INTERVIEW: Styx are back, with their ‘Crown’ still in place
Photo: Styx are back with a new album and new tour. Photo courtesy of Todd Gallopo and Styx / Provided by ABC PR with permission.
Styx are often mentioned as one of the hardest-working bands in the business. During a normal year — remember what that was like? — the classic rock group tracked countless miles on the road, bringing their amped up anthems to thousands of fans across the country. The COVID-19 pandemic sidelined them from gigging, but they kept busy with several projects, including the completion of their latest album, Crash of the Crown.
Now, with concert venues opening back up again and the band with a packed touring schedule, things are starting to change for Styx.
“As a musician, you can kind of find ways to amuse yourself, so it hasn’t been as bad for anyone that didn’t get sick or lose their business,” said Lawrence Gowan, longtime Styx member, about living life during the pandemic. “For all the rest, it’s just been a year of discovering new strengths or underscoring some things that you neglected for years. In my case, that’s true, and kind of for the whole band.”
For Crash of the Crown, all but two songs were written prior to the pandemic. Gowan, who is a lead vocalist and keyboardist for the band, remembers heading to Nashville in 2019 and sitting down with the legendary Tommy Shaw and producer Will Evankovich. They wrote songs and started to compile the album, and then of course in early 2020, everything came to a screeching halt.
“And then about two months into the pandemic, the weirdest thing — because a lot of weird things happened last year — we began to notice the lyrics to the songs, the whole vibe of the album seems to fit the current situation in a rather uncanny way,” Gowan said. “[The songs] seem to outline the current state of mind and state of affairs.”
The new album features such songs as “The Fight of Our Lives,” “A Monster” and “Reveries.” Shaw added “Our Wonderful Lives” and “To Those” later in the recording process, and then the band began to feel a sense of urgency to finish the project.
“Our original plan was to wait until this is over because like the whole world we thought this would be over in about six weeks,” Gowan said. “We [learned] two or three months in about the Zoom calls and an app called Audio Movers where you can be in one studio in the world and then be conversing with another studio in real time where you’re using the full studio. It’s not just coming through laptops. It’s a real recording session. We just became more and more adept at using that. Why don’t we finish the record now, and then it’ll be done when things resume, which could be six months, could be a year, could be two years? Luckily, I guess, Universal Records agreed with that approach and then augmented it by saying, let’s hold the album until you go back out on tour, kind of like the way major labels used to conduct themselves, by timing record releases with touring. That’s how it all unfolded.”
Now Crash of the Crown is out, and Styx are touring the country again, including an Oct. 1 concert at the Tropicana in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Fans can expect many of the classic Styx tunes in the setlist, including “Blue Collar Man (Long Nights),” “Lady,” “Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man)” and “Come Sail Away,” but also some songs off the new album, including “Reveries.”
Gowan said that the new tunes flow seamlessly into the classic set, which has been met with thunderous applause from the audience. “I think the most gratifying thing is that when we play the title track, ‘Crash of the Crown,’ enough people are familiar with it that we see the arms suddenly go up,” he said. “They respond really strongly to that song.”
Still, even though things are slowly getting back to normal for the band and their fans, there is a lot of uncertainty out there. The Delta variant of COVID-19 is still raging, and more musicians are postponing concert dates or canceling tours altogether. Styx are taking the cautiously optimistic approach. Gowan, in particular, seems to be a changed man after these past two years.
“That feeling of someone pulling the plug on you is difficult to contend with, but I have to say our social media connections with people became center stage,” he said about the pandemic. “[I did] one or two livestream songs a week, so that kept me having to get ready, even though I could go and do them in my bare feet in my basement, which we call the ‘Balm Shelter.’ … I had theaters around Toronto where I’d go in, one in particular that had eight robotic cameras, and I’d do a full concert there. A few thousand people watched that, and so I still had that feeling of that connection. But nothing comes close to seeing a few thousand people on their feet with big smiles on their faces and hands in the air. Where that really hit home was when we started playing again last month.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Styx are currently touring in support of their new album, Crash of the Crown. Click here for more information and tickets.
