Ed Kowalczyk left Live for a solo career in 2009 and hasn’t looked back, except for observing the 20th anniversary of the band’s multiplatinum 1994 album Throwing Copper. The extensive 2015 acoustic tour lands Las Vegas’ Hard Rock Hotel on April 2. Kowalczyk talked with Las Vegas Magazine’s Matt Kelemen about some surprises in store for fans.

Are you calling from home? Are you living in Los Angeles now?

I am. I actually moved back to the East Coast a couple of years ago. I’m in Connecticut now.

Have you been on break?

I went to Australia two times last year, so I kind of wound up mostly touring in November there, and then I had a couple of shows, three or so, with the full band in December. So yeah, I’ve been having a nice break since.

It looks like you have 36 shows lined up for the Throwing Copper 20th anniversary tour, which may be more than you played all last year. What caused you to take on this heavy of a tour at this time?

Well, you know, being the 20th anniversary of the record I thought is was time to do it, and the full band had done a bunch of shows that last year, which was really the official 20th anniversary, 2014. There was so much excitement about it in the United States we decided to do something different and get out here and do a U.S. tour with the acoustic version of myself and my guitar player, Zak Loy. For the first time I’ll be doing some multimedia and some visual projection onstage, so I’m really excited about that because I’ve never sort of explored these songs visually. I mean, of course some of them have had music videos made for them, but this is pretty fun for me because we’re getting to go into songs like “T.B.D.” and “Pillar of Davidson” and do a visual for them. I think the fans that have seen me as a solo artist, even acoustically, are going to be surprised at how different this show is.

Are you collaborating with a video-mixing type person, or do all the visuals come from you?

Yeah, yeah. Actually the drummer in my solo band—his name’s Ramy Antoun—he’s down in Austin and is coordinating the video for me, and will probably produce that. It’s a great partnership, and he’s an amazing talent on and offstage, and I’m really excited. Just beautiful work.

How do you go about selecting imagery? Where do they come from and how do they complement the songs?

We just sort of toss around a lot of ideas for a song, and then he went in with his guy and sort of would pull out some footage, and go make some footage and send it to me and we’d tweak it. It’s been a collaborative effort.

When you do something like this, do you really feel the benefits of being solo?

For sure. That element, and also the fact that the show is a stripped-down approach, is also a neat thing for me in my career over the last five years as a solo artist. About 50 percent of my shows are acoustic, and I think that people—well, I know that my fans worldwide—have really embraced this chapter in my life in the sense that they can reconnect, or connect for the first time, with the power of the song and the lyric in a really direct way. And it’s really taken off. I’ve done, again, probably two world tours acoustically so far and I’m just going gangbusters really, so I hope they like it.

Your fans 20 years ago were probably in general admission seating, and now they can see you in a more intimate way. I imagine that’s an appeal to them to a large degree.

Yeah, I mean it magnifies it for sure. When you’re that close to the artist and you’re that … it’s super intimate, really powerful. And this music of mine, the lyric really lends itself to that kind of approach and venue. It’s sort of an essentialized performance of it.

I saw video of you performing at the annual Netherlands festival Pinkpop with an orchestra, and it seemed like that might have been the time that you started performing the songs from Throwing Copper in tracking order.

Yeah. That was a Throwing Cooper show. We scored the entire album for that show, and I think we did two or three more with the orchestra over there. That was sort of the kickoff of the 20th anniversary world tour. We did a show, and filmed it and made a DVD, at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, which didn’t have an orchestra but it was the full band, which I really, really liked. It came out great. We went back to Europe with the full band as well, and now this really unique multimedia thing I’m doing for the States. It’s sort of a full spectrum re-exploration of Throwing Copper, and I’m really happy to do it.

You seemed near ecstatic with an orchestra backing you. Did that experience help you decide to dedicate an entire tour to the second Live album?

That was really inspirational. I had the idea, I knew I was going to do Throwing Copper for the 20th anniversary for a while, but when that show came together and we worked with our promoter: “Hey, do you want to do Pinkpop with a 40-piece orchestra and the Rolling Stones are playing too?” It’s like capital-Y yes. So it was really amazing and it just added to the fuel to the excitement of doing the whole tour.

