INTERVIEW: RICH WILLIAMS from KANSAS – April 2023

Photo credit: David Carstens

According to a recent press release: America’s preeminent progressive rock band, KANSAS, will be touring 50 select North American cities to celebrate the band’s 50th Anniversary. KANSAS 50th Anniversary Tour–Another Fork in the Road will showcase music spanning all 50 years of the band’s illustrious history. The tour will showcase two hours of hits, fan favorites, and deep cuts rarely performed live. In 1973, the “garage band” from Topeka was discovered by Wally Gold, signed by Don Kirshner, and released their debut album in 1974. KANSAS has gone on to compile a catalogue that includes sixteen studio albums and five live albums. KANSAS has produced eight gold albums, three sextuple-Platinum albums (Leftoverture, Point of Know Return, Best of KANSAS), one platinum live album (Two for the Show), one quadruple-Platinum single “Carry On Wayward Son,” and another triple-Platinum single “Dust in the Wind.” Most recently, KANSAS has released two Billboard charting albums with 2016’s The Prelude Implicit and 2020’s The Absence of Presence. KANSAS is currently comprised of original drummer Phil Ehart, bassist/vocalist Billy Greer, vocalist/keyboardist Ronnie Platt, violinist/guitarist David Ragsdale, keyboardist/vocalist Tom Brislin, and original guitarist Richard Williams. With no signs of slowing down, KANSAS continues to perform in front of large and enthusiastic audiences.” We get original guitarist Rich Williams to discuss new music, old music, touring, and much more…

Toddstar: Rich, thank you for taking time out. This is a very cool interview for me. Kansas is just one of those bands… you guys have been around 50 years and legends at this point, and I have original member Rich Williams on the line. So again, I appreciate your time.

Rich: Absolutely.

Toddstar: Let’s talk about the exciting stuff that’s going on right now. Kansas is about to kick off its 50th Anniversary Tour that has been dubbed Another Fork In The Road tour as well as a collection recently released of the same name. What can you tell us about this fork in the road for you 50 years in?

Rich: Well, it’s familiar, I can say that. Today I’m somewhere in Minnesota at a casino having lunch. Play here tonight, then go somewhere to North Dakota tomorrow to play another casino. The road doesn’t change much, and it goes on forever. There’s a lyric in there. It’s still rental cars, airplanes, and hotel rooms. I guess the sameness of it makes time fly by. You start hitting mile markers like 30 years, 40 years, 50 years. All of a sudden, it does give you a chance to reflect, “Damn, I’ve been doing this a long time.” You start talking about it and I get tired. It’s like, “What else would I do? This is what I’ve done my entire life.” We hadn’t seen each other, the band, since last week. We all jump in a van together and we had a pretty good ride to get to where we are. It’s always a lot of fun, a lot of laughing, catching up, even if it’s just been a week or two, just enjoy each other’s company. Before the show, we practice a lot, kind of horse around, and by time we go on stage, everybody’s loose and relaxed, gone through the material for the umpteenth time. It’s just a routine that has become so normalized. I guess for a civilian it would seem different, but for me that is a normal day. It’s very comforting and reassuring as we just go about the next Kansas day.

Toddstar: That makes sense. You’ve been at this so long that there’s not a ton of new experiences out there. There’s just refreshing experiences.

Rich: What really lasts the most is the camaraderie of being with everyone. Everybody, band and crew, we’re family. It’s really running around the country with your friends and family playing music. It’s a lifestyle that everyone is not cut out to do, but fortunately I was. This is my norm, is what we do. Whereas to someone else it would be very unusual. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. It’s another day in Kansasland really.

Toddstar: When you guys dropped Another Fork In The Road, a three-disc collection, you put out a new recorded version of “Can I Tell You,” keeping the spirit and the feel of the original but updating it for the vibe and sound of the new members of the latest incarnation of the band. What was it about that song that made that the right song to do for that instead of one of your bigger hits or something that you all might have deemed more of a gem?

