Sound Advice: Counting Crows Play Covers As Steve Earle Honors Guthrie
Updated: 07/18/2012 02:17 PM
By: Eric Holland
Adam Duritz of Counting Crows discussed playing covers before a Williamsburg gig and Steve Earle says that Woody Guthrie may be 100 years old but is still relevant. NY1's Eric Holland filed the following Sound Advice report.
Before Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows took the stage at the brand new Williamsburg Park in Brooklyn, he talked about performing covers.
Eric Holland: How about the covers album. What did you learn about your singing and the band?
Duritz: A lot, I think. I'm not sure what. But we definitely, it's like collaborating with a bunch of different people who aren't there, using other writers. I hate to say this being the guy who writes most of it, but it's kind of limiting to spend your whole career working with one songwriter. Even though it's me. It was really a cool thing to work with so many others. They weren't there but we had their songs to work with and that adds a huge amount. We had a lot of fun making it. And when we were done and went out on
the road, we were a much better band.
Holland:We just had a 100-year anniversary of Woody Guthrie's birth, please comment on the significance.
Duritz: We've been playing a Woody Guthrie song every night. We were closing every night's show with a Woody Guthrie song. I missed Steve Earle's Woody Guthrie thing. I wanted to go to that so bad!
What Duritz missed was Steve Earle and friends Billy Bragg at City Winery showing how Guthrie's music is still killing fascists 45 years after his death.
"Woody Guthrie was for most of his creative life a New Yorker and I think the world for the most part knows about Woody Guthrie because he managed to make it to New York," Earle said. "We are going to celebrate that and this incredible body of work and the spirit of Woody Guthrie because he invented my job and I am very grateful for that."
There is another Woody Guthrie show scheduled in September in Brooklyn.
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