Speaker 1: 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 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.

00:57:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I my songs.

00:57:21
Speaker 1: 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.

00:57:27
Speaker 2: 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.

00:57:43
Speaker 4: But I think, you know, it's it's worked out. You know, you guys are still here.

00:57:48
Speaker 1: 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.

00:57:59
Speaker 9: 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.

00:58:14
Speaker 3: I couldn't get couldn't get in.

00:58:15
Speaker 1: 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. 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, 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, 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.

00:59:43
Speaker 6: Yep, so.

00:59:45
Speaker 1: 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 to our gig, and they went to it.

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

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

01:00:15
Speaker 1: We tried.

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

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

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

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

01:00:25
Speaker 2: 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.

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

01:00:32
Speaker 1: 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.

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

01:00:40
Speaker 9: 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.

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

01:01:03
Speaker 1: 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 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.

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

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

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

01:01:47
Speaker 7: And and.

01:01:49
Speaker 1: 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, 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.

01:02:20
Speaker 3: It was.

01:02:22
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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.

01:03:48
Speaker 6: You know.

01:03:49
Speaker 1: 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.

01:04:00
Speaker 7: 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 you have a Boy Meets World in your life. Was there a show you grew up watching that was really important to you?

01:04:27
Speaker 1: 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 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.

01:05:10
Speaker 6: You know.

01:05:12
Speaker 1: 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, 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 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 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 did the same thing for me for the X Files and we would watch them in the back of the bus on tour.

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

01:06:46
Speaker 9: 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 VHS tapes. And we would pay the money and we'd get them on VHS.

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

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

01:07:16
Speaker 9: Disney.

01:07:17
Speaker 1: 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 bit of a chore. And a headache because you got to defend yourself the whole way through it.

01:07:42
Speaker 9: 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.

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

01:07:58
Speaker 1: 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.

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

01:08:08
Speaker 7: You know.

01:08:09
Speaker 1: 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 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.

01:08:52
Speaker 4: You know.

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

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

01:09:01
Speaker 1: Writer.

01:09:01
Speaker 7: 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 my musical career.

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

01:09:26
Speaker 7: 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?

01:09:34
Speaker 1: Yeah?

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

01:09:37
Speaker 1: 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. 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.

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

01:10:21
Speaker 1: Please.

01:10:22
Speaker 4: 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.

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

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

01:10:36
Speaker 9: 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 able to talk about the the impact that we had on people and still doing what we love to do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:11:37
Speaker 6: You know.

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

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

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

01:11:46
Speaker 4: 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.

01:11:51
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:11:52
Speaker 9: 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 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.

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

01:12:31
Speaker 9: Yeah.

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

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

01:12:40
Speaker 3: That happened.

01:12:42
Speaker 4: 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.

01:12:56
Speaker 2: 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.

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

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

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

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

01:13:30
Speaker 7: 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.

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

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

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

01:13:43
Speaker 9: 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.

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

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

01:14:05
Speaker 2: 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.

01:14:18
Speaker 4: 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