Counting Crows
June 11, 2025
Fraze Pavilion, Kettering, OH
By Rob McCune
There’s a moment at every Counting Crows concert when, as frontman Adam Duritz holds out his hand palm up and casts his gaze upward, the fans fully expect it to start to rain. That the “Rain King” himself does in truth have the power to summon the drops from the sky. That’s the power of a Counting Crows performance that has kept fans coming back for more, for 30 years or more. It’s the power of a song and songwriter who in 1993, at a bar called the New Amsterdam with his friend Marty Jones, told us, “Believe in me,” like we had any choice but to do just that from then on.
Not only that, but he also implored us: “Help me believe in anything.”
All these years later, Duritz still seems to be searching for something to believe in. As he sings in “Under the Aurora”:
We are dissolving from night to morning
And I wanna believe in something
Strung out on darkness, somewhere under the Aurora
If I could believe in one thing
The melodic mingling of beauty out of darkness and creation from chaos in “Aurora” is what we’ve come to expect from the Crows, who with five new songs on their new record “Butter Miracle: The Complete Sweets,” have given us something, if not to believe in then at least to live in. Complementing four tracks previously released on the incomplete “Butter Miracle” EP four years ago, this first full-length album of new songs in more than 10 years (since 2014’s “Somewhere Under Wonderland”) are both happy and heartsick reflections on the past and a spirit of renewal.
And on the finely fringed backs of these new songs, Counting Crows are as powerful (and believable) as ever, as they demonstrated at Fraze Pavilion, an outdoor amphitheater in Kettering, Ohio, on the second stop of their summer tour.
This latest album – from a band that has released seven other full studio albums, five live albums and a hits compilation – is perhaps the band’s most narrative, in that it tells stories about a band (The Rat Kings) and frontman (Bobby) who decades after their highpoint are reflecting on the emotional and mental rollercoaster that has brought them to where they are today. Missed chances and mixed-up memories spark reunion, rejuvenation and at least one more shot at redemption, as Duritz sings in “With Love, From A to Z”:
I was trying to swim through an ocean of rain
I was hoping to see California again
All these memories run through me like blood in my veins
In the quiet that covers the night like a blanket, I dream …
I see mountains that stretch from Manhattan to Mars
And I followed my comet down out of these stars
Once more crossing America west in my car
I am friendless, endlessly resentful, bereft, and I’ve been
Trying to be what you need
Rain, change and the endless need to believe precipitate throughout “Virginia Through the Rain” and “Boxcars,” but on “Spaceman in Tulsa,” Duritz and the Crows convincingly remind us that they are “motherf***ing rock-n-roll stars.” For a band that has often defied the definitions or boxes that others have tried to put them in, or take them out of, “Spaceman” is arguably the band’s most rock-n-roll song. The Adam evoked here is the one drawn in the liner notes for 1996’s “Recovering the Satellites,” all hair and glasses, middle finger extended.
And that is the Adam who burst onto the Fraze stage in red-and-black-striped pants and a black denim jacket over a red David Bowie/Space Oddity tee, opening the show with “Spaceman.”
The energy was red-hot and stayed that way through a 90-minute set that blended the new with the hits and a few surprises. Still walking tightropes and balancing on monitors at the fronts of stages, Duritz has all of the panache of his younger self who did so on train tracks when ghosts were stepping out front doors into the fog.
Adam has said that the one song he never tires of playing live is “A Long December” (off “Satellites”), which of course made the list with other mainstays “Mr. Jones,” “Round Here,” “Rain King” and “Omaha,” off the debut album, August and Everything After. The Crows sprinkled in songs from the other albums (This Desert Life’s “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby” and “Colorblind” and “Washington Square” off 2008’s Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings) – a highlight was “Miami,” off the 2002 record Hard Candy, which has a beat drop that when played live feels like a defibrillator shock to the heart.
Despite decades of playing them, the favorites never sound stale, as Adam infuses them (especially “Round Here”) with snippets of other songs, rocks an up-tempo “Rain King” and engages the audience to singalong on “Mr. Jones” and “Omaha.”
The latest and greatest live medley-izing starts with Adam at the piano, covering with incredible emotional resonance Taylor Swift’s “The 1,” off her 2020 album “Folklore,” before seamlessly, perfectly transitioning into “A Long December.” It’s a show-stopper, and in this show was the perfect song for the pre-encore stage walk-off by the band.
No one was fooled, as the amphitheatre crowd stayed put for the three-song encore, starting off with “Aurora,” destined to be a new favorite and hopefully another mainstay at shows still 30 years from now.
The hand-clapping, tambourine-shaking “Hanginaround” next reminded us that this band has been around for so long, but it’ll never be too long. After taking us on another “Holiday in Spain,” Duritz promised: “We will be back.”
I, for one though not the only one, believe him.
Rob McCune is a mega-Counting Crows fan, having seen the band live more than 30 times since 1995. On Instagram, he’s Every_Thing_After_Photo, where he posts his concert photography and reviews, as well as clips from the latest Every.Thing.After podcast, which is available to download on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
