New Counting Crows (co-written w/ Gemma Hayes): “Hazy”

From the upcoming live Counting Crows release New Amsterdam: Live at Heineken Music Hall (due June 20), here is a previously unreleased track, “Hazy.” I was thinkin’ all along that Gemma Hayes actually sang on this track, and I was mightily looking forward to it, but turns out she just co-wrote it. It’s still really pretty.

“Hazy” – Counting Crows (co-written with Gemma Hayes)
(Fixed link.)

The story behind the song – Adam Durtiz writes:

“I got an email from Lisa asking me for the lyrics to ‘Hazy,’ which, as you may or may not have heard, is the previously unreleased song written by Gemma Hayes and myself . . . Unfortunately, the truth is I honestly have no idea what they are. I never wrote them down. Gemma and I created the song a week earlier drunk out of our minds around 5am at a piano in a bar. By the time we played the Amsterdam shows, she had left the tour. I had lost my mind, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her (Elvis had also presumably left the building). I was just sitting at the piano in the Heineken Hall getting ready to play “A Long December” and I started trying to remember the music to “Hazy” and making up the rest as I went along. It’s all stream of consciousness. I wrote it and sang it off the top of my head. It’s just me trying to express exactly how I felt at that moment. I couldn’t play it now if I tried.

I saw Gemma in New York about a year ago and I played it for her. We tried to work out the chords but neither of us could figure out how to play it. So it’s just a moment. It exists there on that tape and nowhere else. That’s kind of why I included it. It’s the quintessential bootleg moment.”

Amen, brother. I LOVE ephemeral “moments” in music, I live for them.

I am looking forward to the entire new live CD, which I hear is amazing. It also features “Four White Stallions,” which is an old-school cover that they do, which I adore. The Crows know how to work it in concert — beautiful arrangments, interesting tags, and a fabulous choice of songs included on the new disc.