Goodnight Elisabeth - Guess it's Christmas alternative and Adam explanation

Song: Goodnight Elisabeth
Where: Bimbo's 365 Club, San Francisco, CA
When: October 27 , 2003 (time mark 15:20)

From Adam Duritz from a concert at Bimbo's 365 Club in San Francisco, October 27, 2003

"I should tell you this story, because it has to do with this song because

I had this friend Betsy and I had been begging her to go out with me for like a year, 

and every time I saw her I'd ask her "come on" and she said no.

and then we had this gig here that night.

and her friends were leaving and she decided to stay

and we went up to her house in Berkeley 

she had a big, a big boulder behind the house

and we went up and sat on the boulder all night long, and any ways.

It was very nice, I was just remembering a really dumb joke she told me

It was like two in morning and we were sitting on this enormous rock behind her house

and I said man this is so cool, I wanna rock

and she goes Adam, you do rock

So anyways she ended up being my girlfriend, not because of jokes like that

and I thought that my life had just completely come to fruit

you know we had a successful band 

we had signed a record contract

our record was coming out

we went out on tour

I had a great girlfriend

but Christmas it was all, it was all gone

being away on the road just screwed the whole thing up

and so I came home at Christmas, very bitter and wrote this song

I think it was the first song written for Recovering the Satellites 

but I wrote it that Christmas

and its called Goodnight Elisabeth"

Round Here - Adam explanation

From Counting Crows Storytellers on June 7th, 1999

Sullivan Street - Adam explanation

Song: Sullivan Street
Where: Town Hall, New York City, New York
When: September 18, 2007 (time mark 48:27)

Sullivan Street is a beautiful song off of the August and Everything After album.
For me Sullivan Street is the metaphorical road that I took on the way home after being out with my friends. It was a great time in that it was the first time I experienced youthful freedom. In the calm early morning hours when I would  come home, the mode of this song playing on the radio always seemed to hit the right chords.

From Adam on the August and Everything After: Live at Town Hall album:

Miami - Slow alternative with Adam explanation

Song: Miami
Where: Manchester Evening News Arena, Manchester, England
When: May 11, 2009

From Adam Duritz from a concert at Manchester, England, May 11, 2009

"I was in love with this girl who was far away. I was on tour. 

She was on the other side of the world 

and I hadn’t seen her in a long time 

and she was coming to see me 

and I was at the airport waiting for her 

and I was so in love

and then all the sudden it was like a chunk of my life just evaporated 

and I couldn't remember myself, her, all that time 

I mean I remembered that it happened 

but it was a like a story somebody told me not anything that I felt anything for her

and I knew that meant that it would be over

I didn't know who she was anymore

and these things and you have everything at once

then you throw it all away

and you can’t keep it all in here 

I don’t understand that, it just happens, to me

This time it happened on a beautiful sunny night on the southeastern tip of America

I threw away something that should have never have thrown away

In a city called Miami"

Miami

Oh Miami. This song is a typical example of how The Counting Crows can take a studio version and perform a completely different versions of it.

Below are two different versions of the Miami in concert. Both have alternative lyrics and both have amazing intro of Adam talking about why he wrote this song.   Enjoy.

Dublin, Ireland, May 8, 2009 Fast Version

Manchester, England, 2009, Slow Version

Washington Square Meanings

I've been listening to Washington Square more often these days. It is a great slow melancholy song from Counting Crow's album Saturday Night and Sunday Mornings. I love the guitar melody and the support in the song to Adam's vocal. Haunting is an accurate word to describe the mood as is found so often in the music of Counting Crows.

From Admin from the album Live from SoHo album:

"This song I started right after I moved here,

I was kind of, I'd come back from tour and lost something, someone,

I was kind of faced with process of going back out again,

Seemed like a hard thing to leave New York behind,

So it's called, so we are going to play you most of Sunday Morning now

This is the beginning of Sunday Morning and it's called Washington Square"

What I found different about this song is that the song seems to have happy ending with Adam returning back to Washington Square as if he has found his resolution in his wandering that made him "walk out through the shadows of Washington Square." Happy resolutions couldn't be said for other songs such as Anna Begins or Sullivan Street, for example.

Angels of Silences Meaning

Angels of the Silences is one of the songs I originally overlooked on the album Recovering the Satellites. At the time, I really liked the Counting Crows more melancholy songs and AotS is fast paced, fast moving song.

However, when I went back and listens to the lyrics, the songs really works. It has a message that can be sung in a slow paced self reflective song or a fast beat semi-angry rant.

From Adam Duritz and the Counting Crows Storytellers on June 7, 1999:

"I write quite a few songs where the sort of issue is faith, having faith, keeping faith

and this song in particular is about the difficulty in having faith in things

and finding things to have faith in, in yourself, in God, in like he said, in a woman

Faith is a weird thing, it in a sense it is all about waiting

It's not actually about getting anything, you know

Faith is about the wait because once you get something there is no need anymore

and so a lot about faith is just the willingness to sort of throw yourself on a fence 

and hang there for a while

That's a very difficult and bitter thing, you know

In this song the, I keep saying the main character, 'I'

I said, 'All my sins, I would pay for them if I could come back to you' 

It's not just about finding things to believe in

It's about wanting to be able to believe in anything too

And it's about all the voices that get inside your head 

and whisper for you to do it or not to do it as well

And it's called "Angels of the Silences" 

Anna Begins Meaning

Anna Begins off of the August and Everything After is still to me one of the most powerful songs off of the album.

