What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
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ADAM DURITZ WANTS YOU IN HIS CLUB As Brothers Osborne head out to their next engagement, Counting Crows will roll into the Walmart AMP for their first visit to Rogers since 2017. The "Butter Miracle Tour" sees the alternative rockers supporting their first release in seven years: an EP of four songs meant to be performed one immediately after another — a suite. "Butter Miracle, Suite One" was around 85% finished when covid-19 broke out, lead singer and songwriter Adam Duritz reveals. The collection dropped in May, but by late July — as the band prepared to return to the road — they had still not performed the whole suite, beginning to end, together live. "When we recorded the songs, we didn't end each song. We would go into the first verse of the next song, and then we would stop. So we made sure the transitions worked, but we didn't play the whole thing," Duritz says of finally getting to record the songs last summer. "That's like this exciting thing that's still waiting out there for us that's never been the case. We always have played the songs by the time we got to the tour. But this time, we've never done it. And so it'll be a whole new experience still out there for us even after we released a record — which I've never experienced that before." Even the actualization process for the EP was unusual thanks to covid. It's not in Duritz's nature to hold onto songs or pieces of songs for a long time, he admits. For each new project, he typically writes the whole album around the same time, and then the band gets to work recording. "I'd finished 'Tall Grass,' and the next day, I was playing it back, just trying to figure out if it was actually done or if there was more to it," he recalls. "And then I just found myself singing this line, 'Bobby was a kid from round the town,' which is the beginning of 'Elevator Boots,' and I thought, 'Oh, maybe this is a longer song like "Palisades Park." It's got this other section.'" When he realized "Bobby" was leading him into another song, not just another section, Duritz was inspired to write a series of songs where the beginning of one is the ending of the one before. The first suite of "Butter Miracle" came together as "a bite- size piece of music that's long, but you could sit in one sitting and listen to it," Duritz says. At 18 minutes, the collection was longer than a song, but shorter than an album and gave the band the opportunity to explore something that had a reason to be shorter. It would still be several months, though, before the band could record together to see if what worked in Duritz's imagination actually translated to the listening experience he was envisioning. "There's been a lot of talk in the last 15 to 20 years about how it's better for bands to release singles than records. And probably, as far as the commerce of it goes, it is better, because people don't seem to want to listen to records anymore. People want to just pick what they want, and so it's harder to give them a whole thing," Duritz muses. "But it doesn't do you any good to know that it's smarter to release a song if that's not what you do well. We happen to do this one thing really well, SEPTEMBER 12-18, 2021 WHAT'S UP! 5 ROGERS FAQ Counting Crows 'Butter Miracle Tour' WHEN — 7 p.m. Sept. 18 COST — $35-$129.50 ALSO WITH — Sean Barna and Matt Sucich WHERE — Walmart AMP, 5079 W. Northgate Road in Rogers INFO — 443-5600, arkansasmu- sicpavilion.com FYI — Proof of a negative covid-19 test within 72 hours of showtime, or confirmation of full vaccination is required for the Crows concert. Anyone who's been to a Counting Crows concert will know the band likes to change up their arrangements from night to night, making for a completely unique experience every time they perform. "It's either a refreshing, really cool live thing for people or they're just really annoyed that we keep f***ing up our songs," lead singer and songwriter Adam Duritz says with a laugh. "And I do think it's both, but that's who we are. So I think people get used to it after a while or they don't." (Courtesy Photo) See Crows Page 6