Styx Lights Up Red Rocks

The band joins forces with the Colorado Symphony to deliver a show for the ages.

by Mike Mettler

photo by Jason Powell

Even the weather knew it needed to step aside and respect showtime. When Styx took to the stage at 7:35 p.m. Mountain time at the beautiful Red Rocks Ampitheatre in Morrison, Colorado on August 29, the rain had stopped, the wind had calmed, and the sun was still out in force, adding the right elements to the naturally gorgeous backdrop for a magical night where the strong multi-genre foundation of Styx music and the classical accompaniment of the world-class Colorado Symphony — guided by the steady hand, as always, of the band’s official conductor-on-call, Liza Grossman — meshed in fine, fine harmony.

“This is the best orchestra we’ve ever played with,” declared co-founding guitarist/vocalist James “JY” Young, and it was hard to argue with the Godfather of Styx’s assessment. The band had spent the prior day rehearsing with the Symphony at Boettcher Concert Hall in nearby Denver, and you could already tell something special was in the air when that 2-hour rehearsal officially got underway around 3:30 p.m. (broken into two segments due to the union-required half-hour break) on the afternoon of August 28.

Many notes and tweaks were made during that rehearsal, as they often are, but it was clear both band and symphony were already in sync. The guitar-wielding bandmembers — JY, guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw, bassist/vocalist Ricky Phillips, and co-founding bassist Chuck Panozzo — all faced the symphony as they played and sang. Drummer Todd Sucherman faced toward the hall itself as per usual, doing his thing on a scaled-down Yamaha kit just to stage left of Liza’s podium, while keyboardist/vocalist Lawrence Gowan was perched behind a black Steinway & Sons piano. The band ran through most of the impending Red Rocks set, including tackling the critical back half of “Come Sail Away” a total of four times, as both JY and Todd consulted with Liza so the section in 3/4 time and A flat was wholly on point.

Early on in the rehearsal, monitor engineer Evan McElhinney walked onstage to check the vocal fills in the band’s monitors. The band harmonized briefly on the beginning vocals for “Light Up” so Evan could achieve the required balance. When JY noted that both he and Todd couldn’t hear Gowan’s vocals on “The Grand Illusion,” he suggested Evan put his vocal in Ricky’s monitor instead. “Feel OK?” Evan asked after making the adjustment. JY nodded his approval. Each time JY and Tommy traded off solos, their axes sounded damn good to me whenever I stood down front near JY’s Fender DeVille amp, which was positioned facing JY between his and Tommy's positions.

“Can you make some silly sounds with your mouth?” Tommy joked with Gowan before leading into the acoustic intro to “Man in the Wilderness.” The Symphony’s string section was humming throughout the whole track, especially during Tommy’s acoustic-to-electric transition. “Good! That was awesome!” Liza said after the song finished — and I second that sentiment.

The next day at Red Rocks, about 3 hours before showtime, JY came out front and stood on the steps near stage right to see what things looked like from the eventual audience’s point of view. “I prefer playing in the elements,” he told me. “It adds an extra kick only Mother Nature can provide.” A light drizzle and some wind continued to linger, however, pushing soundcheck back a bit to 5:05 p.m., until production manager Brian Wong gave the OK to uncover all the onstage gear and proceed. In the wings, Gowan sang, “Good men through the ages… Still I wonder, yes I wonder…” — key lines from the 1970 Creedence Clearwater Revival classic, “Who’ll Stop the Rain.”

Finally, someone or something did stop the rain, and soundcheck started with “Renegade,” which hadn’t been played during the previous day’s Denver rehearsal. The four interlaced introductory “Oh mama” harmonies were spot on from the get-go, and the Symphony was right there with them. After the first “Renegade” run-through, Todd and Liza conferred about the tempo during “the jig is up” giddyup sequences to make sure everyone kept things tight, a word both the band and symphony members used on their own to describe how it felt playing together. Yes indeed, we were definitely in for a spectacular night ahead.

As the Symphony commenced the show at 7:35 p.m. with the grand swell of “Overture,” the wheels were turning in Tommy Shaw’s head. “We should use that for something,” he mused about earmarking it for the future, pausing to hug the SoundBard before heading up the ramp to the Red Rocks stage from stage left.

And then it was on.

When Gowan settled into the beginning of “Lady” at his keyboard, Liza briefly came offstage on stage right, and pulled a few tissues out of a box sitting on the roadcase where production manager Jeff Heintz was stationed. Liza took of her glasses, dabbed her eyes, and smiled. “I’m a little overwhelmed right now,” she said, with clear emotion in her hushed voice. “This is #1 on my bucket list. A dream come true.” And with another smile, she returned to her podium. Later, during the first encore, “Rockin’ the Paradise,” the ever-mischievous Gowan jumped onto said podium, grabbed Liza’s baton, and “conducted” the orchestra for a few bars himself, perhaps recalling a certain sequence in Fantasia (or perhaps not). When I later winkingly called Gowan a “conductor usurper,” Liza responded, “I like the shtick!”

Before tackling “I Am the Walrus,” Gowan noted how The Beatles themselves had performed in this very location on August 26, 1964. “I looked that date up before we went onstage,” he told me with a grin during the set break as we located the replication of the ticket for that very show in my ever-present Beatles American Tour 1964 notebook — and we then found out that ticket cost only $6.60, with tax!

During the set break, the band was clearly pumped at what had just occurred. “Does it feel as good as I think it does?” exclaimed Tommy. (Note to T: That’s a full-on affirmative.) “Amazing,” Liza concurred. “That was f---ing great!” enthused manager Charlie Brusco, high-fiving everyone as they entered the dressing room.

JY applauded his bandmates and reiterated, “This is the best orchestra show we’ve done in terms of the vibe, and everything. When the crowd turned on all those cellphone lights [during ‘Light Up’], it was magical.” In the hallway between the dressing room and the hospitality room, Liza assessed: “That was a hot first half!” Gowan came over to her to discuss the strategy in the second set for when he would transition from his 2-minute original piano piece “Khedive” directly into “Pieces of Eight”: “To cue you, I’ll count 1-2-3-4, because I do know how to count!”

The second half of the show was just as thrilling — though the wind did pick up quite a bit and some Symphony members had to scramble to secure their scores, as a few pages blew onto the stage in front of the band as well as off to the sidestage behind the percussion section. One of the lead violinists stood up, leaned over, and gave Liza a large rubber band to keep her oversized score books battened down on her podium.

After the performance, Colorado Symphony percussionist Michael Tetreault was quite impressed with how the evening came off overall. “It felt like we had all already done this together a dozen times,” Tetreault told me while standing outside the band’s dressing room. “Everything was really tight, and Todd [Sucherman] had a lot to do with it. My favorite performance of the night was ‘Come Sail Away.’ The thing that strikes me the most about Styx is that they love what they’re doing.”

“The orchestra was excellent,” Chuck Panozzo observed while seated on one of the dressing room couches. “From the stage, the rocks themselves looked like they were framing an ocean and a waterfall of people. I’m now 3 years into remission, and I’ve learned to appreciate evenings like this even more.”

Before heading out to the bus, Ricky Phillips noted, “The evening was so vibey, so I knew it was good. My job is to stay tight all night, and keep the foundation tight with Todd. It’s hard for us to hear the orchestra when we’re onstage, but I can tell it was special when my heart is beating at the same time as what we’re doing out there.”

Now that Liza has crossed off her top bucket list conducting-related item, what’s next? She says her #2 venue is The Hollywood Bowl out in California — so let’s keep our collective fingers crossed that the masters of the Styx touring and routing universe have that locale in mind for sometime in 2017, or beyond.