I've never had trouble finding inspiration for new songs, no matter what I'm doing.
Ed Kowalczyk
We came from a small town where there was no music scene or no other bands, and we decided to put ours together and go for it.
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.
If there is a doctrine, a message behind Live, it's just that wordless intensity that doesn't necessarily have to mean anything.
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.
Individuals have to find a place to experience a profundity of feeling, and art is a means to that.
Until you solve problems like fear individually, resolve why individuals feel the need to believe in whatever, there's really no point in organizations, in things that turn the world into a concept rather than an individual fact.
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.
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.
It's something I've always been passionate about - which is the power of rock and roll itself. I'm a walking example of its power, 'cause I was totally altered in the seminal years of Live by bands like U2 and R.E.M., U2 in particular.
Music is a spiritual event and a means to realize freedom.
I grew up in an area that was the typical city that was a racially divided and economically segregated place. And it had a big influence on me.
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.
I always thought it odoriferous for people to go about trying to pummel others with their ideas.
We've never been a band that gets up on stage and says, 'OK, we're going to play our entire new album.' Of course we want to introduce new music, but we also want to play the songs people want to sing along with.
I consider our music a catalyst, something that might spark a thought or a question.
Life takes turns. There are forks in the road.
I'll never forget the first concert I basically went to. Actually, Sonny and Cher was my first concert, but U2 was my first real concert. I was 17 and saw them at JFK Stadium and had really crappy seats.
I hit this point - I guess you'd say an end of a chapter - where I felt like I kind of did everything. I wasn't interested in music. It was a really strange feeling, and needless to say, it freaked me out a little bit. I really started to go inward and say, 'Hey, what is this about?'
You look at a song like 'Lightning Crashes,' and it's just so universal.
Ever since we started, we've been trying to give people music that is pop music where you could just get into the melody and get into the performance of the band and be quite satisfied.
To make music that means something, you kind of have to drop the cool. You have to be prepared and willing to be uncool.
From the very beginning, we were all a hundred and ten percent about the music, from the very early days when we could barely play our instruments, and we were just covering other people's songs when we were in high school.
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.
We don't want Offspring-itis, Green Day-itis: you know, that thing where bands are all over the place at once, getting everything at once - major airplay on radio, major airplay on MTV.
I took a page out of the U2 book. They've always had a universal approach. Nobody doubts they're Christian, but there's an open door for everybody in any faith to consume the music at any level.
There's a lot of spirituality and hope in our music that I think people are catching on to. It's not punk, it's not Green Day, not Offspring, not Soundgarden, not Stone Temple Pilots, not all of the other bands that are coming out.
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.
If I were to sit around and think about all the things that were said about Live, I'd never get anything done.
Music, in its clearest and simplest form, can be a catalyst to thought, but that's about it.
We've never been your traditional rock-pop band. Lyrically, I've always had more of an interest in spirituality and that kind of thing.
You're living in a fantasy to think that music can actually change something.
We've never been satisfied with just making 'me' music. What we're doing is trying to go to a place of some reverence.
All of my favorite artists who inspired me were never afraid to be uncool and never afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves - no matter how much flak they took for 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!
I really don't do concept stuff very well. If I'm sitting thinking about what kind of song I want to write, within a few minutes, I'm kind of bored. It's just a personal thing for me.
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.
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?
Arenas, to me, and especially sheds, are really great venues. You get that sea of humanity, but everybody can still see it and hear it. And that's really important to us.
I would have to recommend the chorus of 'Lightning Crashes' for just about everyone that needs a little something, a little comeback.
It's always so rewarding, gratifying to me, as an artist and a writer, to see how this music gets more important for a lot of people as time goes by. And it's not just nostalgia. It's a feeling of it's really relevant to their lives, even though it's 20 or 25 years old or more.
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.
I am an Alanis Morissette fan. I think that she has a fantastic voice, and I would love to sing with her someday.
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.
We've been slighted in the press for being heartfelt.
Critics are critics: their job is to find things wrong with people.
I have always been cursed or blessed with this inability to hide behind anything and to just say exactly what I am experiencing.
We really want the whole world to know about Live and to experience us.
We've always been a band that questions things.
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.
