TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Mr. Duritz' personal site
• Mr. Duritz on VH1
• Article on Mr. Duritz
• Counting Crows official site

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Adam Duritz is the talented frontman for the popular group Counting Crows. The band burst on the music scene back in 1993 with their hit debut "August and Everything After." I remember that. Their latest project has earned them both a Grammy and an Oscar nomination. I ain't mad at y'all. The song is "Accidentally in Love," which was featured in the film "Shrek 2." Here now some of the making of "Accidentally in Love."

Counting Crows: Come on, come on, jump a little higher,

Come on, come on, you'll feel a little lighter,

Come on, come on, once upon a time in love,

Accidentally in love,

Accidentally in love,

Accidentally in love

Tavis: Adam, nice to see you.

Adam Duritz: Thank you.

Tavis: Glad to have you here. So much to talk about, but, Jonathan, you know where I'm going first, so I ain't even going to ask for the shot. Just give it to me right quick. Thank you. Ha ha! Ha ha! You got to love them shoes! I don't know what I like better, Adam, the shoes or the socks.

Duritz: Yeah, I got talked into both of them.

Tavis: Ha ha ha ha! Wait, wait, wait. Somebody actually talked you into this?

Duritz: Well, yeah. I arrived in town last night.

Tavis: Oh, yeah?

Duritz: They had some shoes for me. Well, I picked these out, but, you know, they had some shoes lined up.

Tavis: Yeah, that's, uh--

Duritz: I went for the green ones.

Tavis: Yeah. Those are nice. Those are nice. What size are those?

Duritz: 10 1/2, 11.

Tavis: That's too bad. I can't actually fit those. That's too bad. Ha ha ha! I'm broken-hearted that I can't wear them green shoes. Nice to see you, though. Congratulations. Um, so, an Oscar nomination.

Duritz: It's pretty cool, huh?

Tavis: That is very cool. That means you get to perform on the show.

Duritz: Yeah.

Tavis: Wow. So, you guys excited about this?

Duritz: Yeah. It sounds pretty cool to me. I feel OK.

Tavis: How have the fans that are die-hard, longstanding Counting Crows fans, adjusted to you guys doing hits that are now commercially viable? Oscar-nominated stuff.

Duritz: We started off as kind of an underground band, but we had big hits right away, so...I don't know. They're gonna have to live with it.

Tavis: Ha ha ha! You're not giving it up, are you?

Duritz: That whole Oscar nomination thing.

Tavis: Yeah. But this has been a big year, though. I mean, the Grammy nod and the Oscar nod in the same year, you guys are--

Duritz: Golden Globe, too.

Tavis: That's right.

Duritz: And Critic's Choice. I'm on a losing streak right now. 0 for 2. I expect to pick up a third loss this next week at the Grammys.

Tavis: Ha ha ha! "I expect to pick up a third loss." So you're not like one of these folks who'll come on the show and say, "Tavis, I'm just glad to be nominated. It's such an honor." You're, like, "I wanna win this thing."

Duritz: After the Golden Globes, I'd been to a couple parties, and people from E! Pulled me aside on my way from one party to another. They said, "Can you come out and talk to us?" I said OK, you know. Went out there and she goes, "So, how do you feel being nominated for a Golden Globe?" I'd just lost, you know. I said, "I feel like a loser." And she goes, "We're all winners here." I said, "You're not a winner. You didn't win nothin', and neither did I. We're all losers here." You know. I look at the Oscar thing, though. That's pretty cool to be nominated for, I must say. The Oscar one, I'm absolutely charmed with that one.

Tavis: You should be charmed. But I love your honesty. You gotta love a guy who keeps it real. "No, we're not--we're not winners. We lost. We are losers." Tell me--we saw some of the video, of course, for the making of "Accidentally in Love." Tell me about the experience of doing this many-- "Shrek 2" was huge, obviously. But tell me about the experience of actually bring a part of this.

Duritz: It was pretty cool, you know. I got called in to Dreamworks. They showed me a bunch of the movie, told me what they were looking for. But it was--we had very little time to finish it. I think because we were pretty much the last people they'd asked. They'd been to about 100 people before us. I know this is true. I don't care what they say.

Tavis: But you got them a nomination.

