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E17: Chris Porterfield (Field Report) Interview
312 Plays8 months ago
Chris Porterfield leads the band "Field Report". Chris was influenced by the Crows, toured with the Crows in 2012 (including the famous "Codfish Hollow Barn" concert), and remains friends with Adam to this day.
Join us as we explore a very special part of the Crows legacy--their opening acts.
Field Report on Instagram: @fieldreportmusic
Crows Codfish Hollow Show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D38QF6-mhnI
Field Report Codfish Hollow Show:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Episode and Guests
00:00:16
Speaker
Welcome to episode 17 of Sullivan Street. I am Eric Vogelsang. We have a special guest today, Christopher Porterfield from Field Report. We'll get into that in just a moment, but first I'll say hi to my co-host, Chris Makes. Chris, good evening. Hey, how you doing? It's a good evening. I'm excited to talk to our guest this evening, although I'm also, I will also say excited.
Anticipation of New Counting Crows Songs
00:00:37
Speaker
Apparently there's new Counting Crow songs coming, they said. So that's always exciting news.
00:00:41
Speaker
Yeah, they actually I guess are starting to name them and then it is happening. Supposedly, you know, we'll see. We'll see when that happens. And we definitely look forward to that. And so without any further ado, well, let's introduce
Christopher's Connection to Counting Crows
00:00:54
Speaker
ourselves. So Christopher Porterfield from the band Field Report.
00:01:00
Speaker
lead singer, everything else, you can talk about everything that you do for the band. But how are you related to Counting Crows? Well, Chris, for me, it's from joining the band for tour, summer of 2012, and part of what I think, at least on YouTube, see that just shows the power of social media and YouTube, at least on YouTube, one of the more famous live recordings at the Codfish Hollow Barn. And you had a great set there yourself.
00:01:28
Speaker
So let's say hi and good evening to Christopher Porterfield. Good evening. Thank you for having me. It's good to be with you. Yeah, thank you. I'm going to let Chris handle a lot of this, but I do want to say, because the first question I ask everybody when they show up on the show, it ends up that you did not just tour with the Crows, you were a fan of the Crows before touring with them. So how did you become a fan of Counting Crows?
00:01:54
Speaker
Well, let's see. What year did August come out? 93. 93, yeah. So I was a 13-year-old on a family vacation.
00:02:07
Speaker
I'm a Midwestern boy. We were going from Minnesota through South Dakota, heading to Colorado for like a family vacation. And I remember sitting in a Walmart parking lot as a surly teen while the rest of my family went inside and I was staying in the van and the radio was on and all of a sudden,
00:02:36
Speaker
I hear the strident, insistent, subtle chimes of the introduction of a song called Round Here. And the repeated guitar motif with the moving bass line underneath instantly sort of harken back to like a U2 sort of feeling to me.
00:03:03
Speaker
And I had been very into the Joshua Tree record and and, you know, was sort of broadening my horizons with that band. And so I instantly kind of leaned in and this repeated guitar line and then like the subtle things pushing underneath, moving the changes. And then the lyrics come in.
00:03:22
Speaker
And it just blew my young mind, some of the things he was talking about, the loneliness and the walking around by herself and this woman who sounded beautiful, the way he was talking about her and she's understanding Jesus and Elvis, and that was it. The door was kicked straight down
00:03:48
Speaker
And I walked in and I just found something that I'd never found before in that song in that moment. And so I bought that album as soon as I could and sat with it and the production blew me away, the lyricism blew me away, the classic nature of it.
00:04:09
Speaker
To me, it sounds of a time, specifically, I think the drum sounds, but a lot of it is just really, really timeless. It just blew my mind. Then when Recovering the Satellites came out,
00:04:25
Speaker
I had a friend who worked at a record store. What do they call those? They had the big posters and the pictures for the record. It was just the promo stuff and they were getting rid of it and so I took it and I had that hung up in my room and I used to stare at the
00:04:43
Speaker
at the star and over the street lights. Then there was a big band picture and I'd got to know everybody in the band just from looking at everybody and seeing everything. That record blew my mind. Then This Desert Life, I slept in my car the night it came out in the parking lot at Best Buy. I went deep with this stuff. It was and remains very important to me.
00:05:11
Speaker
That's funny, Desert Life and buying it Best Buy, the day it came out was one thing. I don't know if any of the other ones I bought the day it came out, but the Best Buy, yeah.
00:05:19
Speaker
I was at a camp though. I went first thing in the morning. Yeah, it turns out I beat the line. There wasn't a line to get in at the Best Buy at eight in the morning in Rochester, Minnesota for this desert life. But yeah, no, that was a great record. I got to see them on that tour. That was the first time I saw them at the Target Center in Minneapolis.
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah. And one thing we'll obviously get to is being able to tour with a band that you like and really looked up to for years. And you're not the first person to say that. And by the way, I don't want to minimize. One thing I don't want to underplay is that we're not having you on the show just because you're a Crows fan. We love your music in its own right. And we're definitely going to talk about that as well. And if I have it correctly,
00:06:11
Speaker
four official LPs. The first one was you were promoting during that tour with them in 2012. Yeah, that's
Touring with Counting Crows
00:06:19
Speaker
right. That first record didn't come out until that fall after we had done the tour with them. But I'll never forget, I didn't know this was going to happen, but Adam started tweeting at the field report account. He got an early copy of that record.
00:06:36
Speaker
And kind of the legend is that he was listening to it in his car on the way to the airport and then just kept driving and missed his flight.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yeah, which is pretty wild. He was tweeting at us about this record that nobody had heard yet, and it was just like, oh my God, this is happening. This is a crazy, crazy path that we've found ourselves on where this guy who I've admired forever,
00:07:07
Speaker
is saying really flattering kind things about this weird work that I didn't even understand. Adam, and I'm not going to pass the curse in a second, but Adam is known for that, I think, in a way, of finding
00:07:23
Speaker
If he does find a band that he thinks is, or an act that he thinks is unappreciated, he wants to get the word out there, and I think that's great. And by the way, as a tribute to you, I wore a Bucky the Badger sweater today. I actually lived in Wisconsin for a while. We can talk about that, because I'm curious if you know some of the bands from the Madison music scene when I was living there, which was around the early 2010s. Okay, yeah, let's compare notes. That's great. So Chris, I'll pass to you.
00:07:53
Speaker
Well, no, I'm actually, I'm curious, did you ever find out like how that music got to him when the record wasn't out yet? Yeah. So the guy who had just started managing us, his name was Dave Godowski. He was living in New York and he had crossed paths with Adam through some music circles. And so he had passed it off to, Dave had passed it off to Adam and Adam did the unusual thing of listening to it.
