Sometimes when the best laid plans of mice and men – or in this case promoters, agents and managers – go astray, fun new adventures and experiences can be the result.
Such is the case for venerable rock hit-makers Styx, who are in the midst of a 2016 tour that has seen them play more solo headlining shows in more places throughout North America than was originally planned. It’s a tour that rolls into Artpark in Lewiston, NY, on Tuesday, Aug. 16 for what promises to be a rollicking good time, full of familiar hits and superior showmanship.
Styx bassist Ricky Phillips told Music Life Magazine that because of an illness to Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott earlier in the year, cancelling a proposed joint tour with the British rockers, Styx’s team had to pull some rabbits from the hat to put together an off-the-cuff tour itinerary.
“Most of the shows are billed as An Evening with Styx. We did a show with Cheap Trick about a month ago and did a few with some other bands. But for the most part it’s been just us. And it’s kind of fun; it’s not a typical year. When Joe lost his voice we had to leave the road we really had no fallback plan, so everyone put their heads together and started piecing a tour together,” Phillips said.
“And it’s turned out to be a really fun year. We are doing some symphony orchestra shows and some different types of things than we normally do because it kind of forced our agency’s hand to start putting the year together in a different way, more creatively. But it’s been great. We have also been doing longer sets. We do a long first set and take an intermission and come back and play another long set, which lets us get into some deep cuts and play some stuff we normally don’t have time for. And we can see that’s pleasing the real die-hards.”
With the longer sets some nights, Phillips said he and bandmates James J.Y. Young (the longest-serving member of the band), veteran vocalist/guitarist Tommy Shaw, drummer extraordinaire Todd Sucherman and Lawrence Gowan – the top Canadian singer/songwriter of Strange Animal fame, have brought out some deeper cuts from Styx’s impressive catalogue.
“This year we brought Snowblind back into the set. Before I was ever in Styx that was one of my favourite songs by the band. Something about that song is very, very clever where it goes from JY to Tommy’s lead vocal on the same song. And there is the really cool kind of bluesy undertone to it. It’s a cool little piece of music. I love that song,” he said.
“And sometimes we’ll do Castle Walls, sometimes Queen of Spades. It varies. We have been putting I Am the Walrus back into the set as well. That was such a surprise hit for us. We first did it more than 10 years ago at one of the Eric Clapton Crossroads shows, which was paying tribute to the Beatles. At some point, after another show, a live version of our cover of that song ended up getting on 300 radio stations and entered the Billboard charts at number 46. So that was a crazy way of us having another song on the charts that we did not expect.”
Phillips said the band is not only as busy as it has ever been, playing around 120 dates or more per year to often sold out audiences, but that these audiences continue to grow and diversify as younger and younger fans keep coming to shows.
He believes it’s not only because of how Styx songs such as Come Sail Away, Babe, Mr. Roboto, Renegade, Lady, Foolin’ Yourself, The Grand Illusion and Too Much Time on My Hands have become ingrained in pop culture and the minds of many music lovers, but because the band still consistently excels as a live rock attraction.
“There is this crazy workaholic side to us that I don’t know if people realize or understand. We want to present what you know: If you like Styx, we want to give you the Styx that you grew up listening to. We don’t want to reinvent it and say this is the way we do it now – deal with it. We pay great homage to the original recordings and the solos and the notes. We play all the songs in the original keys. We only have one thing that’s ‘flown in’ and that’s an alarm clock sound for Too Much Time on My Hands. That’s it,” Phillips explained.
“We are making ourselves step up to the plate and hit that ball out of the park every single night. That’s what we’re going for anyways. We do work very hard and we are very passionate about never loosening our grips or taking what we have for granted. Every guy in this band is a serious musician and all musicians hit plateaus but then, boom, you try something new on a song you’ve played a thousand times and you’re like, ‘wait a minute, that was a cool twist’ and it sends you on an exploratory journey.
“I know for me, as well as for the other guys, I don’t want to live off the past catalogue of Styx. I don’t want to do it robotically. None of us want it to be like that. We’re always talking about music and being excited about new things. Tommy is always running over to me with something on his iPad where somebody is selling some wacky musical thing that I had forgotten about from the 1960s or 1970s. We’re living a great life and not taking it for granted.”
