Styx is one of the legendary bands in classic rock. Thier songs are constantly on the radio, and their concerts always sell out. Never a band to rest on their past accomplishments, the 2025 lineup of Styx released a new record that stands proudly next to their classics. Circling From Above was released in July to rave reviews from both critics and fans. Keyboardist and singer Lawrence Gowan recently sat with me to talk about this record and the future of Styx.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Lawrence Gowan interview –
On the evolution of Styx as not just a legacy band – Great observation. The band has been in existence now for 53 years, and I think part of the longevity of the band is that we’ve continued to push ourselves. To come up with new things. New things that can stand alongside the classics. The lineup of this band long before I was involved in it were strong enough to come up with some amazing records and gather such a huge audience. I’m going into year 27 pretty soon. It’s been the kind of the mandate of the band is to uphold that that that standard that was set so long ago. With these albums, I’m glad you feel that way because we can look at each other in the eye and say, I think this record, Circling from Above as was Crash of the Crown and The Mission, stands up in whatever way you want to quantify or measure the quality of these records that they’re that they can stand up to the great classics of the seventies, that Styx put out.
On Will Evankovich becoming a full member of the band – One of the most exciting and yet dangerous things to a band’s existence is that, first one would be if they stop touring for too long, because then people’s lives begin to splinter, or the connection begins to splinter. But really finding the right producer is, is so essential to a band. Sometimes that can be internally, someone within the band as is the case on this new record now. But really finding someone that can, kind of be the arbitrator between the varying ideas and particularly the ones that may clash. Quite often that’s where some real creative friction begins to kind of create fire and some interesting results. But you still need a mediator or someone that can kind of sort through those ideas or add a piece in there and go, “Wait a minute, what if we, if we put this between these two ideas here, they’ll match up, you know, seamlessly”. Will when he came in, he’s both great musician but also really had great studio chops as well as far as figuring out engineer wise what sounds good and what doesn’t, or what fits together, and that was such a great eye opener to it for us when we started working on The Mission, which was around 2014, to have someone like that who was outside the band, and yet could make such a great contribution.
Well then as it evolved, when we went out and played The Mission shows, he would join us on stage for those songs. Then with Crash of the Crown, we realized it, I guess it was right after 2020, “Why don’t we just have him on stage for the whole show?” There’s some Styx songs where there’s three guitar parts or there’s a couple of parts that are doubling each other that fills up the sound even more. We knew he was a really good performer as well. So, with all of those attributes, we realized this is a great addition to the band overall. I only warned him that just be careful that as now that you’re inside the band to be a producer, you still need to have that sometimes a heavy-handed opinion that ultimately is the one that we have to adhere to, and he was able to go walk that line really well in Circling From Above. The results are the album, and I’m really pleased with it.
On what it’s like having his brother Terry in the band – Well, it’s many things. It’s astounding to me, first of all, that I wound up coming into Styx myself. It still is. Then to turn around and see Terry, who’s been in my solo band since 1985. The novelty of it hasn’t worn off on me yet and he’s been with us a couple of years at this point. It really made perfect sense though, because when I would go back to Canada and play my solo shows, which I started doing from 2010 till the present, for the first eight, nine years of that, Todd was the drummer, Todd Sucherman, our drummer from Styx. So, he and Terry had formed a rhythm section over nine years that was solid. I mean Todd doesn’t like me using that expression. It was really, entirely cohesive. Lemme put it that way. They sometimes like words like that become kind of a cliche and we try to avoid those. They, they really had jelled, okay, I’m gonna use that one, as a rhythm section. When, when Todd brought up the notion that Terry should join the band, I realized immediately that he’s the right pick. Despite the fact that brothers and bands, it can be a rather volatile concoction if history has anything to say about it. But we’ve navigated through a lot of those early battles prior to him coming into the band.
So, we’ve worked out a lot of those things in the past, and now I look at him just as a fellow band member and don’t think of him much as being my brother when we’re on stage. I think of him as a guy who’s playing the parts extremely well. Particularly, the fact that Chuck Panozzo was giving him such a strong stamp of approval. That just kind of fit. And funny enough, Chuck said, “Hey, the band started with brothers in the band. Why shouldn’t it have brothers in the band again?” I thought that was great. Full circle.
