Live to rock Bigelow Bash

Ed Kowalczyk and the rest of the members of Live had similar thoughts when they first picked… Ed Kowalczyk and the rest of the members of Live had similar thoughts when they first picked up their instruments at the tender age of 13.

Sure, they were just preparing for a middle-school talent show in blue-collared York, Pa., but Kowalczyk and his buddies already felt something special.

“We always felt that [we would make it],” Kowalczyk said during a recent interview. “It sounds crazy, and it sounds naive, but even when we were 13-year-olds learning to play our instruments, we thought we were going to become the best band ever.”

And, after releasing eight studio recordings and selling more than 13 million albums, Live has become just that.

“I have to say, at the very least, we had balls,” Kowalczyk said, “but I believe there is such a thing as destiny, and those ideas start to resonate the longer you play.”

Kowalczyk and the rest of Live will headline tomorrow’s Bigelow Bash, an all-day event on Pitt’s campus, sponsored by the Pitt Program Council. The event, free to Pitt students, will begin at noon and last until around 7 p.m. and feature games, various musical acts and other forms of entertainment until Live takes the main stage in the early evening.

“We’ve always had a lot of fans [in the college age group],” Kowalczyk said. “I mean, I’m 35 now so I’m out of that range, but it remains an important part of our fan base. I think part of it is our lyrics, which I’d like to believe have a little more depth and intelligence behind them than what is out there. It seems to appeal to college kids.”

Live spent some time on college stations before breaking into the national scene. Kowalczyk was quick to point out that the group’s debut album, Mental Jewelry, got its start on college radio 15 years ago, as did 1994’s Throwing Copper, which has sold over 8 million copies. The band has put out six albums since, enjoying success in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

As Live’s lead singer and songwriter, Kowalczyk attributes the group’s sustained success to its innate chemistry which, he says, always motivates them to put the “Live Stamp” on each song.

“The beginning part of [writing] songs typically comes from me just sitting around with my acoustic guitar,” Kowalczyk said. “I’ll bring it into the studio, and the band will put its stamp on it – turn it into a ‘Live’ song.”

And just what makes it a “Live” song?

“I think it has to do with the way we all appreciate hearing the music the same way,” Kowalczyk said. “We can listen to one of my ideas and just instantly understand that it should sound ‘like this.’ It’s part of our chemistry, which is hard to explain. I think chemistry is only great when you’re not sure why it’s exactly the way it is.”

However, Live’s chemistry might just have a rational explanation, as the band’s roots lie in York’s Memorial Hospital, where both Kowalczyk and drummer Chad Gracey were born.

A week apart. In the same room.

“It’s kind of funny when you think about it,” Kowalczyk said with a laugh.

Due to its unique chemistry, Live has flourished since that first middle-school talent show. The runaway success of Throwing Copper put the band on the map after the album went double platinum. Throwing Copper yielded five singles and climbed to the top of the Billboard charts in 1994.

Jerry Harrison, the group’s initial producer, put together the album and remains, to date, one of the biggest reasons Live is where it is.

“In terms of influence and how we arranged music in the beginning, Jerry Harrison had a big part in it,” Kowalczyk said. “He was an educator as much as producer and he had a big influence as to how we looked at music.”

While Harrison hasn’t worked on a Live album since 1999’s The Distance to Here, Kowalczyk says that his still-present influence and the group’s chemistry spearheads the excitement and energy behind each work.

“Aside from different aspects becoming more refined [over time], we still try to keep a core of excitement in our music, and I think we have,” Kowalczyk said. “If you listen to Mental Jewelry, there’s just a raw sort of energy that we can’t exactly recapture. We were 19- and 20-year-olds and we’ll never be that age again. As you grow up, you get better and you refine things, but the energy is still there.”

Tomorrow’s Bigelow Bash performance will be the second of an eight-gig tour, which will run until early June and involves a stop in California, a place where the spiritual Kowalczyk takes much of his inspiration from his wife and two children.

“I’m into meditation, and I try my best to lead what some consider the ‘great search’ as a matter of spirituality,” he said. “I’m just lucky that I get to sing lyrics inspired by that search