Styx frontman Lawrence Gowan on Aug. 4 Bank of NH Pavillion trifecta – with Foreigner, John Waite
They’ve been on the road with fellow classic rock icons Foreigner for their “Renegades & Jukebox Heroes Tour,” which lands at the Bank of NH Pavilion in Gilford on August 4. The show starts at 6:45 p.m. with pop rock artist John Waite (“Missing You”) kicking off the festivities.
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GILFORD, NH – Classic rock is as big of a part of the American musical landscape as any other genre, and there’s a case to be made that it’s even bigger than ever now, due to its longevity and its ability to impact a wide range of generations.
There are only a few classic rock bands still touring and performing on a regular basis. One of those bands is Styx from Chicago, known for hits like “Lady,” “Come Sail Away,” “Renegade,” “Too Much Time On My Hands,” and “Mr. Roboto.”
They’ve been on the road with fellow classic rock icons Foreigner for their “Renegades & Jukebox Heroes Tour,” which lands at the Bank of NH Pavilion in Gilford on August 4. The show starts at 6:45 p.m. with pop rock artist John Waite (“Missing You“) kicking off the festivities.
During a recent chat with Lawrence Gowan, co-lead vocalist and keyboardist for Styx, we talked about his musical education, collaborating with all sorts of people, how this massive tour came together and thoughts about doing it all over again next year.
Rob Duguay: When you were 19, you earned an associate diploma in classical piano performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. In what ways did this particular education acclimate you to perform and write rock music?
Lawrence Gowan: Honestly, I began to take note of the classical influence that had crept into rock probably around when I first heard The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper record when I was 10 years old. Suddenly, there were sounds that felt deeper than the pop music that was going on and I was trying to discern what that was. Particularly with the piano, I remember hearing the Rolling Stones’ “She’s A Rainbow,” and that one had Nicky Hopkins on piano with this Mozart-like approach. During the early ‘70s was when it really dawned on me with emerging bands like Genesis, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and even Elton John and Queen, I began to notice how much classical music was playing into it. I then decided that if I really wanted to do this, I started attending the Royal Conservatory to study classical music.
It wasn’t intended, it was just to broaden my musical vocabulary for when I actually wanted to write my own songs. That’s truly what was behind all of that.
RD: You’ve been a co-vocalist and keyboardist for Styx since 1999, so what makes being part of this band stand out for you versus other projects that you’ve been a part of in your career?
LG: First of all, it’s one of the most successful bands on planet Earth through being played on the radio, record sales, etc. More than that, quite honestly, we did a couple shows together in Montreal in 1997 and I opened for them, I hadn’t opened for anybody in Canada for 14 years. I got to see Styx live and I really thought they were excellent, I really thought the show was great. When they called in 1999, it felt right to try to have this be and act two to my own career after my solo career, which had six albums with four of them going platinum and my greatest hits record had just come out the year before. I thought of it as a bookend for that for the time being and to see what it would be like to join a band instead of being a solo artist, and what better band to join up with than Styx? That was 25 years ago now.
RD: Outside of Styx, you’ve collaborated with the likes of former King Crimson bassist Tony Levin, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson and Jerry Lee Lewis among many others. When it comes to creating with another musician for the first time, how do you usually approach it?]
LG: There’s two levels of collaboration, one is when you’re playing and the other is when you’re writing. In the ‘80s up until 1990, I wrote all of my songs myself and I was fortunate enough to get some of the greatest players on planet Earth to join me in the recordings. As you mentioned, Tony Levin and also Jerry Marotta from Peter Gabriel’s band. After that, Jon Anderson from Yes was on the next album, who is a hero of mine, and in 1990 I worked with Alex Lifeson from Rush because we had the same manager. That created the opportunity to have Alex involved in one of my albums, which was my fourth one called “Lost Brotherhood”.
Hearing each of their takes on my songs was always really exciting because you had these world class, world-renowned musicians giving their interpretation of what you’ve written and how their instrument fits into it. That’s always a very elating experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It can be a little difficult to navigate exactly what their part should be with them being so well established in their own right, but once that’s accomplished, it’s very fulfilling and very rewarding. As far as writing goes, a person who I wrote a couple songs with for that record in 1990 was a guy named Eddie Schwartz, who is best known for writing “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”, which is sung by Pat Benatar. In a lot of ways, that laid the groundwork for me learning how to write and work with other musicians in a creative sense.
In a way, it prepared me for what I’ve done with Styx and the albums that we’ve written together starting with “Cyclorama” in 2003 and really extensively co-writing with Will Evankovich for “The Mission”, which came out in 2017, and the most recent one “Crash of the Crown” that came out in 2021.
RD: It’s cool that you’ve been able to have these different experiences and form your own musical approach from them. For this current tour with Foreigner, both bands released an accompanying album titled “Renegades & Juke Box Heroes” that features all of the hits from both acts, so who had the idea for this and how did it all come about? You don’t really hear of tours like these having a record accompanying them.
LG: Well, we had toured together, Foreigner & Styx, around the United Kingdom around 10 years ago and we also did an American tour about eight years ago and both were really successful. Basically, the pairing of the two made a lot of sense to Live Nation and to our managers. They were speaking to each other a couple years ago and they both agreed that it was time for these two bands to do another tour together. With Foreigner, we have a really good rapport with all those guys and it just made a lot of sense. There’s probably about a dozen classic rock bands that are still active and touring on the level that both bands are at, so the numbers are fairly limited with who we could do this with on a large scale.
Foreigner is still very much built for that, and we also have our special guest opener John Waite, so there’s four hours straight of classic rock that everyone knows every word to. The audience just soaks it up.
RD: It’s hit after hit. After this run of shows with Foreigner and John Waite, what’s next for Styx going into 2025?
LG: We got new material and we almost have the next record written, we just need to carve out the time to actually do the recordings. We’ll likely start doing that in earnest toward the end of the year when the dates lighten up a little bit. I can’t say for sure that there will be a new album being released next year because at the moment this tour has gone so exceedingly well, so we might be doing a full blockbuster summer tour again, which is something we normally don’t do. We usually take a couple years in between these mega tours while instead performing in other regions of the country or other parts of the world. I can’t say for sure, but we’re either going to be doing some more dates on this tour or finish up the next record.
