Squaring the Vision of ‘Circling From Above’

By Doug Fox

It was a mid-March evening in Salt Lake City, and I found myself gathered around a pre-show catering table at the stately Grand America Hotel, pen and notepad at the ready, surrounded by Styx’s songwriting triumvirate of Tommy Shaw, Lawrence Gowan and Will Evankovich. 

They were hours away from tearing through a high-voltage private Styx set — tight, familiar, hit-packed — the kind of show built to ignite even the most mixed corporate event crowd with recognizable melodies and lyrics with which to sing along. We weren’t talking about the classics, however. We were enthusiastically focused on the near future.
Our main topic of conversation centered on a new collection of music that was to that point unheard outside of the group’s inner circle: namely, Styx’s new album, Circling From Above.

At that point, I’d actually been immersing myself in these songs for a little over two weeks, and it became increasingly obvious with each new listen that the band was forging forward with the momentum fostered from its previous two releases, The Mission (2017) and Crash of the Crown (2021).

Circling From Above marks the band’s third studio album in eight years. Considering the 14-year gap in original studio albums before that, it’s safe to say this creative resurgence has moved the needle from welcome coincidence to full-blown trend.

Circling From Above showcases a band in the midst of an inspired second wind rather than one settling for a victory lap. Following its release, the 13-song, 41-minute masterclass in songwriting racked up enthusiastic reviews by rock influencers and fans alike behind the strength of lead singles “Build and Destroy” and “Forgive,” along with an expansive cast of additional favorites such as “It’s Clear,” “Michigan,” “King of Love” and “The Things That You Said,” to name a few.

With Styx in the midst of an undeniable creative heater, it seems like the perfect time to delve a little deeper into the band’s current songwriting surge and the combination of events leading to the new album. Our mid-March meeting in Salt Lake City and several follow-up video interviews provided a unique window into that process.

So, let’s pull back the curtain on how Circling From Above took flight, shall we?

From ‘Wasteland’ to ‘Fate’

The first word listeners hear when pushing play on the title track of the new album is “wasteland.” The final word they hear at the end of album closer “Only You Can Decide” is “fate.”

These are what producer and multi-instrumentalist Will Evankovich refers to as “happy accidents.”

While not consciously planned as bookends, those two words — “wasteland” and “fate” — unintentionally encapsulate the album’s arc: a journey through technological debris, human ambition, emotional reckoning, and ultimately, personal choice. It’s that unspoken cohesion that makes Circling From Above feel less like a collection of songs and more like a unified experience — one that rewards close listening and invites reflection between the lines.

“It’s a series of minuets — a theater of the mind,” keyboardist/vocalist Lawrence Gowan told me that first night. “Little nuggets cobbled from different perspectives.”

That cohesion begins long before the album sequencing stage — it starts at the source. Styx’s creative process may evolve with the times, but its heartbeat remains steady: artists who write because they’re innately compelled to.

“I think that the credit has to go to Tommy and Lawrence — they’re both very creative people as far as writers,” says Evankovich, who joined the band full-time during the Crash of the Crown Tour. 

Evankovich has been a collaborator with Shaw dating back to the Shaw/Blades project tour in 2007.

“Tommy has to write,” he says of the guitarist/vocalist. “He's born to be a songwriter. That’s just who he is.”

And as the band has rediscovered the rhythm of making full-length albums, so too has the writing process deepened, sowing a blend of instinct, discipline, and trust.
It’s one thing to write a song. It’s another to put it out into the world.

The First Chord is the Deepest

For Shaw, songwriting often starts like planting a seed.

“You start hearing it in your head and pick up a guitar,” he says. “Then the guitar will give you the key you’re going to do it in. And then it starts to blossom, like seeds going into the ground with some rain water and you just keep minding it. And if it’s meant to be, it will take root into a good song.”

That intuitive beginning can lead anywhere. Sometimes, as Shaw describes it, “You just let it come to you — and then when you get it, you stick with it.”

