Caught LIVE — (Left to right) Chad Taylor, Pat Dahlheimer, Ed Kowalczyk, Chad Gracey.

By GREGG KIRK
Big Shout Magazine, May 1994

Their story is like a blueprint for how young bands can achieve a record deal. Two years ago, a group of high school kids from York, PA nabbed a manager, a few showcase gigs in New York, and before long they scored a record deal with a medium-level label willing to get behind the band with plenty of money. Before they knew it, they were all over MTV, touring Europe and the U.S., and making plans to record a second album.

Now that the group has had a chance to catch its breath just before the release of its second release, members of the band Live have become more introspective regarding their whirlwind success. Bassist Patrick Dahlheimer talks candidly about the shifting of gears that occurs when a band moves to the next level…

Big Shout: Now is this album different from the last one?

Patrick Dahlheimer: I think sonically and musically we came a long way. We’re definitely a tighter, more interesting band due to the fact that we toured for so long after the first album. It has a little more of an edge this time. Ed’s starting to play a lot more electric guitar. Musically, I think it’s just grown. It’s not like it’s part 2 to the first album, but it’s still along the same vein.

BS: How did you guys originally hook up with Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads) to produce your first album?

PD: Actually, the president of the label (Radioactive Records) did mange the Talking Heads, and he knew that Jerry was doing production so he thought that would be interesting.

BS: Wasn’t your getting signed for your first album kind of like a Cinderella story? Didn’t you basically send a tape in and the president of the label love it and signed you on the spot?

PD: It took a while. We graduated high school, and we all decided that what we wanted to do was go get a record deal and record. So we originally did some demos, sent ’em out, and didn’t get anywhere. I think we picked up some management, which helped then, and we started doing a lot of showcase dates in New York City and we invited everybody out. Initially, it wasn’t like everyone was fighting to have us. One label had given us some money to go in and do a demo deal, so we went in and recorded some songs. And that label opted to pass on it, so we used that demo to ship out and mail to everybody.

From there, somebody from Radioactive came out to one show. He came back and introduced himself, and he said he was from Radioactive Records, and we were like, “Hey, okay, whatever.” We had no idea. He said he was really interested, so I think a week later we did another show and the president came out. We got done and he came back, and he said, “Well, I think we’re going to do some good things together.” From there we started to talk to them and realized that it was pretty legit, and it was something that we were definitely interested in. So yeah, to us it was like a Cinderella story. But it took some time.

BS: When your first album was released, the push was amazing. You guys pretty much came out of nowhere. I remember seeing your debut album plastered all over Tower Records in Manhattan. You had to be psyched about it.

PD: Definitely psyched. We went and recorded the album, and you have to sit around for a couple of months before it actually comes out. And we were also working our day jobs, and I couldn’t even imagine what was going to happen. I just thought, “Okay, I’ll take a month off from my job. I’ll go tour, and I’ll come home. Life won’t be that different.”

BS: What happened when everything came crashing down?

PD: It just came down, and I figured, “Man, I don’t have time for a job! (laughs) I’m quittin’.” And I haven’t had a job since. My life has just been music, which is fine by me.

BS: You guys have moved into a higher tax bracket…

PD: Exactly. We’re payin’ Uncle Sam a little better.

BS: What have you been doing since things took off? You went on an MTV tour for a while, didn’t you?

PD: Right. That might’ve been for two months, and we went to Europe for another month, came back, and we had a few weeks off, and did another tour of the States. We did mostly clubs. From there we went back to Europe, did Brazil, came home, and had, like, many months off. From there we just kind of starte to work on new material. Then we went back to Brazil, came home and had some more time off to work. And then we went to record the album, and that kind of brings us up to date.

Actually, we had a lot of time off, and initially, when we got done touring the States and Europe, it was like four months had gone by that we just kind of sat around and didn’t do anything. We figured that, “Well, we’ve got to work on something.”

BS: You didn’t have some kind of schedule where you had to go in the studio at a certain time?

PD: It wasn’t that. It was like we couldn’t just sit around. I guess everything had just taken us by surprise, and we were at home and we just thought, “It’s nice to have time off and do nothing.” But I guess we kind of wised up and figured out that we couldn’t do that forever, and we had to get back into the swing of things. So it took us a while to get back into the writing mode.

BS: So did you start to formulate some ideas on the road?

PD: No, actually that’s one thing we regret — we didn’t do anything on the road as far as writing new material. So when it was time to start on the next one, we started from step one. Like everybody says, “You’ve got your whole life to write the first one.” The second one you’ve got X number of months. We didn’t feel any pressure from the record label or anything — we felt like we had to produce songs.

BS: How long did it take to write the entire album?

PD: Ummm. That’s hard to say. I would say less than a year… maybe like eight or nine months. It wasn’t like eight or nine months of intense working. We definitely slacked a lot, which is easy to do.

BS: How have your daily lives changed since you graduated high school? You all still live in York, Pa?

PD: Yeah, the guitar player’s married and just bought a house. It’s been like a world of changes, actually. Going from living at home and working your job to having enough money to finance a place to live in and pretty much feel secure on your own and by yourself — it’s a strange feeling. It was like, “Oh, we’re grown ups now, you know. We’ve got some money and we can be responsible for some things.