Duritz: Yeah, I'm proud. But, you know, we only had a few weeks. I wrote a little bit of it in my apartment in New York, finished it in a hotel room in Manchester, England. Then we recorded it over there on tour 'cause we were on tour at the time.

Tavis: You recorded it in the midst of your tour?

Duritz: Yeah, we had a couple days off. We went into London and recorded the song.

Tavis: I was a bit surprised when I saw you had done this in part because I'd read so much over the years about the way you work and about your writing style, and it was interesting to me that you actually wrote something on demand. As opposed to the stuff that comes to you when it does come, you went and saw this and actually wrote something to fit a particular soundtrack. How strange was that for you?

Duritz: It was a little difficult. I'm not really good at writing on command like that, but I was stuck for a while. I actually called--I was about to call them and tell them, you know, "You gotta find somebody else 'cause I don't think I'm gonna come through with this." But, uh, I had been in love with a girl at the time who was kind of--you know, it wasn't the best situation. And I don't know. The song just came one day. Half of it came one day, another half came a few weeks later in England. It just kind of all came out.

Tavis: So you're glad now that you didn't call them and back off the project?

Duritz: Yeah, man. I just had lunch with Annette Bening.

Tavis: Ha ha ha!

Duritz: This is a good deal.

Tavis: Yeah. So tell me...what Adam is referring to is that there is, obviously, an Oscar luncheon where all the nominees, all the Oscar nominees, the winners and the losers, I might add, all come together in advance of the show for a big luncheon. So you got a chance to meet Annette Bening? That was cool, huh?

Duritz: She was really nice. I actually haven't become a loser yet in the Oscars.

Tavis: Not yet. Exactly. That's right.

Duritz: I'm hoping to avoid it this one time.

Tavis: I stand corrected. He is not a loser yet with regard to the Oscars. I stand corrected.

Duritz: I got high hopes.

Tavis: Yeah. Nothing wrong with high hopes. Tell me about how...I mentioned this earlier, but I wanna come back to this. Tell me how over the years you think your fans have embraced the way that the sound, the way that the band has, in fact, changed over the years?

Duritz: Well, I think people like, as much as they wouldn't say this, I think people like you to repeat what they know. They like you to do the thing you did before that they liked. And we've been--we're really different every album, I feel like. Excuse me. That's kind of upsetting for our fans sometimes. But, you know, they come along. They catch up. You know, they end up liking it.

Tavis: How bored would you be, though, if you had to just repeat the same stuff you do over and over again?

Duritz: Yeah, it'd be pretty boring. You know, I think you wanna write what you're inspired to write, and you're not the same person you were 2, 3 years ago, so, you know, it tends to be a different deal.

Tavis: I read something I hope you don't mind or won't mind expounding on. I don't necessarily believe everything I read, but maybe this is true. I read somewhere that after the Counting Crows--or as you mentioned earlier, it didn't take long. You guys came out and pretty much overnight you guys were a hit. You had some hits early on. I read somewhere that you really did not like the whole public adulation thing, that when you came out of the house and people started recognizing you, whether they liked your stuff or loathed your stuff, you just didn't deal well with the public recognition, and you just kind of went like...

Duritz: Well, it's kind of a weird thing.

Tavis: Down under.

Duritz: I was always--I was never a particularly good public person. You know, it happened very suddenly, and, you know, I've said it before. It's like waking up on Mars. Takes you a little while to deal with the gravity of it, you know. But after--you know after a little while, you adjust to everything. It was a lot at first, you know? I don't know what Beatle-mania was like, but Counting Crows-mania was kind of a pain in the ass, so...

Tavis: Mm-hmm. How'd you learn to adj--for a guy who isn't, admittedly, good with the public, how'd you learn to adjust to it?

Duritz: Uh, I went and bartended at the Viper Room for a year.

Tavis: Ha ha ha! And what...and what, pray tell, did that teach you?

Duritz: Uh, I met a lot of cute girls. You know, that's all right. And, uh--no, you know, I just kind of learned to deal with being, you know--it felt really weird, everyone looking at me at first. I just sort of learned to deal with, OK, people lookin' at you, and it's kind of fun, you know? Just hang out, chill with it.

