Ultimately, nature will prevail”: Lawrence Gowan on Styx, analog tape and the kids who know every word

Ahead of Styx’s October 26, 2026, concert at Place Bell in Laval, singer and keyboardist Lawrence Gowan talks about the band’s latest album, Circling From Above, bird people versus bee people, and why recording on analog gear still gives their music a certain je ne sais quoi.

Lawrence Gowan joins our call humbly apologetic for being a little late, citing a time difference mix-up. He’s calling in from St. John’s, Newfoundland, where Styx has landed ahead of their next show. When I ask what he can see from his hotel window, he picks up his laptop and turns it toward the glass: the port below, grey water, thinning fog, that misty autumn mysteriousness only a Newfoundland morning seems to carry. « There’s a surreal feeling that I always get here, » he says.

« Don’t worry, Lawrence, » I tell him, « you’re a rock star, I figured you might be late. » He laughs. « I’m actually trying to shake that stereotype. » He’s warm and familiar from the jump, and I’m immediately at ease.

Tala: Bonjour Lawrence, et merci d’être avec nous aujourd’hui !

Lawrence: C’est toujours mon plaisir. C’est une bonne opportunité pour pratiquer mon français, parce qu’on va au Québec la semaine prochaine et j’ai besoin de me préparer.

Tala: Mais vous parlez très bien français !

Lawrence: You understood that? That’s ridiculous. I was just making up words. [Laughs]

Tala: You’ve called Montreal the catalyst city of your career, and Québec audiences « phenomenally faithful. » How does it feel to be coming back to Place Bell on the 26th?

Lawrence: I treasure it more now than I ever have. Québec was the first area of our country to really respond with full vigour to the Gowan records that came out in the 1980s. The first number ones were there, and then the rest of the country kind of followed. Montreal in particular, Québec City, but even regions like Mistassini and the Saint-Georges-de-Beauce area were great places for me to play early on. Getting to go back there all these years later, you just value it so much. It’s the extra cherry on top of the great experience we’ve already had there. For some places, it would be the extra blueberry on top.

Tala: Terry’s first run of shows was in Québec as well, right? Be honest: is he the better-behaved Gowan brother on tour?

Lawrence: I have to be honest? No one’s ever asked me to do that before. Terry joined my band back in 1985 and toured with us until 1990, then again when I started doing Gowan shows in 2010. That galvanized him to Todd, our drummer, who played my solo shows too, and now Terry is a member of Styx. So little by little, we’re infiltrating.

At this point I’d say he probably is better behaved, though not intentionally. It takes a couple of years to get used to the protocol within a band, as opposed to playing with a solo artist. He’s been quicker to grasp the nuances than I have. I’m still pretty badly behaved, quite honestly.

Tala: Good, I’m glad to hear it. Fair warning: I was afraid you’d think I was too young to know all the Styx lore, so I polled some dads. Their burning questions are coming later.

Lawrence: You polled some dads. That’s very nice. Instead of going for data, you went for dads. Right to the eyewitnesses. But I’ll tell you this: I’ve been in Styx for 27 years, and for the past 19 or 20 years, the audience keeps skewing younger. When I look out at the audience, half the people are under 40, and most of those are 18 to 28. They weren’t even born when the biggest records of the classic rock era came out. Like I always say when I look at them, either you’ve had some incredible work done, or you’re amazingly young to be so into classic rock.

A couple of years ago I went to Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, and my whole row was mostly 18- to 20-year-olds who knew every word. I’d been at the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road tour 50 years earlier, sitting with the same age group, when I was that age.

We assumed this music would have a fairly limited shelf life, because bands lived from one album to the next. But those albums have become so iconic and so revered over the decades, so that’s why it’s a joy to go out and play them every night.

Nature always wins

Tala: Partway through the writing process of Circling From Above, the band got talking about an app that tracks abandoned satellites. Tommy described them as “somebody’s dream, once created with love, now drifting in a wasteland.” What did that image open up for you as a writer? Tell me a little bit about that conversation and how it led to the vivid imagery on this album.

Lawrence: In a band that’s ’70s-based, let’s call it that, it’s a natural inclination when you’re writing an album to find a theme. So much of our human invention has caught up with us to the point where some of it has become a nuisance, like all the junk floating around us in space [laughs], and some of it has become an existential threat. At the same time, we love it, because we love what we’re doing right now on this call.

Ever since the wheel was invented, there was probably some backlash to it.

