Being in a rock band is about touring. It's about writing songs and it's about making records but it's also about taking a wonderful smile onto that stage and making the people feel good about themselves.

People like to let loose at rock concerts and it gives them an excuse to do it in a way that is not destructive to others and not really destructive to the band.

It is something we have always excelled at and prided ourselves at - the excellences of our stage performance.

In my own mind, we are a much happier and much more functional family and a much more well balanced group of individual s both off and on the stage - in the current incarnation.

I'll play until they have to scrape me off the stage.

I don't quite have the energy for extra curricular activities. I have to pace myself a little bit more.

I don't know, I think the crowds are even more responsive now because the audiences are skewing younger.

But, there was a time when we all had a great thing going but one person just became very uncomfortable with it and he had to try to change it around to suit him more and then it suited no one else but him.

Being in the studio is okay but sitting in a room by yourself composing is a discipline that takes a certain type of mind set and Tommy has a great gift for that as did the previous guy.

And in an era where radio stations that are inclined to play Styx music are your classic rock stations and the stations that play current music look at us as dinosaurs - the only way we could reach people with our new music, generally, is to perform live.

And I said - Styx - as a musical group it is our place to reflect the light that is shining on us back onto this place and say - this is where so much great stuff started.

And for REO - they get to play for some Styx fans and then we get to play in front of some REO fans. It helps spread the new music to the following of other bands.

The band we have now on stage is the band I always wanted to be in.

People tell us they have been inspired by our music to do great things.

But there are rock and roll fans all over this continent and all over the globe, really, and we're just set at marking the planet with Styx music until the day we die.