Counting Crows' debut album, August and Everything After, marks its 30th anniversary on Thursday (tomorrow).
The album was released on September 14th, 1993 but it took a long time to take off. It didn't even hit the Billboard 200 album chart until January 1994 and peaked at number-four the week of April 2nd, 1994. It went on to sell seven-million copies.
Much of those sales were propelled by "Mr. Jones," which peaked at number-two on the Mainstream Rock and Alternative charts in February 1994. It also spun off two other Top 10 rock hits -- "Round Here" and "Rain King."
The album was produced by T-Bone Burnett, and shortly after the album was released, Adam Duritz said Burnett was a perfect producer for a band making their first album because he "allows a band to grow into their sound." Duritz explained that sound is just him and his bandmates playing in a room.
"The main aim of this album was to make a record where you could see five or six guys sitting around a room and playing it. I have nothing against wall of sound music. I think there's been plenty of great big wall of sound music made. But I wanted it to be very personal. I think even when there's big rocking songs on our record you could still see all six of us sitting in a room -- you can close your eyes and see us sitting around the living room in this house playing it, which is just what we did."
The Crows will mark the anniversary on their current tour with Dashboard Confessional, which stops in Bend, Oregon Thursday (tomorrow) night. They will be in Denver at RED ROCKS , Sept. 25th. Robbyn has your tickets with "Best Seats On The Rocks" at 12:15PM this week!