In the summer of 2020 they released their sixteenth studio album, "The Absence Of Presence", which debuted at number ten on Billboard's Top Current Albums chart. Their songs have been included in TV shows such as Supernatural, Reacher, All Elite Wrestling, South Park, The Office and The Simpsons. They've also had their songs featured in films like Old School, The Suicide Squad, Anchorman, Pitch Perfect, and Happy Gilmore.
The group we have been talking about is Kansas. To celebrate the band's 50th anniversary, Inside Out Music has released "Another Fork In The Road: 50 Years Of Kansas", which just happens to coincide with their fifty concert tour of North America. Kansas guitarist Rich Williams spoke with us about his group.
Q - Rich, in looking at your touring schedule it doesn't seem to be one night after another night after another night. You perform a couple of nights and take some time off. That's a smart move. That way you keep your energy level high.
A - Well, Phil (Ehart, Kansas member) and I discovered awhile ago, what we call the Kansas mode. No more buses. We don't do the bus. Buses are expensive. The overhead on a bus, if you play seven nights a week or one night a week, the bus costs the same amount of money. You've got days off and guys sit in hotel rooms. The best shows are on the weekends, so we decided it's got to be fun and it's got to be profitable and honestly enjoy this. And so for me, I moved from Atlanta, my wife and I moved to the mountains of North Carolina. On a Thursday I'll go down to Charlotte and catch a flight and say for this weekend to Pittsburgh, get here the day before the show, wake up, have breakfast and get to relax before the first show. Try to drive to the second show, which we're doing Baltimore, and I'll fly home on Sunday. So, I have Sunday evening, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off and Thursday afternoon I take off to the airport and do that throughout the year. So, there's always a week to look forward to. Get a chance to warm up, go over some things. Just to practice. Have a home life and do that most of the year. It just keeps everybody fresh and normal. There's nothing normal about riding around in a bus for eight months with a bunch of guys in their sixties and seventies. If you want to make somebody crabby, do that.
Q - You must have a top-notch travel agency making all these travel plans for you.
A - Marsha in Atlanta does miracles. We've got one guy come in from Savannah, two guys come from New Jersey, me coming from North Carolina, another guy coming from Chicago. And the crew is just as scattered. So, to co-ordinate all of that to arrive at a place around the same time, rental cars. She's a miracle worker. So, there's an app we look on. Here's what you do. Here's where you go. She makes it very easy. The logistics of it takes a professional.
Q - Practices really must be fun.
A - We call it homework. We have the ability to record every night. We have live tracks to play along with us, so I can sit at home in my own studio and play along with the band any time I want to. And so, their job is just to do the homework. Run through the set a time or two every day. That way when we get together, we rehearse, going through stuff in the dressing room before the show in leas an hour. It just keeps everybody loose, fresh and ready to go. Modern technology has made even recording remotely a lot easier. When we did the re-recording of "Can I Tell You", I did it from my guitar room up in the mountains and then mailed it in. The technology has made these things possible.
Q - When a band like Kansas has been around for fifty years, is it hard to keep everybody on the same page and limit the disagreements?
A - I can't remember the last real disagreement other than somebody waking up a little bit crabby. We don't really have too much to disagree about. I think over the years if we had a disagreement we would have already gone through it. Phil and I are the remaining original originals. I can't even remember when we had a cross word. For us it seems to be pretty easy. We all get along great. It's one big family. The crew are my friends. I don't think of them as my employees. Everybody out here wants to be here and loves this job. So, when you're in those circumstances it makes it easy.
Q - In January, 1977, your band mate Kerry Livgren told 17 magazine, "Our band sounds the way it does because we grew up in a place, Topeka, Kansas, that had absolutely no musical tradition." I kind of know what he means. It's not like being in New Orleans or...
A - Philadelphia.
Q - Were there other bands in Topeka that were doing what, "cover music"?
