Ed Kowalczyk - Live and Solo. (X-Press Magazine 2009)
Ed Kowalczyk - Live and Solo
X-Press Magazine Issue 1172
30-July-2009
Live frontman Ed Kowalczyk will perform two special solo shows at the Octagon Theatre on August 12 and 13.
BOB GORDON reports.
After years of playing arenas around the world fronting Live, Ed Kowalczyk is revelling in the intimacy of playing solo shows, armed with only his voice and an acoustic guitar.
"This is like being in 1990, making music in a room with a couple of people for a couple of people. I'd sort of become completely separated from that. This has been an incredible sort of leap back into that world. I've rediscovered myself."
Ed (or Eddie, as the tour publicity goes) Kowalczyk's enthusiasm for the simple act of playing solo and acoustic resonates on many levels. While he's always been open and approachable with Live's fans, the logistics of a major rock band being on tour means that aside from a lucky percentage who may meet the band, most see and hear the music from a distance. In touring solo, Kowalczyk is meeting both the shier or timid fans, as well as those who maintain the deepest kinds of connections to his music.
"Yeah, I believe so. Also I've noticed that with this particular approach to the music that it's bringing out the people who are really hyped about the songs, who have had a really long-term relationship with my lyrics. Now for them, they've been able to see my face doing it right up close and experience it in a direct way that you can't get if you're 10, 15 or 100 rows back in an arena, or in a theatre even.
"It's just a whole new experience. It's just me and an acoustic so you can really hear the vocal and the lyrics, so it's just different in that it is a new reflection."
One of the most fascinating aspects for Kowalczyk is the ongoing reveal of how people relate to his music...
"It's been really extraordinary for me the way that people have grown with the lyrics," he says. "And basically, regularly, daily, how much the music still means to them. It somehow even means more now than ever. I mean, when I take a perspective on that, a lot of the music that I liked in my 20s I don't care about that much anymore (laughs). You move through phases of life where inevitably you drop off from things that once meant a lot to you.
"To hear people say that 10 years, or 15 years later, a song still means just as much to them, has been really amazing. It's something that you hope you're doing with your writing, but never really realise when or if you're at that point. So I'm just overwhelmed by that just about everyday.
"One of the tactile things about these shows is the sheer appreciation of the fact that these people have been able to grow with this music and having it mean more in the lives with the more experience that they bring to it. I mean that's what you dream of, it's great."
In the fans' eyes it's like new light shining through old windows. From Kowalczyk's point of view in re-treating these songs, it's like meeting old friends again.
"Absolutely. They really start there for me. Before they really go to the band and they get produced and arranged and added to, subtracted from - whatever happens in the studio and all the layers that go on there - they start in that sphere of me and the guitar. So for me to do that on stage and invite people into that experience, which is so personal to me, people are really appreciating that.
"A lot of people aren't aware that I can do it or am interested in doing it that that way (laughs). For me it's very natural and I've been doing it for years, but a lot of people have had no idea that it could be so compelling done it that way."