Kansas teams with Styx and John Waite tonight at Show Me Center

The band Kansas recorded some of the great rock 'n' roll anthems of the 1970s: "Song for America," "Carry On Wayward Son," "Dust in the Wind," and others. Violinist Robby Steinhardt and vocalist Steve Walsh were the most distinctive elements of the six-piece band's sound, a marriage of classical and rock music that with the bands Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer defined the term progressive rock.

Other bands of the day -- The Flock and It's a Beautiful Day -- used violins but didn't play the kind of driving rock 'n' roll that is Kansas's forte.

Thirty-three years after forming in Topeka, Kansas has now released 24 albums. Last fall the band produced the concert film "Device Voice Drum," a DVD that includes state-of-the-art computer animation.

That longevity is due to Kansas' standards of musicianship and to the loyalty of its fans, known as "Wheatheads," who keep up with the band through the Internet.

Kansas will perform tonight at the Show Me Center in a bill that includes Styx and John Waite.

Styx, the headliner, made its living in the '70s and '80s performing power ballads like "Lady" and catchily operatic tunes such as "Come Sail Away." John Waite is a former member of Bad English and the Babys who had his biggest hit, "Missing You," as a solo artist.

Drummer Phil Ehart was there when Kansas formed in 1970 in Topeka, Kan. In a phone interview from Kansas City, Mo., Ehart said they were a terrible copy band but wrote and played original songs from their beginning as a garage band. To survive they had to play other bands' music, so they would introduce their own songs as somebody else's material.

"We'd say, 'Here's a new song by the Allman Brothers,'" Ehart said.

The band signed a record deal and earned a gold album for "Song for

America," then had its big breakthrough with the single "Carry on Wayward Son" in 1976. The album, "Leftoverture," went platinum and hasn't quit selling. In 1998, sales of "Leftoverture" topped 6 million copies.

Subsequent albums, boosted by hits like "Dust in the Wind," did nearly as well through the 1970s. In the 1980s, record and concert sales looked more favorably on what Ehart calls "haircut bands." Kansas stopped playing for three years in the mid-80s, and two members retired. But the rest carried on. Steinhardt, Walsh and Ehart are still there at the core.

The advent of classic rock radio has been a boon to performers like Kansas. In 1997, "Carry on Wayward Son" was the most-played song on classic rock radio stations. That translates into CD sales primarily through older fans replenishing their record collections. At the end of the 1990s, the Kansas played a tour of concerts with symphony orchestras.

Ehart has a theory about why the band has lasted while other 1970s bands died.

"We're just musicians. We've never really been image conscious," he said. "... The difficulty is to pull something off image-wise when you're 50 when your image came from your 20s."

To this day, only staunch fans know their names.

"We were always pretty faceless," Ehart said. "Kansas was always more about the music than image. As the music has remained timeless it's easier for us to remain timeless as well."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

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