Photo credit: Emily Butler Photography

Rich: When we first started writing material together, this was before Kansas, we were a band called White Clover. We were writing material and that was one of the first songs we wrote and recorded. Sending off the demo to some different companies, “Can I Tell You” was the song that Don Kirshner heard and liked and that’s how we got our record deal. Without that song, we probably would never have gotten a record deal and there would be no Kansas. What a great full circle of 50 years is the song that brought us to the table to redo it for the end of a 50-year period, and that’s why we did it. To present it with the band members today, it just made sense. It was pretty quick conversation with Phil and I, “We ought to do something, do a rerecord or something. Let’s do “Can I Tell You.” “Okay.” That was how long that conversation took. We did it with modern technology. Tom Brislin, our keyboard player, who was the music director on it, coordinated it all. We did it all from home. I vetted all my guitar parts at home. Ronnie did all his vocals in Chicago. Billy did his vocals and stuff in Savannah. Ragsdale did his violin parts in Atlanta. The only thing we had to do live was the drum tracks. Phil went over to the studio that we use in Atlanta and laid down the drum tracks and laid them down to a click track from the original track so we could have the same tempo and same everything. That was an experiment. We had never approached a recording in that fashion before to see if we could do it remotely instead of actually in a studio together. It was a fun project. We did that and Tom put it all together and then we shipped that off to Chad Singer, who is our front house sound man, has been forever. He’s engineered the last several live projects we’ve done. There’s nobody that knows better what we sound like than Chad does. We had him mix it and the album. There was a synchronicity to the whole thing that made perfect sense.

Toddstar: It doesn’t sound sonically that much different from the original as far as the purpose and intention of the track. It sounds like classic Kansas, which you all have all been together long enough with Tom the newest member at 5 years. The core of you has been together a long time and gelling.

Rich: That was also intent. There were different ways we could go about it. We went about it from a classic or vintage classic or something mode that didn’t make it sound super modern. We wanted to capture the time as well as possible, and we had three or four different versions of it to listen through and then make a choice, “Let’s take this one.”

Toddstar: You are out on the road and playing to fans who have been there since day one and to fans who are children and grandchildren of those fans. What is it like to look out at the crowd and know that you’ve created a legacy that will far surpass all of us in longevity?

Rich: The first feeling is gratitude that I get to do this, and I still get to do this. It’s hard to explain. I am not, nor ever have I been, in awe of myself or my achievements in any way. When I stand back and look at what the band has done, I’m very amazed, very pleased, and very proud of what the band and the legacy of what we have done is. For some reason I can separate the two. I’m just glad to be here.

Toddstar: Looking at the last 50 years, if you could look back, Rich, and talk to yourself back in 1973 when you started this adventure not knowing what was going to happen, what piece of advice would you give yourself then?

Rich: More important than anything I would say what I would change, would be, “Leave the booze alone.” Stay away from that. I became an alcoholic. I was drinking a half gallon of vodka a day and I quit about 14 years ago. It grew to that. Nobody ever starts out with that as an end goal, but that’s where I wound up. It was brutal, it about killed me. I about lost my position in the band with it all. What’s funny is that I don’t feel like I’ve missed a single thing by not being in a bar every night and all the nights I spent in bars, I can’t think of anything of any worth that really ever happened. It was just a waste of time and money. I’m a very grateful recovering alcoholic today, have been for a long time. That’s what my main advice is. The rest of it I handled pretty well.

Toddstar: When you hit the stage like you’re going to do tonight – I’m extremely excited to know that I’m going to get to witness the tour when it hits Detroit in the middle of June – what’s the song that when you know it’s coming in the set list still gets you excited?