But now we’re in an age where we’re actually threatened by our inventions. So if the album has an overall theme, it’s the struggle between our penchant to keep inventing and reaping the marvelous benefits, and having to grapple with the negative inverse of those things. It’s basically our technology in a fight with nature. And the funny thing is, we ultimately know who wins. Ultimately nature will prevail, right?

Tala: You see that on the cover too, with thousands of starlings flying as one over a broken satellite dish. Is this a hopeful record or a warning?

Lawrence: Both. More hopeful than a warning, quite honestly. There are songs on the record that say, don’t worry about it, let’s celebrate what we have. That would be « Everybody Raise a Glass. » And there are songs with a very poignant view, like Tommy’s « Only You Can Decide », the last song on the record. « Build and Destroy » is really the centre of that theme. That’s why it’s the one we’ve been playing for the last year and a half. We build, and we could wind up destroying ourselves with what we’re building, but we’d rather not. I’m thinking of the chorus:

Tear it down and start all over
Find a path to hope and joy
Are we destined forever to build and destroy?

So it keeps it an open question.

Tala: « Build and Destroy » is my favourite song on the record. It has this very spacey late-’70s kind of intrigue to it that’s really hard to create, and is truly of the era, but it deals with these themes that are so current, like AI, that we’re facing today. I found that marriage very cool. Could you tell me a little bit about where the inspiration for that song specifically comes from?

Lawrence: I was fooling around in my hotel room, where I usually have my keyboard in front of me, playing a little Wurlitzer electric piano sound. People would have heard it on pretty much every Supertramp song, or Queen’s « You’re My Best Friend. » I got this funky thing going, and then what I call the spy theme came out. Like a ’70s spy or detective type show. I saw it as an instrumental, and I already had the title, « Build and Destroy. » But when I played it for Will Evankovich, our producer and now our guitarist as well, and for Tommy, they said, we’ve got to stretch this out into a full song and put lyrics to it. We bashed through it over about a day and a half, and we felt it could crack the setlist. That’s the hardest thing for any new Styx song to do, because the classic songs at the band’s disposal are almost endless.

For the birds

Tala: The music video has a very intentional AI-generated look. Because of the nature of Styx, I could tell it was a deliberate wink.

Lawrence: A friend of mine from Toronto, Jay Ziebarth, put it together. He drew up a bunch of his own artwork, and then he did what people do with the AI stuff. It’s intentionally bad AI. I fed Jay the storyboard I heard in my head: remember, this is a battle between nature and technology. We sent in all our faces, he drew them and then added the AI. So it looks like us and it doesn’t look like us. You know who everyone is, but something’s… off.

Tala: An extra finger or two. [Laughs]

Lawrence: The battle then became the bird people versus the bee people, and I loved that, because bees are builders, right? And many species of birds are destroyers. They’re birds of prey. Then the humans interject themselves into the middle of it, and as it turns out, the bees don’t do so well in the end. We do what humans quite often do: if you can’t beat them, join them. We wind up with the birds. We’re for the birds.

I do like the part where they build a tower to the sky like a beehive, made of beeswax. When it gets wrecked, the honey that spills like manna from heaven turns out to be a disastrous occurrence that marks the end of the battle.

Tala: AI Tommy seemed to really enjoy bathing in that honey.

Lawrence: He had quite a sweet tooth on him, that guy. [Laughs]

“Till the day that it’s true”

Tala: Speaking of Tommy, you co-wrote « Forgive » as a duet with him. Why did forgiveness need two voices?

Lawrence: Because it needs two voices, and I don’t just mean the song. Forgiveness is something humans grapple with throughout their lives: how to get over bad things that happen to you, or because of you. The main point I wanted to make lyrically was that we can pay lip service to forgiveness, and many of us do, but truly digesting it and feeling it as a completely realized state can take a lifetime. That’s why the chorus says, I’ll keep saying I forgive you, please forgive me too, till the day that it’s true. I always like when there’s a punchline in a chorus, and that was the hook for me, because it’s not necessarily true until you’ve fully accepted it.

There are things that have happened in my own life where I’ll tell myself, forgive that. So why is it still replaying in my head? Why does it go around like a reel every once in a while? I have to reach that conclusion again, or go, wait a minute, I’m not really over that. But I’ll keep saying that I am, until I bring it into a realistic state.

Tala: You’ve said you’re not afraid to show your influences, and « Everybody Raise a Glass » feels very Queen. Where on the record can we hear 15-year-old Lawrence?

Lawrence: First of all in « Build and Destroy, » because I like songs with a dramatic underpinning. The thing we decided to commit to on this record was that yes, we were influenced by all the great bands from the ’70s: Genesis, Pink Floyd, Yes, a little Emerson, Lake & Palmer, definitely some Queen, some Beatles, and Will did a song that could almost be one of The Who’s. And « Ease Your Mind » has my classical piano influences all over it.

