BANDS TO FANS
  • Home
  • Hire Us
  • Clients
  • Contact
  • Interviews
  • Substack
  • eBooks
  • Voice Overs

The Resilience of Styx

11/23/2022

 
Picture
Cris Cohen: This might seem a little bit of a stretch, but I would even draw a through line thematically from that experience to the recording of “Crash of the Crown”. In the sense of… you guys were moving along with it, the pandemic hits, suddenly everyone is in their own homes, in different countries. And yet, you guys found a way to record together virtually, and get around this obstacle. Like, “Okay, we can't push through this thing, but how can we get this done in other ways?”

Lawrence Gowan of Styx: So that was the challenge for everyone, everyone on planet Earth. How do we navigate our way through this, with a virus that doesn't care what our intentions are? And the disappointing thing for us, I have to say, was that we had made “The Mission” entirely with all of us in the studio together and had that experience like a band would in the 1970s, a band like Styx, where we're in each other's faces, and our phones are all shut off for five seconds, and we can actually embrace that method of the analog world of how to make music as a band and have it sound like it came from that era.

So we figured all that out, and we had to replicate that on the making of “Crash of the Crown”. We had the songs written, all but two of them, and had started the recording process that way, or at least myself and Tommy Shaw and Will Evankovich, who was our co-writer and producer on both of those records.

And suddenly this interruption happens. And like everyone else, we thought, “Well, it's a drag. We'll have to stop for maybe as much as six weeks, maybe even two months, before we can get back to it.” And at the two-month mark, we thought, oh, once again, not following our script. This could be indefinite.

We went back and we listened to the songs. And we felt, “These songs relate so well to what we -- and probably a lot of people on the planet -- are going through psychologically and the challenges that we're facing. The lyrics really fit with this situation. We have to find a way to do this.”

For myself living in Toronto, I couldn't cross the border anyway. So that was a moot point. So we realized, just like you and I are doing this Zoom thing… I didn't know what this was in February of 2020. At the end of March 2020, I was very familiar with it, and this became a new phenomenal tool for communication. You and I are speaking, we could have this conversation over the phone, but there's something about being able to look you in the eye and see you and get some kind of idea of obviously this guy’s into the Stones, and stuff like that. Like knowing these things, it alters the conversation.

Well, I have a great studio in Toronto, with all this analog gear I bought years ago. And I have a great partner there, Russ Mackey, who's a phenomenal engineer and producer. And Tommy and Will were in Nashville, Todd was in Austin, Texas, JY in Chicago, Ricky was also in Austin. We all figured out how we're going to do this. We used this Zoom medium and a thing called Audiomovers. We pushed through and made the record starting from around late August of 2020 right into about November.

In October, I was done with all of my parts. It got so second nature that it really felt exactly as if we were in the studio together.

And that I think speaks volumes to the adaptability and flexibility of human beings when faced with a challenge like that. We still were able to do the record, to tape and to get all the analog juice in there that needed to be there in order to make it qualify or in some way resonate as a classic rock album. And again, the resilience of Styx. This speaks probably to why this band has endured for half a century. It's 50 years old. And that's just another aspect of how they've navigated it.
Full Interview

Comments are closed.
    Subscribe

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011

    RSS Feed

Contact
A division of Connect To Fans
  • Home
  • Hire Us
  • Clients
  • Contact
  • Interviews
  • Substack
  • eBooks
  • Voice Overs