Year 2002

June 26, 2002

Hello Friends,

We've been in the recording studio here in Denver and will be for the next two days, finishing up a song for a Christmas album that we'll tell you more about later this year when it's ready to come out.  We think you're going to love it.  Today we get back into the new CD we just began recording last week at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles.

After the next couple of weeks, we won't get much time to hit the studio until we finish up our July/August dates.  Busy band we are.

Actually we've never been busier, but you won't hear any of us complaining.  We've never attempted to continue performing as we make a studio album, the thinking being that we could not focus adequate attention to the project.  At first I admit I was concerned, but at some point everything clicked and all the benefits of being legged up from touring, paired with the museful infusion engorging our spirits, we are so energized now it's a bit scary.  Not really.  It's very satisfying to see the other members in the band so high from getting the creative juices flowing on top of the buzz we get from performing.

I'm not sure I would recommend this for other bands but for STYX it's working.  There are two things that make all the travel and sleep deprivation non-issues.  The adrenaline of performing for a house full of fans and the satisfaction of hearing what was only a sound in your head become a full blown recording of a song out of thin air.  In the past those things NEVER happened concurrently for us.

But it's a new day, and we love it.

See you soon...

TS
 
 

February 21, 2002

Hello Friends,

I'm writing from Peoria, Illinois where we've been for a little over 24 hours.  It finally started getting a bit colder than what we've experienced so far on our "Northern Exposure Tour 2002" with our "Arch Allies" REO.  Break out those hardly used winter coats!  The tour has been a huge success so far and looks to continue that way.  I'm not surprised.  It really is a great night of music.

I was leaving my bus after making coffee this morning when a couple of young dudes approached me and asked me to sign a few things.  Out came a stack of beautifully preserved STYX albums on vinyl, with sleeves in tact.  It amazes me to see fans who were definitely not even concepts when these albums were recorded, now going to a lot more trouble to get their hands on them than the fans who originally bought them.  And going the extra mile to seek us out for signatures.  Truly remarkable.

The thing is, for us, we are still as much a band working hard to dig down and write new music today as we were back then.  It's what keeps us vital and hungry.  To have a rich legacy of music from our past as our masterpiece in progress, we wake up every day excited about painting in more new details with the as yet unfinished new music.

Last night Lawrence and I watched Canada defeat Finland in Olympic hockey.  Wayne Gretzky fretted on the sidelines as he watched his team fight the defensive fight which secured their victory over the extremely aggressive Finland team.  He looked as if he aged ten years before our eyes.  Lawrence told me that he's never seen anyone age faster than retired hockey players.  The aches and pains from every hit, the lacerations and broken teeth, concussions and other trauma they'd adrenalized through to keep pushing their teams forward finally seems to catch up with them.  The amount of food they consumed to keep fueling their intense energy needs suddenly adds bulk in places that weren't bulky before and the constant training to keep pace slows mercilessly to that of the average person.  Evidently these things converge and translate into a concentrated aging process.

I can see how this would apply to people like us if you took away our touring, our songwriting and recording, our personal appearance schedules and photo sessions, etc.  It is this constant forward momentum that rules our micro-universe and explains why we relate more to young bands than to the people we graduated High School with.  Why we often have more in common with Snoop Dog, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and other touring entities than we do with many of the folks we grew up with.  A strange brother and sisterhood indeed, but we all share this obsession of ours to keep raising the bar.

I personally don't see ever finding out what the effects of turning off the time machine will be.  Retiring from doing what you love makes no sense to me, so it isn't a foreseeable future option in my book, and I think I speak for my pals out here as well.

A couple of nights ago as the show began I was having a little trouble hitting everything as precisely as I intended.  Lack of sleep perhaps, slightly higher altitude, whatever.  But within a few minutes the unabashed joy of seeing the smiling faces of the fans and feeling the heat of the other members of the band jump-started my sluggish skull and next thing I knew I was on top of my game again.  This is the opiate of what we do.  There is a Gold Top Les Paul (electric guitar) that Norm from "Norm's Rare Guitars" shipped out to me yesterday, waiting for me at the gig and it feels bigger than Christmas and reminds me very much of how I felt in 1964 when my folks bought me my first electric guitar, a black and white Silvertone with an amp built into the case, from the Sears/Roebuck catalog.  I can't help it.  Some things never change.

To think I ever felt like I needed any other stimulant or mind altering substance only underlines the beauty of outliving a large amount of my own stupidity in those matters.  These days I embrace the often mocked cliché of getting "high on life."  If you have MY life and you aren't buzzing from it and intoxicated by it, you might want to see if you have a pulse at all.

Go Maple Leafs.  (That is of course unless you are playing the USA...)

TS
 

February 6, 2002

Hello Friends,

Let's take a trip back in time...

In 1979 I went with an A&M promo executive to Tokyo, Japan, then to Sydney and Melbourne, Australia for a PR trip for STYX.  In Australia, the night before I was to leave to return to America after being gone for two solid weeks of nonstop interviews and appearances, I went to a local club where a famous Aussie guitarist was appearing.  All week everyone had warned me to be careful drinking the Australian beer.  Being a still imbibing member of society I scoffed at such a wimpy insinuation regarding my ability to handle a few cold ones.

Needless to say, I woke up the next morning with virtually no memory of where I had been and zero recollection of what I'd done the night before.  I was painfully aware of how deathly green around the gills I was.  Ironically, THE most important appearance of the entire trip was to be taped that afternoon.  "Molly Muldrum's Countdown," THE biggest Rock TV Show in the southern hemisphere was never mentioned by anyone with anything less than the same amount of awe given to the Dalai Lama or a meeting with the queen.