00:08:19
Speaker
And just, and it's interesting cause I haven't always assumed cause there was like a, I was talking about Adam was talking about day trotter a lot. I just always kind of assumed maybe he like founded on day trotter or something, but it's awesome that Dave just able to sort of slip this in. Was that like early 2012 or like when did she say?
Porterfield's Musical Journey
00:08:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that would have been like maybe March or April.
00:08:42
Speaker
It would have been before South by Southwest because I think the first time I met Adam was at, we went down to South by Southwest for, I think we must have done 14 shows in three days or something, but one of them was Adam's show and I think that was the first time we met. So it would have had to be before that.
00:09:05
Speaker
Because at that point, your little stories, you were kind of like coming back to music at that point, right? That you'd made some records with D'Armond Edison, right? And then you had been doing kind of, I've never actually figured out that you'd been doing like the Conrad Plymouth thing, but I don't know how long that was before. But the story was kind of like you kind of like coming back to music, right?
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, so I went to college in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and while I was there, I had some friends that I played in their band for a few years, and they were called D'Armond Edison, and that went on to be the project prior to Bon Iver and to Megafaun. And so, yeah, and then they all moved to North Carolina, and I moved to Milwaukee, and I kind of figured I was done with music at that point.
00:09:58
Speaker
I got a real job and got married and all of that stuff. And then I'd never been a songwriter before. I had always been like a side guy, guitar player or steel guitar. And yeah, and I think out of the missing of that fellowship of that camaraderie, I started writing some of my own songs and finding people to
00:10:22
Speaker
to play them. And then that project sort of was called Conrad Plymouth as sort of an inside joke from Eau Claire days. We used to go to this bar in Eau Claire called The Joint, and everybody kind of would come up with their country music stage names, but you had to use your same initial letters as your given name. And I think Justin's was Jesse Valentine or something like that.
00:10:51
Speaker
when I was Conrad Plymouth. And I was also sometimes moonlighting for this Arts and Entertainment magazine. And if there were any stories that I wasn't particularly proud of, I'd put them under the pen name Conrad Plymouth. And so that that name sort of became just a repository for stuff I was unsure about myself. And so, yeah, we recorded an EP under that moniker. And then, you know, that was back in the
00:11:19
Speaker
the early aughts and the bloggy tens and all that stuff where, you know, stuff could happen. Stuff could happen pretty fast. And so we had stuff up on Bandcamp and people started reaching out from record labels. And so they came out to Milwaukee and we'd talk and
00:11:38
Speaker
ended up signing with this guy who became a dear friend, Dave Godowski. And we made a record in Eau Claire at Justin's studio there, and then found a label to put it out. And then before it came out, it got to Adam. Just because you mentioned the steel guitar, as someone who is not as familiar with your music as I think Chris is,
00:12:02
Speaker
That was one thing I caught from your appearance there that, I mean, I always liked to steal guitar partly
Tour Experiences and Fashion Mishaps
00:12:06
Speaker
because of the crows. So did you guys bond over that at all, right? Emi plays, you know, Emi's a steel guitar player, right?
00:12:16
Speaker
I mean, a little bit, a little bit. I love Emmy and everything he does, but he's kind of a tourist on the pedal steel. If I'm being totally honest, shots fired, shots fired. But no, and it's one of those things. Well, I've got one right here. Can you see it? I don't know. I got a steel right there.
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's one of the most beautiful instruments. It's a very, very weird, complicated instrument, and you can go as deep into it as you want to. And Amy makes beautiful music on it. But my steel player, his name is Ben Lester, and he's gone on to play on some pretty phenomenal records. He's a real deal. No, I mean, Amy was always very kind, but we never really talked about the steel.
00:13:06
Speaker
Fantastic. Chris, you had a question. Yeah. No, so Adam, here's the record. Then how long? So when do you kind of find out that you're going to do this tour and other than just excitement, kind of like what's your reaction? What was your, you know, in terms of finding out that was going to happen? Well, it was a long enough tour where I was going to have to quit my job to do it. And so
00:13:33
Speaker
It was a, it was a real, are you doing this or not sort of situation for me? And I had kind of been swinging on this vine for a while, you know, trying to build up enough momentum to get to the next thing. And suddenly here's this thing and it couldn't have been a starker choice. It's like, well,
00:13:54
Speaker
you could go on the road, play these incredible spots as some of your first shows as a band with a band that you've admired and looked up to and have been touched by for a couple of decades, or you could not go
00:14:15
Speaker
and go into the office and maybe do an open mic sometime. It wasn't even a choice. Adam forced my hand and pushed me into this life that I'm still in. I'm grateful to him for many things, but that being a big one. He pushed me off of the vine I was swinging on, waiting for something to comfortably come within reach to move on to the next thing and he's just like,
00:14:46
Speaker
Let's go. How does it affect you during those, I want to say a 12 month period, maybe the tour itself and a few months after, because obviously there are going to be some people that get exposed to you that wouldn't have before. And this happens, you know, during a lot of the tours, right? Oh, Chris just raised his hand. He's one. Yeah. Yeah. No, I met you then.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, it's because it's, you know, again, well, and I'll tell my story because I feel like Eric keeps like alluding to this. Right. So the first show, we'll talk about the cod for Shala show at some point on YouTube. It's a
Touring Memories and Band Dynamics
00:15:18
Speaker
good one to talk about. But the first show of the tour proper, right. It's it's first of all, it's the Outlaw Roadshow Tour. Right. So it's three bands opening for the crows. It's field report. It's We Are Augustine's.
00:15:30
Speaker
and it's Casey Anderson and the Honkies, which also just at the whole thing was just a fantastic lineup. It was a really spectacular evening of music. The first show of the tour is at the Brooklyn Waterfront at a venue that I don't think they used after that year. The first memory I have, and this is one of the things I'm curious about for you guys in terms of how you decided to sort of be on this tour and what you were doing to promote the music.
00:15:57
Speaker
That's the hottest concert, one of the hottest concerts I've ever been to. I literally have a picture of my phone and my then girlfriend, now wife, and we're just, we just took a selfie to collect and like remember how like much we are melting at that point in t-shirts and shorts, but like we're just literally, it's like 90 something degrees and like a hundred thousand percent humidity. And my first recollection is you guys walk out in suits, which just,
00:16:24
Speaker
incredibly ballsy just an amazing like step so and then the music was amazing too but we were going to remember you regardless because of the suits but the music was incredible well can I ask whose idea I mean whose idea were the suits and how long did you keep wearing those things in what was probably the heat of that summer
00:16:47
Speaker
Yeah, so the suits were the idea of the record label. We had done one tour before the Counting Crows tour and they had gotten some pictures back from somewhere in Nebraska the night before and they were like, these guys are not looking too cool. So we got the call from the label and they're like, hey, you guys,
00:17:15
Speaker
We think you should go stop at the next men's warehouse and get fitted for some suits so you look nice for photos. I'm like, okay. So we stopped in Boise and got fitted at the men's warehouse poorly.
