WANTAGH, NY | Counting Crows’ “Banshee Season” tour stop at Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, on July 9th, was both a celebration and a homecoming.
The band released their debut album August and Everything After in 1993. Surprisingly, since that time, the group has released only seven full-length studio albums, the last being nine years ago. It has also released four live albums, a live download-only album, two best-of collections, and its most recent release, “Butter Miracle,” a four-song EP in 2021. While the group was founded and has recorded extensively in California, the band’s principal songwriter, lead singer, and founding member Adam Duritz has lived in New York.
Counting Crows has long been one of the best American bands on the scene. While Duritz is the frontman and commands much of the spotlight (with his trademark dreadlocks now a thing of the past), this is indeed a true band. Drums, bass, and keyboards are augmented by a killer three-guitar attack.
In many ways, the group is part of a continuum of classic, timeless and iconic American rock bands that extends from The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, followed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and R.E.M., and even artists like Sheryl Crow, not to mention The Beach Boys, The Eagles, The Black Crowes, and Fleetwood Mac (pick your lineup). Another American band to fit into this club since Counting Crows has come along would be Kings of Leon and arguably the list ends there.
After a heartfelt, spirited and well-received set by Dashboard Confessional, the group took the stage and played a 22-song, two-hour set filled with many of its classic songs and a few well-chosen obscurities. The group’s songs are often epic story-songs of the good, the bad, and the ugly of relationships, or songs where place is the key to the narrative, such as on the show opener “Sullivan Street,” or “Omaha,” “Miami,” “Holiday in Spain,” “Washington Square,” and “Angel on 14th Street,” with both the first and the latter two about Greenwich Village. Some surprises included a cover of the Jon Mitchell song “Big Yellow Taxi” and the encores when both groups were on stage together for “So Long, So Long” and “Hangingaround.”
Duritz is truly an emotional performer who pours his heart into every song, seemingly often reliving the emotions of the experiences that inspired the song and the no-doubt tortured process of writing it. He was very animated during the show and talked often between songs, explaining their origins, or how difficult the recording process was, particularly the group’s debut August and Everything After.
Seeing such a great band that relies solely on a great catalog of songs and countless hours logged on the road who plays with such almost telekinetic interplay, it’s a sad reminder of a time where bands like Counting Crows were not an anomaly. As great as the show was, one wonders why it has been so long since the group has recorded a full album of new music. The group’s albums have always been well-recorded and the songwriting and playing are always top-notch.
At the end of the show, to the delight of the audience, Duritz guaranteed the group would be back and said they were proud of their 30 years together, but let’s hope on its next tour the band also has yet another superb album of new music to play live, along with its classic back catalog.