The pieces eventually start falling into place.

“They’re all just little puzzle pieces, but there’s not a thousand pieces,” he says.

After a while, you get a feel for how different pieces best fit together. A perfect example is “Only You Can Decide.” Shaw started with an open E chord, added a single pinky note a couple frets up on the E string, and suddenly heard a new emotional color.

“That's what makes that chord sound kind of lovely,” he says. “That's how that song got started. I picked it up and just followed it.” From there, the lyrics unfolded organically. “You're building it … and if it's something that evokes some kind of emotional thing, usually happiness or something not too sad … you just let it tell you where to go.”

That sense of discovery is part of what keeps songwriting exciting — even after decades enduring the tantalizing grind.

“I like to see where it will just open up to the next part,” Shaw says. “There’ll be a little door, then another door will open. And you can go upstairs or you can go down. You can always come back to where you started, so you’re never lost in the woods.”

While many of Styx’s most memorable songs came from similar instincts, today’s process also thrives on collaboration. Ideas now bounce freely between Shaw, Gowan, and Evankovich — sometimes starting as rough fragments, or “song buds,” as Evankovich calls them.

“How it takes shape sometimes is just kicking over song buds or ideas to any of the three of us,” he says. “And then it starts to become something.”

The choice of lead vocalist on any particular song often depends on where that initial spark came from. “Usually it's the guy who sat down with the guitar and started humming and singing the melody line,” Shaw says. “Because if you get a melody line and you get the chords, then the rest of it … it's easy to extrapolate from there.”

As the band’s studio output has ramped up in recent years, so has their individual flexibility. Each writer works from home studios — affectionately referred to by Evankovich as “sandboxes.”

And that’s perhaps the real secret behind Styx’s current songwriting surge: not pressure, not deadlines, but passion. No record label pounding on the door. No ego-fueled drama. Just a shared understanding that writing is the lifeblood of a band and that something beautiful often begins with someone picking up a guitar or sitting at a keyboard and waiting to see where the next door opens.

Convening All Cooks in the Kitchen

The songwriting may begin in solitude, in another band member’s sandbox or in the quiet arc of a single chord. But it’s in the studio — with the rest of the band plugging in their contributions — that they truly become Styx songs.

Founding guitarist James “JY” Young scent-marked the album with his trademark baritone lead vocal on “King of Love,” a song written specifically for him, and the last one recorded for the album. In addition to his booming vocal, he plays a blistering guitar solo, even using the original G5 Strat he played on Styx’s debut album in 1972.

"When JY gets going, he’s hard to stop,” says Evankovich. “The Beck/Hendrix/Clapton love child exudes Chicago blues. It’s always a joy to see the improvisation take shape in the studio with him." 

Young doesn’t need to be a main songwriter these days but picks up Styx in more spontaneous ways.

“Us other songwriters will drive ourselves nuts with the whole process,” says Shaw. “JY is an old blues guy, he’s not wired like that. He’ll come up with a riff — like the main one in ‘Gone Gone Gone.’ I just happened to hear him playing that in the dressing room one night and it’s, like, ‘Wait, where’s my iPhone?’ And you record it. That’s pure JY. That type of thing just pours right out of him.”

The band’s rhythm section — drummer extraordinaire Todd Sucherman and bassist Terry Gowan — played a vital role in bringing the album’s 13 songs to life, anchoring each track while complementing the guitars, keyboards, and everything else swirling in the mix.

Two days were set aside at Nashville’s hallowed Blackbird Studio for drum tracking, but Sucherman, in peak form, tore through the entire album in a single seven-hour session — a feat equal parts precision and poetry.

“He had every note planned out when he got there,” marvels Evankovich. “He does that with his drum parts, so I was kind of expecting it — but I wasn’t expecting it to be done in seven hours!”

Ten songs in, Evankovich suggested knocking off for the day and picking up the final three tracks in the morning, when everyone would be fresh.

