Live's Kowalczyk Ready To Go, Aussie Dates With Sugar Ray

01/21/2000 2:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(1/21/00, 2 p.m. ET) - Tonight (Jan. 21), Live is ready to pick up where it left off, as the band starts a brief U.S. tour to make up for the dates canceled due to illness in November. Live singer Ed Kowalczyk has been the hardest hit of the band's members by the flu/cold bug that's been going around. He had a relapse while touring Europe last month, and was ordered to rest and not speak. With Kowalcyzk once again healthy, Live is set to deliver the goods, starting tonight in Detroit at the State Theater.

This time it looks like Live has taken the proper measures to get healthy. Back in November, during the first outbreak of the flu, the band knew their Indianapolis show would be their last for a while.

"We were all laid up," Kowalcyzk told LAUNCH. "My voice just completely shut off, and we got onstage in Indianapolis and three songs into it I said, 'Well this is going to be fun.' So we did the whole rest of the show acoustically down an octave. But we got through it. We had sort of, at soundcheck, realized like, 'God we can't play. I mean, Chad can barely sit at his drum kit, I can barely sing. We need to get over this.'"

The current U.S. tour will run through Feb. 14 in Providence, R.I.

After that tour wraps up, Live will be going down under to Australia and New Zealand for a tour with special guest Sugar Ray. That tour starts Feb. 26 in Auckland, New Zealand.

In other Live news, fans who bought Live's latest album, The Distance To Here, got a little card inside the package when they opened the jewel case. There's a password on the card that entitles fans to go to a protected section of the band's website, Live.cerf.net/news.html, and download exclusive live acoustic tracks.

-- Darren Davis, New York

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