Fair in Maryland last weekend. Styx lineup is Todd Sucherman (drums), Ricky Phillips (bass, backing vocals, additional guitars), Lawrence Gowan (lead/backing vocals, keyboards), James Young (guitar, lead/backing vocals) and Tommy Shaw (Lead/backing vocals, guitars). As a band that’s been around, they could have easily given a staid performance of old hits, but somehow Styx delivers more energy with each new show.

Styx mixed it up by playing a number of songs that haven’t gotten much radio time, or much live time for that matter. . They played ‘Light up’ from the same album that gave us “Lady” on Styx II backin1975. ‘Man in the Wilderness’ is a song from Grand Illusion that is fairly new to their live set. And” Lights” probably hasn’t been played live since the album Cornerstone came out in1979. It was very cool when Tommy Shaw was telling the story of how when he first came to the band in ’75. He brought with him the song Crystal Ball. James Young was telling him it wasn’t quite a Styx song. After a few rewrites it came together as the Styx song it became. The storytelling in between some of the songs gave it a feel like the band and the crowd was friends that grew up together. Friends that enjoy rocking out retelling their stories

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