As a 15-year-old, I was deep in the Royal Conservatory, always trying to write rock music with a heavy classical underpinning. I was trying to figure out how I could bring Beethoven into rock, where he belongs.

The analog way

Tala: You mentioned Will, who produced this record and is one of Styx’s newest members. What has he changed about how Styx makes records?

Lawrence: When Tommy, Todd and I started talking about a new record, we realized we needed an outside producer. There’s nothing like that cold outside voice who can be the ultimate arbiter when two or three guys in the band disagree. In a band there are so many great ideas, and you can’t follow them all. A good producer picks a path. Will came in around 2015 as the producer on The Mission, which came out in 2017. It was about a NASA-type mission to Mars, and NASA actually got involved. They sent a copy of it up into space.

Tala: Here’s to hoping someone up there finds it! [Laughs]

Lawrence: [Laughs] They sent it up just to add to more space junk. That’s what I’m hoping for. That some person from Venus or maybe Mercury will find it. Will quickly became a co-writer too, because he’s a really strong musician. And our real drive was to make it sound as if it came from the 1970s, which becomes a taller and taller order the more technology infiltrates.

Tala: Well, you’ve grown quite attached to vintage studio gear, and I hear you have quite a collection!

Lawrence: I have. Over 10 years ago I bought an old Studer 24-track machine and started recording on tape again, and Will was extremely into using every piece of it. Everything had to go analog first. We made all three records at Blackbird in Nashville, which has a tremendous array of gear from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, kept right up to spec. When you start recording that way again, you put these things down and…

Tala: You go back in time.

Lawrence: You’re back in time, with all five guys in the room at once, bashing through arrangements. Which is exactly what we’re talking about on these records: convenience often brings unexpected little pitfalls that can derail things. When we finished The Mission, we put it on, then put on The Grand Illusion and Pieces of Eight, and asked: is this the same band? When we felt it was, we knew it could be really good. Then the younger fans I was telling you about started showing up in Mission T-shirts, and Crash of the Crown went to number one on Billboard’s rock album chart. That’s when we knew this was a real second wind for Styx.

Tala: It’s serendipitous, because it’s happening hand in hand with that pendulum swing in young people we keep talking about. So many are choosing analog again. There’s something about the manual struggle that breeds creativity, and convenience zaps it out.

Lawrence: Yes. I don’t exactly know why, but last week I was home for a few days and bought another old tape machine off a great guy named Kareem. I started hacking away on it, and sure enough, the ideas began to come from a different area. The best way I can describe it is writing something out with a pen, maybe in cursive, maybe all in capitals, versus typing it on your computer. The manual thing of the pen in your hand, having to stop for a second, you gather your thoughts in a different manner. You can make incredibly interesting records in the digital realm, absolutely. But there’s something about songwriting and analog tape that we’re more connected to. Perhaps that had more to do with how those old records sounded than we understand.

Tala: This interview’s not about me, but I’m a writer, and writing in [Microsoft] Word is nowhere near sitting down at my typewriter and feeling the keys push back against my fingers. I’ll clank away at my Olympia, and the product is better every time.

Lawrence: Why? Is it the clicking of the thing? The rolling of the paper? The pace at which you’re gathering your thoughts?

Tala: Maybe there’s something romantic about having to put in that extra effort. It shakes some creativity loose. I’m obviously not being transported back to the ’70s, but I am transported back to where my teachers, the writers I learned from, spent their time. I can romanticize that enough that it adds something to the final product.

Lawrence: I think you’re on to it.

Tala: Will also described Terry’s bass fills on « The Things That You Said » as « banana cakes. » Can you translate that into musical terminology for me?

Lawrence: Well, it’s a good thing to begin with. Who doesn’t like banana cakes? [Laughs] It’s probably a term they came up with together, and I’ve never been inclined to ask for a translation. But there seems to be a smile on their faces when they say it. It’s like when I hear a couple of people having a really intense Québécois conversation. I can pick out the odd word, but really I’m lost, and I give it the old excusez-moi?

The dads have questions

Tala: As promised, the dads. Ali has been dying to ask this for 40 years: Styx wrote a song where a sailing trip turns into an alien abduction, and another where a rock star escapes prison disguised as a robot. He wants to know: what was in the coffee?