Phillips joined Styx in 2003, replacing Glen Burtnik who was on his second tour of duty with the band. He in turn had replaced band co-founder and original bassist Chuck Panazzo who continues to successfully battle HIV and still performs a couple of tunes with the band most nights. Prior to that, Phillips lengthy musical pedigree include stints with pop-rock band The Babys, an AOR super-group called Bad English, which featured members of The Babys and Journey, and also performing alongside Whitesnake founder David Coverdale and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page on their Coverdale/Page project in the early 1990s.
The Northern California native has also carved out a reputation as versatile and in-demand session player, who has played on recordings by the likes of Roger Daltrey, Mick Jagger, Sammy Hagar, Jeff Beck, Julian Lennon and Toto’s Steve Lukather among many others. He has also developed a sideline career as a songwriter/producer and engineer for movies and TV shows, including projects for CNN and kids television network Nickelodeon.
Immersed in music from a young age, Phillips said he was influenced by the early days of rock and roll and was encouraged to learn music after his parents bought a piano in 1959 when he was six years old.
“The town I lived in had two TV stations and one rock radio station. I thought everybody was listening to the same rock songs I was listening to and with the Beatles every program director was putting that on their list. But I have since found that what I was listening to was just a small snippet of what the rest of the world was hearing. I was in a very small town and I think our playlist was repeated every couple of hours. I head lots of British bands like the Dave Clark Five. There was something about the guitar and cool riffs on the bands from England,” he said.
“The first time I heard Jimi Hendrix was when I was in my dad’s car and it came on the radio. I dove over the front seat and grabbed the knob to crank it up. I knew my dad was going to shove me back and yell at me, which he did, but it was like oh my God, what is that? And it was Foxy Lady and then immediately after they played Purple Haze and that changed everything.
“A couple of years later came Led Zeppelin and I was on a different path. I soon discovered David Bowie and Queen in the early 1970s. People kept coming up with new things and a different twist on rock music and that’s what I wanted to figure out. But it all started with getting that piano in 1959. And I still have that one and three others in my home now, including one in my bedroom.”
He said that like millions of other American and Canadian kids growing up in the 1960s, his world truly turned upside down on the evening of Feb. 9, 1964, when a certain mop-topped musical quartet from Liverpool made their explosive debut North American television performance in front of more than 75 million viewers on the Ed Sullivan Show.
“It was very profound when those four guys got on that stage. There were so many levels happening at once: it wasn’t just good singing and songwriting, they had a cool look that was different from a lot of others – the hair and the way they dressed was amazing and so fresh ,” he said, adding that every member of Styx has similarly been impacted by the music of the Beatles.
“I think many of us saw that Ed Sullivan show appearance. There is something about a young guy who wants the girls to dig him and boy oh boy did they did with the Beatles. So it was like, ‘well, maybe that’s the way.’ That’s why so many 9 and 10 year olds started playing tennis racket guitar in front of the mirror after that show, trying to see what it would be like to pay an instrument and get that kind of attention.”
Phillips has been with Styx for 13 years and has nothing but praise for his bandmates.
“Foolin’ Yourself (Angry Young Man) is one of my favourites. I think it’s Tommy Shaw’s best song as far as a writing achievement. That song is in some ways a masterpiece because it goes through so many different time signatures and has a great message, great melody and has this cool little prog-rock piece in the middle. He is just a monster songwriter. JY is the spiritual leader of the band and he is always fooling around with some new riff or some guitar sound. He is so focused on music and he is just a great guy to be on the road with,” he said.
“We all bring something into the relationship and everybody in this band is completely different and I think that’s what makes it interesting. We’re pretty close. And there is an intelligence involved with everybody and that’s part of it. A huge factor is sense of humour too. You really need one when you are on the road as much as we are. I think Lawrence and Todd could both be on Saturday Night Live as cast members and go on a two or three year run. They could come up with material that would become classic bits. Plus they are both so immersed in so many aspects of music. They are always learning, always practicing, always exploring and experimenting. They’re both like mad scientists sometimes.”
As for new Styx material, Phillips said that there are songs in various stages of the writing process, but when a band is on the road 120 dates a year; it’s hard to find the time to hunker down in the studio.
“Every time it looks like it might happen, we get a string of offers to go to this place or that place. And playing live is the bread and butter of this band, so we take those opportunities when they come up. I will say we will record new music, but I just can’t say when,” he said.
For more information on the Styx show at Artpark on Aug. 16, visit http://www.artpark.net/artpark-amphitheater-2016-styx.
For more information on the band, visit http://styxworld.com.
* Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com
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