New Article: Live Headlining Hershey, New Studio Album Options

[SJN1279]

Dangum posted this on SOY:

Summer send off
Live headlines season's final Hersheypark Stadium show
Thursday, September 20, 2007
BY KIRA L. SCHLECHTER
Of The Patriot-News

After a period between 1994 and 1997, when it nabbed two No. 1 albums and became one of the biggest arena bands going, Live is back down to playing small to medium-sized venues -- and comfortably so, says singer Ed Kowalczyk, a York native.

"I love that," Kowalczyk said in a phone interview from Dewey Beach, Del., where the band was performing. "A 2,000 to 3,000-seat venue is the perfect place to see a show. Going above and beyond that, you just start to lose people.

Live will briefly delve back into the stadium scene when they hook up with Breaking Benjamin, Three Days Grace, Collective Soul, and Seether Saturday at Hersheypark Stadium -- a bill that delivers plenty of bang for your modern-rock buck.

Kowalczyk spoke further about the band's latest album, last year's "Songs From Black Mountain," and other topics:

Spirituality vs. carnality
Live is perhaps best known for Kowalczyk's spiritually-oriented, meditative lyrics on God and the nature of the universe. But in "Songs From Black Mountain," he touches strongly on themes of love and eroticism. Disparate subjects? Not for Kowalczyk.

"I don't know that I separate them out or compartmentalize them," he said. "That's all part of being a human being, from the lowest to the highest. And an artist like me and a person like me really wants to explore all of it and try to be enlightened about all of it and include all of it," he said.

That OTHER talk with your kids
"Love Shines (A Song For My Daughters About God)" arose when Kowalczyk started thinking about how he was going to broach the subject of spirituality with his two girls, ages 5 and 3. He called that the most challenging thing he has ever faced.

"How do you simplify it but yet not oversimplify it? How do you make it profound but yet not dogmatic,?" he remarked.

Doing the song also made him re-evaluate his own conclusions on the subject.

"It reflected itself back to my life too," he said. "OK, so here you've been into this for 15 years and thinking about these kinds of things -- where are you?"

Becoming a better singer
Kowalczyk's passionate, almost strident singing was a big part of the band's first few albums. He's mellowed a great deal recently through re-examination of past work.

"It's really just been a sophistication in the vocal styling and how I want to say things now as opposed to how I wanted to say them before," he said. "They still mean the same things to me. I have more places I can go now than I had at 23 or 24 and I want to go there."

Up next
A bootleg rarities compilation with two new songs will soon be available at shows and for pre-order, Kowalczyk said. The next studio album will happen in mid-2008.

The band haven't yet captured the potency of a live Live show on record, but Kowalczyk said that might be resolved.

"It is on one of our burners -- I'm not sure if it's a front or back at this point. But it's on the stove to happen," he said.

KIRA L. SCHLECHTER: 257-4763 or kschlechter@patriot-news.com
http://www.pennlive.com/entertainment/pa....xml&coll=1

[AgentK7]

There's another central PA article posted online at www.lancnews.com. Nothing groundbreaking but a few local touches.

http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/209718

Live: still going, still growing and influencing a new generation
By DAVID O’CONNOR, Staff
Lancaster New Era

Published: Sep 20, 2007 9:40 AM EST

LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. - Ed Kowalczyk was out shopping for jeans one time when a woman came up and thanked him for a relatively lesser-known song by the band Live's frontman.

"She told me, 'I just wanted to tell you that 'T.B.D.' is the best song ever, and it's always meant a lot to me," Kowalczyk recalled.

She was TV's Ellen DeGeneres, speaking of a moderately-known song, "T.B.D.," from Live's number-one album from the early 1990s, "Throwing Copper."

But most of the times it's not someone who's on TV who says thanks. And that's why you write songs, Kowalczyk said last week — it gives you a special connection with fans, "and trust me, it never gets old," he said.

And Kowalczyk and his Live bandmates and fellow York natives still connect with fans, a good dozen years after "Throwing Copper" dominated radio airplay.

Live, which performs at Hersheypark Stadium this Saturday, doesn't rule the music world like it once did.

But the great story that Live was — four friends start a band and become one of the biggest acts in the world — still is a great story.

It's just in a slightly different form, to hear the now-36-year-old Kowalczyk tell it.

Kowalczyk and his mates (guitarist Chad Taylor, bassist Patrick Dahlheimer and drummer Chad Gracey) are still doing what they do best — after 22 years together, performing and recording.

"And I think that's one of the things we have going for us," said Kowalczyk, who is as thoughtful off stage as he is passionate on it.

"You get the maturity, but also get the really edgy rock-and-roll side.

"We've weathered so much together, and it's made us stronger rather than weaker," Kowalczyk said Friday before the band's show in Dewey Beach, Del.

From the start, Kowalczyk's unique voice, offering lyrics of emotional intensity over a layer of rock guitar with a thumping bass-and-drum duo sprinkled on top, connected with fans.

The band took off with their first two full-length albums, "Mental Jewelry" and then "Throwing Copper," from 1994.

"I'm always surprised by the songs that people say really struck a chord with them, meant something to them ... 'Iris,' 'T.B.D.,' or 'Gas Hed Goes West' (from 1997's "Secret Samadhi" album).

"You're just throwing it out to the world, so it's definitely cool when it connects," he said.

Kowalczyk comes across with a down-to-earth, non-rock-star attitude: "The kinds of bands we looked up to (growing up) eschewed that kind of attitude. They weren't 'the rock-star types.'"

Kowalczyk likes returning here for many reasons, not the least of which is he can better hold what he calls "a chip party."

"I get my Turkey Hill iced tea, and my Utz and Martin potato chips, and I stock up," he joked.

Kowalczyk also is getting to see how he has influenced younger up-and-coming singers, like Chris Daughtry, who got started on "American Idol."

Kowalczyk said he and the others "want to show people that we're getting better with age. It's a different kind of energy today, a show that goes to a lot of places musically."

[Badman]

that's why you write songs, Kowalczyk said last week — it gives you a special connection with fans, "and trust me, it never gets old," he said.

I wonder if anyone ever told Ed, "Wow, 'People Like You' has had such a big impact on my life! Thanks"

I kid, I like PLY