York, PA · alt-rock · post-grunge

Live

1 upcoming festival

Throwing Copper made them inescapable in 1994 and the songs never really left — Ed Kowalczyk's clenched, searching delivery over guitar figures built to fill a field, with 'Lightning Crashes' still the moment a crowd goes quiet.

Live formed in York, Pennsylvania, where guitarist Chad Taylor, bassist Patrick Dahlheimer, drummer Chad Gracey and singer Ed Kowalczyk had played together since school, initially under the name Public Affection. Their first records for Radioactive, including Mental Jewelry, were produced by Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison, who also worked on the album that broke them nationally in the mid-1990s.

The band's sound pairs ringing, open-tuned guitar parts and a heavy rhythm section with Kowalczyk's declamatory vocals and lyrics that lean toward the spiritual and the searching — a combination that separated them from grunge peers even as they were grouped with them. Later singles such as "The Dolphin's Cry" kept them on rock radio into the end of the decade. Kowalczyk spent several years away from the group after 2009, during which Live continued with another singer, before rejoining the original line-up.