Counting Crows Biography

Few bands can claim the title “overnight sensation,” but the label suits Counting Crows perfectly. Band members Adam Duritz, Millard Powers, David Immergluck, Dan Vickrey, David Bryson, Charlie Gillingham, and Jim Bogios originally signed to Geffen Records after only a year of playing around the Bay Area of San Francisco. The rest is history.

Counting Crows’ debut album, August and Everything After, was released in 1993 and immediately found the band stardom with the single, “Mr. Jones.” A blend of haunting and tortured lyrics, penned by front man Adam Duritz, were effectively balanced with a late 60’s and early 70’s sound. It was a formula destined to bring Counting Crows success. The band released Recovering the Satellites in 1996, and the album Across a Wire: Live in New York (1998) also came before This Desert Life, in 1999. Films About Ghosts followed, and in 2004 the film Shrek 2 featured the hit single “Accidentally in Love.”

VH1 filmed a live performance of “Mr. Jones” in 2007 by Counting Crows, and ranked the single at number twenty-seven on their list of the 100 Greatest Songs of the 1990’s. That same year, Counting Crows performed August and Everything After, from start to finish, at Town Hall in New York City.  The show, which also featured songs from Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings, was recorded for a DVD which released at the same time as the album, in 2008.

In 2009, Counting Crows began their Saturday Night Rebel Rockers Traveling Circus and Medicine Show tour. Joining them on the tour was the band Augustana and Michael Franti and Spearhead. Instead of performing in sequence, with one act followed by another, all performers launched the first song together onstage, joining each other for performances of all their songs, and they maintained this format throughout the entire performance.

Counting Crows continues to perform and record with the same lineup established during its inception. The band’s most recent albums—Underwater Sunshine and Somewhere Under Wonderland—arrived in 2012 and 2014 respectively. An additional live album, Echoes of the Outlaw Roadshow, was released in 2013.  The band has spent much of 2017 on tour, and is expected to begin work on new material in early 2018.