00:17:36
Speaker
And, uh, I want to like, let's, let's bask in this image for a second. Cause so you're a rock band walking into a men's warehouse and Boise. Yeah. Like how are there many options? Who's helping you? Like really? I don't want to paint the picture here.
00:17:54
Speaker
I don't know, man. I mean, it must have been pretty weird for them too because they got the call. There were six of us in the band and they got the call from the label. When the label was in Brooklyn, they were all very cool and hip and we were just like not cool and hip at all. And so their solution was, yeah, let's call ahead to the Boise Men's Warehouse and say, this is how much we're spending for you. So they're waiting for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were waiting for us and we walk in and everybody
00:18:21
Speaker
gets fitted and man it was bad it was really it was really bad but we committed to that look for the rest of that tour and then the whole crows tour and all the touring i think through the end of that calendar year we went out with amy man for a while right after the crows tour yeah we did a bunch of stuff and so yeah and we kept that going for a while and i just remember
00:18:46
Speaker
You know, we were a few dates in on the crows tour and Julie, their tour manager, uh, I was, you know, in her trailer office and talking about logistics and stuff. She's like, do you guys need me to get those suits dry cleaned?
00:19:03
Speaker
She's like, oh, is it bad? And she's like, I think you should let me do this for you. And so she would, every couple of the days, she would take the suits out and have them dry cleaned for us. I mean, that's the, well, hey, that's the level of stank that we were living in, but being, that's the level of, you know, just like kindness of the whole operation and the experience. That's awesome. Cause I was, I was thinking like, it's gotta be very quickly.
00:19:31
Speaker
Again, it was so hot. By the end of the first show, even if you only was out there for the 30, 40 minutes, you've just got to be sweating through them basically. For sure. Yeah. Because it didn't seem like you guys had gotten cotton suits. It looked like full wool.
00:19:51
Speaker
Oh, no. I mean, it was it was full synthetic for sure. And so maybe there was a maybe there was a an air wick situation with some of those cheap fabrics. But yeah, no, it was not a light summer suit. That was that was, yeah, straight after Agman's warehouse. No, no regard to season. Well, what are your you know, I'm curious, like, what are your memories of
00:20:18
Speaker
I mean, when we start with cod, cod fish, all it was the first show you, you guys did with them, right?
00:20:22
Speaker
I think that's right, yeah. Oh, is that true? See, that's interesting, because I would think that, you know, being on YouTube and everything that I thought, oh, this is probably near the end of the tour. No, I don't even look at the dates. No, I think that was the first one. And so, yeah, we that was the first. Yep. And I think we drove to New York from there. If the itinerary tracks would make some sense. It's July 4th and then the New York show is July 17th. But given the distance, you might have taken
00:20:52
Speaker
Sometimes maybe not. I don't remember. Yeah, I know that you know what that show was recorded. I for day trotter
00:21:00
Speaker
Okay, okay. Yeah. Because Day Trotter was doing, Day Trotter, Adam was heavily promoting the Day Trotter and Day Trotter used that barn for shows. And I remember that, I actually remember listening to that show initially and A, getting excited. He's like, oh, I'm going to see this banding sound. These guys sound good. And then, you know, the Crows, I remember they were streaming that show and it just kind of kept going. Hmm.
00:21:26
Speaker
because it's a famously long counting crow show. It may be the longest show they've ever played. The YouTube video is two hours and 45 minutes and it's clearly cutting things because speaking of hot, Adam keeps talking about how hot it is and he goes to at least three shirts and there's no change.
00:21:43
Speaker
Yeah. On that tour, they were set and geared up to be doing outdoor amphitheater situations. This barn was a huge underplay for them.
00:22:00
Speaker
because I think the barn holds maybe six, 700, something like that. And so they got to Iowa with all of their trucks and buses and trailers. And to get down to this barn, you have to go through like a pasture on a dirt road and you have to go down into a valley and make this sharp turn around and then go back up a hill. It is not meant for loading tour buses and trailers.
00:22:28
Speaker
And so they had to leave some of their stuff just because it wasn't gonna make it down the hill and back. And then they had to leave other of their stuff because it wasn't gonna fit in the barn itself. And so their team was really having to like,
00:22:44
Speaker
think and react and respond in ways that they hadn't had to do before. And so that was a challenging show for them operationally. And then it was also 100 degrees on the 4th of July in a barn in Iowa. And
00:22:59
Speaker
Yeah, and they played 30 songs about so yeah, well, and I think I think Adam was so committed to the idea and so excited about it that that just put him in a place where he just was like, doubling tripling quadrupling down on here is where we are. And this has happened.
00:23:15
Speaker
See, that's what I love about Adam. Of course, he knows if something's recorded for a live CD or something, he's going to maybe put a little extra effort. It just makes sense. But I love when he's committed to things for the artistic principle of it, and he's committed. He doesn't care if anybody else is, and he just gives it his all for that, even if, like you said, the attendance is lower than it would be in New York or whatever.
00:23:39
Speaker
Yeah, no, he wanted to do something special for those people because all those people, nobody was there by accident that day. Everybody needed to be there. One thing I thought about, I know it's even tougher probably now, I know the Crows deal with this, but when you're an opening act and I forgot that you shared the opening act with other, you weren't just the opening act, there were a number of them. So on that show, now maybe it was,
00:24:07
Speaker
cut but I probably not it looked like you you recorded three four fives about seven songs which is interesting because you know you don't even get to play your whole first album right you have to kind of choose I know that's probably not easy to do to figure out and I don't know did you keep the same kind of rotation most of that tour and
00:24:26
Speaker
No, I think we'd change it up every night. Okay. I think, um, yeah, and you're right. I mean, that is a challenge as an opening act. Uh, and especially as like a rotating headliner opening act, it was like, it was a, it was a weird thing.
00:24:39
Speaker
But it was Adam's idea and that's another thing that he really believed in. And one of the things like that barn show when he believed in it, wanted to be there, needed to prove it to everybody and so he played for two and a half hours with this sort of mini festival idea. Like every night he was side stage for every band the whole time. Yeah.
00:25:04
Speaker
It didn't matter if somebody in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, if that show wasn't an all eyes on us sort of show, because Adam was right there. In his generosity and understanding of his audience and how all of this stuff works, he would come out and greet the crowd every time.
