Styx is coming to the Eastern Kentucky University Center for the Arts.
The multi-platinum rock band will perform at the Center on Tuesday, April 5, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for the concert, which will feature the band’s hit singles and classic rock radio standards such as "Come Sail Away," "Renegade," "Blue Collar Man" and "Fooling Yourself,” will go on sale on Tuesday, March 1, at 9 a.m. Tickets range from $35 to $75 and are available at the EKU Center Box Office or at ekucenter.com.
The event is sponsored by 100.1 WKQQ.
The six musicians comprising Styx – Tommy Shaw, James “JY” Young, Lawrence Gowan, Todd Sucherman and Ricky Phillips (along with the occasional surprise appearance by original bassist Chuck Panozzo) – have been “Rocking the Paradise” together with more than 100 live shows per year.
“This is going to be a night of classic rock at its finest,” said EKU Center Executive Director Joel Aalberts. “The thrill at being at a Styx concert is the show is filled with hit after hit after hit sung by a band that can still deliver the goods with the same power and vitality as they did when these songs were first released.”
Spawned from a suburban Chicago basement in the early 1970s, Styx transformed into the virtual arena rock prototype by the late ’70s and early ’80s, mixing big rockers and soaring power ballads.
The group hit its stride with guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw’s first LP with the band, 1976’s “Crystal Ball,” and then became the first group to score four consecutive triple-platinum albums: “The Grand Illusion” (1977), “Pieces of Eight” (1978), “Cornerstone” (1979), and “Paradise Theater” (1981). Over the ensuing decade, Styx weathered the shifting winds of the public’s musical tastes, reconvening for a highly successful 1996 Return to Paradise tour that was documented on both CD and DVD in 1997.
With a little help from their many friends in Cleveland’s Contemporary Youth Orchestra, “One with Everything” (2006) became a hybrid orchestral rock blend for the ages. And on “The Grand Illusion / Pieces of Eight Live” (2011), the band performed at its peak when tackling every track from a pair of its finest triple-platinum albums back to back. The band also re-recorded two discs worth of its classic material with “Regeneration Volume I & II” (2011 and 2012). “Now,” Shaw said, “you have something you can take home with you and go, ‘Yeah, that’s the band I saw last night.’”
After more than a decade together on the road, this incarnation of Styx is looking forward to performing as many shows as it can as long as it can. “It all comes back to the chemistry,” said bassist/vocalist Phillips.
“The legacy of this band will be that it brought joy to millions of people,” added drummer Sucherman.
“We’ve always tried to explain why this is this happening,” said keyboardist/vocalist Gowan. “It’s obviously a multitude of factors, but the main one is that our show is really good! And if it’s really good, they’re going to come to see it again.”
Said co-founding guitarist/vocalist Young: “Music is this amazing force that comes from a higher place. I'm humbled for this band to have the great success that it has.”
“We just want to keep on doing this,” Shaw said. “We want to let life take its course and let this music continue to be the soundtrack to it. And this band will continue to evolve as long as we live and play this music.”