Tavis: I got a news flash here, Adam. It might be that people look at you not just because you're a great songwriter.

Duritz: I got funny-looking hair.

Tavis: The hair, the clothes, the shoes--maybe that's got something to do with it.

Duritz: Well, I'm, you know--I'm fabulous today.

Tavis: Ha ha ha! See, I walk down the street dressed like this every day, and nobody ever recognizes me. Nobody bothers me.

Duritz: It's the pocket square.

Tavis: It's the pocket square. Ha ha ha! It's the pocket square. Um, did I also read somewhere that you are like a huge--I'm a sports enthusiast. You're like a huge Cal-Berkeley fan.

Duritz: Yeah, I grew up there.

Tavis: You grew up in Berkeley.

Duritz: I did. I went to college there.

Tavis: Yeah.

Duritz: I'm big on it. I was at a women's basketball game a couple of days ago at Cal.

Tavis: Oh, my God, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Ha ha ha! You're that big a fan?

Duritz: Well, my friend's the coach.

Tavis: Yeah. Well, that--

Duritz: But, no, I know a lot of players. You know, I just like it all. I'm interested in anything people do to try and like, you know, do something better than anybody else.

Tavis: Mm-hmm.

Duritz: So sports are cool that way. The ballet's cool that way. Opera, rock 'n' roll.

Tavis: You like all this stuff.

Duritz: I'm a well-rounded--I'm a Renaissance man.

Tavis: Ha ha ha!

Duritz: Can't you tell by my pocket square?

Tavis: Yeah, I see--ha ha ha! A Renaissance man and a comedian to boot. You gotta love this guy. So what did that--is that like growing up in the Bay? I mean, I have a lot of friends who grew up in the Bay, and I get the sense, to your point, which is both funny and serious to me, there is this sense of renaissance in the Bay Area. People appreciate a variety of culture and of art. Is that--is growing up in the bay where that came from for you or...

Duritz: We moved around a lot when I was a kid, too. I was born in Baltimore, lived in Texas, Colorado, finally out in California, but I think the Bay Area's a real melting-pot city, you know? It's a--and, you know, unlike in some ways Los Angeles where the people are very--even though it's a very diverse city, it's kind of segregated out in areas. Bay Area's a little more just mixed up that way. It's kind of what I like about living in New York, too. I think it's that way, too.

Tavis: Mm-hmm. How long have you been living in New York now?

Duritz: About a year and a half now.

Tavis: OK, so you like--New York is one of those cities where--what I love about New York, you know, in L.A. You can be a pseudo-celebrity, and people will stop you in the middle of the street. In New York, nobody gives a you-know-what. You can walk down a street in New York, even with hair like this and green shoes, and nobody bothers you. So are people leaving you alone in Manhattan?

Duritz: Well, they'll come up to you in Manhattan, but it's not gonna be a big deal. They might stop you and go, "I love your band," and then they're out.

Tavis: Ha ha ha!

Duritz: We played the "Today Show" one morning. We did a small concert on the "Today Show," and, you know, it's in New York City.

Tavis: The Friday thing outside? Yeah, yeah.

Duritz: And, uh, that whole day, I was walking around the city 'cause I live in the village. In New York, you walk everywhere. And everyone's coming up to me, but just for a second. "Nice show." Gone. They don't want to talk. They don't want to get nothin' from you. They don't want to take a picture. They just want to say, "Love you, dude," and then they're out.

Tavis: Yeah. And you like that.

Duritz: I like that. I like a city that's, you know, they're impressed and they're complimentary, but they're not that impressed, you know?

Tavis: Well, I'm gonna try something here. Uh, Adam, thanks for coming on the show. Love you, dude.

Duritz: Thank you very much.

Tavis: I'm out. Did that work?

Duritz: Works for me.

Tavis: OK. Ha ha ha! Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows. The CD, of course, is "Shrek 2." You know about this. "Accidentally in Love," the song for which they are nominated and I hope win with regard to the Oscars this time around. Their web site: COUNTINGCROWS.COM. Of course, you Counting Crows fans already know that. Adam, nice to see you again.

Duritz: Thank you very much.

Tavis: All the best to you. That's our show for tonight. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching. Good night from L.A., and keep the faith.