On if they approach writing a record with a theme in mind or if it evolves – All of the above. But really if I was to kinda work from my corner, what you just described, that the fact that Styx were able to bring progressive rock elements into their music and still be commercially viable was what attracted me to the band in the seventies. It really made me admire the band in the seventies when they emerged, because bands that weren’t from the UK struggled with that. They struggled with, there’d be some great moments of progressive rock, but they wouldn’t catch a mass audience. Yet Styx were able to somehow pull that off because they had this great balance of great musicality and very diverse musical approaches within the band. They somehow managed to pull off a balancing act between hard rock elements, pop elements and progressive rock elements, and blend them together without being super long-winded. Which made them very palatable to a mass audience. That to me is a great recipe to follow. In my own viewpoint, it’s kind of what the Beatles began to do from Revolver on. I think The Beatles really invented progressive rock as well as everything else on the planet. They began to play with very diverse elements.
For example, George Harrison bringing in Eastern music from India, and somehow melding that into what rock (can be). So, it just expanded at what rock could be. So, Styx seemed to cull together those influences, and that’s what we’re trying to do. That’s what we tried to do on these last three albums. I think on Circling From Above, we were particularly successful with it because, you take a song like “Build and Destroy”. I had that piano piece of most of what runs through the song, but Tommy, immediately is, “How do we make this palatable?” Then his “pop hat” kind of came on, so to speak. “How do we make it rock and drive it forward?” Then Will, as a great lyricist as well as everything else began to see, because all I had was the title “Build and Destroy” and that piece of music. How to flesh this out into a piece that’s interesting. Less than four minutes, I think it is and yet is musically adventurous enough to keep people’s attention.
On what it was like to immerse himself in The Grand Illusion on the summer tour – Honestly, all that, all that heavy lifting had already been done. I just really look at myself as having to play it as faithfully as possible when I sing the songs that Dennis DeYoung sings on that, on that album originally. I don’t sound like him, and I don’t approach them probably the same way as he does, but I can really relate to them and how well they’re written and how within the band that the spirit that they were able to conjure up on Grand Illusion. I just try to figure out how do I infuse myself into that, the spirit of what it is alive. Fortunately, those are songs that I can really relate to. I love the theme of the ones that I get to sing in : and “Castle Walls” and definitely obviously in “Come Seal Away”, those are songs that can be reborn every time we get a chance to perform in front of an audience. The great thing with Styx is with Tommy (Shaw), JY (James Young), Chuck (Panozzo), they never have never asked me or hinted at me trying to sing them in any other way that I feel authentically trying to interpret them in my own way. That seems to have, if the audience responses is any gauge, that seems to have worked.
On trying to add new songs to the set when people are there for the classics – Last night we played, we opened the show last night with “Circling From Above” into “Build and Destroy”, into “Too Much Time On My Hands”. So, we weave them in in a way that we think is palatable to the audience that, as you say, we know that it’s the sound of classic rock that they have really just discovered. I’m speaking mainly now of the younger audience, the people that are say under 40, that love classic rock as well as we do and have come and maybe even a more authentic way, and that they came to it of their own volition. It wasn’t driven at them on the radio, or they may have discovered it on classic rock radio, but they may have just discovered it through the internet or through their parents or siblings or, or just simply delving into some musical history. That’s one of the great things about the internet is you can bring that up and the sound of classic rock, that sound was invented in that era we try to replicate that as close as we can with these records. So, they, they are open to hearing new things. It’s harder for people that wanna show up and just embrace their memories of, of the band. It takes a little more time for them to kind of accept something new. But eventually they seem to, because they begin to voice their opinions and as to what their favorite top 10 Styx albums are of all time. Now, “The Mission” and “Crash Of The Crown” have cracked that list. Hopefully “Circling From Above” will as well.