“But Todd was all, ‘No, I’m inspired. I want to keep going.’ And I’m like, ‘What the hell are we going to do tomorrow?’ And he goes, ‘I’ll come in and play tambourine.’”

Evankovich laughs. “He’s pretty amazing. I’m very grateful to work with someone that good. Drums are hard — usually they take the longest in the studio.”

You can check out Sucherman’s exquisite work in a series of videos captured during the actual takes that ended up on the record.

While Sucherman’s drum work was a cohesive anchor throughout the album, bassist Terry Gowan brought his own quiet fire to the sessions — locking in with groove, grace, and a sharp sense of when to let loose. Though a recent addition to the Styx lineup, the younger Gowan brother quickly proved to be the kind of musician who elevates a song not by dominating it, but by serving it fully.

Evankovich said Terry played upright bass on “Blue-Eyed Raven,” something he rarely does.

“He’d grabbed one a few weeks before recording, showed up, and pretty much nailed it in one take,” Evankovich said. “We did a couple more just in case, but honestly, he’s a remarkable musician. He’s a great writer, a great singer, a great piano player — the Gowans are all really talented, and Terry’s no exception.”

Evankovich adds, “Usually when I’m writing, I play the demo bass parts myself — and he could’ve come in and rewritten everything. But he really respected the foundation, stuck close to it, and made it better. On tracks like ‘The Things That You Said,’ toward the end he just goes completely banana cakes with these killer bass fills. He’s a consummate pro, and a gem to be around.”

Original bassist Chuck Panozzo added some goose eggs and his unique touch to the tranquil interlude “Ease Your Mind.”

“I can see why he sounded great on all those Styx records,” Evankovich enthused. “He’s a unicorn.”

And while the spotlight often shines on the songwriters, Circling From Above is ultimately the work of a band in sync — each member bringing their full musical tool bag to the table. That chemistry doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the product of a renewed sense of purpose.

Start Spreading the Muse

For a band as seasoned and celebrated as Styx, there’s no pressure to chase the next hit. With a catalog of classics and a relentless touring schedule, they could coast indefinitely on nostalgia. But that’s never been their mode — as the past eight years clearly testify.

After the release of Cyclorama in 2003, the band found itself at a creative crossroads. The music industry was in flux, labels were scrambling to adjust to the digital revolution, and the economics of album-making had become increasingly upside-down. As Lawrence Gowan recalled, “There was a lot of disarray. … The big four labels were really trying to grapple with what the internet was doing. And we just noticed it’s not a great time to be making records, but it certainly is a great time to be playing live because people have discovered that there's only a few experiences now that you can't download, right?”

So they toured. A lot. And like many bands, they filled the occasional gap with a covers album,  singles and bonus tracks for live albums and DVDs. But for more than a decade, the idea of crafting a full-length studio album stayed on the back burner, not because the creativity wasn’t there, but because the environment didn’t seem to reward it.
That shift began with a realization: While touring might pay the bills, writing new music is good for the soul.

“We finally realized we should make a record because that’s part of the lifeblood of a band,” Gowan said. “New ideas have to keep coming to the surface. Otherwise, things get stale. Even as great as the music is that we play, it can get stale if you don’t have something new on the horizon that’s pulling you forward.”

Evankovich echoed that sentiment.

“Styx is a viable touring band that makes plenty of money on tour — so if you want to be a writer, then be a writer. That’s how we started in the first place.”

In that spirit, he and Shaw emphasized muse over matters, passing demos back and forth. No deadlines, no pressure. Just music for music’s sake. It was during that period when the pair wrote “Michigan,” and “The Red Storm,” from The Mission.

“I think for Tommy, those songs were a little jarring and not very Styx-like … and so we kind of shelved them,” says Evankovich. Then they traded two songs they’d been working on separately, “Locomotive” and “Mission to Mars,” which launched the entire Mission project and a songwriting journey whose fuse remains lit. “Things just kind of caught fire and it didn't really matter anymore whether it’s going to sell or not.”

