There’s a songwriter character on ABC’s Nashville - which is excellently musical and soapy all at the same time, if you haven’t seen it - whose lyrics start with her poetry, which sounds great read aloud but, with music is lush and achingly beautiful. Adam Duritz’s lyrics have always sounded like poetry to me - the aching, honest, hyper-literate, self-aware and brilliantly connective kind. I know they’d connect emotionally if read aloud - “I belong in the service of the queen/I belong anywhere but in between” would be the toast of any poetry reading.

But when paired with the Counting Crows’ singers’ expressive sonic cry of a voice, they complete them. Kinda like in Jerry Maguire, but with more melodramatic depressed girls named Maria. Which we don’t mind at all.

Duritz was in amazing voice last night at Mizner Park Amphitheater in Boca Raton, and seemed much more mellow and at ease than at their SunFest show in West Palm Beach this past spring. The band, as always, was tight enough to anticipate the others’ zigs and zags — Duritz famously changes up the lyrics sometimes, melding bits of one lyric into another song, or making the refrains longer with snippets of the lyrics of others, like a bit of Crimson and Clover into St. Robinson and His Cadillac Dream or a gorgeously on-point bit of Someone To Watch Over Me into Rain King.

The night was lovely and comfortable - I imagine that most of the fans there were longtime ones, whose connection to these songs and these lyrics likely go beyond just being a catchy thing you heard on the radio once and form a connection in ones memory. Confession: Counting Crows was the soundtrack of my emotionally self-indulgent 20s, and so when I was singing along with the crowd on Hanginaround, I, as I am sure others were, was remembering hanging around a small town on the corner for way too long, hungry for change but not being awake enough to make that happen. We sang the “I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell myself to hold onto these moments as they pass” line from A Long December and I felt all of the easily accessible self-pity and the inaction you blame for the stagnation in your life, that’s really just your inability to stop whining and go. I am so glad not to be in my 20s anymore, but the music sure was great.

The set list was an easy ride back and forth through the band’s catalogue - their debut, August and Everything After was particularly well-represented, including the buoyant Rain King and A Murder of One, and the gorgeous Round Here. No they didn’t do Mr. Jones, and I didn’t hear anyone talking about it. I assume that most of their fans know they don’t always do it so they weren’t sitting around going “Where’s the hit?”

Counting Crows have had a lot of hits, but hits are beside the point. It’s about the easy feeling, the emotional intensity and the lyrical connection even to songs they didn’t write, like Untitled (Love Song) by The Romany Rye from their recent Underwater Sunshine. It’s not all angst and emoting - Holiday In Spain is a sly, flirty little thing, and Hanginaround is a clever nudge.

These are amazing songs, and an amazing band. It was so relaxed that it could have gone on for another two hours - well, I would have stayed that long - but as Duritz said, they had to go. It seemed like a night with old friends. The kind you’ll certainly see again.