angels of the silences
"I'm gone I leave today"

Tired voice, valiant cries and shouts; and in this Adam captures the essence of this song. I first heard this song wandering through the streets of Anchorage; I'd been listening to August and Everything After for a year now, and this song came on the radio -- just once; I never heard it on our stations again -- and though surprising, I enjoyed it. The album was released later that year, after my move to Houston, Texas, and it became an instant favorite.

I drive; a lot. I love to hit an open road and throw in some music and just lose myself in the peacefulness of just being out there. I always sing along. My favorites? My perfect driving songs? Every Counting Crows song ever written. They capture the wonder of the backroads in their music; "..wish I was traveling on a freeway, beneath this graveyard western sky.." How can you top that?

I feel as all fans feel at some point or another; if you could know a person based upon the words that they write, the songs they sing, then I would know Duritz so well. But that's not the case. Still I feel that these songs have become mine; several of them encompass the moods and the feelings that I've been attacked with at several times in my life. That's the biggest thing about the Crows' music, and not everyone understands it: it's real. None of this cheesy sex-driven R&B, no 'let's-shoot-each-other' rap, no reworked classics-turned-Puff-Daddy-songs. None of it. Every word comes from the life of one that's lived it all. It's real. And in being real, it's beautiful. Adam finally accomplished his soft-spoken desire [..man, I wish I was beautiful..], but it came through in his songs. And to me, that's the most honest thing in the world.