A - Oh, sure. We had radios and record stores. So we might get it a week later than they'd get it in Los Angeles, but we still got the same stuff. If you're playing in a bar band you're playing the hits of the day. That's how you get a job. (laughs) I think what might have been kind of unique for me let's say, and all of us, in our pre-musician days, was listening to AM radio. They would be playing the Top 40 of the day, but that same station would also be playing Classical music that night and maybe late enough they'd be playing Jazz music. So, you'd be hearing Mitch Ryder And The Detroit Wheels, the The Supremes, and then here comes the British Invasion with bits and pieces of that. So, AM radio and shows like The Hit Parade. My parents were always watching that, the hits of the day, Perry Como to whatever. So, we got hit by it all at the time. That was before everything was put in boxes. You had Country 'n' Western stations. See, we got a bit of it all. I guess that nobody told us you had to pick a side. (laughs) And so we just had kind of a general education of it all. You kind liked it or you didn't. The Statler Brothers were Top 40 radio back then. You'd get such a wide variety of influence.
Q - And see, that's what changed with radio. You only have one type of music on a station.
A - You have to pick a tea. And I don't get that. But in the meantime the Midwest had quite a phenomena of bands getting together, and this would have been the generation just above me, joining these Soul bands. These ten piece bands, horns, Hammond organ, guitar, bass, drums and lead singer all wearing matching tuxedos, roving all over the Midwest and putting on their own shows. You'd hear all this stuff broadcast late at night on AM stations across the country and that was a big influence, what they were doing. This was not just playing in a local club. These guys were playing all over this whole Midwest circuit. The Fabulous Flippers and all this stuff. That really influenced me as far as I want to do that, to get into one of these bands where I could break away from the three clubs we play and start traveling all over the Midwest. That was the biggest dream really. And, what if we could record something someday? By the time we had recorded the first album we had reached the zenith of what were trying to do. Then to have a Gold or even Platinum album... By then we had exceeded any dream. It's kind of been just gravy ever since. (laughs)
Q - Now this guy, Wally Gold, who for lack of a better word, "discovered" Kansas, whatever happened to him? Is he still around in the music business?
A - Oh, no. He passed away quite awhile ago. He worked for Don Kirshner. So, when we sent out the demo tape to about six places, we had a friend who lived in New York and he said he heard Don Kirshner was starting a record label. "Send me a tape and I'll take it over to the office." Well, he walks in and gives it to the secretary and threw it in a box with a hundred other tapes, and don't expect anything. And then we got a call. We were playing a bar in Dodge City. How Wally Gold found out we were there, I don't know. But he called during one of our breaks. The bartender said, "You guys have a call from New York." And it was Wally Gold. He said, "I heard the tape. Love the band. I'd like to come out and see you guys. So, put a show together." We had a record company that wants to come see us. So, we did that. There's a little, small town in the center and it's called Ellinwood, that had an old opera house there. There wasn't much else there really. And we used to rent the place. For $135 you could rent the building. Charge fifty cents at the door. And so we rented that place. We advertised free beer and of course the record company never knew that. So normally, fifty people would show up. Suddenly it was free beer and there were people outside who couldn't get in. Wally Gold was sitting up there watching us while all these people were going nuts. They were drunk. He called Kirshner back and said, "These guys have really got something!" So, he was sent on behalf of Don Kirshner and that's how we got our foot in the door with them.
Q - After your first album came out, you went from playing bars to opening for headlining groups in hockey arenas. How much time went by before Kansas became the headlining act?
A - We had a few little spots here and there where we would headline, but for the most part we were an opening act. It probably continued through the "Masque" album and really the headlining didn't start until "Leftoverture" just exploded. Again, while we had done some headlining, nothing to the extent of that. That really kicked the door down for us.
Q - According to Rolling Stone's Encyclopedia Of Rock and Roll, your first album sold 100,000 copies. Your second and third albums sold 250,000 copies because you were doing 250-plus gigs a year. You were really on the move! 100,000 copies of an album was enough to keep the record companies interested, wasn't it?
A - Yes. They had artist support back then. But when we hit the road we didn't have any money for that first album, so they gave us tour support. They'd pay for hotel rooms, rental cars, all we could eat. Of course all of that comes out of advance royalties and we signed the worst record deal of all time. We signed away our publishing. I think we got a quarter a record. So, to pay off a recording debt at twenty-five cents a record, and meanwhile they're probably skimming a third of it off the top that they're not reporting, it took a long time to pay off that tour support and recording costs. We weren't even with Kirshner until "Leftoverture" went Platinum. That's when we finally paid our past debt. There weren't a lot of music lawyers in Topeka, Kansas. "What's publishing?" "Oh, don't worry about it. It's just sheet music crap." We signed away half of the watermelon right there.
