Individuals have to find a place to experience a profundity of feeling, and art is a means to that.
— Ed Kowalczyk
I think the message of the Live/Counting Crows tour is that, aside from what's going on trendwise, if you dig a little, you can always find something to inspire you.
We never really write 'love' love songs. There's always something twisted about them. But as far as love songs, women just became way more important to us after we turned 21, as a band in general. Kind of broke up our boyhood solidarity as we started branching out into babes.
We really want the whole world to know about Live and to experience us.
If I were to sit around and think about all the things that were said about Live, I'd never get anything done.
We've never been satisfied with just making 'me' music. What we're doing is trying to go to a place of some reverence.
I've always been into asking the big questions; I'm the last guy out the door at closing time cuz I was sittin' around 'til the wee hours with the other ones who were asking the same things.
I am an Alanis Morissette fan. I think that she has a fantastic voice, and I would love to sing with her someday.
Open Wings - Broken Strings is an opportunity for you to get to the heart of your favorite artists and their songs in a unique and compelling way. Stripped down, intimate and acoustic, you'll hear the strings on the guitar vibrate and buzz, the vocal chords hum and pulsate as the songs you love come to life like you never knew they could.
Music is a spiritual event and a means to realize freedom.
We've always been a band that questions things.
Life takes turns. There are forks in the road.
It really has become the singular motivation in my life - to surrender to the art and to the free expression of what I may be experiencing in my life spiritually. It is really hard in the face of people who don't get it, but what do you do?
Critics are critics: their job is to find things wrong with people.
The place we go as a band is a sort of samadhi, intensely emotional and not bound by self-thinking. And lyrically, one of the goals is to suggest that something is going on beyond what you can see.
I have never been able to separate - nor have I wanted to - my personal love and desire for truth, passion, and understanding from my lyrics.
I was buddies with Dennis Rodman back in the day; actually, I am still buddies with him, and so I have gone to a lot of games and always enjoyed it.
As a songwriter and a singer in a successful rock band, I have had the good fortune of being surrounded by incredible musicians, lots of wonderful production on both record and onstage, and plenty of volume!
Practicing love is a difficult thing to do. It's much easier to get angry.
When you're 19, girlfriends are girlfriends. Then you start thinking about the rest of your life and stuff. I don't know; something happens with your glands. Your alimony gland.
Our success just flies in the face of critics or people who would rather that we just failed... because we didn't fit into the style of the times or our lyrics were too upfront or too earnest or whatever.
I have always been cursed or blessed with this inability to hide behind anything and to just say exactly what I am experiencing.
We've been slighted in the press for being heartfelt.
The message of 'The Distance To Here' is no secret. It is a message of love and an invitation to myself and to those who want to come along to ask the big questions and not feel uncool doing it.
I would have to recommend the chorus of 'Lightning Crashes' for just about everyone that needs a little something, a little comeback.
I was into all of the Pennsylvania teams at some point in my childhood. I would flip back and forth between the Pirates and the Phillies, and I was always a Steelers fan but not much of an Eagles fan. Then I became kind of a band nerd in school, and I went the music route.
