Sellersville, PA (Sellersville Theater 1894), March 3, 2013 Options

[dangum]

Spotted this tour date online, it doesn't seem to be here on the forum...

I Alone acoustic
Date: March 3, 2013
Venue: Sellersville Theater 1894
City: Sellersville, PA

Tickets: $39.50 & $50

http://www.st94.com/store/Ed-Kowalczyk---I...m_1=EK.3.3.aspx

This post has been edited by dangum: Nov 21 2012, 1:14 am

[OutToDry]

New Ed Death Stare Public Photo!!







This post has been edited by OutToDry: Dec 27 2012, 2:00 pm

[dangum]

Live's Ed Kowalczyk still selling the drama on 'I Alone' solo tour

March 01, 2013|By John J. Moser, Of The Morning Call

By all accounts, the life of Ed Kowalczyk, former singer and primary songwriter for the alt-rock band Live, is going swimmingly.

He's a proud father of three daughters, with a fourth on the way. He's on another tour, this one an acoustic solo (plus a bassist/backup singer) jaunt called the "I, Alone" tour after one of Live's biggest hits. It comes to Sellersville Theater on Sunday.

He's working on his second solo album, after 2010's "Alive" and an EP preview, "The Garden," released in November.

So why is the new disc shaping up, as Kowalczyk describes it in a recent phone call from his new home in Connecticut, "darker; emotionally a little more, I wouldn't say sad, but definitely sort of more on the darker side of the intensity than in the past"?

"I guess 'darker' is maybe the wrong word," Kowalczyk says, laughing. "I think it's more of an intensity in the melody. It just comes from a place of feeling passionate, feeling just like going in that direction."

He describes the new songs as leaning more toward Live's double-platinum 1997 album "Secret Samadhi" and "the darker stuff" on 1994's eight-times-platinum "Throwing Copper" than Kowalczyk's first solo album.

The solo debut did well, with a guest appearance by Daughtry and a single, "Grace," hit Top 30 on the Christian charts. Kowalczyk says he's excited the new disc has "definitely a different flavor than the last album."

"It's just making a record that I felt I kind of wanted to go there — just wanted to go to this big minor chords and very beautiful, haunting melodies, I think," he says.

"So yeah, you're right, my personal life is amazing. I'm in sort of a Renaissance of creativity and joy with my career that is a real breath of fresh air, to say the least. It's just that's where this record wanted to go and my producer's been really good at arranging these songs to really bring that out, and I think fans are going to really like it."

So you might say Kowalczyk is still, as the title of Live's chart-topping 1994 hit says, "selling the drama."

Kowalczyk says he's "seven or eight songs in," on the new album, has "another couple of sessions to go" and expects to have it ready to mix and master by the end of May, with release late summer or early fall.

If the brooding, anguished songs of the EP are any indication, he's right about both the music and the fans' reception.

It's the kind of music that pushed Live from its beginnings in York to one of the biggest bands of the late 1990s, with more than a dozen Top 20 alternative singles, including chart-toppers "Lakini's Juice" and "Lightning Crashes."

Those songs helped the band sell 12 million of its first four albums. But after three more albums that didn't sell as well, Live in 2006 announced a hiatus, with Kowalczyk releasing his solo music and the other members Chad Taylor, Patrick Dahlheimer and Chad Gracey forming the group The Gracious Few.

By 2009, the break devolved into a permanent split, with the other members suing Kowalczyk over songwriting credit, royalties and use of the band's name. Then in July, they reportedly sued Kowalczyk again for misuse of the band name.

A year ago, the other members performed a concert as Live with a new singer, Chris Shinn, formerly of Unified Theory, for an invited audience at York's Strand-Capitol Performing Arts Center and said it intended to revive the band.

Kowalczyk declines to talk at length about the battle. "Obviously, all those things are being handled by lawyers," he says. "I can't really comment on any of the specifics of it, and I don't like to, because to me, it kind of distracts. It's just a distraction from the essence of what this is all about, which is music and making music.

"How I've dealt with that is just continue to focus on what I feel is really what the fans want and deserve — which is the songs, and intense and passionate performances," Kowalczyk says. "Everything else, I kind of feel like it's … not something that I think the fans are ultimately interested in. So I try to avoid it."

But he does offer that, "at the end of the day, the fans, I would say, would definitely want, if they want a reunion at all, it would be with the four of us as original members. And I'll leave it at that."

He also says he intends to continuing performing the Live hits, as evidenced by the song-title name of his tour. But he says playing as an acoustic duo will add a different take on some of the music.

"This duo approach, I really enjoy it," he says. "My bass player, Chris, is a magnificent singer and so we've developed some really amazing, some really moving harmonies. And when this music strips down, you really get — you really can hear our singing together. It's pretty unique. I think Live fans and, of course, my fans of the solo work, are really impressed with it."

Kowalczyk says he occasionally gets back to York, where his mother still lives, and in November played Penn State York's Pullo Center in a show he said he hopes to make an annual date.

"That was great, because I got to see a lot of familiar faces. … I've been invited to come back in the fall again, so I want to do something cool there."

john.moser@mcall.com

610-820-6722

ED KOWALCZYK
With Ben Arnold

•When: 7:30 p.m. today March 3
•Where: Sellersville Theater 1894, 24 W. Temple Ave.
•How much: $39.50 (Cabaret seating sold out)

Set list: Songs from his solo album "Alive" and his new EP "The Garden," as well as hits from the band Live, such as "Selling the Drama," "I Alone," "All Over You" and "Lightning Crashes."

•Info: 215-257-5808, http://www.st94.com

link

[Bremang]

link

I doubt there's any chance that Ed's new stuff will resemble Secret Samadhi.......and was the hiatus in 2006? I thought that was announced more like 2009.