By Peter Lindblad
Lawrence Gowan can’t stop basking in the afterglow. As a member of Styx for 27 years, he’s used to playing to seas of appreciative fans on tour, and they give as much as they get.
It’s what keeps him going.
“Well, there’s the immediate health benefits of being in front of thousands of people and seeing the joy on their faces and trying to lean into it as much as possible,” said Gowan. “Every day is a bit of a challenge, but it’s one that we’re excited to take on and continue to do. It’s quite addictive to be honest with you.”
It’s good medicine for the soul, seeing folks enjoy classic songs from the band’s vast catalog.
“Once you’ve ended a few thousand of your days with people on their feet with big smiles on their faces and obviously in a state of ecstatic joy, that’s very intentional,” said Gowan. “That’s something you walk in, if it’s even possible. So, we still derive the benefits of that every single night that we play.”
Gowan and Styx are making the rounds again, coming to Summerfest June 19 to pay the BMO Pavilion as part of “The Windy Cities Tour – All the Hits … Your Kind of Tour” with Chicago. It just wouldn’t be right if the progressive classic-rock champs weren’t there.
“Well, first of all, [Summerfest is] unique to Milwaukee because it’s got its own kind of vibe to it,” said Gowan. “And also, what’s nice about it is we’ve seen it grow over the past, whatever it is, 20 years or something like that, maybe more. And, you know, it’s now the beautiful pavilion that you play in that it has that feeling of an annual celebration. And so, we kind of feel like, well, we helped build it, so we better be invited.”
The lineup features Gowan, Tommy Shaw,
When Styx invited singer/keyboardist Gowan to join, he knew the deal.
“The main ingredient of the band, which is the main thrust of the band, obviously, was to uphold the legacy of what was there, what was already in place when I joined,” said Gowan. “So that was, you know, that was mandate number one.”
Having helped uphold Styx’s reputation for high-quality musicianship and dynamic performances, Gowan said the band then decided it could do more than celebrate its illustrious past.
“We began to figure, ‘Well, wait, there’s probably all kinds of extra development, extra evolution that we can add on to this as the years go on,” said Gowan. “And so, we’ve done that when you look at our live shows, how they have been involved and, in many ways, advanced over the years and our presentation of it. There’s that. And then, of course, there’s the records that we made with four complete studio albums. One of the five that you include, the Big Bang Theory album, which was an album of covers. Several live records, several live DVDs, and maintaining a pace where we’ve played over 100 shows a year, every year since I joined the band.”
Birthed in Chicago in 1972, Styx has always been a heady hard-rock band, with guitars front and center. Progressive sensibilities seeped in, as acoustic guitar and synthesizers and piano fleshed out their sound. They became more theatrical, more pop and eventually, they softened up a little.
Styx made a splash with the hit power ballad “Lady,” before releasing the albums Equinox and Crystal Ball, which featured newcomer Tommy Shaw and contained another enduring classic song in “Lorelei.”
Then came 1977’s The Grand Illusion, which shot Styx into the stratosphere, with the soaring “Come Sail Away” fueling the album’s rise up the charts. It kicked off a string of four consecutive multi-platinum LPs for Styx, including Pieces of Eight, Cornerstone and Paradise Theatre.
Hard-charging singles like “Renegade” and “Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)” mixed with ballads like. “Babe” kept the train rolling.
Paradise Theatre, a concept album like its successor, yielded “The Best of Times” and “Too Much Time on My Hands,” setting the stage for Kilroy Was Here, the band’s final major hit album.
Behind the scenes, cracks were forming, as members argued over the creative direction of Styx. Of course, that was all before Gowan’s time. These days, peace has settled over the Styx camp, where a spirit of collaboration has emerged, which resulted in the glorious, wide-ranging triumph Circling from Above. While holding true to the elements that have made Styx so popular, the 2025 album – boasting contributions from all seven members, including founding guitarist/vocalist James “JY” Young, guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw, original bassist Chuck Panozzo, longtime drummer Todd Sucherman, keyboardist/vocalist Gowan, guitarist/vocalist Will Evankovich and bassist Terry Gowan – finds the band branching out into new territory, too.
