Biography

Michael's Counting Crows Backstage Pass | home

Biography from Rollingstone.com

Counting Crows formed in 1989 when singer Adam Duritz and guitarist David Bryson hooked up in San Francisco and began performing acoustic music in local coffeehouses. Taking the name Counting Crows from an old English rhyme, the duo expanded to include local musicians Matt Malley (bass), Charles Gillingham (keyboards), and Steve Bowman (drums) and began playing dark, '70s-style rock music. Vocalist/songwriter Adam Duritz's Northern California band is an early-Nineties graduate of MTV's school of heavy rotation. The group scored a muitiplatinum hit with its rootsy first album August and Everything After.

In 1991 Duritz first played acoustic shows with guitarist David Bryson in the San Francisco area. After honing a folk-based sound -- comparable to that of early recordings by Van Morrison -- the duo recruited bassist Matt Malley, guitarist Dan Vickrey, keyboardist Charlie Gillingham, and drummer Steve Bowman (later replaced by Ben Mize). As the Counting Crows, the group recorded August and Everything After (#4, 1994) under the production tutelage of T Bone Burnett, an idol of Duritz's, in the Big Pink -- like atmosphere of a Los Angeles mansion.

In the midst of the alternative-rock boom, the group sold over five million copies of their more traditional-rock-sounding album without ever releasing a U.S. single. MTV and radio's incessant playing of "Mr. Jones," a song about a singer grasping for rock stardom, helped vault the album 40 notches on the pop album chart in one week. "Round Here" was a second semiautobiographical song; its video also proved popular on MTV.

Formed August 1991, San Francisco, California

Adam Duritz (b. Aug. 1, 1964, Baltimore, Md.), voc., piano, harmonica;

David Bryson (b. Nov. 5, 1961), gtr., voc.;

Dan Vickrey (b. Aug. 26, 1966, Walnut Creek, Calif.), gtr.;

Matt Malley (b. July 4, 1963), bass, voc.;

Charlie Gillingham (b. Jan. 12, 1960, Torrance, Calif.), kybds., voc; Steve Bowman (b. Jan. 14, 1967), drums.

1993 -- August and Everything After (DGC)

1994 -- ( - Bowman; + Ben Mize [b. Feb. 2, 1971], drums)