When thinking of the tour, you must almost conceptualize it as a performance rather than a concert.

It’s a great theater out there, you know? South, big bass drum, a 100 model plane remote control, the world would be a Spirit Vine: you got the big bass drum and Jim’s got our drum, we got the snare drum, they break it down to the drums at one point, they break it down to the drums at one point, and Jim’s up there with Michael and just doing the drum solo off the snare drum. And Michael’s got a guitar, of course, Jim starts playing on Michael’s guitar, then playing on the drums, then playing on Michael’s guitar, then playing on the drums with the drum sticks. It’s pretty cool, it’s a lot of goofy fun.

Let’s talk about the setlist. Did each band bring its own list of songs or did you have a say in the evening’s set? Or did you look at this as an opportunity to rework some of your back catalogue?

It was a mixture. I mean there are places in the set where we all play together, we found covers that we both wanted to do or we talked about it a lot beforehand. A lot of times we wanted to do together some covers, when Michael was out, Augustana and I, we found a couple of more things that we wanted to do together, you hear someone flying and you’re like, “Can I sing on that?” I knew something I wanted to do, I really wanted everyone to be on “Remote Control,” it’s just such a lethal song. I wanted everyone to be on “Rain King.” We found—I would never have expected it, but, “Why Should you Come When I Call?,” is straight up, Smile-era, Beach Boys, “Good Vibrations” level harmonies—really hard to do by ourselves. But with everybody, we could completely do it. I didn’t have to play the piano anymore, everybody could sing, and set up the seven-part harmonies, which are really hard for a seven-piece band to do. We have 12-part harmonies, which are really easy for an 18-piece band to do, and I don’t have to play the piano. And in the middle of it also, Michael comes up and says, “I have an idea, when we enter the stops, I’ll go to human beat box, me and you.” I’m like “Oh, awesome! Look at that!”

The collaborations almost seem to be shaping the song selection.

So we brought down our human beat box, and I could go off. I’m not singing the chorus, I’m just doing my own thing. And while we’re doing it, I’m standing next to the other guys, Dan Layus the singer, started singing these other harmonies behind us and they just pick up with this decrescendo, and at one point, I drop my arm down, and everything stopped, and we just sang the first line of the chorus a cappella 12-part harmony or something, and then Dan crashes back.

The beat box keeps going, and what they were singing, background music will change with you. So there was some things that we wanted to do, and some things that we ended up doing. Michael had written a new song called “Sounds of Sunshine.” It was really, really beautiful. We all loved it, we all said, “You should play it for the tour, it’s such a good song.” We heard him playing it one day, and then we ended up having Michael and his drummer playing, and then his bass player, playing some bass—I think he’s playing bass, I know he’s singing, and then me and Dan singing back-up.

Different songs have different configurations. Sometimes we’re playing all together, there are Augustana songs that I play, I sing on, Charlie plays on. There’s one called “Dust,” Dan plays on. I think Dave Bryson is playing this one called “Twenty Years.” I know Dan Layus is out there singing with artists with Spearhead on a couple of their songs. I’m on three Spearhead songs. I sang on 25 songs last night.

Part of my job during the Spearhead songs is to be like a Flava Flav. I’m mostly bouncing around getting the crowd up and singing the chorus and the background vocals. But my role largely is to echo whatever Michael wants the crowd to do that moment. I’m like bouncing and jumping on things, complete cardio exhaustion. Like the second song in the show is usually “Hello, Bonjour,” which is one of their greats, but I’m all over the stage bouncing up and down, it’s a complete work out, and then it goes into a Counting Crows song after that, usually. And we started doing, “A Long December,“—but—it just—it’s a huge hit, but it’s too down for that moment, to go down to the piano from “Hello Bonjour.” So we switched to playing “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby” more often. But the great thing about, “A Long December” is that I can sit the fuck down. I was exhausted at that point, and this is “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby,” I’ve got to stay on my feet. Like, last night, in Miami, that heat and that humidity, it was hard feeling the heat.

We ended hanging around at the end of the set, and went off stage, then came back on to play, “Cecilia” with everybody, and people are out there playing, “Cecilia” all over these big telecoms, every beating drum just kind of banging, from the mandolins and banjos, and it’s very simple instrumentation but everybody’s singing. You know that Simon and Garfunkel song? It’s an easy song to play, it’s like a breath song, except that I was so tired, I was falling around. I’m going to Chris, John, the guitar player and the piano player for that, Augustana. Last night, I was literally hanging on, I could not stand up. They were completely supporting me. Literally physically holding me up, I was not on my feet.

Both Counting Crows and Spearhead are known for their ability to change and rearrange their classic material over the years. Is there any Counting Crows song you feel has gone through a transformation on this tour?

Well, “Rain King” has always been a work in progress—it’s now in complete shambles. It’s become insanity. It’s like, “Everybody down on ‘Rain King.’” We changed the chorus, they snap at these break-downs, all these choruses, and I jump on the piano, we roll a piano out, and we play, “With A Little Help from my Friends.” The Beatles song, over the music of “Rain King,” and then it just stops, and I start doing it, Michael comes to sit down by where I’m playing, and I start playing The Beatles song, and they start answering me in the harmonies, and then it becomes a huge wall of harmony and me and Michael are trading vocals, and after the first chorus starts breaking down, I start singing something and Michael starts answering me and then I was like—“I just want somebody to love, I just want somebody to love, I just want somebody.” And then all of the sudden, Dan Layus all the way on the other side on the stage goes, “But you can’t always get what you want!” I’m still playing guitar and singing, and all of the sudden, there’s like nine of us singing this total soul round, going around, and that’s become cooler every night. And we’re just making this up, no one knows what the hell is going on. No one remembers what we did the night before, because it’s just such chaos, we just make it up every night. And then I made up a version one night of, “Goodnight Elisabeth,” that comes out of that.

I know you often insert new lyrics and portions of cover songs into your own work live. Do you have an recent examples of that exercise?

I rewrote “Goodnight Elisabeth,” and stole a title from Cracker. The first verse of it is: “I’ve wasted the afternoon waiting on the train. I woke up a piece of Elisabeth had disappeared again. You get to measure all the measure all the love you lose against these songs you gain, because in the end, it’s just another song about the rain.” If you’re not careful, you can spend your whole life trading actual human contacts for songs. I don’t know why it occurred to me one day: That old Cracker song about “Just Another Song About the Rain.” It was occurred to me that I have lots of songs, but all the girls are gone.

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