On if Styx will perform other full records live – Yeah. Back in 2010 or 11, you correct me, we did The Grand Illusion and Pieces Of Eight both out in their entirety, there was a DVD of that. That’s to me, the pinnacle experience of Classic Rock is that it grabbed people as a full album. I remember when I heard Close to the Edge by Yes. It was the first time I had a record that I didn’t feel satisfied unless I got into my room, opened up my little record player and put the thing on and listened from beginning to end. It was this amazing experience to take in all of that 40 minutes of music all in one go and, and then I began to realize, going back and listening to some other albums that in the sixties albums that I had Sgt. Pepper, obviously, Abbey Road I’d say Let It Bleed By The Rolling Stones. These, I began to listen to them as full albums, and that’s the experience ultimately that I think people become so in love with, even if they didn’t realize it at the time. It’s become part of their life that they embraced this piece of music and went on whatever, the theater of the mind that it evoked. They want to kind of share that experience with other people, and what better than to be with that band in an arena full of10, or 15,000 people or however many there are, and share that experience that you had in your room alone and hear the whole thing unfold. I think that’s exactly what you saw. That’s what I see from the stage every night is they’re engaging with that again, but in a live situation. There’s a, I think there’s a sense of kind of gratitude that you’ve lived this long, and this piece of music still does it for you.
On if there have been discussions of Styx continuing without JY or Tommy Shaw – No, honestly, I think it, to ask me that question today, I wouldn’t wanna go on without, without those guys, I wouldn’t want to continue on. But that may change entirely, depending on the circumstances that, that come our way in the future. We really don’t look much further, Jeff, than the next six months or so roughly, because we’re realistic people as well. We know that we’ve got three guys now in the band that are in their seventies and all three of them displace the same vigor and commitment to it as they ever have. You fantasize that this is something that can go on you know indefinitely. But as I said, we are realistic people and we realize that there’s, at some point, there’s an end point to it.
I will say that I’m gonna quote Yes again, Rick Wakeman, who in addition to being such a phenomenal musician, is also has a great sense of humor, but also some great insights. I remember, and I’ve quoted this many times past. Around somewhere around 1990, someone asked him, it might have been in British, in Britain’s Melody Maker magazine. They asked him, “Does it bother you that you have seen other lineups of Yes. That don’t include you, who you are considered part of the classic lineup?” I remember pausing before I would read his answer because to my mind back then, okay, I had my five all-star Yes members as a fan. This is why I understand how people can hold tightly to that. But his answer shocked me at the time because he said, “There will be a Yes a hundred years from now long after I’m gone. No, it doesn’t bother me in the least when I hear other members, other people who come into the band and what they bring to the table.” He said, “Just as there was a London Symphony 200 years ago that played Beethoven, there’s a London Symphony today that plays Beethoven and nobody in the one that existed 200 years ago probably has much left of, of their, of their bodies than dust.”
At the time, Jeff, I thought, “Oh, he’s lost it. That’s not true at all”. Then I’ve seen it. Absolutely. It’s playing out. He’s absolutely right. If music, and I used to say this, what really dawned on me was that let’s say the first half of the 20th century was dominated by the influence of jazz, okay? The influence of jazz that that permeated into swing and permeated into that Boogie Woogie or whatever, all those styles that emerged. Say Country music was kind of a new thing. It was born outta folk and a western style. Those styles dominated the first half of the, of the of the 20th century. To this day, you still hear jazz, and you still hear country music being played and those classics are being played and the difference, well, I’m gonna say obviously the rock music dominated the last half of the 20th century. The difference is it’s very much a combined music other than solo artists. It’s a combo and what that combo, the spirit of what that combo brings forward. I often say to me, to my mind, the spirit of the Rolling Stones hasn’t suffered even slightly with Ron Wood being in the band because he exudes the spirit of the Stones as if he was there right from the first day.
The same thing when, to me, the most calamitous thing that happened to me as a fan was when Peter Gabriel left Genesis, and at that point I didn’t even know the, I couldn’t tell you the drummer’s name. I knew it was Phil something, and then I find out that Genesis went on to do great things. Because the spirit of what the band was survived. Peter Gabriel went on to do phenomenal things because he as a solo artist, had a whole vision that carried on. But bands as a collective group, much like what Rick Wakeman said back in early nineties, the spirit of that may be carried forward. I saw it, as you mentioned, I saw it last year when we toured with Foreigner. I happened to do a couple of shows with Foreigner back in the eighties opening for them. One was in Cleveland at Richfield Coliseum. It was great, great night. The Foreigner that I performed with last year was Styx is every bit as strong, every bit as strong. Audiences respond exactly the same way because the songs are great. How do we know the songs are great? They withstood this test of time. Audiences still love it. I don’t know to answer your, this long-winded answer to your question. I don’t know if Styx could go on. I prefer that it didn’t, if you’re asking me today, but in 10 years from now, I’d be like, “Who knows? Yeah, who knows?”