Q - Which is a story I hear more and more from recording artists from that era. It's not uncommon.
A - Yeah. Oh, no. The Black Blues players signed their life away. They wound up with nothing while other people made millions on it.
Q - Even The Beatles signed away their publishing. Now when Paul McCartney sings "Yesterday", a song he wrote, he has to pay somebody!
A - (laughs)
Q - Since you were influenced by The British Invasion groups, did you ever meet the guys in The Beatles or The Stones?
A - The Beatles? No. Never did. There's a few times I've ever been star-struck. One was when we did two shows with The Stones. We played at the old football stadium in Cleveland and then we played at the Boulder, Colorado University football stadium later that summer. So, they had a show in Boulder and they had kind of a tent city set up for backstage on the field. And so I hear all this screaming, kind of warming up, sitting in our circle kind of thing, and I can see all these limousines pulling up. Oh, The Stones are here. Okay. So, we're just sitting there and all of a sudden Keith Richards and Mick Jagger walk into our dressing room. The world kind of stopped turning. "Hello boys. Love your band. Glad you're on the show. If there's anything you need, just let us know. Glad to have you here," and walked away. I just mumbled. I had no idea what to say. I'd been listening to The Stones since their first album, and suddenly here they are in the dressing room, greeting me. I'm not the type of person I would think that would be star-struck, but I definitely was.
Q - That was nice enough of them to come back and say hello.
A - Oh, they're such gentlemen. That was surprising too.
Q - That song, "Dust In The Wind" was a pretty heavy song for a bunch of guys in their twenties to be singing. I know Kerry Livgren wrote it, but would you agree with me?
A - Oh, it definitely is. Kerry was always searching for the meaning of life. He was searching through every religion from kind of the get go. When he wrote "Dust In The Wind" it was just a finger-picking exercise to kind of teach himself how to Travis pick and just create a chord pattern around it. His wife mentioned, "That's really nice. You ought to do something with that." Kerry said, "We would never do anything with this." He had been reading a book about Native Americans and American spirituality and all that type of stuff. The "Dust In The Wind" concept was in that book. It moved him and so he scribbled out the lyrics. He brought the song to rehearsal. We were close to the end of picking out material for the "Point Of No Return" album and he just comes in and says, "I've got another song here. Just throw it on the pile. It's probably not anything we would do, but I just thought you guys should give a listen." He just had a rough recording of him on a reel to reel (tape recorder) playing it and then he was kind of mumbling the lyrics. Robby and Kerry were looking at the lyric sheets and he was done. Dave Hope said, "Where did that come from?" I just said, "That's our next hit single!" And Kerry's like, "Really? You guys like that?" (laughs) He had no idea what he'd written. But first listen, even in that rudimentary form, I knew that was a good song.
Q - How long did it really take to write a song like that?
A - It went in hot streaks. We'd be working and Kerry said, "I wrote this song last night," and all of a sudden he's playing us "The Wall". (laughs) "You wrote that last night?" We didn't have multi-tracks to demo stuff on back then. And so just sitting at the piano writing the beginning, the verses, the chorus, maybe the ending. Then in his head, bass lines. It was a very rough structure, but a structure non-the-less. It was a pretty amazing process. When Kerry got on a hot streak it was pretty amazing to watch.
Q - I think you're fortunate that for the hour and a half or two hours you're onstage you can make people forget their problems and just enjoy the moment. Not many people have jobs like that.
A - Sometimes when I'm tired or when we've been out too long, I will remind myself of exactly that because I am always grateful for what I get to do. Sometimes it might slip a bit. I also know there are 50,000 better guitar players, better than me, that would do anything to be in my spot and are waiting for the chance to do something. So, I don't take that for granted. People come up to us and tell us what the songs have meant to them, thanking us for continuing. It's a very humbling experience. They think it's a sacrifice in some way. I'm just fucking glad to be here. (laughs) I've got the best job in the world and people are thanking me for it? No. Thank you for keep coming and supporting us.
Official Website: www.KansasBand.com