That was an offer made to you?

Yeah, we work with an amazing longtime promoter in Holland that’s a good friend of mine named Willem Venema. He had sort of brought it up saying, “Yeah, this can be really cool.” Of course we said, “Sure, let’s go.”

Were you able to set that up before you went over there or did you have extensive rehearsal time?

We had a couple of days rehearsal. We did Pinkpop first then I think we did two or three more concerts with that orchestra, and then the rest of the tour was just the full band.

Did the Sydney show solidify the desire to do the Throwing Copper tour?

That was a huge moment because Australia’s such a huge powerful and important market for that record and then all my music, for Live for so many years. It was such a celebration to get back and have that show sell out in such a great theater in Sydney. And then kind of last minute we said, “We should film this.” It wasn’t something I thought we would do until I think we were down in Australia. It was so cool because this company called Moshcam, they’re already set up in the theater to film. They do it pretty often, so they were able to throw it all together and then we did a pledge campaign with PledgeMusic, which was really cool. People got to pledge their participation in terms of buying different packages of what we were offering, and made the budget possible to get the production done quickly. It was a joint effort with the fan base, which I had never done before so it was really, really cool.

When I started doing research for this interview the first thing I saw was video of you onstage with the Jayhawks in a festival Mexico and Peter Buck doing “Driver 8.” That must have been a great cap-off to the year.

Oh, man, I just got back actually, so I was down there, I think, the 15th, 16th and 17th. I played three nights. This was my third year in a row down there.

So it was this year? I’m sorry, I thought it was towards the end of last year. So you’re still high from that.

Oh yeah, big time. Such an amazing year. This was probably the best year so far. This year the lineup was extraordinary, with the Jayhawks and Kevn Kinney from Drivin N Cryin, and the Old 97s and Joe Arthur. You could throw a rock blindfolded down there and hit an incredible artist. It was just really cool, and it’s such a small, little village of a town—almost like 5,000 or 8,000 people in this town about an hour north of Cabo San Lucas. They set up stages and do two weekends of this really cool, music-driven festival. Artist-driven if you would. It was just really refreshing and I had a blast. Again, I’ve been going there three years now.

Was it spontaneous getting onstage with them?

Yeah, that’s the kind of night it is. Everybody plays with everybody. It’s really unique. It’s a charity event as well, so there’s a real fluidity to the lineup and all that. It’s a lot of fun for all the musicians involved.

Jayhawks are my favorite band in the world.

They were absolutely amazing, I have to say. I played with them years ago. I always loved their songs. They are in top form. They were just absolutely extraordinary. I was so honored to get to sing with them play onstage with them. They’re just great. Gary (Louris, Jayhawks singer/guitarist) couldn’t be a nicer man.

Did you know how to blend your voice with them harmonically pretty easily?

No, no. I just drank a few beers and sang really loud. They seemed OK with it.

How long has Zak been playing acoustic shows with you?

At least the last year or so. I did a bunch with my bass player, Chris Heerlein. We did a European tour. We did a bunch of shows together, that duo lineup. I met Zak, he started with my full band about a year and a half ago. We started playing together and I thought there was something different in it. We’ve been doing it about a year now as the two of us. And of course the Throwing Copper show will be him and I.

I know you write acoustically, but do you rediscover something about a song when you perform it as an acoustic arrangement?

Oh, absolutely. Big time. In fact, for this Throwing Copper tour that we’re doing, Zak plays about three or four different stringed instruments, from lap steel to mandolin, onstage with me. Most of the songs, we stayed really true to the arrangement. We’ve done a few things with some of the songs that I think have really lifted them into a different place for this acoustic show. Plus, when I watch the visuals it’s amazing for me to get that excited about a 20-year-old album. I feel like it’s new because of the addition of Zak and his creativity on all these instruments. It really does, with some of these songs, feel like I’m playing them for the first time.

When you reintroduce fans to an acoustic arrangement of a song they know as a studio arrangement you have the opportunity to surprise them.

Absolutely. And you know, I stay really true to the vocal arrangements, so it’s really just a matter of what makes sense. How do you get the same dynamic, and how do you make this interesting? We got really into that with this multi-media approach, and I feel like we landed on something super special, and definitely I’ve never done anything like it on tour before.