00:25:29
Speaker
for each band and tell them why they were important to him and why they should be important to the people who he's important to. And it was such a classy move and he did it every night for everybody without fail, no matter if he was feeling burned out or didn't, you know, had something else he wanted to do. And that's just the kind of guy he is and was. And he just treated us with so much dignity and respect and we just,
00:25:57
Speaker
soaked it up. It didn't matter if we were in Sandpoint, Idaho next to a prison and there was a weird something going on. It didn't matter because Adam was right there and he was vibing on what we were doing. A lot of it was for him. Yeah. Was he giving you guys advice and stuff? Because he's watching the shows every night. Is he helping you guys? Yeah. He would offer
00:26:26
Speaker
he would say what was working or he would request other songs another night and he would always open up the set list to us too. Like, you guys wanna hear anything? Like, I don't know. And so it was a very, we just felt like we were- Is there anything you picked that he, it wasn't the set list that you were like, hey, can you play this one? Man, I don't remember. I don't remember honestly. Cause he would ask every night and everybody would throw something out and sometimes it would show up and sometimes it wouldn't.
00:26:55
Speaker
But yeah, that was just sort of the feeling in the air on that trip.
00:26:59
Speaker
I'm hoping by listening to, right now you've been on the podcast for almost a half hour, that people are going to check out your music if they don't know you already. One thing that just kind of struck me today is I was doing a little pre-work and was reading some magazine articles that either mentioned you or interviewed you. And they describe, oh, this is, right, right, field report, they play this type of music. And instead of saying that, I want to know how you would describe your music.
00:27:29
Speaker
to someone who asks or didn't know or wants to check you out. Yeah. I've struggled with that all along. A good marketed band should have an elevator pitch. I've always been bad at business. No, I think it's lyrical folk music with restless arrangements. I think ultimately there's
00:28:00
Speaker
At its core, it can just be a voice and a guitar telling stories that hopefully are either true or could be true, and leaving it halfway for somebody who has felt that way to find it and finish the other half.
00:28:22
Speaker
That's sort of a I don't know if that's a good way to describe it, but that's that's kind of my intention There's there's a restlessness there You know, we're never gonna be Super polished necessarily. We're never gonna be Super Bowl halftime ready But you can bet that every night is gonna be sort of an honest expression of what's in the air past present and future and Yeah, just
00:28:53
Speaker
I don't know. I like words a lot. That's great. I like trying to tell stories and be artful about it. I definitely noticed the storytelling. I know a lot of cruise fans like Adam's, quote, unquote, storytelling.
00:29:09
Speaker
And I definitely noticed that on the songs I was listening to all day today. I had a little follow-up on that, but Chris, let's go to you. No, but as in the honest expression thing, I think is something that would, is like an analog kind of with the crows, right? That's kind of comes back to like, what's counting crows live? Why is it different every night? Kind of the ideas, right? Just an on expression of where you're at. It might be very different or it might not be that different from night to night, but it's always going to be sort of honest.
00:29:37
Speaker
And I was actually kind of curious in terms of, because again, I saw the band.
00:29:43
Speaker
as you know, but I listened to that record a lot, a lot, a lot. It was actually the second show we saw on that tour where my wife and I, we went to see you guys in Camden at the WXPN festival. And we decided to, we bought, it wasn't even the record yet. It was an EP that had five or six of the songs. Cause you had like something at that point. And we just, we drove two and a half hours home, like, cause we were,
00:30:13
Speaker
in our late 20s and still thought it was a good idea to drive from Camden home to New York instead of just, you know, sleeping somewhere. Why bother? But we just basically listened to that record just on repeat for, you know, two and a half hours, which was only, it was only five songs. We must've listened to it five times. But part of it was gotten used to it, but then like you, it felt like the songs, like even just a couple months later, like playing like a radio session or when we saw you guys again,
00:30:39
Speaker
they'd started to evolve and the arrangements had already started to like move and shift. And I was kind of curious if that was in part kind of the inspiration of just like watching whether you guys were already thinking about doing that or whether that was kind of an inspiration from the tour or not. I think my instinct for chasing those things and being curious about those things is maybe in no small part from
00:31:06
Speaker
their double live record where they reimagined their first two albums.
Influence of Counting Crows on Music Style
00:31:13
Speaker
I think that was such a brave and bold and visionary thing to do. And it opened up the idea of that curiosity and that degree of improvisation to maybe an audience that wouldn't encounter it in that way. And to have a completely reimagined
00:31:33
Speaker
full album, you know? And that, I think, I mean, I could listen to that still all the time. And then the different version, like the version of Horse Dreamers Blues on Live at the Ten Spot, you know? And just like switching out which instruments they're taking charge when, it just seems like such an organic way to present something rather than a scripted way.
00:32:04
Speaker
And I think that really got its fingers into me, I guess. And that became a really important part of exploring the work that I do, too.
00:32:17
Speaker
Yeah. Also just the functional reality of being a band opening for people and trying to bring in enough money to keep all your bandmates satisfied and people are coming and going and people are getting married and divorced and getting jobs and losing jobs. So I became aware pretty quickly that in addition to
00:32:42
Speaker
sort of being the genesis of what our songs would be, I was also kind of the general manager of a sports team. And I had to try to hire the best talent available at the time for the goals that we needed to achieve. And so that changes the music too, you know, because different people have different strengths and different aptitudes and you just kind of have to put the best team on the field. And as people kind of come and go,
00:33:10
Speaker
as sort of the center of the thing, like my relationship with this stuff comes and goes too. Like, oh, one night I'm really waiting for this part that I've gotten used to from this guy, but he's not here anymore and so he's not giving it to me. So then I have to change and I can't rely on anything. And so I become more of an amorphous thing that can go in some direction or another, and then it's up to people to sort of respond to that.
00:33:37
Speaker
It's funny you said that about the live out. It's not released yet as of talking to you right now, but across the wire, we reviewed on our last episode and we said the same thing about how original it was and taking a chance. We were thinking of it as fans, that we had never heard something like this before as music fans. This is wild, but we didn't even think about the impact it might have had on musicians.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah, totally.
Impact of Personal Life on Music
00:34:03
Speaker
I think it requires the fans and the players to have bigger ears and more trust in the process.
