Band will take stage with Michael Franti, Spearhead and Augustana for mega show
Counting Crows with Michael Franti and Spearhead
When: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 5
Where: Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Parkway,Columbia, Md.
Details: $35 to $75; ticketmaster.com
You snooze — or in this case delay arriving on time for the Counting Crows show tomorrow — you’re going to lose in a big way.
Crows’ founder and frontman Adam Durwitz posted an almost 200-word message on the Merriweather Post Pavilion site telling concertgoers that every artist in every band on the bill — which includes Michael Franti, Spearhead and Augustana — will be on stage at the designated show time.
“The only thing I know for sure is that every show on this tour is going to start with EVERYONE onstage together and we’re going to be all running on & off stage all night playing on each others songs and playing songs all together,” he wrote. “So you get my point, right? GET HERE ON TIME!”
Of course the Crows has consistently been one of the hottest bands in the United States since it burst out of the Bay area in 1993 in support of its debut album “August and Everything After,” produced by T-Bone Burnett and featuring several hits including “Mr. Jones.” And the members are known for their onstage exuberance even when Durwitz had to take to the stage supported by a cane.
But this show arguably more than all those that preceded it will show the band at its most versatile and energetic, proving once again that it is much more than “Mr. Jones.”
“[We want fans to see] different ways to experience music,” said David Immerglueck who is a member of both Counting Crows and the alt rock band Camper Van Beethoven. “We don’t shy away [from our hits] to get other statements out but the popularity of any given song is separate from us.”
That’s always clear at Crows concerts where sets change every night. This is no different though it’s a bit strenuous and strategically challenging when some 18 musicians are on the stage at any given time.
“It’s really going very well,” said Immerglueck, citing both Joe Cocker’s “Mad Dogs & Englishman” and Bob Dylan’s more recent “Rolling Thunder” as inspirations for this tour. “We are having fun. But I think I speak for all of us when I say that once the tour ends, it will be time to head home and recharge a bit.”