I’m not sure if fans realize you’re a different person than you were 20 years ago.

It’s an interesting process, but I think music has this unique power, especially when it touches chords that this music did. I think it has an extraordinary power to remain relevant. A song like “Lightning Crashes,” when I wrote the song I didn’t have any kids and now I have four. Even for me, I’m experiencing that song with maybe an extra depth level of life lived and humanity of being a father. That’s how I’ve grown with my own music as well, and it’s still relevant to me and it’s still teaching me things about what was then and who I am now. It’s a real process, and I think people enjoy it, the sort of subject matter, the spirituality of it. The fact that these bigger issues of truth, love, life and death that are sort of in that record, these are issues that don’t really have answers. They’re things that you live with for like really, and so I think that helps the content to stay relevant as they move down the road of life.

You were in a seeker stage like a lot of people at that age are, but are you still sympathetic to the teachings of Krishnamurti?

Oh, sure. Again, these are issues that don’t really have black-and-white answers. Life is a sort of dynamic process. You have different experiences as you move through life and continue to flesh them out and find new things or jettison old things. Singing this record is really amazing to me because a lot of these songs I hadn’t done … even in Live a lot of them we hadn’t done in concert, really, ever. For whatever reason when we consider songs weak we’d put in a new song instead. We didn’t do “Pillar of Davidson” for a really long time, so that’s been a great song. “T.B.D.” we didn’t do a whole lot after Throwing Copper, so that’s one I’ve been able to sort of go back into with a really fresh head because it's been so long since I'd done it in a live context.

You definitely created something timeless. Before his death, Krishnamurti allegedly said he was concerned that “the "immense energy" operating in his lifetime would be gone with his death.” He thought of himself as Thomas Edison, but people needed to flick the switch. Do you think Live flicked the switch for his legacy to some degree?

I think if people are still consuming the music, it’s inspiring and maybe allows them to open up a closed door … I’ve had people just recently, and all the time on Facebook, say, “This song served me at this point in my life where I just was so down, or something was going on, and I listen to this song and it was enough to change my perspective just a little bit to help me through it. I think if that’s happening then you’ve done more than you can ever dream of as an artist, to provide that kind of content for someone. And I’ve been so inspired by my influences like U2 and REM and Peter Gabriel that it feels like there’s this mutual exchange where you get inspired and inspire as well, just feel super blessed to be part of that process for people.

I’m not the first person to ask you this in some form, but how has your evolving relationship to spirituality affected your music over the years? Do you look back at earlier periods of your life and find yourself surprised at how your outlook has changed. Or do you feel it’s been pretty consistent?

It’s been pretty consistent, and as I play some of these older songs I realize I’m still deeply and essentially interested in these issues and what I was singing about then. I sing songs like “The Beauty of Gray” from Mental Jewelry, which was this huge fan favorite, and maybe one of those songs where you go, “Ok, I was young and kind of a fledgling songwriter, didn’t really know how to write. But there was a charm to that and a real energy to that I think people picked up on. The content of that song was about growing up in a segregated society. Of course it was contemporary times, but racial tensions in the schools I went to and stuff like that, I wanted to write about that. That still matters to me, and it still matters to people who want to hear that song. Songs like “Overcome,” that became sort of the song around 9/11 that people used on the East Coast, particularly in New Jersey and New York to get through that period. All these moments as a writer you can’t ask for anything more than that. These songs have found a place in culture in your time that has been really important for people.

What’s your best recollection of recording the Throwing Coppermaterial? Do you think there was a maturity and increased confidence that inspired the work after your debut album?

I would say the most inspiring thing about that was the fact that there was such a blank slate before we made that record. People always say … well, bands say, “Hey, you spend your whole life recording and writing your first album, then if it’s even a moderate success then you have 12 months to make the next one.” That was a real pressure that I had never felt before as really just a beginning songwriter-performer. I hadn’t really done it that much. Mental Jewelry did well enough to where there was going to be a second album, and the second album was going to come out around this time—“OK, what’s it going to be?” There was this kind of this creative void where it was like, “OK, this is it. The metal’s hitting the meat,” as they say. I really dug, sort of in an emergency kind of fashion, really deeply into the songwriting process, deeper than I had ever gone before, really out of that necessity just to sink or swim. And I think there’s an urgency to the record and to the music that comes from that period that co-created that energy, the times that I was in. I still feel that when I play it.

