From the Vaults: StyxWorld

 

      What is new in the world of Styx?  We haven’t touched base with them since FTV:  Styx in Three Acts back in March of 2021.  After seeing an interview the current leader of the band Tommy Shaw did recounting how he came to join them in December of 1975, it seemed an opportune time to see what else has transpired over the last half a decade.  Before we get into the here and now, let’s take a brief look at how a blond haired Georgia boy ended up in one of Chicago’s biggest musical exports, Styx.

     The brief formation story of the original band goes back to 1962 when Dennis DeYoung passed by the house of the Panozzo brothers (John and Chuck).  He heard them playing and stuck  his head in the window to check them out.  A budding accordionist, the 15-year-old DeYoung offered his services to the 13-year-old twin’s polka band which later became a popular cover band known as The Tradewinds.  After a name change to TW4 (There Were 4), they continued to play while attending Chicago State College.  Guitarist John Curulewski joined the band when guitarist Tom Nardini departed.  Another hard rock guitarist, John ‘JY’ Young came on board in 1970.  When the band signed with Wooden Nickel Records, they began looking for a new name. Everyone tossed out ideas and finally decided on Styx because, in DeYoung’s telling, “It was the only one none of us hated.”

     Styx began writing their own songs and beginning with the eponymous album Styx in 1972, they released an album almost yearly throughout the 1970s.  Four albums released on Wooden Nickel were a mixture of straight-ahead rockers and songs with definite progressive rock leanings.  The sleeper power ballad hit Lady (from Styx II (1973)) first saw the light of day on legendary Chicago station WLS.  When it broke through nationally, it climbed to No. 6 on the singles charts (which helped pull the LP to No. 20 on the album charts).  With one of the earliest examples of a power ballad to his credit, Dennis DeYoung became the defacto ‘father of the power ballad.”

     The success of Lady got the band signed by A&M Records.  Their first outing for the label (Equinox (1975)) began getting significant airplay on the newly emerging Album Oriented Rock (AOR) FM format.  As the band was preparing to tour behind Equinox, Curulewski announced he was leaving the band to spend more time with his family.  This is the point of the story, the band was on the upswing toward their greatest commercial success when a door opened and Tommy Shaw walked into the band.

     In January of 2026, Shaw sat down with Doug Fox for an interview that was posted on their website, The Stygian Chronicles.  The interview was instigated when Shaw received news that longtime Styx mentor and advisor Jim Vosecek (known to all as ‘Vose’) had passed away peacefully at the age of 75.  Prior to his association with Styx, Vose had worked as a roadie and sound engineer for another Chicago area band, The Ides of March (1970-72).  His official tenure with Styx ran from 1974 to 1980, encompassing the release of six albums, five of which sold in  platinum or gold record status numbers.

     Before Curulewski decided to leave the band, Shaw was playing in MS Funk.  They did a lot of gigs along the mile-long strip of clubs on Chicago’s upscale Rush Street in the Near North Side area of Chicago.  “I was just another guy playing on Rush Street,” Tommy told Fox.  “Our band was killer, but it didn’t seem to matter how good our band was.  Eventually, there was just no audience for it, coast to coast.  We played until there were no more gigs, and then we all just went home,  That was it,  That was the end of MS Funk.”  He went back to Montgomery and joined a local band called Harvest.  Steady work playing covers at places like Kegler’s Cove (a local bowling alley lounge) provided a steady $200 weekly paycheck and more financial stability than he had seen chasing gigs with MS Funk.  Then he got ‘the call’.

     Jim Vosecek had seen MS Funk play and had even booked some shows for the eight-piece group that included a horn section.  He remembered the stage presence and skill of the band’s young blond guitar player.  With the immediate crisis created by Curulewski’s departure, Vose knew dates were booked, tickets had been sold, and swift action was in order.  He told Styx he had the ideal replacement…if he could track him down.  Some detective work on his part finally found Shaw in Montgomery.  He called and said, “Can you come over tomorrow?  I’ll have a plane ticket waiting for you at the counter.  If you just go to the Montgomery airport tomorrow, get on the plane and come here, we’ll go out and see the guys.”

     Shaw now chuckles at his response to Vose:  “I told him I was making $200 a week and that he would have to beat that.  And he kind of laughed and said, ‘Don’t worry, you’re not going to have any money problems.’”  Tommy made his flight and met the band but it was not much of an audition.  It was more like a test drive to see if everything would be a good fit.  He brought a guitar but it never saw the light of day.  The big test came when they gathered around the piano to see if he could hit the high notes on Lady.  He told Fox, “They gave me the highest note – it was the highest note plus another step up to the real highest note.  I wasn’t used to singing those kinds of clear, tight notes.  I was more of a blues singer.  But once I did that, they didn’t really linger on it.”

     When they dropped the needle on the Equinox track written by JY Young (Midnight Ride),

Shaw lost any preconceptions he had about the band.  JY’s riff in Midnight Ride ‘exceeded all of his expectations’:  “I fell in love with James Young at that moment.  I was like, ‘Okay, this is going to be good!’”  They already knew I could play.  I think when they heard I could sing that high note, I had the job when they heard that.”  His audition trip wasn’t without a little drama, however.  Vose hosted a party that first night at his Berwyn home which saw Shaw end up on the floor with JY kneeling over him:  “I stood up at one point and the next thing I know, I’m on the floor.  I didn’t know anybody and there were just a lot of new things happening and apparently I had an anxiety attack and passed out.   I’ve never passed out like that.  I’m hard-headed, so it didn’t hurt, but I have no idea why I blanked out.  So that was my first night there!.”

