Live – Local 717
Release Date: 12 October 2018 via Kavalry Records
The band Live is about to release its first new material with all four original members since the 2006 album, Songs from the Black Mountain. Let me tell you something..
It was worth the wait.
These guys storm back with Local 717. An EP that includes five brand new songs that feel a little harder than some of the previous albums while retaining the classic Live sound that made them famous to begin with. Ed Kowalczyk’s voice shines on the first single Love Lounge and he delivers that familiar tone and mood on Venus In Furs. A song that gave me the Secret Samadhi chills. It’s that good. Chad Taylor, sounds like he is getting out years of pent up.. something.. on these songs. His guitars are aggressive, both on tone and performance. The guitar riff on Be A Giver, Man, announces the Live band’s return with a burst of energy.
The drums on this record are big. Just the way I like them. When I say big, I don’t mean cavernous. They are ultra-present, not only production-wise but also by technique. Chad Gracey’s toms sound monstrous on Waterfalls and his always terrific sounding snare did not let me down on this record. Patrick Dahlheimer provides a nice thick bottom end to the album. On the song Brother, the bass combined with Gracey’s toms in the pre-chorus rock the speakers with some serious thump.
The only real complaint I have is that it is only a five song EP. But to be honest, after listening to it a dozen times this week, it has lit that fire. The fire that lives inside of all fans of music. When you follow a bands career, you will sometimes see the highs and lows that happen when a band is together for a long period of time. Sometimes that fire seems like it’s just about to flame out and then.. they find their way back to one another and begin writing and recording. They find the spark that drove them to release chart topping albums like Throwing Copper and Secret Samadhi, and the journey you watched comes back full circle and the fire burns hotter than ever.
It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s special. This feels special.
When I was talking to guitarist, Chad Taylor, it sounds like it feels special to him too. When I mention Local 717, Chad says excitingly, “Yeah! I can’t wait for people to be able to listen to the body of work from front to back. And you’re right. It is a little short. I know that, but I also think that in the time span that people have now to devote to music, it’s better in its own weird way. They’ll get this EP and at the rate that Ed and I are writing songs, we’ll have another five ready to go before you know it.” You can feel the energy and excitement in Chad’s voice. He sounds like a man that has the “newness” feeling and wants to play music but has the knowledge of having been through many years of a highly successful band.
I asked Chad to walk us through his thought process of writing these songs and ultimately going into a studio situation and recording them. Chad says, “Live is such an interesting band at this point. I almost say that there was Live 1.0, which was the early days of establishing ourselves all the way through Throwing Copper and all of those things. Live 2.0, I call the break up period. Live 3.0, put it back together and not have it be revisionist but be more forward thinking. Well how does that band, where fans still want to hear you play I Alone or Lightning Crashes, how does that band, where all of the members have experienced Queens of the Stone Age and Eagles of Death Metal and, like, all of these great bands. And we love that stuff, but how do we assimilate that theme into our music while still sounding like Live? So the first rule is, that as long as the four members from Live play on it, it always sounds like Live. We can play a Blues song and it sounds like Live. We can play a Jazz song and it’s going to sound like Live. But then the writing. How does that feel and how does that work?”
Chad pauses and says, “For Ed and I, that was really honing in on how we wanted the band to feel. So we probably wrote, I’m gonna go high and say fifteen songs before we hit on Love Lounge. And then went, whoa, this is a different gear. This is a new feeling for the band. Then there was Be A Giver, Man and Waterfall. All of these songs started popping up that had this immediate energy and urgency to them. To me, I was like, “these are going to be fun songs to document”, rather than think about them as songs that are going to make an album. Just capture that raw energy of the band and get that down on tape. Get good mixes on it and make it sound like a band you want to come and see in concert. I think in that really simple way, we accomplished the goal.”
I tell Chad that I feel that Love Lounge was a great choice to comeback with and Be A Giver, Man is the gem of the record and my personal favorite. He tells me that it is also his favorite. Chad explains the two, “Be A Giver, Man was recorded and already in the can as we were coming out with Love Lounge. Ed and I kind of felt all along that Love Lounge was a nice, introductory offering and Be A Giver, Man was like, if you’re a boxer, Love Lounge is the jab and Be A Giver, Man is the knockout uppercut. And I think that Live fans, new Live fans and old ones, will relate to that. And when I say old, the people that love the Secret Samadhi era and that kind of stuff will instantly get where that comes from.”
I wondered how long this process took. Not only the actual recording but everything that has happened to the band since it reunited and started recording these songs. I also wanted to know where this album was recorded at since I’m borderline obsessed with sonic quality. And while many things go into that, a good base of having recorded in a solid environment can go a long way to achieving that quality. Chad tells me, “A few years ago, I built my own recording studio. Which is called Think Loud Studios, located in our hometown of York, Pennsylvania. We really started writing way back in 2016, as soon as the band started communicating with each other. Ed and I grabbed acoustic guitars and we’d just woodshed on weekends. He’s not that far, he’s in Connecticut, so it’s a relatively close drive. We just kind of like woodshed, no pressure. We kept thinking, well look in 2017, we already came up with a plan that we weren’t going to release any new music. Just go out, celebrate the reformation of the band and take it easy on ourselves. Just enjoy that, with no pressure. But we knew that pressure starts the build, the longer you wait to get creative. So then we jumped on the creative. So that’s why I was saying earlier that we went through fifteen different songs. There’s a whole different record sitting in the can but it wasn’t what we wanted to come back with.”
L-R: Chad Gracey, Chad Taylor, Patrick Dahlheimer, Ed Kowalczyk
So what was it that put the writing process over the top? Chad says, “It wasn’t until we played Lollapalooza in 2017 and we walked off the stage and Ed looked and me and said, Man, I gotta talk to you. I said to him, ohhkay? And Ed says, on stage tonight, I could hear the sound of this band in the future. I know what I need to write. I know the song I need to write. At that point, Love Lounge, didn’t exist. After that moment he was super motivated. We have two side members that play with us, Robin Diaz and Zak Loy, and we were joking around and we called it the super band. Ed says, there’s this sonic thing we’re doing, that we haven’t done before. It’s new and I want to write a song that showcases that. So one day Ed is standing in one of the lounge kitchens with some music blaring from his iPhone and sang just a little bit of it to me. I was like, Whoa hold on, stop, we need to record this right now! That’s how quickly something like this is birthed. So you asked how long. This thing got started back in 2016 but the focused recording was probably a little less than a month.”
After hearing the backstory to this record, it’s understandable why Chad is so fired up. I’m fired up hearing him talk passionately about not only the music but the brotherhood of this band.
The Freaks for Live are sure to be thrilled with this EP and the reunion tour that has been running the last two summers. While Chad didn’t have any specifics to give us, I’m hoping we get to see a headlining tour in 2019 and hear these new songs played live. The other benefit to a headlining tour is that there’s a greater chance of hearing some deeper cuts from the bands catalog. Either way, I, along with the other fans of Live are excited they are back and rolling like thunder.
Finally, Chad has a message for the fans of LIVE: Relax. Enjoy the moment. Don’t worry, Live is back.
-Tommy Marz
Follow Tommy and SoundVapors on Twitter.
Track list for Local 717:
Love Lounge 3:17
Be A Giver, Man 3:24
Waterfall 4:05
Brother 4:43
Venus In Furs 5:11
Ed Kowalczyk – Vocals, Guitar / Chad Taylor – Guitar, Backing Vocals / Patrick Dahlheimer – Bass / Chad Gracey – Drums, Percussion
Produced and Engineered by Chad Taylor
Mixed by Tim Palmer
Recorded at Think Loud Studios – York, PA
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