Timeless rockers STYX and Joan Jett & The Blackhearts are teaming up with Tesla for a summer U.S. tour that kicks off in Irvine, CA at the FivePoint Amphitheatre and makes its way to the metro Atlanta for a show on June 16, at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre.
Tickets for various cities of the tour, produced by Live Nation, went on sale, Friday, February 16 at 10am local time at Livenation.com. STYX and Tesla will be offering VIP packages via their own exclusive pre-sales beginning Wednesday, February 14 at 10am local time at StyxWorld.com and Teslatheband.com. Fans can explore Joan Jett VIP packages available at the time of ticket purchase and at VIPNation.com.
STYX with Tommy Shaw (vocals, guitars), James “JY” Young (vocals, guitars), Lawrence Gowan (vocals, keyboards), Todd Sucherman (drums) and Ricky Phillips (bass), along with the occasional surprise appearance by original bassist Chuck Panozzo—would eventually transform into the virtual arena rock prototype by the late ’70s and early ’80s, due to a fondness for big rockers and soaring power ballads. Over the course of their 40-year career they’ve released 15 studio albums, six best-of compilations and four live albums, garnering eight Top Ten singles. STYX has sold over 30 million albums worldwide. Throughout their illustrious career, they’ve performed more live shows since 1999 than all of the previous years of its career combined. Two Super Bowl appearances, Pollstar box office chart-topping tours with Def Leppard, Journey, Boston, and Bad Company (to name only a few), two more studio albums. September 2, 2016 marked the long-awaited release date of STYX: LIVE AT THE ORLEANS ARENA LAS VEGAS on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital Formats via Eagle Rock Entertainment. It captures the band performing in July 2014 such fan favorites as: “Too Much Time On My Hands,” Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man),” “Renegade,” and more. It also includes a special surprise visit from Don Felder—formerly of the Eagles—for a rousing performance of “Blue Collar Man (Long Nights).” It was released on CD July 24, 2015. After 14 years, STYX’s 16th studio album and its most ambitious, most challenging, and most rewarding album to date, The Mission, was finally released June 16, 2017 on the band’s label, Alpha Dog 2T/UMe. It debuted on various Billboard charts, including: #6 Top Rock Albums, #11 Physical Albums, #11 Vinyl Albums, #13 Current Albums, #14 Billboard Top Albums, #16 Retail, #17 Mass Merch/Non-Traditional, #29 Digital Albums, and #45 Top 200 Albums (includes catalog and streaming).
Styx is also bringing out on the road with them in 2018, a new album. Returning to the band’s progressive beginnings, The Mission, is a new effort from this legendary band, that is a home run. Sci-Fi and music geeks will love The Mission.
The Mission is the band’s real-life connection to another planet, Pluto, and its smallest moon, Styx, which was discovered in 2012. Three years after the spotting of Styx by the Hubble Space Telescope, the unmanned space probe New Horizons flew by Pluto and took some eye-popping photos. In July 2015, Shaw, singer/keyboardist Lawrence Gowan and drummer Todd Sucherman viewed those photos when they met members of NASA’s Horizon team in Maryland. The moon wasn’t named after the band, but the name choice certainly had Shaw and his bandmates stoked about the meeting.
This is also an album that pays homage to the way albums used to be made.
“Yea, our longtime engineer, Gary Loizzo, had passed away in January of last year, so we weren’t ready to be in the studio recording yet.… Will Evankovich and I have been working together since he became the third guy in the Shaw Blades project that Jack Blades and I did,” said Shaw. “He would be the glue holding it all together. Will introduced me to the albums that he’d made as American Drag, and I heard all these classic rock influences. They were all fresh and so well organized and recorded that I was thinking, How can I get some of this influence in Styx?”
The Mission is also made to be listened to as an album, from beginning to end, added Shaw.”
“The record really is an adventure; it’s a journey. It’s best listened to all in one sitting, and we’ve made it easy to do that because the songs lead you into each other.”
This is an album for true “music enthusiasts.”
The Mission comes complete in a true hi-fidelity analog recording and mixed with a larger than life sound, so this mission apparently is a go!
“To have this music for everybody to imprint who they are on it right now and still honor the sound of the band—it’s been a treat,” smiles Shaw.