So there I was with the worst hangover I'd had since I was a teenager, and I had to perform "Boat On The River" as well as sit for an interview in less than 4 hours.  I drank coffee, ate dry toast, took aspirin, Tylenol, prayed, exercised and anything else the locals could come up with, but they had seen this phenomenon before and only shook their heads and said, "We warned you..."

Soon we were at the television studio.  I wore an aqua blue shirt and a black jacket.  When we rehearsed and I met Molly, he was wearing the identical combination of clothes and colors.  We looked like members of a casual glee club.  Neither of us said anything but it was clear we both took notice.  I decided to make it easier for him and removed my jacket in the time between rehearsal and taping.  I also gave in and asked for the hair of the dog, which turned out to be straight Jack Daniel's.  It was NASTY, but it worked.  I was no longer quite as high on the list of "those most likely to hurl on Molly on prime time."

I was supposed to sit in front of a blue screen and lip sync to the STYX video performance of "Boat" while playing the mandolin.  I was feeling good enough for that, and I figured I could fake my way through the interview.  Moments before taping began an assistant popped their head into the green room and announced to me "Sorry, but the blue screen isn't working, so we'd like you to just play it live by yourself..."  I suddenly felt ill again.  Another gulp of JD and I went for it.  When they announced my name I walked out to the generous applause of the live audience and when I shook hands with Molly I immediately noticed he's also removed HIS black jacket.  Casual Glee Club men think alike.  I don't really remember the interview, but soon enough he announced my pending performance and cut to a commercial.  I moved over to the set, surrounded by members of the audience and soon I was singing, just me, the mandolin and the knowledge that I was a two-legged toxic wasteland.

I got through it and now looking at the photo below, I realize how great and forgiving youthfulness is.  You'd never know what was going on to look at me.

You'll be pleased to know that I gave up the booze many many moons ago, so there will be no new stories like this.  There are still plenty of OLD stories, and that's how I prefer to keep it.

They say God looks out for children and drunks.  Since I no longer qualify in either of those categories, I suppose I can take comfort in knowing I won't be bugging God for that service any more.

TS

January 29, 2002

Hello Friends,

It's Tuesday afternoon here in Los Angeles and a storm front keeps teasing to turn into rain.  The wind blew like crazy a few days ago, drying everything out and creating fire conditions, but a good soaking over on Sunday cleared all the dust as well as the usual haze over the basin.  Yesterday it was so clear it was almost unsettling.  From where we live in the Hollywood Hills you could see clearly to Long Beach and all the way to the San Gabriel Mountains in Orange County.  The golden sunlight that we get about an hour before sunset only added to the psychedelic clarity, bathing the sides of the skyscrapers downtown and creating such a blinding panoramic view we had to go outside and try to absorb the rare visual feast before it changed.

Last night there were several aftershocks from the 1994 Northridge earthquake.  Even another was reported as I watched the local morning news, slouched with my cup of coffee on the living room couch.  The hills absorb so much of the seismic rumbling that I never felt a thing.  But it only goes to show you that there is balance in the universe.  All the beauty and splendor of California are the rose.  Fires, quakes and mud slides are the thorn.

Yesterday when I got into the car to go work out, the CD player was playing 7Deadly Zens from when Jeanne was out and about.  She never likes to listen to it when I'm present.  I tell her it messes with her suspension of disbelief.  I don't think I've listened to it in at least a year, maybe longer.  Long enough to have distanced myself from what it took to create it.  So now, since we have all put on the songwriting hats and begun creating new music for a future STYX project, my writing side is raw and sensitive to anything that strikes a creative note in my head.  The list of unfinished songs grows as we continue to get together for band writing sessions so I am this strange, semi-here being moving around, curiously preoccupied all the time with the omni-track music trains running constantly in my head, working subconsciously on each song, sometimes several songs at a time.  To hear a finished, polished collection of my own music had quite an impact on me.  "How the heck did I do that?" was something that came up a few times as I drove into Beverly Hills this morning.  7DZ was my favorite record making experience so far.  It was never meant to be a piece of product that fit into a genre.  Not an attempt to break away and become a solo artist.  Just a work of love.  I got to work with so many great people and had so many memorable experiences that it was really a tapestry of everything I'd learned or experienced up to that point.

Gerry Goffin, Alison Krause, Ed Roland, Kevin Cronin, of course my DY brothers and so many others came on board to make it bigger for me than any solo record I ever imagined doing.  I can listen to it now as almost a detached observer, but more like an out of body experience.  So often, in fact most of the time, album projects involve one compromise after another and are in fact a defining aspect of being in a band.  Creative people, each with a hammer and chisel, carving away on the big block of stone, agreeing and disagreeing on just what to reveal, with the most convincing leading the way with each swing of the hammer.  Solo, by definition, is the opposite experience.  You can look to others for inspiration, guidance, advice, co-writing, etc., but at the end of the day is the singular voice.

I have been incredibly blessed, beyond my wildest expectations.  I have worked with one great singer, player, writer, performer after another since my childhood and they have each taught me a thing or two in the process.  7DZ was the one to beat when the day comes that I have the time to take on another solo project.

Meanwhile, we are about to embark on a little winter tour with REO, which any more is closer to a road trip with your buds than a real job.  Down to the crew members, it is about as easy a thing to do as we've ever experienced, and as you know, REO gets better and better with each passing season.  The joy that comes from their side of the line is real and it spreads like a rumor.  The fact that the tour is doing so well in advance only tells me that we must be living right.

See you soon!

Tommy