For a band with nothing left to prove, the answer to “Why now?” is deceptively simple: They still have something to say.

Vintage Vinyl Meets Digital Dawn

Circling From Above showcases a band drawing on deep roots while still chasing new ground.

Even as the album threads together forward-looking themes and textures, it carries intentional nods to the rock legends who slightly preceded them. “Everybody Raise a Glass,” for instance, echoes Queen’s A Night at the Opera with its exuberant vocal approach and layered, Brian May-style guitar harmonies. “We Lost the Wheel Again” has a catchy, raucous energy reminiscent of Who's Next-era The Who, with Sucherman channeling his inner Keith Moon and Terry Gowan providing a turbocharged bassline that propels the whole track forward.

Listeners might also find Easter eggs evoking Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons, The Beatles, ELO and Supertramp throughout the album. It’s all part of the Circling From Above experience.

“We’re not afraid to show our influences,” says Lawrence Gowan. “I like the fact that we're such products of that entire era of classic rock that we don't try to necessarily mask in any way what we're inspired by from that period.”

“Forgive” is a perfect example of the current writing collective, featuring an emotional core, tradeoff lead vocals by Shaw and Gowan, and a perfectly crafted emotive guitar solo by Evankovich.

“That intro with an acoustic guitar and Tommy singing is a signature Styx thing, whether it’s ‘Crystal Ball,’ ‘Radio Silence,’ or any of the others he does,” Evankovich says. “That’s just classic. Give me an acoustic guitar and Tommy Shaw’s voice and I’m sold!”

“Michigan” is about the internet’s power for both good and bad. The song exudes a frenetic tension and was written in the style of a James Bond movie theme.

“It’s Clear” is another radio-friendly tune with brooding verses, powerful, melodic choruses and a bewitching breakdown segment in the middle. “It’s Clear” also has the distinction of being just the second Styx song to feature three separate lead vocal performances, with Gowan, Shaw and Evankovich all taking a primary turn at the mic.

“Blue-Eyed Raven” is a gypsy-flavored tale, bedazzled by Shaw’s Spanish guitar and mandolin stylings and a “Fiddler on the Roof” meets “Devil Went Down to Georgia” manic fiddle solo on the back end by Nashville session stalwart Aubrey Haynie. Adding to the song’s mystery is that it was inspired by a true story.

“That song has a long arc,” Evankovich says, citing previous Styx forays into unexpected territory on songs like “Boat on the River” and “Our Wonderful Lives,” which feature Shaw playing mandolin and banjo, respectively.

That spirit of exploration, Evankovich suggests, is just part of the band’s DNA — a willingness to honor their foundation while still staying wide open to wherever the songs lead.
“The mantra is: If it’s not good or it’s not great, it’s not going on there no matter who does it,” Evankovich says. “And people’s feelings can get hurt a little bit — but in the end, I think we all want the same thing.”

From ‘Wasteland’ to ‘Fate’ Reprise

“Only You Can Decide” follows in the grand tradition of choosing your closing song wisely. Pensive and poignant, it encapsulates the album’s theme of examining our personal choices and recognizing how they may fit into the larger scheme of humanity in general.

“I always heard that as the closing song,” says Shaw, noting that he wrote it in the wake of multiple school shootings. “It’s a broad message. I didn’t want to make it about gun issues but I was just trying to suggest that you don’t need to get a gun and do something bad with it.”

Just as the title track majestically unfolds like large doors opening to a new world, “Only You Can Decide” slowly closes them again, leaving the listener to ponder their individual role in creating the rare harmony that resonates on record — and in life.

“The bigger theme,” Evankovich says, “is that Styx is all about hope. We’re always trying to send a message that it’s possible, if we actually work together, to make things better.”
For now, it appears, that aspiration is best pursued in the space between “wasteland” and “fate.”