     The last person he met before they headed to the airport was John Curulewski.  The first thought was, “He is having second thoughts about leaving the band,” but Tommy said he actually was jovial and, “seemed really relieved to be out on his own and just not, you know, wrestling the bear, so to speak.”  Shaw went home with  a dozen songs to learn for the tour.  Between packing his road kit and rehearsing (“just me and my record player back in Montgomery”), he prepared for life on the road with Styx.  Vose wore many hats during Tommy’s first tour with the band:  “Vose was a great guy.  We had a small crew originally.  Jim could mix the sound, he could help set up, he could drive the rental truck.  He was just an all-around good guy.  He was funny and had a big laugh, and a great sense of humor.”

      Vose wasn’t a saint and Shaw gives him full credit for some classic hijinks that occurred on the road.  He said, “You know, day after day, it’s the same old stuff, and things like that really help the time go by.  When you’re on road trips like that, you’ve got do something to keep yourself amused – and oh yeah, Jim was big into that, too.”  Whether it was hiding a Coke machine in their room at a Holiday Inn or setting up a table and drinks in an elevator, Jim was right there in the midst.  When they were told, “You guys have to get your stuff and get out,” Vose simply took the hint and went off to the next adventure.

     Vose joined Tour De Force Productions in 1980, a company specializing in graphic design and staging for major rock acts.  He was fondly remembered in the Styx fan base and often posted insights and inside stories about Styx.  Unfortunately, he and the band had a falling out over a contractual issue and lost contact.  “We were friends for a long time,” Shaw said.  “You kind of take for granted that people are going to be around for a while.  And then one day you get a phone call that says, well, they’re not around anymore.  And you realize that you missed your opportunity to go say goodbye.  You know, if not for Jim, I might still just be living in Montgomery playing in bars.  That phone call changed my life.”

      Where does this leave Styx in 2026?  On the road, of course.  After releasing a new album in 2025, (Circling From Above), the band announced it would be touring with another well known band from Chicago – namely Chicago.  While the tour press points out that both bands have had ‘a significant amount of membership turnover’, this first time collaboration will no doubt be a hit packed affair.  With longtime Chicago members Robert Lamm (keyboards, vocals) and James Pankow (trombone) quietly retiring due to health problems, 2026 finds trumpeter Lee Loughnane as the sole original member in the band.  Chicago’s revolving door of musicians since bassist Peter Cetera left for a solo career in 1985 hasn’t stopped them from being a top notch live band.  Their record sales may not be what they were in their prime, but they maintain a strong legacy following to the present.

     Styx went through its own share of lineups after an acrimonious break up with original keyboardist / vocalist Dennis DeYoung.  At the time the Mr. Roboto single (from the album Kilroy Was Here) reached the top three of the charts in 1983, friction built in the band as DeYoung’s shows began getting more and more theatrical.  Shaw rebelled, saying, “I am a guitar player and I am on stage for twenty minutes and never play a note,” before announcing he was leaving the band at the end of that tour.  After a six year hiatus, they came back strong with 1990’s Edge of the Century before they moved on without founding member DeYoung.  Dennis asked for a break to heal some nagging health problems and the rest of the band voted him out in 1999.  Canadian keyboardist / vocalist Lawrence Gowan was brought in to replace DeYoung after Shaw and Young had seen him performing an extensive catalog of Beatles tunes as a solo artist..  Both sides have their own version of how this all transpired, so you can decide who was right and/or wrong.  DeYoung would go on to tour the music of Styx with his own band while the Shaw / Young version kept recording and touring.

     Drummer Todd Sucherman joined the band in 1995 after original drummer John Panozzo died (from complications as a result of acute alcoholism) and he is still with the band.  Bassist Chuck Panozzo’s own health problems sideline him and he now appears as a special guest at selected shows.  Glenn Burtnik replaced Chuck for a short while before former Baby’s bass player Ricky Phillips held the spot from 2003 to 2024,  Phillips has now bowed out to pursue his own musical projects.  The current bassist is Lawrence Gowan’s younger brother Terry Gowan.  Producer and studio musician Will Evankovich has produced three recent albums by Styx (The Mission (2017), Crash of the Crown (2021), and Circling From Above).  He adds guitar, backing vocals, mandolin, and keyboards to the mix as well as song writing credentials alongside Lawrence Gowan and Tommy Shaw. 

     So to make a long story a bit shorter, suffice to say this isn’t the Styx those of us learned to love in the last quarter of the last century.  None-the-less, they have done multi-band tours with the likes of Cheap Trick, REO Speedwagon, Loverboy, Joan Jett, Foreigner, and as previously mentioned, this summer’s outing with Chicago.  Look for the full schedule on the Styxworld.com web site – we noticed they will be playing a couple of shows in Eau Clair, Wisconsin and at Milwaukee’s Summer Fest in June.

 

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