RockOm

By Trevor Harden, Trevor@RockOm.net

Since forming in 1985 as a band of middle school students, the rock quartet known as Live has grown to become one of the most popular and enduring alternative rock acts of the past two decades. They gained massive mainstream success with their sophomore breakthrough album Throwing Copper in 1994 and have since gone on to sell more than 20 million CDs worldwide.

Live frontman Eddie Kowalczyk is currently on an acoustic tour called Open Wings, Broken Strings with Leigh Nash of Sixpence None The Richer and Art Alexakis of Everclear. He is also working on a rocking new solo album to be released in spring of 2010 (details and mailing list at eddieklive.com).

Eddie sat down with RockOm's Trevor Harden to discuss his spiritual journey, rediscovering the Bible, the power of performing acoustically and more...

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Trevor: Since Live's first album, Mental Jewelry, you've always allowed depth and spiritual truth into your lyrics. That album came out when you guys were very young so was there a catalyst that started you down that spiritual path? Can you speak about where that longing for something deeper came from?

Ed: Sure. I was baptized and confirmed Roman Catholic but never really got into it much beyond the routine of occasional church going and the formalities of the religion, never really digging that deeply into it as a child. Then as a teenager, I had a natural tendency to dig a little deeper than what was handed to me as a kid, in terms of spirituality and religion. When I was about 16 or 17 in high school I noticed that I was really interested in meditation and seeking Truth and a deeper meaning to my existence. I ended up wandering into a metaphysical bookstore that was near where I lived one day and saw a book by J. Krishnamurti called You Are the World; I bought it on a whim. It ended up being a book about questioning conditioning. He put everything into question in terms of what we accept as true or real and why we do so. It was maybe the first time I did that - to look at the ideas and beliefs I held about God and Truth and ask myself if they were accurate and what I was getting from it.

So that started my questioning which then led into years of meditating and reading. I've always been an avid reader of scripture and philosophy and never went to college so that was kind of my education. In the mid-1990's I met Ken Wilber and became really good friends with him and read his book called A Brief History of Everything which was a major watershed opening of my mind. Then about four or five years ago I did something called the Big Mind project with a man named Genpo Roche, a Zen master who developed a piercing kind of Zen questioning process. Since then I've come full circle by re-investigating the Bible from a metaphysical point of view - reinterpreting scripture in a way that relates to consciousness. That has been the main focus of my life for the last four years. It's definitely not a type of Christianity that people would recognize as typical or dogmatic; it's about the furthest you could be from fundamentalism but nonetheless Christian in nature. I'm really discovering the Bible for the first time in terms of unlocking its potential to teach us about reality.

Alongside all of that, it's music all the time. Music and songwriting is an extension of that search and has given me a lot to think about. It's been a fount of inspiration for me throughout the years and people seem to dig it.

Trevor: What are you finding in the life and teachings of Jesus that you weren't finding elsewhere or that you're finding unique?

Ed: It's unique in it's power, unique in it's breadth of influence. But you have to get away from looking at it as just a moral code and dig deeper into the language of the Bible and I'm interpreting it as it relates to consciousness itself or being itself. One of the simple ways that I see the power in it is every time the Bible says God or Lord or Christ is to relate that directly to consciousness itself, which is ever present and intermingling with your own being at a very deep level. So that unlocks an interest in prayer and meditation that was there but is now even more driven to a deeper place, understanding that as we touch that deep level that our life becomes the fruitage of that. We're happier, our relationships become more harmonious... "you shall know them by their fruits" stuff starts to happen. There's an extra sparkle in my eye and a smile that wasn't there for a while by ucovering that because of the depth of this prayer and practicing going to that place where we all become one. There's a very powerful silence there and it really reveals a lot.

As a musician and artist, you can't really ask for more than that. I come out of these periods with incredible inspiration and want to sing about it. Being able to go full circle and pick up the Bible again has been very powerful for me because it was a book that I really just didn't understand in a way that meant much to me for years. It's a sort of a coming home, but in my own way. It has been really, really exciting and powerful.

Trevor: You're currently offering the free download of your song "Forever" on eddieklive.com. It's a beautiful acoustic version of the song with the great line, "The darker the night, the brighter the dawn." Can you tell us a little about your inspiration for this song?

Ed: Again, coming from rediscovering the Bible and words like faith, that particular lyric is trying to express that when we see our ideal - the best case scenario, the most loving scenario, the fullest life, God or Truth - to keep our attention there in spite of what is appearing as an obstacle or limitation. As you keep the faith and keep your attention on that ideal and get more and more stronger doing that you find that the negativity leaves. You discover you've moved past the limitations and closer to the ideal in ways that are beyond imagination. Everyone has experienced that but this was just putting it into a context that is hopefully inspirational to people. It's something that has had an incredible impact on my life.

Trevor: All musicians talk about that mystical thing that happens in a live setting where there's a unity and connection you have with the audience. I'm sure it happens at both the loud rock concerts with the band as well as in the quiet, acoustic solo performances that you're currently doing. Can you talk about how the texture of that is different in both of those settings?

Ed: It's really different. Look, I love to rock. I've been in a great band for years and love to turn up the amps and have all the lights going and the big PA. But there's a part of you that sits by yourself in a room and writes a song that doesn't get to be on stage then. He has to recoil back into a little place of being there, but not really. Stripping it down and making it an acoustic, intimate setting really allows that guy to come forward. I had really kind of missed him. You obviously have that when you start out, when the crowds are smaller, but as the band gets bigger and your art succeeds, it becomes a persona that is designed to fill these big spaces. With this "Open Wings, Broken Strings" tour, the idea was to strip that down and put artists on the bill that were also ready for those types of things in their music. There's a fullness about the show that everyone is sharing in and the crowds are just loving it. A lot of them have said to me, "I never knew it could rock that much or be that compelling." That trips me out because that's where the music comes from, but I guess yeah, if you've never seen me acoustic you wouldn't know. This is just another view and it's really neat.

Trevor: In that setting you can talk about the meaning behind the songs and share the background a little bit. Are there any of your songs that you're particularly enjoying "clearing the air" about? Is there any song that you really enjoy telling the real story and meaning behind because it has maybe been misunderstood in the past or is perhaps a bit cryptic?

Ed: You know, I keep them that way a lot. I actually just did an introduction to "Lightening Crashes" the other night and said if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me what this song meant, I'd have a lot more dollars. I basically stepped off it again by saying that I have a feeling about what it means but people have received such different impressions about that song in lots of good ways that I don't want to influence that. I've said it's about reincarnation for me at periods of time in my life but I still tend to back away from that because there's something about the openness of it - letting it be interpreted in the way people receive it - that is really powerful.

www.eddieklive.com

Tags: Acoustic, Bible, Catholic, Christianity, consciousness, Eddie Kowalczyk, God, Interview, Jesus, Ken Wilber, Lightening Crashes, Live, mysticism, Open Wings Broken Strings, Zen

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 9:54 am and is filed under Featured Articles, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.