Long before listeners across the country ever hummed the strains of the Counting Crows' latest hit "Round Here," Dan Jewett heard the song in a much different context.
Jewett, who grew up in Foster City, co-wrote the song with his bandmates three years ago in a South of Market practice studio in San Francisco. His then band, the Himalayans, had recently auditioned a lead singer named Adam Duritz, and was in the process of putting together enough material for a good live show. "As soon as he (Duritz) came in, we knew there was something cool about his vocal style. there was a good chemistry right off the bat," said Jewett, currently a reporter for the Foster City Progress.
Jewett and bandmates Chris Roldan (drums) and Dave Janusko (bass) are credited for the composition on the Counting Crows' debut, "August and Everything After," released in September on the Geffen label. The release has sold more than 500,000 copies and is currently enjoying its third week at No. 1 on Billboard's album chart.
According to Jewett, Duritz' lyrics and vocal melodies complemented the band's sound. "He came in and immediately started singing over things. His vocals really added a new dimension to the music. "Some of the words he sang off-the-cuff were so good, I would scribble them down between songs because I was afraid he might forget them," Jewett said.
When Duritz finished penning his lyrics, the band knew it would become its strongest song. "It became our trademark. Every time we performed it, we would get these strange reactions," Jewett said. "People would just stand there with their mouths open when we played it. After my sister first heard it she instantly asked me for a copy of the lyrics."
According to Jewett, Duritz wrote the song about his own experience growing up in Berkeley. The song chronicles the frustrations of a person whose artistically talented friends have grown up and settled for laid-back jobs.
The lyrics juxtapose the emptiness of an easy existence with the pain associated with striving for greatness.
"Basically, it was the same for my friends and me playing music in my dad's garage and dodging the police," Jewett said. "If you take a look at the talent that came out of that garage, it's amazing."
Jewett's first band, the Batmen, formed while he was a junior at San Mateo High School, where he also gained his first reporting experience as a writer on the school's newspaper, the San Mateo Hi. The band recorded and rehearsed in his father's house on Spinnaker Street in the mid-1980s.
According to Jewett, being a garage band in the suburbs was not a particularly glamorous experience. "It's hard to feel like a band when you have to stop in the middle of practice to mow the lawn," Jewett said.
After graduating from San Mateo High School in 1986, Jewett studied philosophy at San Francisco State University. He graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1991 around the time the Himalayans found Duritz.
However, in late 1991 when all things appeared to be "go", Duritz announced that he was leaving the band to form "Counting Crows." Shortly after their formation, a major label bidding war erupted, out of which David Geffen's DGC label - and the Counting Crows themselves - were winners.
Since then, Jewett has gone on to play in three other projects: the Groove Pigs, which he describes as "unexplainable," a San Francisco acoustic duo which he plays intense, melodic songs, and the Winthers, a duo with a former member of the Batmen.
Jewett, meanwhile, has gone over the situation in his mind more times than he would like to admit. "Being in a band like that was just the best feeling in the world, and it's too bad it had to end. But Adam (Duritz) was always very straight-forward with us about his other projects. "In fact, he was very active in giving us credit for the song. When they played local shows, he would always point us out in the audience and say, 'hey, these guys wrote this song,'" Jewett said.
"They played a blip of it on and ad promoting the Counting Crows' concert at the San Jose Civic Auditorium, but that's it," Jewett said. The band's management recently announced it will soon release "Round Here" as the second video for the album.
"I always knew the song would make it, but I always thought it would be our version of the song. It's taken me some time to appreciate the song in the context of their record, but I like it," Jewett said.
In the future, Jewett said he looks forward to a release by the Groove Pigs, to be titled "Free Poster Inside," and a single by the Winthers, who should be appearing soon on a compilation CD on New York's SpinArt label with a song called "Where's Larry?"