“We are really proud of that record because it really stands up, in our estimation,” said Gowan. “It stands up extremely well to the classic Styx records of the ‘70s.”
Working together, in various configurations, the threesome of Gowan, Shaw and Will Evankovich hashed out all 13 songs.
“We, as a songwriting trio, I guess, we really developed a knack for trying to hit all of the great flavors, all the good Styx brought to their albums back in the ‘70s, but also quite liberally, you know, using that decade of the ‘70s, the classic rock records, progressive rock records, and the rock records that were made back then, to kind of fill out and enhance the sonic spectrum of what we’re doing on these records,” said Gowan.
At the same time, Circling from Above is a forward-looking effort, part and parcel of the times during which it was made.
“Of course, it would sound extremely cliché if we were suddenly pulling phrases from the ‘70s and trying to jam them into the song,” said Gowan. “So, we try to write things that seem current and reflect our own experience of the world as it comes to us on a daily basis, just like everyone else.”
As Gowan says, they’ve “lived enough to reflect on where we are today.”
Among his favorites from the album are songs like the funky “Build and Destroy,” “Everybody Raise a Glass” and a song written solely by Shaw called “Only You Can Decide.”
“Yeah, that’s a great song and there’s a prime example of, you know, someone that wrote ‘Crystal Ball’ 50 years ago wanting to look ahead and then reaching a conclusion – this current conclusion being that, it’s what we always kind of know, but it takes a long time to accept, [which] is ultimately it’s up to you to decide how you embrace this experience of living,” said Gowan.
Gowan’s experience with Styx has been a wonderful ride. Every night he plays live with them, he gets to run through Styx classics, it seems he has a different favorite every night.
“Well, over the years, it’s become a moving target as to what my favorite song is,” said Gowan. “On any given night, it could be ‘Grand Illusion’ or it could be ‘Renegade.’ I often say ‘Renegade’ because I don’t have to sing lead on that one, so I get a chance to observe the audience. It’s always at the end of the night.”
To him, audiences’ reactions are different and similar, no matter the location.
“The great thing that I’m able to witness from my pedestal is people around the world – you know, Japan, Sweden, you know, America, England – the audiences, they’re very different at the beginning of the show,” said Gowan. “They have a different temperament to them, a different sort of vibe. And by the end of the show, which is when we’re playing ‘Renegade,’ they’re so alike. It’s remarkable. You know, an audience in Japan can be very similar to an audience in Norway. It can be very similar to an audience in Mexico by the end of the show.”
It’s amazing to him how music unites people. As an example, he noted how the Pittsburgh Steelers’ football team has taken up “Renegade” as its rallying cry, even playing it at the NFL Draft before the Steelers’ first pick. It elicited a full-throated roar from Steeler fans, whose home city hosted the draft.
“Yeah, and it sure taken on a second life of its own, I guess, with the association with the Pittsburgh Steelers,” said Gowan.
In preparing for the upcoming tour, Gowan is focused on his instruments and connecting them to various eras. Along with a grand piano, he has a mellotron, a Hammond P3 organ and synthesizers, mostly an Oberheim.
“So, it’s like I get to use the instruments of that era,” said Gowan. “And a song, basically, as much as I can imagine that they were approached back in the ‘70s by keeping in mind that there are two lead guitarists here in the band, and a whole stack of vocals that I need to weave around, and I need to kind of support in a lot of areas.”
Gowan also considers the overall soundscape, while not wanting to be heavy-handed with keyboards.
“So, I try to come up with parts that really support the song itself and not get in the way of what’s going on and try to play something that’s emotionally connected to what the lyrics are, too,” said Gowan. “That’s my general approach.”
Interestingly, Gowan said Styx often opens its shows with “Build and Destroy,” which bleeds into “Too Much Time.” In a microcosm, that’s the Styx of today, celebrating the past while remaining relevant to the current music scene. Gowan wants that message to get across to audiences.
“Well, the first thing I want them to get is to feel that here’s a band that’s been around for 54 years,” said Gowan. “And they’re still coming up with innovative ways of presenting classic rock. And there’s a continuum right from the very first six albums to the latest one, I think 18 records in total now, that’s a nice arch of music that has been carved out over half a century. They come away loving Styx more than ever. That’s really what I want.”