The Adam from Counting Crows is on the phone being asked what career advice he would give to the Adam from Maroon 5.

The occasion is a teleconference previewing a co-headlining tour between the two bands -- which stops at the Post-Gazette Pavilion on Thursday -- and the more veteran Adam suggests that the key to longevity in the fickle pop world is that special connection an artist can make with a live audience.

"I really truly believe that the impression you make on someone on the radio at one given moment is very fleeting," says Duritz of Counting Crows. "As much as they love your song or your record, it can be very fleeting if the radio plays it too much. ... But the impression you make on a given evening when it's you and them and you make a real connection with an audience, that can last forever, and does."

While acknowledging the importance of touring, Duritz knows that life on the road is both his tonic and his poison. He suffers from a condition called dissociative disorder, which causes him to feel detached from reality, and life as a touring rock star has to be way up there in the category of unreal living.

"I don't really have mixed feelings of performing live at all. I love playing," he says. "But performing live is an hour and 15 to two hours out of a 24-hour day. And the nature of my mental illness is such that it makes things seem hallucinatory and not real, and so the best thing and healthy thing for you is familiar things, family, friends, home, those sorts of things. And so a succession of very similar hotel rooms is really disorienting to me and can be real difficult. ... It's not the time on stage. People would ask me if I have stage fright. And I would say, 'No, I have rest-of-day fright.' I'm so comfortable there. I belong on stage, I belong writing songs. I don't belong necessarily in whatever hotel room I'm in."

Counting Crows, one of the stalwarts of Triple-A formats like WYEP, are on the road with "Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings," a fifth studio record that is divided between an upbeat electric side and more reflective, acoustic side.

Adam Levine and Maroon 5 -- more of a neo-pop-soul outfit -- come to the party with "It Won't Be Soon Before Long," a second album that arrived five years after the band's slow-blooming debut, "Songs About Jane." The new one debuted at No. 1 in May 2007 and spawned four singles, including the dance-funk hits "Makes Me Wonder" and "If I Never See Your Face Again" with Rihanna.

Part of the delay on the sophomore release, which gets back to the longevity issue, is that Maroon 5 spent years on the road after releasing the first album.

"I don't consider myself to be very prolific at all," Levine says. "It's a really big struggle for me to write a song. Songs take either 30 seconds for me to write or a year or two to piece together, depending on the song and how I'm feeling on any given day. I don't really like to write music at all unless I'm completely unbothered by touring. ... I don't want to be on stage; I don't want to be performing; I don't want to be anywhere. I want to be alone and home and with family and friends, and that usually winds up yielding more creativity."

Maroon 5 supported the new record by touring with the Hives and then Dashboard Confessional. Despite the stylistic differences, Levine embraced the idea of the Crows tour, having been a longtime fan of the San Francisco-based band.

"I remember when that first record came out, I was pretty amazed," he says of 1993's "August and Everything After." "It didn't sound like anything that was out at the time. It was ... really organic and simple. And a lot of the stuff that was coming out at the time was really overproduced and kind of over the top, and this seemed like a really nice breath of fresh air, and it has been ever since then. I'm a fan."

Having played some shows with Maroon 5 five years ago, Duritz says he can return the compliment.

"I remember very clearly the first day Maroon was out on the tour, my band and I going out in the audience to watch them play and two songs into it looking at each other and going, 'Oh, they can really play.' Because you never know nowadays, it's so easy to fake it in the studios. And there are lot of bands, you see them on some TV show, you realize they can't play. Everybody here can play music. And that's kind of the spirit of this tour is that it's for real. It's a great thing, a great thing."

Asked what Counting Crows song he would sing given the chance, Levine reaches for "A Long December," the wounded ballad from 1996's "Recovering the Satellites."

"I love that song so much, it's insane," Levine says.

On the flip side, Duritz would do Maroon 5's "If I Never See Your Face Again."

"I just like the funk of it, and I like it because it gives you a lot of room. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing it in the summer because what I like about Adam is that he's a real singer. ... And I like to see singers who can take a song from a record and delve into it even more live and give you a little more out of it."

Levine adds that he'd love to see opener Sara Bareilles thrown into the mix.

"Those three voices would probably sound pretty interesting together. ... I can guarantee there's going to be some sort of collaboration. ...

"It's going to be fun, man."