Styx invites us to sail away at Tucson concert

Every time the members of Styx get ready to hit the road after a short home stint, frontman Tommy Shaw greets them with this:

“It’s good to be back; my charm was wearing thin at home,” recalls bass player Ricky Phillips.

You would think that after four decades of touring, playing big arenas in the early days and mid-sized amphitheaters like Tucson’s AVA at Casino del Sol these days, being on the road would lose its appeal.

Not even, says Phillips, who’s been with the 1970s rock band going on 16 years.

“We like it,” he says during a phone call from home in Austin, Texas, in mid-September to talk about the band’s AVA show on Sunday, Oct. 7. “We enjoy it. It’s a great kind of chemistry we have between us and it’s easy. It’s one part of life that seems to flow effortlessly, and we appreciate that.”

Styx is on the road 200 dates a year, which is pretty remarkable for a band that’s been around since 1972. The lineup includes founding members Shaw and James “J.Y.” Young, and several members have been with the band since the 1990s.

Phillips, who has been in a number of bands since the 1970s including The Babys, Bad English and Coverdale-Page with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, joined Styx in 2003.

“It took me nearly a year to say, ‘OK, I nailed that one’,” says the 65-year-old musician. “I’ve never really had that challenge before.”

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These days, playing the Styx catalogue is burnished in his muscle memory, which makes it easier to change it up a bit and be more creative. On the band’s 2017 record “The Mission,” Phillips was able to step out and exert himself musically, although he says he walked that fine line of adding to the music “without getting in the way of it.”

Expect to hear a cut or two off “Mission,” the band’s 16th career studio album, but Styx will spend most of its time on stage Sunday playing the hits. Among the songs that Phillips says define a Styx concert: “Renegade,” “Come Sail Away,” “Fooling Yourself,” “Too Much Time On My Hands,” “Blue Collar Man” and “Miss America.”

“You can’t leave those songs out. Beyond that, there’s a lot to choose from so that makes for a good night,” Phillips says.

Phillips’ favorite song to perform live? “Fooling Yourself.”

“It’s such a cool song that I wish I had written. It’s one of Tommy Shaw’s genius moments, I think,” he says, pointing out the changing time signatures, solid storyline lyrics and great melody. “It just goes through these movements that pop songs don’t go through. It’s fun to sing, it’s fun to perform.”

And Phillips believes what we will experience on Sunday will be Styx at the top of its game.

“A band like ours, everybody has gotten better than back in the heyday of the band,” he says. “A band like ours has improved so much that when we play the songs, the only reason they sound different is because we are better players. We try to stay really true to the original script of what made Styx who we are. ... The band was great back then, but the musicianship, you just naturally get better.”