00:34:11
Speaker
You can't just be expected to make your mark. It's not just like, okay, get to this point in the show because this is the part of the show where this happens. You have to be listening, you have to be present, and you have to be more egoless, and you have to be more fluid and just accept the journey because
00:34:33
Speaker
If you are the one who isn't responding in the fluid way, you are either going to block up the flow or you're going to do something stupid. And it's funny what you said about the we've kind of hinted and probably something we won't go into in depth because it requires like conjecture and people's personal, maybe, or, you know, family stories or issues. But certainly it's just part of life, just like if a band member dies or whatever that
00:35:01
Speaker
life goes on, right? And if people start having, getting married and having children, we talked about this with Matt Malle, Matt Malle a little bit. It's one of the reasons he stepped away from the band, but that people are going to live in different cities and different towns and it's just different when you get older and that's going to change the touring process, the writing process, et cetera. So I'm glad to hear you say it. Well, the songs take on, I mean, some of these, again, I think great writing, I think Counting Crow's writing, I think you're writing, Chris,
00:35:31
Speaker
you take on these songs that have enough open-endedness to them that you're going to hit them on a different day and round here is going to hit you in a different way every day, especially as your life changes and grows in the same way with I Am Not Waiting Anymore and Taking Alcatraz. There's a lot of songs that
00:35:54
Speaker
If you just keep coming to them, honestly, you might sing them differently and you should be singing them in a way that feels true to you on that day. Yeah, no, I agree with you. I agree with you. I think if it doesn't ever change, then you're kind of telling on yourself that it never really meant anything.
00:36:19
Speaker
That's not true. Chris Miggs, I don't know if you had any particular, and we'll link to it in the description. We'll link to multiple field report items, but we are going to link to the Codfish Holobarn. Did you have any comments about that particular show? Now, as someone who is not as familiar with the songs, I did find that the original, that first set list I get from the show, I did find that at Crescendo in a bit that I liked
00:36:46
Speaker
I thought the last three or four songs, I like more in that first listen than the other that I didn't like any, but I thought that was a good choice.
00:36:54
Speaker
Again, as someone that, especially as recent, and I've said on the show, in the last 15 years, maybe as soon as I started having children, I'm not as much of a music fan as more of a crows. I mean, you know, I have my set groups. And as we talked about in the green room or whatever, a lot of times now when I'm exposed to new music, it's from a TV show. And then I go to the, you know, an Amazon, right? You can click up and it says what the song's from. And I'm like, oh, I'll check that out.
00:37:19
Speaker
But for fans of the podcast, if they want to check you out, I'll just give them a little. I did believe this, and I don't mean any slight. I say this in a positive way, that the last two songs. So yeah, but it's interesting that you mentioned taking Alcatraz. I really thought it was a fantastic song. Chico the American, I heard, to me, heard some in the music itself, not the lyrics. I heard some hints of Anna Begins, or at least some kind of the feeling I was getting a little bit.
Storytelling in Music
00:37:48
Speaker
I'm guessing not intentional, but the last song, Fergus Falls, and also the first track of your first album.
00:37:56
Speaker
it gave me the round here feels. And also, it's kind of written in this third person. Well, I mean, round here, I guess, The Counting Crows, it's a little bit third person and first person, right? The way he thinks. But I guess, yeah, in your version, I thought it was more of the third person part of it, but the storytelling that I was talking about, I felt some out of influence, whether it actually was influenced or not. But as a fan, that's what I heard a bit of that. So I invite fans to check
00:38:24
Speaker
check out that set and especially the last couple of songs. That's cool. I appreciate your taking time to listen and find something in there. I'd never thought about Cheek of the American and Anna Begins, but they do have a similar 6-5 chord progression in the beginning, so I can see that. That's interesting.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah, and as far as that set, I hadn't thought about that for a really long time until you guys reached out about doing the pod. And so I watched some of it. And yeah, I mean, we were, you know, we, it was, it was early. We didn't have a whole lot of experience under our belt.
00:39:05
Speaker
There are things that I wish I had done differently, but there's no cheap way to get good. All you have is your instincts and you have to trust them and then just repeat 500 times. Unfortunately, we weren't 500 times into the repetition on that one yet.
00:39:21
Speaker
But I think I was probably pretty drunk already by the time that show went on. That next morning, I woke up shirtless in the barnyard with the sunrise and I was like, what happened?
00:39:39
Speaker
So that was a thing. I'm wearing a dangly earring that I bought for some vendor down in the barn. And I thought it was a good idea to try to reimagine the Star Spangled Banner with less idiomatic language.
00:40:01
Speaker
didn't quite land, but my instinct I think was... I'm not going to discount my instinct, but it didn't quite land. It's got a vibe. The Star Spangled Banner has a vibe. It's definitely got a vibe. The idea was to go into that song, Captain Video, which is in large part about how Americans treat our veterans of war when they return.
00:40:27
Speaker
And that didn't hit because I think I was borrowing Dave's guitar amp that day because the stage was so small that there was no room for anything of ours really. And so I was using Dave's, Dave Bryson's amp.
00:40:43
Speaker
and it was on standby and my amp didn't have a standby switch. So I never turned it on from standby. So for the first two songs, I'm sitting there trying to get sound out of this things because that's how I direct my band. So I'm bending over and trying to figure it out and plugging my stuff in and I'm off my game. So anyway, there's a little inside baseball on that show.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's like anybody listening and listen if I listen the first episode of this podcast I mean I certainly I I have my Record, I'm sorry recordings from me on the radio when I first started like decades ago I could not even listen to it because I wouldn't you know like just just just to get back to Chris for one thing because when you mentioned about Dave and there You talked about you know, Amy a little bit with this deal and Adam of course he had interactions with her Are there any since you did spend some time with them? Was there any memorable?
00:41:39
Speaker
I don't know, either musical connections or something, and I know with any of the particular band members that you wanted to mention, like, I don't know, Dave because of the guitar or something like that or Charlie or anyone. I mean, they were all very kind to us. Adam was above and beyond just generous with his time and allowing us to have access to their resources, whether it be catering or sound guys or all of it. It was just,
00:42:07
Speaker
Beyond, beyond generous. Charlie was very kind to our keyboard player specifically and showed him how he did some of his sounds. And man, just a shout out to Charlie. I think he's one of the most underrated piano and organ players. To me, like he's up there with Ben Montenche from the Heartbreakers.
00:42:30
Speaker
just as far as complete control of his sound and what he brings to any song. You can tell that it's him, but it's not because it's just a one-trick sort of thing. He just has a fully formed sound that I've admired from the beginning. He really is one of my favorite Hammond players.
00:42:55
Speaker
I think if he had more hands, he could play five instruments at the same time. I got it. I get that impression. Listen, for sure. And his his melotron sounds, too. Like, I just I don't know. I'm just such a huge fan of of of his world. It's really cool. Yeah, there's an incredible at the end of the Codfish Hollow Crow show, he ends up playing because Adam just starts talking and he plays under him all sorts of different things for a solid five plus minutes because he's just Adam's just going and he's just following and doing things. And it's a great
00:43:26
Speaker
It's a pretty entertaining improv from Charlie there.
00:43:30
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah. I think he and Adam really do have a pretty cosmic spiritual connection in those moments. He just knows where Adam's head is going and there's not ever like any, oh no, what's going to happen? Is something going to go wrong? It's just total trust. And that is Charlie being the net underneath Adam's wire walk and just knowing that it's there.
