Does it surprise anyone that Live preferred the Tibetan Freedom Concert to Woodstock '99? "Spiritual" is the description usually attached to the sincere rock quartet whose watershed album, 1994's "Throwing Copper," was compared to early U2.

Most of the attention is focused on singer-lyricist Ed Kowalczyk and the Indian philosophers who inspire him. But "everybody has common spiritual beliefs," says bassist Patrick Dahlheimer.

"It's not all Eastern, but when it comes down to ground zero we all share more or less basic spiritual ideas."

However, he adds, "Ed realized spirituality is one thing, but it didn't save his life. What saved his life was rock 'n' roll. This band saved his life and gave him a direction. So I guess if I were to (assign) us a church, it would be the church of rock 'n' roll."

High-minded rock still powers Live, which plays the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay Sunday, on the heels of its 3-week-old album, "The Distance to Here."

Earlier this summer the band played Woodstock, and realized its somber yet traditional sound didn't quite fit in with the rap-metal moshing or Kid Rock silliness of the other heavy bands -- even though the "Throwing Copper" hit "I Alone" is included on the "hard" disc of the new two-CD Woodstock compilation.

"I left Friday night and I just really didn't care," Dahlheimer says of the festival. (It's odd to hear him say he "drove home," but he still lives in the band's home state of Pennsylvania).

"It's not like we were there for peace and love. I don't think anybody was there for any reason except to play to a lot of people," he says. "I guess we were naive. We got there and it was run like a military camp."

On the other hand, the Tibetan Freedom Concert earlier this year in Wisconsin "was amazing," he says. "It just seemed so organic, and you got backstage and nobody knew what was going on. (Beastie Boy Adam) Yauch and I just sat before the show and talked to these two Tibetan monks. I said, `You know what? This is right.´ "

Live fans who missed the melodic hits from "Throwing Copper" on the band's last album, "Secret Samadhi," might like the new one better.

The last time, "we intentionally set out to make a sonically dark record, and Ed set out to lyrically make a record that was almost nonsensical, or his flowing consciousness" Dahlheimer says of "Samadhi." Most reviewers labeled it a misstep, and the album fell far below the 7 million sales mark of "Copper."

"That's the record we needed to do to get out of our systems (and) I would never take that record back," he adds. But the new one brings back former Talking Head Jerry Harrison as producer. It's more musically varied, less dramatic in its grasp.

Instead of bringing song fragments or a couple of chords into the studio, the band members -- which include guitarist Chad Taylor and drummer Chad Gracey -- wrote separately at home this time, and traded their demo tapes. "It was like a big jigsaw puzzle," Dahlheimer says of picking and choosing the songs, most of which ended up being Kowalczyk's.

The lyrics of one new song, "Voodoo Lady" might be an in-joke about the band's image: "Light up a cigarette, she said, and calm the (expletive) down/You got a serious side to you that could give the whole world a frown."

"We're serious and we've always been serious, (but) we're doing what is true to us," Dahlheimer says. "We're not going to get onstage and fake it for the sake of the industry or the market. We just have to be honest with ourselves and live with ourselves."

Even if it means that a big-guitar band that once would have been labeled "arena rock" ends up sticking to smaller clubs and theaters.

"If we think it looks right we'll do (an arena tour), and if we don't, we'll record another record," he says. "I don't even know who's in the arenas anymore. Aerosmith, and that's about it."

"I think rock is gonna come back," Dahlheimer adds, ever the optimist. "I would love to see songwriters become what they used to be. ... I think there's a lack of that right now."