Crows Cooking Up Best-Of, DVD
Counting Crows guitarist Dan Vickrey tells Billboard.com the group is planning a greatest-hits release to coincide with the decade that has passed since Crows’ breakout track “Mr. Jones.” Drawn from the band’s 1993 Geffen disc “August and Everything After,” the song reached No. 2 on Billboard’s Mainstream and Modern Rock Tracks airplay charts.
“[We’d like to] put a period on those 10 years and move on to the next,” says Vickrey. Aside from singles, the as-yet-untitled compilation will include new studio material. “We have a couple of songs that we are rehearsing at soundcheck,” he says. “I’m sure we’ll record them.”
The Crows are in the midst of a co-headlining tour with John Mayer, which stops tonight (Aug. 5) at Columbus, Ohio’s Germain Amphitheater. Once the trek ends in early September, the Crows plan to enter the studio to record the new material and may even head back on the road later this year in Australia and Europe, as well as visit a few choice Stateside venues to support the greatest hits album.
Also in the works is a DVD recorded over three January shows in Amsterdam. Vickrey says there is no timetable for its release but it’s definitely planned for sometime in the near future. There is also talk about eventually releasing the band’s 1998 acoustic/electric concert disc “Across a Wire: Live in New York” in DVD form.
“I actually brought that up,” says Vickrey. “I would love to do that because I think those are two great things. They are fully recorded in great audio and , so that is something we are looking into as well.”
In addition, there is plenty of extra footage that could make its way onto the DVD release. “Oh yeah, definitely,” says Vickrey. “I think for the acoustic ‘VH1 Storytellers’ thing, there was maybe one or two extra songs, but [MTV’s ‘Live From the] 10 Spot’ was a whole concert we filmed. So, I know there is a lot more.”
Vickrey speculates the band will take half of 2004 off before regrouping to work on the follow-up to 2002’s “Hard Candy” album, which debuted at No. 5 on The Billboard 200 and has sold 660,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.
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