Lawrence: I don’t know what was in the coffee back then, but I know it was probably illegal. [Laughs] Those songs, « Come Sail Away » and « Mr. Roboto, » predate my joining the band, so I can only give my take from my Styx history class with Tommy, JY and Chuck. JY has said it was his suggestion, towards the end of « Come Sail Away, » that the sailing ship turns into a starship, because in the ’70s that was the beginning of embracing the whole space thing. I also have heard that there was a whole section there in the middle that Tommy wanted it to be more like a spaghetti western thing, but then it turned into kind of that spacey keyboard solo thing. And again, I think all three of them, or the whole band, may have had individual brews in their coffee that took them to wherever it was they needed to go, at that time.

I really enjoy singing « Mr. Roboto. » It’s one of the first songs I can think of that’s prescient about technology infiltrating a little too much. You look back at the ’80s and think, that was nothing compared to now. And I love singing a song where the character has a secret they want to reveal. So I hope that helps, Ali [Laughs].

Tala: Michael says « Fooling Yourself » is his favourite Styx song. Tommy wrote it so young, but it’s full of wisdom, and speaks to a generation of young men in the 70s. What does that song mean to you today? Does it still resonate?

Lawrence: Very much so. As young people, we can suddenly become cynical. I enjoy a bit of cynicism and lots of sarcasm, but we can let negative talk come into our lives a little too deeply, and it can be self-defeating. Tommy is a very positive-outlook person. In your 20s as a songwriter, you’re choosing which path to go down. You can write really dark things, which I happen to enjoy as well, but he wanted something positive and uplifting. He was looking at some people in his life who were being a little too negative, and he thought: get back on your feet. You’re the one. I hear it as a self-motivating thing.

Tala: My dad, Suhayl, doesn’t have a question. He just wants you to know that « Boat on the River » is one of the greatest songs ever written.

Lawrence: Funny enough, that was my dad’s favourite Tommy Shaw song! And your dad’s right, because the biggest Styx song outside North America is « Boat on the River. » It’s been recorded in 13 different languages and went to number one in, I think, seven or eight countries. Whenever we play Germany, it’s not even a question. It’s on every setlist.

Tala: He was listening to it in Beirut in the ’70s, so I can tell you for a fact that’s true.

Lawrence: There you go. I think Lebanon was actually one of the countries where it went to number one.

Lightning round

Tala: The Forum or the Bell Centre?

Lawrence: Both have brought great things to my life.

As a kid I’d watch the Toronto Maple Leafs play at the Forum, and it seemed like another planet to me. In the ’70s I played Le Moustache, across the street, and I promised Jean Béliveau in the parking lot that next year I’d be playing in that building. It took me eight years, until November 1985.

Then at the new Forum, the great promoter Donald K. Donald convinced me to open for Styx in 1997, just solo piano. That’s where they heard the audience singing « A Criminal Mind » and « Strange Animal » and « Moonlight Desires. » So how can I choose?

Tala: « A Criminal Mind » or « Build and Destroy »?

Lawrence: « A Criminal Mind » changed my life. It was like The Wizard of Oz, going from black and white to Technicolor. Literally overnight, I became this MuchMusic and MusiquePlus video guy. Years later, having Styx play their own version of it? That’s too high a mountain for « Build and Destroy » to climb. But to be playing a new song 40 years later and see people react so well to it is quite gratifying too.

Tala: Piano or Mellotron?

Lawrence: [Laughs] I have a Mellotron, and it’s the greatest love-hate relationship I’ve ever had with any keyboard, because it rarely works. But when it does, my God. It’s like having a partner who’s high maintenance. The piano, though, is my reliable rock. I can always depend on it to take anything I throw at it. Usually two fists.

Tala: Do you ever get dizzy on the spinning keyboard?

Lawrence: No, I don’t get dizzy, I get injured. There have been many injuries over the course of my life. Here, I’ll show you the latest. Can you see it there on my leg? But that’s so much better than the times I’ve whacked myself in the head with it.

He tilts the camera to show me the evidence of his latest spin mishap on his shin.

Tala: You are a brave, brave man. One more: settle this once and for all. Who is Mr. Roboto?

Lawrence: Well, I don’t know for sure, because again, it predates my era in the band. But it’s still on the setlist, and on my piano, where all the programs come up, I’m going to let people know this: I have it down as « Mrs. Roboto. » Because I want to know more about her. What she’s had to put up with all these years. I mean, the stories she could tell.

Styx plays Centre Vidéotron in Québec City on October 24, Théâtre du Casino du Lac-Leamy in Gatineau on October 25, and Place Bell in Laval on October 26, 2026. Every show supports a local nonprofit through Rock to the Rescue. Tickets at styxworld.com.

Crédit Photos : Jason Powell