Styx Sails Back In

[sadie65]

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/myr ... ertainment

Styx sails back in
By Kristi Singer
For The Sun News
Legendary American rock band Styx - known for songs like "Mr. Roboto" and "Come Sail Away" - has navigated its way back into the headlines with the release of "Big Bang Theory," Styx's first studio release since 2003's "Cyclorama."

The album's debut single, a remake of The Beatles' "I Am the Walrus," was a radio hit, rising to No. 2 on Classic Rock charts.

Styx, the first band to have four consecutive triple-platinum albums (The Grand Illusion, Pieces Of Eight, Cornerstone and Paradise Theatre) will re-awaken the sounds of classic rock tonight at the House of Blues, North Myrtle Beach.

The band's current lineup is vocalist/guitarist Tommy Shaw, vocalist/guitarist James "JY" Young, vocalist/keyboardist Lawrence Gowan, drummer Todd Sucherman and bassist/backing vocalist Ricky Phillips.

Young shares with Kicks! what to expect at the show and discusses the Big Bang Theory during a phone interview from his Chicago home:

Question | Styx is performing at the House of Blues, probably a smaller venue than you're accustomed to. Are you looking forward to the more intimate setting?

Answer | We perform in all different settings. We just did a string of House of Blues shows on the West Coast - San Diego, Sunset Strip in L.A., Las Vegas. [It's] the time of year before the outdoor festival season begins. [They're] great, particularly Myrtle, which is a bit of a tourist town but still has a rockin' environment.

Q. | Which do you prefer - the big or small venues?

A. | Each individual venue, be it large or small or medium-sized, indoors or outdoors, be it preventing people below the drinking age of coming in or not - they all have their own unique charm to me as a performer. One of my favorite places to play in the world was the House of Blues in New Orleans because that place is wild and woolly and rocking. We did raise money for Katrina victims. That town is gonna take on a life of its own again, I'm confident of that.

Q. | Did the New Orleans House of Blues survive the storm?

A. | I don't know. There was word that we were going to be going back there and then I heard that we weren't. I haven't had time to get the details. Eventually it will be back, I'm confident of that. A lot of Bourbon Street did survive. It's more of the housing and people who worked the minimum-wage jobs that kept the city running whose homes were swallowed up in the great storm.

Q. | What can your fans expect to hear Styx perform at the Myrtle Beach gig?

A. | People can expect to hear the soundtrack of their glorious misspent youth, unless they're too young. Then they can hear some of their favorite rock favorites like "Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)," "Renegade," "Too Much Time On My Hands," "Come Sail Away," "Snowblind" - and the list of those go on. Then there are deep cuts - we stick about 16 of them in a 14-minute medley. We touch upon songs that we otherwise don't get a chance to play.

Since the last time we were there, we've released the album "Big Bang Theory," which is almost 11 months out on the street. Our version of "I Am the Walrus" has risen to the top of the classic rock airplay charts and that helped spawned the release of "Big Bang Theory." So there are a number of songs off that album that find their way into our set.

We're in the process of starting to record the next Styx album, but nothing's ready to be performed yet. So, it's going to be a night of rock 'n' roll fun - featuring our "Big Bang Theory" record, but 80 percent of it will certainly be Styx classic favorites.

Q. | Why the title "Big Bang Theory"? Does Styx believe in that theory?

A. | The record company said we want a whole new album from you guys to go with this ["I Am the Walrus" single] and we need to get it out quickly to take advantage of the momentum.

We said we don't have enough new music written yet and they said why don't you do an album of songs that influenced you? So we did an album of songs - I think 99 percent of them are from the '60s and a few are from '70, '71. So, the big-bang theory of course is a theory of how the universe began, one man's theory - and these songs are a little peek into how Styx's musical universe began.

Q. | Tell me more about how "Big Bang Theory" came about.

A. | We never intended to make an album of other people's music because what we're about is writing and recording our own music and then performing it live on stage. But going back almost two years now, we were invited to perform at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival in Dallas, a charity event to raise money for Eric Clapton's drug rehab center in the Caribbean, in the beginning of June 2004. We [had] just performed a headlining show with Peter Frampton about three weeks earlier [and] I knew there would be somewhat of a different audience, but some of the same people.

I said, "We really have to change our set up a bit to come back and play basically the same stage 3 weeks later."

So, Tommy [Shaw] did some blues songs he was known for, I did some Hendrix songs that I was known for [and] we decided [to] do something with Lawrence singing that would set us apart from everyone else because there were so many guitar blues slingers there.

Knowing that Eric Clapton and John Lennon had been friends - that "I Am the Walrus," I thought we could do a bang-up job of it.

I said, "Let's do that to distinguish ourselves from everyone else." We had a huge response and had so much fun playing it.

With time permitting as we went down the highway in 2004 we put "Walrus" in our encores every night. Our tour manager said, "The crowd is really digging the way you guys do that."

We got to Chicago a couple of months after that and our local classic rock station program director was at the show and heard us play it for the first time live in Chicago and the crowd went wild for it. Then we had dinner with this gentleman and he said, "Gimme a copy of that and I'll put that on the air." This doesn't happen very often - very rare that such a thing would happen.

We thought we made a great record two years before that with "Cyclorama" - all original music with Jack Black, Billy Bob Thornton and Brian Wilson - [but] we had a hard time getting airplay. And all of a sudden a guy says, "Gimme a copy and I'll put it on the air." The moral of the story is that it's tough getting airplay on new music. But somehow at classic rock radio where they want familiarity, it was a familiar artist playing another artist's familiar song and shedding new light on it, it became the No. 2 classic rock song nationally.

Q. | Styx topped the charts in the '70s and '80s. How do you feel about having a No. 2 song on the charts so many years later?

A. | It was No. 2 on the classic rock charts. The only thing ahead of us was the mighty U2. It was fantastic to have something so truly unexpected.


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[froy]

Styx sails back in
By Kristi Singer
For The Sun News
Legendary American rock band Styx - known for songs like "Mr. Roboto" and "Come Sail Away" - has navigated its way back into the headlines

Honestly at this point in the game who really believes any of these articles anymore.
First of all the current Styx lineup is not a legendary anything
Second of all the songs they mentioned are all from Dennis and he was tossed over board so that alone makes the article null and void,
3rd of all they copied a Beatles song and put it on a cd to get noticed
That alone is worthless.

[froy]

Q. | Styx topped the charts in the '70s and '80s. How do you feel about having a No. 2 song on the charts so many years later?

A. | It was No. 2 on the classic rock charts. The only thing ahead of us was the mighty U2. It was fantastic to have something so truly unexpected.
Next year we are going to try Stairway To Heaven.

[DarrenUK]

Or a list of Broadway tunes.......