Rich: It’s usually something, either a new song or it’s a song that we haven’t played in a long time. There’s going to be a few of those. In June when we begin the 50th anniversary tour, there are some old classics in there that people haven’t heard in a long time and we haven’t played in 40 years. We’re having a lot of fun in the dressing room working on them, working them up, relearning them, and songs that fans have wanted to hear for a long time too. So, we’re looking forward to that. That’s the latest version. There have been times where there’s songs I just got so tired of, I couldn’t stand them anymore. I had to change my attitude because there’s nothing wrong with the song, it was all about me. Rather than piss and moan about, “Oh God, we got to play that again tonight,” I decided I’m going to learn how to play it better. I’m going to work on my sound while I’m playing it and I’m going fine tune it. I’m going to play it cleaner, whatever I can to devote myself back to the song that I once loved, and it works. So, songs I was tired of, now I’ve conditioned myself to actually like them again.

Toddstar: What’s the one song that blew up that you just never thought stood a chance from the word go?

Rich: We’ve never been really a hit machine, but we did find a few along the way. “Wayward Son,” we knew right out of the box. We knew that. Sitting back, listening to the album mixed in the studio and listening to that song, we were convinced that we struck gold with that record. We just knew it. Then here comes the next album with Point of Know Return. When Kerry Livgren brought “Dust in the Wind” in just a very rough form to rehearsals, on first listen, it was like, “That’s our next single.” He goes, “What? You guys like this?” “Yeah, that’s our next single.” We knew on the first listen that we were going to be able to repeat what we had done with Leftoverture and Point of Know Return, and those two songs made our career.

Toddstar: Is that how you look back at it? That those are the songs that were the turning point and positioned you to be on the road 50 years later?

Rich: No. It was never a plan. Your perspective changes as the years go by. I was just remembering the other day, I was writing a story for a friend, or a family member, and in 1970 we played at The Warehouse in New Orleans, and this was me, Phil Ehart, Dave Hope, original Kansas members. We were playing in New Orleans for six months and a new place called The Warehouse opened up. After the show one night, a girl that was living with us brought Jerry Garcia over to the band house and we met him. I was 19 and suddenly sitting in the kitchen talking with us is Jerry Garcia. I’m just sitting there going, “I can’t believe this guy is still doing this, man. He seems really, really into it. He’s like the grandfather of rock and roll.” He was 27 years old. It’s all perspective. I’m 73 now and there are no plans to stop. As the years go by, yeah, I guess the angle at which you look at things, that perspective changes slightly, but the desire to do it is really exactly the same thing. You’re getting together with friends, writing and recording, and playing music together and traveling the world, having fun, and making a living at it. Of course, it’s a surprise to make 50 years, but it’s just been a day by day, hour by hour, step by step process that after extremely long walk, here we are.

Toddstar: That’s a great perspective, Rich. I know you’re busy and I want to let you get back to your lunch so you can wind down and get to what you need to do before tonight’s show. I’m looking forward to Detroit. I’ve been dusting off some of my old albums and one that has always stayed in constant rotation for me is Vinyl Confessions. I was a teenager when that came out, but it’s one that has stuck with me forever. I’m very excited for this tour and everything else. Looking back, if you had to pick one album that you thought the minute it dropped, Rich, you knew it would stand the test of time among the Kansas catalog, what’s the one release from top to bottom? Not a single, not a song, but what album do you think was so cohesive that it made Kansas what it is, and it represents you all?

Photo credit: Mark Schierholz

Rich: Leftoverture, without a doubt. We were fortunate. Kirshner, he was our benefactor. He kept pouring money into us and while the first album got us out there, second album was well received. Song for America was again well received, but none of them had recouped yet. We’ve always been varied. We do fast songs, slow songs, heavy songs, prog songs, life songs like “Dust in the Wind.” We do a bit of everything, so kind of all over the map. But Leftoverture, I think, from top to bottom was the most cohesive, the most quintessential Kansas album.

Toddstar: It’s hard to argue with an album that’s gone four times platinum.

Rich: Yeah.

Toddstar: Rich, again, I appreciate your time. I hope you enjoy the show tonight and I wish you safe travels until we see you in Detroit at the Fisher Theater.

Rich: Looking forward to that one. Thank you very much.

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