From Counting Crows Storytellers on June 7th, 1999:

"There was this period where I got really, really sick of playing music 

and I, I saved up some money from landscaping

and I bought a backpack and some boots 

and me and a friend got tickets

and went over to Europe just to backpack around Europe

It was like the summer of 1989

I ended up on this Greek island and I met this girl named Anna 

and I completely fell in love with her and I think vice versa

Which is a dumb thing to do in the middle of the summer on a Greek island 

because the girl is  from Australia and you're from California 

and the last thing- you should have a fling, you know

But the last thing you need to do is fall in love with a girl from Australia 

because you've got, you don't have years

You have weeks, you know

and then everyone goes home, you know. 

We were kids and the plane tickets are too expensive 

and you can't change these things, you know 

and it was just really difficult 

because no one wants to really cop to how important they feel about it 

because it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a hole that you are gonna fall into, you know.

and so the song is really about denial, you know,

The characters in the song keep saying to each other 

'No, no, I'm not ready for this sorta thing'

Until the very end when it's too late 

and they realize what they really weren't ready for is the loss 

and it's a terrible thing to find out because it's a, it's too late

Which is what it ended up being at that point

And it's, it's, it's funny she's married now and she's got a kid 

and she still lives in Sydney and we still talk every once in a while, not too much

but whenever I talk to her she still tells me that she loves this song and I do too

This is, this is Anna Begins "

Adam's idea of denial in love makes the song real. Sometimes things don't always end as a fairy tale.  In life sometimes the loss is what keeps with you and lingers. But love is there, even though it may have been unexpected.  It's still there after it is over.

I also have another interpretation of the song for me personally. One of my daughters name is Anna. We named her after Anna Begins.

"And every time she sneezes I believe it's love and

Oh lord, I'm not ready for this sort of thing"

Those lyrics really sums up for me how unexpected I felt about her. She wasn't unexpected but the late nights  when I was with her and rocking her to sleep, I would think of this song.

Miami Meaning

Miami is my favorite song off of their album Hard Candy. Adam Duritz has explained the meaning of Miami many times during their live concerts so I transcribed his words below.

Adam  Duritz  from a concert in Manchester on May 11 2009:

"I was in love with this girl who was far away. I was on tour. 

She was on the other side of the world 

and I hadn’t seen her in a long time 

and she was coming to see me 

and I was at the airport waiting for her 

and I was so in love

and then all the sudden it was like a chunk of my life just evaporated 

and I couldn't remember myself, her, all that time 

I mean I remembered that it happened 

but it was a like a story somebody told me not anything that I felt anything for her

and I knew that meant that it would be over

I didn't know who she was anymore

and these things and you have everything at once

then you throw it all away

and you can’t keep it all in here 

I don’t understand that, it just happens, to me

This time it happened on a beautiful sunny night on the southeastern tip of America

I threw away something that should have never have thrown away

In a city called Miami"

It is interesting to note that lyrics mentioned in this song refer to a Amy. Amy is also referred to in other song titled Amy Hit the Atmosphere.

The song to me is a reminiscence of a past relationship. Even the good ones or the bad ones eventually end and you try to hold to what is left. They lyrics disclose that "summer's gone, so are we"
But then I love how the next lyrics states "So come on baby, let's go shut it down In New Orleans"
and asking for one last time or one final moment before letting it go.

Rain King Meaning

One of my favorite songs from Counting Crows. They do alternative lyrics on many different live version of Rain King. One of my favorite live performances can be found on New Amsterdam: Live at Heineken Music Hall. 

Adam Duritz from during VH1 Storytellers on August 12, 1997:

"I read this book in college when I was at Berkeley called 'Henderson, the Rain King' 

and the main character in the book was kind of this big, open-wound of a person, Eugene Henderson, He just sort of bled all over everyone around him

For better or for worse, full of joy, full of sorrow

He just made a mess of everything

and when I wrote the song years later it didn't really have anything to do with the book 

except the book had kind of become a totem for how I felt about creativity and writing

that it was just this thing where you just took everything inside of you

and just sort of  sprayed it all over everything

and not to worry too much about it, I mean

You try and craft it but not to be self-conscious about it, in any case

And, it's sort of a song about everything that goes into writing, all the feelings

everything that makes you want to write, makes you want to maybe pick up a guitar and do it

and express yourself because it's full of all the doubts and the fears 

about how I felt about my life at that time

And also the feeling that I really deserved something better 

than what I had accomplished up to that point

I think it is sort of a religious song about the sort of undefinable thing inside you 

or out there somewhere that makes you write, makes you create, 

makes you do any kind of art form, you know

And makes me The Rain King"

To me, Rain King is about wanting to have more in your life. You can't help but feel down on your self because of how things are going, but you know you deserved better. You "belong in the service of the Queen." and  you "belong anywhere but in between."

But even in this situation, you admit at how bad things are. You're even proud of it and labeled yourself the "Rain King." Ultimately, if things are going to end, you are ready. When you "think of dying" you hope that you are delivered in the "belly of a black-winged bird."  For me that bird would be a Counted Crow.