Counting Crows tour plots ‘Traveling Circus’ with Augustana, Michael Franti

Alternative rock crew Counting Crows will throw a wrench into conventional concert formatting on their upcoming summer outing. The band will hit the road, along with Augustana and Michael Franti & Spearhead, for what it calls the Saturday Night Rebel Rockers Traveling Circus & Medicine Show.

The Crows’ summer itinerary begins June 26 with a performance at Summerfest in Milwaukee, WI, and is scheduled through September 6 at CMAC in Canandaigua, NY. Michael Franti & Spearhead officially join the “Traveling Circus” on July 19 at Table Mountain Casino in Friant, CA, and Augustana will appear intermittently starting June 29 at Lifestyle Communities Pavilion in Columbus, OH.

Though Counting Crows are technically headliners for the summer-long event, all three bands and unannounced “special guests” will recieve about the same amount of stage time. Crows frontman Adam Duritz explained on the band’s official Web site, “We’re going to start every show with everyone onstage playing together. I’m not sure what’s going to happen next….”

After toying with a few complex formatting ideas for the tour, Duritz simply concluded, “It’s going to be a show. One show. Not three bands playing separate sets, although everyone will play sets on their own. This is going to be one big circus of a show with an intermission in the middle and lots of collaboration on either side of that.”

Counting Crows are touring behind their fifth studio album, “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings,” released in March 2008. The album debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, making it the band’s highest peak since 1996’s “Recovering the Satellites” topped the charts.

Counting Crows itinerary:
(Dates are subject to change.)