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah, I sense that even with the songs, right, that just on the on the album versions, I was like, Charlie comes in right after maybe the songs written all this stuff. And I'm like, he just knows that there's little touches to add that that he knows exactly what what Adam wants here. I guess I was going to the end, but it is nothing. I don't want to focus on you as much about just like because when if the crows go on tour and it seems like every, you know, again, they they support all these other acts and go on all these tours and have little festivals sometimes where Adam will invite multiple bands.
00:44:31
Speaker
Now this was 12 years ago now. Do you ever hear from him at all or ever check
Friendship with Adam Duritz
00:44:38
Speaker
in with each other? I imagine it would be hard for somebody like Adam to keep in touch with everybody that he's played with and supported over the years. He does a good job of sending out like, uh, like an email to everybody, uh, about when tour dates come out. And you know, it was always like, Hey, if you want tickets, just, you know, let us know. And then,
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we don't do it often, but we text back and forth from time to time. On the 30th of August, I shot him a text and he got right back to me.
00:45:11
Speaker
Yeah, and he's, you know, when we were in New York one time, I don't remember if it was on that same trip, Chris, or if it was a different trip. But he invited us all up to his house and just watched a movie at his house and got spaghetti and hung out, you know, it was just a very, very down to earth
00:45:32
Speaker
You know, you just, I think he just really likes to connect with people. And I don't think people realize, like, again, I don't want to get into Adam psychoanalyzing too much and I don't know him. But but it's funny when somebody wrote the podcast recently and they were asking about, well, what's your takes on Adam's personality? You know, it's again, it's all conjecture. But oh, Adam seemed like moody this day about that. I'm like, first of all, you know, every
00:45:56
Speaker
I'd like to see this person. Are they in a great mood every day? Well, fantastic. Good for them. But what I think people don't have the empathy to realize is like, again, just like he sings about it, right? Being a star and having what people expect you with certain things and they want you to act this different way. But I don't think people realize how
00:46:15
Speaker
taxing it can be to be generous, like you said, and to do things the right way and to come out, like you said, during the codfish tour and say, Hey, this is why and he still does this. Oh, these are my good friends, you should you should make sure you know, you listen to the opening act and all this kind of stuff. And to keep in touch, it takes a lot of physical and mental energy and
00:46:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally agree. And you know, I think we've all been in situations before where we've wished we had more to give in every environment, but sometimes you just don't have enough. And so you have to defend yourself and your wellbeing in some of those situations. With him, I think he, I think he feels like
00:47:04
Speaker
rock and roll or songwriting or whatever that kind of expression. It's almost like
00:47:11
Speaker
It's like a calling or it's like the priesthood or something. And he's been in that ministry long enough where he has a lot of sympathy and empathy for people who are beginning it on that journey and beginning to share it publicly in that way. And so he might not have the bandwidth to go out to every single person at every show and say, thank you for coming. I love you. This means the world to me. It's just impossible.
00:47:40
Speaker
But in his gratitude and generosity, I think he can offer that to the people who have also sort of entered the priesthood in that way. Yeah, thank you. That's a great way to say it. It's kind of like he welcomed you into the priesthood. He kind of welcomed you into the priesthood. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:03
Speaker
Chris, did you want to talk about the little bit, we're not going to go every song, but of the Crow set list on that day? You know, I will say, I watched that show and it was great. I'm curious for you, Chris, any songs that they were playing at that time, either at the Kotvishala show or just over the few weeks, which is the set list, or relatively speaking, the same batch of songs, roughly speaking.
00:48:30
Speaker
Any songs that you were like a fan of before and that like changed for you watching them kind of play them every night or frequently or just things that like of the Crow songs are just kind of being on tour and being around it for like a month straight just kind of gave you a different perspective on or. And before we get its answer, we should preface the audience if they haven't seen the show recently or never did on YouTube is that this was during the underwater sunshine tour.
00:48:56
Speaker
So for example, this particular set list of about 30 songs, about a third of them were cover songs. Um, the cover songs that they took ownership of, but that, but that might affect the answers a little bit. So anyway, Chris, uh, for the field off. Oh man, I should have gone back and looked at the set list. I mean, I don't know, like,
00:49:18
Speaker
around here is one of those songs that just continues to live and breathe. And some nights it's a quiet breath and some nights it's a heave, you know? And I remember
00:49:30
Speaker
I don't know. And back to Charlie, too, like when when he gets that Leslie rotating speaker cabinet really going on the breakdown stuff in round here, you know, it's a good night because he's really feeling it and he's like physically putting his weight on it. But in that moment, it's a breath. And so it's it's this tension you can feel. And I felt like just about every night it was different. And every night it landed.
00:50:00
Speaker
It's just so cool and you know and some of the some of the fan favorite moments.
00:50:07
Speaker
you know, like hanging around or, or the, the, the wave in your hands in long December or whatever, like, man, any, any, any moat of cynicism or like, uh, that's not so cool. Just absolutely evaporated instantly, um, being able to see it night after night.
00:50:30
Speaker
and just see how- That's a unique part of being on the tour with the crows. I forget when they started their tradition, but you know you're gonna come out for hanging around. Right, right. That's part of the process and unique, right? Most? Yeah. You're not going out with, I don't know, the Rolling Stones and I'm playing something with them.
00:50:50
Speaker
I've done a lot of opening acts in my day and never has it always been a certainty that everybody is coming out for the headliner at this point in the show and it's just that's what's happening. Correct me if I'm wrong, you also come out for at least in that day with a real fan favorite song, Up All Night.
00:51:13
Speaker
I think that you add to that at all. I think you did because it's right after hanging around. That could be wrong. Yeah, there's a couple songs on this particular tour that the hardcore fans, I guess,
00:51:28
Speaker
casual fans wouldn't know as much, but Up All Night was one of them. Chris, did you, I went back and I saw most of it again. This is one of those shows that I've seen over and over, and even people that don't love Underwater Sunshine, they think this is one of their best concert recordings, but The Hidden Track on Desert Life, Kid Things, is played. And Charlie played guitar. I've never seen him play guitar live. Chris, have you ever seen Charlie play
00:51:54
Speaker
I mean, I feel like I must have seen kid. I saw them. I saw the crows like eight times that year. So I feel like I must have seen them play kid things at least once, but I don't recall that. I don't know. It doesn't like spark. So yeah. So you have to watch it again. He plays a little bit in the beginning, which it just, it just made me laugh. Um, ghost train, which they, uh, don't play live as much anymore. Uh, recently they,
00:52:17
Speaker
played that, I thought it was great. A couple other, Saturday night, Sunday mornings, they had a few, well, so Goodnight LA is a song that they don't play live much. And the one tour that they did play it live quite a bit was just him on the piano mostly. And this was the electric version. And that stood out to me.
