If all goes as planned and the Counting Crows release their fifth studio album next year, five years will have passed since their last album with new music.

“The entire career of The Beatles,” jokes the band’s guitarist, David Immergluck, while finishing his eggs Florentine in Manhattan last week.

It’s been a while since the Counting Crows have been active, but it’s going to be a busy summer for the band from San Francisco.

In June, they will begin a 46-date summer tour, co-headlining with the Goo Goo Dolls.

On June 20, the band will release a live album, “New Amsterdam: Live at Heineken Music Hall 2003.”

And just over a week ago, they entered the studio to begin work on a new album.

The band will work on the album for the next few weeks. They’ll take a break a couple weeks before the tour, play shows all summer long, then it’s back to work to finish the album, which may not be out until next spring.

“We have four songs in a pretty strong straight,” Immergluck says. “We have about nine that we’ve been working on. So we’re ahead of schedule, which is kind of cool. It seems to be coming pretty easy, which is unusual.”

Immergluck says that while the band tries to find some direction in the beginning stages of creating a new album, ultimately, the music takes control.

“No matter what you do, it tells you what direction it’s going. You can control it to a certain degree but the song will force you to do any number of things.”

Fans can expect to hear many of the classic Counting Crows songs (”Mr. Jones,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Accidentally in Love”) on their upcoming tour.

“It’s been a while since we’ve been out playing so we’re very hungry for it,” he says.

Concert organizers had presented the band with the opportunity to tour with Sheryl Crow.

“There would have been a lot of opportunities for Crow imagery,” he says, “but us and the Goo Goo Dolls, looks like it’s going to be good.”

The tour is sure to be one of the summer’s highlights. The Counting Crows – a band that has sold 20 million albums worldwide – haven’t had a lengthy tour since 2003’s jaunt with John Mayer.

“I’m a big fan of a proper tour where you’re playing every night. The band gets into a greased groove,” he says. “If you have a gig every five weeks like we’ve been doing lately, it’s always good and exciting but it’s rough, rusty and randy. When you’re playing all the time, you get into the groove and the bar is raised.”






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