More than a decade after Counting Crows [ tickets ]' debut album, "August And Everything After," went multi-platinum, the group continues to work hard--and to sell records.

The Crows are coming off another long tour, which included several dates with current folk-rock sensation John Mayer, and their greatest hits package, "Films About Ghosts," hit the streets in November.

Although singer/songwriter Adam Duritz doesn't anguish 24-7 like the protagonists in Crow anthems like "A Long December," "Raining In Baltimore" and "Round Here," he still is very hard on himself when it comes to his writing--suffice to say it's probably what makes his work so prolific, and songs so endearing.

Duritz recently spoke with liveDaily from Manhattan on a rare day off.

liveDaily: Was writing something you were always thinking about as a vocation? Apart from music?

Adam Duritz: I don't know if you think about those things vocationally. You just do them, you know what I mean? Other things you look at in terms of job prospects; you need to go into an entry-level position and work your way up in whatever you're going to do. It's not that way as a writer. You just write. Then you find yourself one day: a writer.

What did going to college at Cal-Berkeley mean to you, writing-wise?

That's when I started songwriting, my freshman fall term. I write less now than I did then, but I'm more severe in my self-criticism now.

Why?

Because you need to become that to be good. I feel like self-criticism should be an extraordinarily severe thing. In order to be any good, you have to be ... brutal. I always get asked these kinds of questions; I'm not a defining kind of person. I never spent any time trying to define these things, except in interviews.

College was very important to me, especially Berkeley. You were forced to write, and you were pushed; it demands a great deal of you. And that sort of crucible develops you, especially as a writer. In any of the arts, the biggest transition you make is the transition from "Isn't it wonderful to live a life of self-expression?" to the brutality. When you're a kid, you want to grow up to do something that seems fun, and art seems like one of those things to outsiders. To a lot of people, writing seems like, "Well, I don't have to go to work every day and be bossed around or go to a job." So it seems great. The truth of the matter is it's a lot harder than that.

People always ask me, "Do you love what you do, or is it a job?" My thing is, I don't think it's about loving what you do. I don't think that's important. Sure it would be nice if that were the way it is, but it's not about that. It's about doing something that's really good. For me, it's about leaving a legacy of something that I'm proud of.

I read somewhere, you said that you don't have to tell somebody you're depressed, you can just tell them what the room you're sitting in looks like. That the way you look at the room communicates your mood. When did you figure that out?

You learn that the first time you read [William] Faulkner describing the turtle crossing the road. The devil is in the details. It's always about that to me. It's not saying you can't tell someone how you feel, but when you say "I love you," what does that mean? It's been over-said. Not that it doesn't have meaning, but if you want to say "I love you," you'd better really be able to communicate that at that moment so that it feels true. It doesn't impart a lot of meaning in and of itself. There are so many phrases that have become idiomatic because they are so used--they go in one ear and out the other.

But if you tell someone something in a smaller way, in between the lines is where all that feeling is. In "A Long December:" "All at once you look across a crowded room / and see the way that light attaches to a girl." You know how that guy feels about that girl at that moment. You don't have to say, "She takes my breath away," or all these things that you've heard. Rather than say that she takes my breath away I'd rather explain that I can't breathe. "She takes my breath away" doesn't mean anything. The first time somebody wrote it, it meant a lot, but now we say it and it's just a phrase. So I want to find a way of saying that, that communicates the meaning, but in a different way. But I think all of that pre-dates songwriting for me. It's in Faulkner. It's in Hemingway.

What's kept the Crows going for all these years? How do you think you've been able to sustain?

I think it's been persistence. We've worked. We tour a year and a half for every record. I don't know anybody that's pursued it as a career more than us. And I don't mean in a commercial way, it's just there's very real work to be done with keeping a career as a musician. There's writing and recording, but longevity is achieved through touring. The people who last are the people who can bring it onstage.

Radio may be your friend right now, but they may forget you next year. People that love you for one song they like, may not be interested at all if the next one isn't like it. You can't depend upon the pop culture to keep you at the center of the universe every year. It disposes of you, it's only mildly interested in keeping you. But the people that you play for on any given night, the people who share something intimate with you that they've never seen before, they treasure that. And they come back for the next record, because they were there for all the songs. And they come out for the next tour, and they bring their friends.

Rock and roll is a five-minute business. If you want to last ten years, you've not only got to go out on tour, but you've got to be able to deliver on stage.