Classic rock veterans Styx will perform at the Heartland Credit Union Arena in Park City on Wednesday, May 20.
The group is currently on tour with Cheap Trick, the power pop quartet which formed in Rockford, Illinois in 1973, around the same time that Styx’s first lineup assembled in Chicago.
According to Styx vocalist and keyboardist Lawrence Gowan, who has fronted Styx since 1999, the combination has worked successfully over the years.
“They do a great job of getting audiences ready for us,” he says.
Styx averages 100 concerts per year, mostly in the United States, and their current run is in continued support of their most recent album, 2025’s “Circling From Above.”
Gowan, who maintains an active solo career outside Styx, recently spoke about the band’s ongoing appeal and more.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I was struck recently by the lyric content of Styx’s songs in the sense that in a lot of the material, there’s a sense of individual people triumphing over adversity or finding resolve in difficult times.
I think that’s a good observation. Although they may start off with a difficult subject, let’s call it that, it does land the right way. It lands in such a fashion that you feel like you have the wherewithal to withstand whatever has been brought up. It’s also part of the longevity of the songs, I think, that we think we’re unique to our time on this planet but we do tend to go through the same challenges that every generation does. I guess all that changes, really, is the technology.
Along with that there’s the musicianship. There’s often more going on that one hears with a casual listen. And, at the end of the day, the music and performance of it makes people happy.
We’re all very committed to making the whole thing entertaining. It has to entertain. It has to capture the whimsy that an audience comes in expecting to encounter. That makes a very unique setup.
Speaking of entertaining. You’re a keyboardist/frontman who has this rotating keyboard stand and my understanding is that that device originated in your solo career.
We were doing a video in 1990 for a song called “Lost Brotherhood.” It’s an album that Alex Lifeson from Rush plays guitar on. He agreed to come and do the video for the title track. It was the second video we made for the record. When I’d written up the storyboard with our director and started to piece it together, it was all really working well, I realized that I had the most boring part in this entire video. [Laughs.]
So, I went to the production department, the lighting people in particular and said, “Can we come up with something that moves?” Over the course of us gabbing about it, finally we landed on, “What if it spins?” One of the fellows who was there said, “We can concoct something that does that.” We drew it up, it was designed and put together.
I used it in the video, but it was just a video prop. Just for that song. I was able to move and relate to all the action that was going on around me. All of the guys in the band, including Alex and the guys on the crew said, “Are you going to use that thing live?” I said, “No.” But then, I thought, “Wait a second. This could work.”
So I took it out on stage and after the first five or six shows, I realized, “I’m not giving this up.”