00:52:36
Speaker
I will say the one song that really stuck out to me, they kind of stopped playing from that Underwater Sunshine record, is Hospital. I had a star right here in my hospital. Their arrangement of that is... I think it's kind of one of the best Crows songs, even though they didn't write it. I think it's like fairly high up there for me, actually.
00:52:59
Speaker
No, it's funny you said that I started and how good it sounded live with everybody. Chris, did you also end up doing... I was just looking at some of the setlist from the tour. Did you do You Ain't Goin' Nowhere, the Dylan song altogether, a bunch? Yeah, they did that a bunch. Did Friend of the Devil happen on that tour? Yes, yes. Yeah. Did you come out for You Ain't Goin' Nowhere? Yeah. Yeah.
00:53:24
Speaker
That's kind of fun. Now, one thing I did, and I was going to say this one in the introduction, I guess this is the time because you all came out during, yeah, when you came out, he introduces the other bands and stuff. And when I introduced you today, I was going to say, and this was because, right, sometimes a lot of jokes like this start from reality, which was that this is Chris Porterfield from Field Report, not, right? Because in the beginning, I got confused with foreign fields.
00:53:52
Speaker
who was on the same tour. Yeah, they were on an earlier leg of that tour, but also a field Wisconsin band, yeah. Yeah, field Wisconsin band. And I know this sounds silly, but I went to see it recently. So in California, there's a, and actually I went there first because the crows played there. There's a wine region in the central near St. Louis Passo Robles, and they have a winery field recordings.
00:54:20
Speaker
Yes, they do. Yeah. A chef friend of mine was really good friends with those guys. Yeah. There was a lot of field stuff happening back then and still, although I feel like I can plant my flag in it. My last name is Porterfield. Fields report is an anagram of my last name.
00:54:44
Speaker
So I feel like if anybody gets to claim it a little bit, I get to claim it. Although it's probably created more trouble and uncertainty than it's worth. I think it's an untrustworthy collaborator, honestly, that band name. Well, the funny thing is, it's not just that your name, I got confused with another band, with foreign fields, it was that the reason I know foreign fields was also because of Adam.
00:55:12
Speaker
Sure. Because he had mentioned it in one of the... So when Chris brought it up to me and I said, oh yeah, I got those two confused, but now I know and this podcast is making it so all Counting Cruise fans will never make any such mistake again. And they will go out and buy your four LPs, the most recent that came out in 2020. That's right. Light, red, tide. You can listen to Foreign Fields too. Those guys are so good. They're really good guys. They're really good guys. They're friends and I like them very much.
00:55:41
Speaker
Is there anything you want to talk about with your either most recent album or anything you're working on besides just, I'm sure you just want fans if they haven't yet to check out some of your new material. Yeah, sure. I mean, check out Breaklight Red Tide, see what you think. You put that out like the week of COVID shutdown, so the timing was just perfect.
00:56:09
Speaker
We never really did a proper tour on that record. Everything sort of shifted. This is my office I work out of. I've got a pile of new stuff that I'm kind of working on right now.
00:56:27
Speaker
that I'll put out at some point, I don't know, in this ish, in this, in this moment where, you know, it's sort of content, content, content. I'm of the age where I'm, I think over the hustle.
00:56:44
Speaker
And I'm also really disinclined to do any cultural littering right now. So I'm keeping my shit to myself. And when it's time, I'll put some new stuff out there, but I'm not in a hurry.
00:57:01
Speaker
Yeah, but field report songs are in litter. They're like planting trees that grow and it's true. It's true. Yeah. No. And they, you know, some of them are 12, 12 plus years old at this point. And I'm sure there's nice little groves all over the place. You can find some trees. And let people interpret it how they wish. And that's part of the beauty. Yes, sir. Just before I forget, the last thing that I wanted to ask you or not ask you, I said, I'll quickly talk about the Wisconsin
00:57:27
Speaker
because I lived in Wisconsin a couple of years in Madison, and I'm guessing you know. Hey, by the way, I saw something that you were like the pride of Milwaukee, that like the mayor thanked you once or something. I just quickly saw that, right? There was something that, you know, that's pretty cool. Yeah, there was a field report day. There was no strictly- There's no Eric Day. By anybody, my mom doesn't even recognize Eric Day, so I'm just kidding.
00:57:51
Speaker
But did you know, because one of them has a Crows connection. So I was in Madison for a couple of years. I did get to see some shows, particularly if I wanted to drink and watch some live music. I wasn't as much of a live music guy as Chris is, but I did see some. In fact, I got, they're not a Wisconsin band, but the first show I went to was like a blind pilot show. It was just random. And they were very good. And then they got a little bigger. But
00:58:18
Speaker
One band I saw live, of course I've read about it, and it was Daniel and the Lion. Yeah. They ended up touring with the crews as well. I don't know, and then they changed names, and we're going to talk about them in the show. We both love that band. Did you know them well? I knew them a little bit. I knew Dan's older brother, Randy,
00:58:41
Speaker
back at Eau Claire, he's a phenomenal trombone player and lives in Boston now and continues to be a professional trombone player. So that was probably my main connection with them outside of just crossing paths on different tours and shows and stuff. But yeah, no, they're a great band. Have you seen their cover of Amy Hit the Atmosphere? No.
00:59:07
Speaker
It's fantastic, and it features as a background vocalist, Monica Martin from Fox, who was also from Wisconsin. She's unbelievable. She doesn't release much, but because I lived in Wisconsin, in fact,
00:59:22
Speaker
I guess I, I think I met her once, but just like it was just as a, as a, I kind of knew who she was and she was just going to a lot of live shows. It's like comedians go to see a lot of comedians, bands, or sometimes you go to a live show and I'm like, I think quarter of the, of the audience here are in other bands, right? But anyway, she, she does great stuff. Her song, her song, Easy Kid is one of the best songs I've ever heard.
00:59:45
Speaker
Yes, I know that one. And then last one, I was curious, because she's not a traditional, she's folk, but not, I can't even describe her music, but she shares my last name closely. Did you know somebody?
00:59:57
Speaker
on a Vogelsang. Did you know that? Yeah, I know her. Yeah, she would come out to show. She lives in Chicago now. Okay, I know she moved to LA and I was going to see her, but then I think she left her in COVID and I never got a chance to see her. Yeah. Anyway, just a little- That's great. All musicians. Yeah. The indie folk, Lots of Madison. I love it. Yeah, I know all those guys. That's cool.