Yeah, I think you went against the grain with the concept of the sophomore slump, like things happened in the opposite way.

We were on an independent label that hadn’t spent a whole lot of money, so there wasn’t an uber-amount of pressure in that sense on us. We had pretty much made everybody money on the first record, so everybody was like “OK, let’s take out time and develop this.” That doesn’t exist that much anymore. I mean, Throwing Copper took 52 weeks to get to No. 1 on Billboard. I don’t think that’s ever happened since then, because I don’t think that anyone would develop an artist that long anymore. Fifty-two weeks is like a century now. There was an attention span for artists back then based on the way things were that was really amazing, and I have a lot of gratitude for Radioactive [Records] and what we were able to do then, because it was really important for me as a writer.

Yeah, I think that was a sleeper album. The momentum built steadily. I remember “Selling the Drama” came out and that got some rotation and the album sold well, but it was a little while before “I Alone” came out, and it just exploded.

Yeah, they stayed true to us and we just kept touring. We also did international touring a lot, which was really important to me as an artist. I wanted to get out there and see the world, bring this music to as many people as I could. It was a time where, like I said, you were able to develop as an artist. There was pressure, but not like today with the sink-or-swim radio thing that exists predominantly now. There were elements, especially on indie labels like Radioactive, where you could be a band over a longer haul and still have the support that you had started with.

Yeah, I imagine from your perspective you almost feel sorry for some of the bands starting out now.

It’s sad. I know that there’s an intense amount of pressure for new artists, too. It’s harder than ever get that traction that it takes to make a living at it and to get worldwide attention and recognition while doing your own thing originally has become very difficult. It was never easy, but now, for sure, there’s a lack of that long-term interest in things to take it over a longer haul for two or three songs, at radio even.

Do you think you’ve benefitted from the changes in the music industry more than been hampered by them? Has it made your solo career easier?

I’ve really appreciated this sort of confluence of the rise in social media and music distribution and my solo career because on a lot of levels, not only on the distribution of the music but also the interaction with the fan base directly and quickly, I’ve really taken advantage of that. As a solo artist it was important because I was doing something totally new, so there was a sort of instantaneous availability for me to go and get right to the fans that I couldn’t have done 10 or 15 years ago. It’s a mixed bag, though. Some things about the commerce and downloading, working all that out, and distribution, have become sort of a Wild West frontier land where it’s changing all the time. But generally speaking it’s been a lot of fun as well.

How would you characterize your songwriting efforts since The Flood and the Mercy? Has it been coming to you in productive periods or bursts of creativity?

This 20th anniversary thing, because it’s a unique year in my career as a songwriter, I would have typically be in the studio probably in another few months, but I’ll be on the road instead. Though it’s gonna be pushed back a bit I’m hoping to have something, at least an EP or something new, in the fall. I’m always writing. I’ll write in fits, then I won’t write for a while then I’ll pick it up and get going. This Todos Santos experience every year has been really a period where I take … of course, I have a guitar down there and I’ll write when I’m down there. It’s been almost a retreat for me to kind of kick off the year in a creative environment with a lot of musicians and no pressures, just really inspiring. Maybe some of those folks will be on my record.

Is a reunion of Live’s original lineup completely off the table?

I just forced my kids to watch Forrest Gump the other night because I have a soft spot for the line about the box of chocolates. At 43, it really is so true. You never know what you’re going to get in life. I don’t know, who knows? I’m so happy doing this now. This has been such a renaissance for me as an artist. These last five years as a solo artist have been some of the happiest I’ve had at doing music. That said, I don’t close doors. I think I know enough now to know that you never know what could happen. So yeah, the doors are open. I have to say though, just from an artistic, and the aspect of myself as a performer, I’m super-thrilled with what I’m up to. But you never know.

Vinyl at Hard Rock Hotel, April 2, 9:30 p.m., $40-$60 plus tax and fees. 888.929.7849