Coming Full Circle & Forgetting 'The Not-So-Good Years'

During the past couple of months, US rock veterans Live have been ramping up their enthusiasm regarding work on new material. The eagerness is palpable in frontman Ed Kowalczyk's voice; even if they remain undecided as to how exactly said songs will be distributed. "We've got about seven or eight that we're really happy with, so I would expect new music very soon," the singer says of the tracks they've completed so far. "Not sure exactly how we're going to release it, we're talking about that. Maybe we'll put a song out at a time or something. But we're so excited about it we want to get it to the people as soon as we can."

The conventional industry infrastructure in place at the time of Live's commercial breakthrough isn't so much dead as rotting in its casket nowadays. The Pennsylvanians' 1994 smash hit Throwing Copper shifted millions of copies in the US and was a multi-platinum success in Australia. The several radio staples it spawned were inescapable.

"It is night-and-day different compared to when we started out, of course," Kowalczyk agrees. And there's challenges there, but there's also an excitement about for us, too, because it's kind of 'wild west'. We spent so many years in a record cycle kind of attitude about things; you go and make a record and tour for a few years, then you go home and you do it all again. But now, it's like, 'Wait a minute, we don't have to do it like that. We can release a song at a time, or we can do this, or that.' So it's exciting. Challenging, but I'd like to think we're going to take advantage of these changes, and serve our fans music in new and exciting ways.

"We're free as birds, man," he adds of their record-label status. "Getting back together - that was by design. We said, 'Hey, let's just let this happen naturally. We don't need any pressure from outside.' The music business changed so profoundly that there's all kinds of other ways to get music out, and we're exploring those things, and keeping it wide open. Again, we're blessed because we have this incredible fanbase. We've got fans in places like Australia that allow us this freedom to really be the best artists we can be."

The band seems rejuvenated on all fronts these days. Kowalczyk left the Live ranks for several years, spawning a period of acrimony and legal action. The remaining personnel soldiered on with replacement frontman Chris Shinn before Kowalczyk's return was announced in late 2016.

The Music inquires as to whether the members are still repairing relationships with each other and the overall nature of the band dynamic nowadays. "We've absolutely made peace," the frontman insists. "This has been a process, the reunion, [that] technically started last year. But it was a few years in the making, or a year and a half in the making, before we actually got out on stage again and played. I always say that we had so many good years that, when we stood on stage together again after the not-so-good years [laughs], the good years just swallowed that up, almost immediately. There was just an incredible joy and gratitude for our relationship, our chemistry on stage... It just really came full circle. I don't think anybody really expected it to be this amazing and now, with the new music coming to this whole other new level, it's incredible!"

Real-life responsibilities rearing their head has also resulted in a more measured approach to all band activity. "We've all got families now, so that's a consideration that wasn't there as much in the '90s," he points out. "We try to find a pace that allows us to be the total person that we are. Yeah, we want to rock and we want to work on the music and tour, but at the same time we're family guys so we're committed to that.

"So I think what's wonderful about where we are as a band now, since the reunion, is that there's so many incredible opportunities for the band. We're able to look at the year and say, 'Hey, we want to do this, we want to do this and we're going to take some time [because] we really want to work on music. So we don't want to play out at all for these two months.' It's a luxury that I'm so grateful for, because I think it allows us to be really the best version of ourselves that we can be."