Live released The Distance to Here in the United States through Radioactive Records on October 5, 1999. The album reunited the band with producer Jerry Harrison and opened with “The Dolphin’s Cry,” a song whose water imagery became a physical challenge during its video shoot. Director Martin Weisz filmed the musicians being hit by 6,000 gallons of water.
“Once the water hit, every safety precaution went out the window,” Ed Kowalczyk told Billboard in September 1999. The singer showed reporter Larry Flick scratches and bruises from the shoot, explaining that the force had thrown the band beyond the mat intended to catch them.
The song introduced an album built around a deliberate change in outlook. Kowalczyk told Billboard he wanted to write about hope and love after the darkness of Secret Samadhi. He had driven into the California desert alone to think and work on songs, stepping away from the band's schedule. That time away helped establish the direction of the record before its imagery reached radio or a video set.
Harrison's return renewed the partnership behind Mental Jewelry and Throwing Copper, with Live sharing production credit. But Kowalczyk resisted the idea that the band was simply trying to repeat its biggest commercial success. Speaking to CMJ New Music Monthly for its November 1999 issue, he defended Secret Samadhi as an important period of experimentation while the musicians adjusted to the scale of their career. Its abstract writing had served a purpose. For the next album, he wanted a more direct connection with listeners.
Those intentions developed through camping trips across the Southwest, with Kowalczyk taking a guitar and spending as long as two weeks away. He told CMJ that “Run to the Water” expressed a particularly open approach to writing a love song. The recurring natural imagery gave him a way to describe feelings that he wanted the new material to communicate.
The rest of the band had plenty of material to consider. Guitarist Chad Taylor told the Observer & Eccentric in November 1999 that Live had spent two years developing approximately 30 songs before settling on 13. Recording began slowly, he recalled, then gathered momentum. Kowalczyk described another part of that process to CMJ: some material was recorded again two or three times as the band pursued performances with more spontaneity and raw energy.
Taylor singled out “They Stood Up for Love” as a song that captured what the group was trying to express. “I think that's the Live theme song,” he told the Observer & Eccentric. He also noticed audiences connecting with the new material quickly on tour, a response he contrasted with the longer adjustment period he usually expected after an album's release.
The Distance to Here earned platinum certification in the United States, and its songs continued into a different recording setting. In April 2000, Live recorded a five-song acoustic session in Brussels. Four selections came from the album: “The Dolphin’s Cry,” “The Distance,” “Run to the Water” and “They Stood Up for Love.” Alongside them was “I Alone” from Throwing Copper, placing the new songs beside material from the band's earlier collaboration with Harrison.