01:00:19
Speaker
But they have ties to national bands and Counting Crews as well. And I would argue that Anna, besides the fact that Anna begins, that they're musicians, right? With a lot of different instruments they play and everything. But Chris, let's go to you. I was wondering, you know, we talked about sort of a little bit about the tour as a whole.
01:00:39
Speaker
I'm kind of curious, I was looking at like the list
Memorable Venues and Tour Stories
01:00:42
Speaker
of dates, right? You guys played with them for about a month and the venues that you, first of all, the distance that you cover, the tour begins in Brooklyn and ends in Billings, Montana. And the venues you cover, I'm kind of curious about like, you guys hit Red Rocks and the Idaho Botanical Gardens, which I don't know what that is, but that sounds like it might have been amazing.
01:01:06
Speaker
And any sort of like particular memories from sort of the venues or places of those shows or...
01:01:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, being able to play Red Rocks on that trip was pretty special. It was a rainy day and all the gear had garbage bags over it in case of rain. And so it wasn't the pristine idyllic sort of natural beauty, but it was still gorgeous and it was just phenomenal being able to do that with them.
01:01:36
Speaker
One of the things about Red Rocks is they put a little plaque in the back on the stone walls of everybody who's ever officially performed there. You can go back and you can see the little field report plaque back there, thanks to that trip with Counting Crows. Yeah, that was very special.
01:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, the Bend Oregon show. I remember that being really awesome. Some folks reached out to us about taking us fly fishing and hiking. That was really beautiful. Yeah, that was a very special trip. Yeah, got to see a lot of places that I hadn't been before. That was our first time in Boise. We went back to Boise a few times. What did we do in California? Did we have California shows on that trip?
01:02:29
Speaker
No, Montana is sort of the end at the Magic City Blues Festival. Oh, yeah. Far out. It's like New York, Massachusetts, outside Philly, which is a show that I was at, the XPN Fest, which was very weird. Do you mind if I tell this one?
01:02:51
Speaker
Please. Well, because because you guys so the other the crows were headlining a festival, the WXPN, the radio stations festival. And it was in that part of the evening was in the amphitheater. Again, most of you guys are playing like kind of beautiful outdoor places. This was like a sort of a standard amphitheater on the water with a big lawn. And I think the other two bands were playing like a side stage like in the
01:03:19
Speaker
out like not in the main amphitheater. And you guys play the amphitheater, but my recollection is that the printed time on the ticket was six o'clock. And your set time was 5.30.
01:03:33
Speaker
And it was, there were not a lot of people, again, I mean, again, this is why you play to everyone, right? Cause like I was there and I've seen many field report shows since. So you never, you never know who's going to be in the audience, right? But I just remember that this like, and I remember it made an impression on you, this weird kind of like, I don't know. They're just, it was just like playing to quite an empty room, but like given the size of the room, like there were just not a lot of people who'd wandered in yet. Sure. Yeah.
01:04:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think if memory serves, the reason that happened was because the guy at World Cafe and the station manager at XPN, Bruce Warren, was an early fan and wanted to see us in a quiet place. And so he kind of made that happen. Oh, wow.
01:04:26
Speaker
Yeah. He really made that happen. He succeeded. But I think that paid off for a band like us better than like a boozy parking lot set. It was beautiful. I mean, it was beautiful. I mean, again, you could really hear a pin drop, which made it easy to hear the songs and you guys sounded amazing. And again, obviously you guys have ended up doing stuff with XPN in the future. Yeah. And then I think that day too, we also filmed a bunch of songs in the bathroom. I think
01:04:53
Speaker
Oh yes, that's still on YouTube somewhere. Somewhere. I don't remember who that was with. But yeah, some blog followed us into the bathroom and we sang a bunch of songs in the bathroom. This is the 2012 indie music scene though. It's just like, yeah, blog followed us in the bathroom. We played a couple of songs. Right. Christopher, what did you call it in the beginning? The 2008's blog something? What was your term for that? The bloggy aughts. I don't know, man. Bloggy aughts, right? I like that though, because yeah, maybe it'll come back.
01:05:22
Speaker
There was definitely an article about you guys on Aquarium Drunkard, you know what I mean? That still exists? Still exists? Yeah, they do cool mix tapes and stuff. And they still have good writing. That's one of the ones that still works. I feel like they have good book reviews. If anyone's listening and does not follow the blog Aquarium Drunkard, it is still, or stopped at some point. It's still out there and it's still a delight. They still have some good stuff.
01:05:47
Speaker
One thing I remember about the eastern leg of those shows is we had never done, like, the, like, Cohasset, you know, the Massachusetts, like, the rotating stages where you're on the Lazy Susan. That was a trick.
01:06:04
Speaker
They have these big tent stages and then the stages themselves are circles and they very slowly will do 180-degree rotation and then it comes back. It takes 30 minutes exactly and so that's how you know where you are in your set. That way, everybody in the audience gets to see everybody in the band.
01:06:29
Speaker
And that was a really wild experience. We had never done that before. I hope you hadn't had too many drinks before that one. Right. Well, and if you need the sound guy, you're toast. You're trying to find him.
01:06:43
Speaker
Well, thank you so much. This has been great. So for Crows fans, I want them to check out Field Report and all of Chris Porter's fields. And it's great that you could talk about this experience from 12 years ago and the memory. And I also liked hearing
01:07:03
Speaker
the take of, I don't know, an opening act or a tour partner with The Counting Crows because they're kind of famous for that. I mean, it's part of Adam's legacy, I think, in The Counting Crows story. So this was really exciting to me. Chris, do you have any last words and then I'll let Christopher answer questions? I've been refraining from gushing, but if we're wrapping up,
01:07:28
Speaker
The field report self-titled is my favorite record of the 2010s. Anyone who hasn't listened to it should go listen to it now and then find some live versions to hear how those songs, which are spectacular on the record, get sort of even better as time goes on. So you were, I guarantee you will thank me. It is currently winter. I think that's a beautiful winter record.
01:07:52
Speaker
So just go do I once we once drove with that record on, you know, a sort of very kind of terrifying snowstorm. And that was like the perfect soundtrack for just a snowy evening trying to get up to upstate New York somewhere. But yes, it's spectacular. You should listen to it and go see whenever there's more field report shows, which hopefully there will be. Or if you're again, if you're near Milwaukee and maybe you get to see them
01:08:17
Speaker
You have many opportunities to do so relatively speaking. Go see Field Report. You should do it. Well, thank you, Chris. It's good to see you, my friend. It's been too long. And Eric, thanks very much for inviting me on this program. You guys are doing a cool thing, sort of oral history of this band from a different angle. And I'm glad to be a part of it. So thank you very much.
01:08:40
Speaker
Cool, thank you so much for joining the podcast and we'll see everybody else next time right here, down here on Sullivan Street. Thank you so much.