These Crows’ Feathers Don’t Ruffle

At this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel, all of the living inductees were on hand except, predictably, the cantankerous Van Morrison. So Robbie Robertson, the evening’s musical director, brought in a replacement to do the honors of performing the absentee’s “Caravan”: a young San Francisco band that hadn’t yet released a record, Counting Crows.

You’d expect an unknown stepping into Morrison’s sizable shoes to quake in them, particularly when hundreds of veteran rockers and music-biz heavyweights were looking on. But there were no butterflies for unflappable lead Crow Adam Duritz, who relished being the rookie called in to pinch-hit for the star slugger.

“What a chance, to get up and show off in front of Bruce Springsteen and George Clinton,” said Duritz, 29. “I’m not really scared of that stuff. That’s one thing I can do--close my eyes and sing these songs. They mean everything to me. I’m scared of success .”

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Will Duritz have a chance to realize his worst fears? Whether the Crows will fly in the ‘90s remains up in the air, as the group’s first album--perhaps the most promising debut of the year--draws so distinctly on the traditions established by Morrison, Robertson (through the Band) and Bob Dylan. There are no guarantees any of those legends would be huge sellers out of the gate as freshmen in today’s climate.

But the T Bone Burnett-produced “August and Everything After” album is off to a strong start on the “adult alternative” radio format and with critics, two camps that reward adventurous singer-songwriters.

Even if Robertson hadn’t picked them as high-profile Morrison stand-ins, reviewers would still be comparing Counting Crows’ sometimes soaringly emotional sound to Morrison’s soulful strains.

“He’s certainly been a major influence, but I’m always surprised when people think I sound like him,” Duritz says of Morrison.

“I have learned one big lesson from him: As long as you get up there and do what you’re feeling, then there’s no right and wrong. People criticize him for not playing to the audience, but he’s going internal and finding what he feels about the song that night. For better or worse, that’s where he goes.”

Duritz tends to go somewhere, too, turning in loose-limbed, vocally extravagant performances that are at once totally introverted and completely flamboyant. “My parents always think I’m drunk on stage,” he laughs, adding, “but it feels like being drunk.”

Performers such as Michael Bolton condition us to equate gutsy performances with a song’s content, so it’s a surprise when you realize Duritz sounds as if he’s pouring his heart and soul out in songs that are about emotional avoidance.

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“The way I write is not about ‘this is how I feel’ so much as there’s this person feeling all these things, and these are the things they say while they’re trying to keep it down,” Duritz says. “The songs are very conversational in that sense, like a collection of all the little lies the person’s telling himself. And there’s just like one moment in each song where they admit whatever the problem is. I put it that way because I don’t think people really generally do tell the truth.”

But is it as easy to be so passionate singing from a self-deluded point of view as it might be delivering more direct love lyrics?

“Yeah, actually, and I think that’s why they end up being more passionate songs,” Duritz says. “Because they’re about the tension of it being built up inside you. And these characters are all just barely holding it together.”