Adam Duritz

Adam's band, Counting Crows, has enjoyed their share of fame since their debut album, August and Everything After, back in 1994. The alternative rock band's raw, energetic live performances are the foundation of their successful run on the music scene. In 2004, Counting Crows' "Accidentally in Love" was featured in Shrek 2 and the song was nominated for Best Song at the 2005 Academy Awards, where they gave a live performance of the hit.

DM: How you doing, Adam?

AD: Good, how are you?

DM: Doin' well, doin' well, well. Well, to get right to the chase, you started the new label.

AD: Yes I have.

DM: Why are you going for this a second time, because I know you did a label a couple of years back, then sold it. To Geffen, I believe?

AD: Well, I wouldn't say sold it, because we didn't get any money at all.

DM: (Laughs) Ah, I didn't know that part!

AD: There's probably a better word for it than that.

DM: Donated it! (laughs)

AD: Basically, what happened with the old label was that we started an indie label at a time when we were coming out of being a college radio band. And coming out of the '80s, there were all the great indie labels.

DM: Yeah.

AD: Airline, Sub-Pop, IRS all the rest, some great Minneapolis ones. There were a ton of great indie labels at the time.

DM: I remember them, yeah.

AD: The result of all of that was that there was great distribution in the late '80s, early '90s. But now there was all this business coming out of this, and all the majors [record labels] thought it would be genius to buy them and try to run them like majors. Which is basically what runs them into the ground. So, they ruined all those great labels. But it also kind of ruined indie distribution. Because when all the labels got bought up, we were being distributed by Sony or Universal or Geffen or MCA or RCA or Virgin or whoever bought them. So all of a sudden, the indie distribution companies weren't as efficient as they used to be. So when we started our label, at first we had a lot of trouble dealing with our distribution, because you couldn't get efficient distribution networks up. Distribution companies that had been really good five years before, suddenly stopped being good. They started off doing a good job, but then they started doing a bad job, so