Allison Crowe performs Counting Crows songs
Allison Crowe counts Counting Crows among her favourite bands - and credits Adam Duritz and co with inspiring her to become a singer-songwriter.
Some years back, Stephen Thomas, co-founder of the UK"s Folkroom Records, and a longtime blogger, interviewed Allison and asked her to pick six formative albums. Here's what she said about her CC pick:
Counting Crows – August and Everything After
From ‘Round Here’ to ‘A Murder of One’, this album is, without a doubt, my favourite album of all time. A bold statement? Yes. Allow me to explain. When I was roughly 12 years old, my older brother had a lot of CDs that I started to enjoy. I “adopted” a few of them, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and, of course, Counting Crows.
Years went by, and I listened to August and Everything After roughly 1 trillion times. Through it, I experienced grief, joy, pain, healing, growing, and, most of all, music felt deeply from within the gut. I learned to sing from these crazy places through the wails and words of Adam Duritz, and thought that one day I’d be their backup singer. (lol ya I know, dream big!) I always had trouble sleeping and had some pretty crazy times as a youngun, and it was nice to have something to identify with – or at least pretend that I could. (A lot of the time I really think it was just my imagination.)
I learned how to really hone my desperate pining hopeless romantic skills to write words and melodies. I also learned how to play guitar by listening repeatedly to ‘Mr. Jones’ and teaching myself chords that I’d only ever known on piano. I played my first piano/vocal song in front of anybody in the form of ‘Raining in Baltimore’. Along to ‘A Murder of One’, at the top of my lungs, I wailed out my cry for independence in the time of an oppressive relationship, driving and singing in an almost meditative screaming chant “change change change”. And I sang along to ‘Omaha’ and truly believe to this day it is the “heart that matters more”. I sat up late and hopeless and empty thinking about ‘Perfect Blue Buildings’, and I took my way home back to ‘Sullivan Street’. I felt like I must have been tired of SOMETHING ‘Round Here’, and took the cannonball down on the ‘Ghost Train’, and danced around like I thought I must have been the ‘Rain King’. I tried to figure out who was Anna, and kind of wished I was her. (“Kind of” is an understatement – remember… hopeless, pining, romantic and a SUCKER for a well-turned word).
I am still waiting for Counting Crows to return to Canada a touch more often – 2 of the BEST concerts I have ever seen took place before the year 2000. I am one of the girls who wanted the songs of AAEA to be about me, and tried to decipher the lines scribbled on the CD cover.
I do what I do in large part due to this music and the honesty in its words and sounds.
The first Crows song Crowe performed on-stage in her teens was
Raining in Baltimore. (A popular recording of this song is
heard on her "Secrets" album.)
Raining in Baltimore lyrics as performed by Allison Crowe (click here)
Another live favourite is this song, A Murder of One, from Allison Crowe's "Live at Wood Hall" double-album set.
Of this interpretation, the Salty Salutes blog says:
"Sometimes though, an artist can cover a song and bring a whole new life to it, arguably improving on the original version. Perhaps the best example of that that I have heard in some time is Canadian singer Allison Crowe's slowed down take on the Crows' song 'A Murder of One" with just a piano backing up her powerful, moving vocals.'
A Murder of One lyrics as performed by Allison Crowe (click here)
Allison Crowe's music in digital + physical formats ~ click here
Studio A (released tracks) ~ Studio B (rarities, boots+)
Web 2.0 Vids #1 ~ Web 2.0 Vids #2 ~ Web 2.0 Vids #3
