Rolling with the changes
REO Speedwagon and Styx to co-headline Friday concert in Virginia Beach with Loverboy
VIRGINIA BEACH — Last year, REO Speedwagon’s Kevin Cronin traveled a few miles from his Southern California home to catch the Foo Fighters at a club with a capacity of 600.
It reminded him of when REO Speedwagon was a group of college kids in the late 1960s before it became a headlining arena band of the 1980s.
“Seeing the Foo Fighters playing fast and loud inspired me to go back,” Cronin said, “and there are now a couple of songs from the early days in the set.”
That’s the set that REO will play Friday when they co-headline the Live and Unzoomed concert with longtime buddies Styx at the Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater at Virginia Beach. Loverboy, a Canadian rock band also popular in the ’80s, is also part of the tour.
REO’s earliest days were in 1967 when a bunch of University of Illinois students put together a group that took its name from the REO Speed Wagon, a 1915 truck designed by Ransom Eli Olds. Playing around Illinois and then the Midwest, REO, which had a shifting lineup early, got signed to Epic Records in 1971. But that didn’t immediately send them into arenas — not even close.
“We played bars,” said Cronin, who took over as REO’s singer in 1972.
The band had a 1972 Impala station wagon and a truck for the equipment. It worked its way to bigger bars, then small theaters and finally arenas. Cronin said the group’s big success didn’t come until its 10th album, 1980’s “Hi Infidelity.”
“I always got the feeling that people in the Midwest were rooting for us because we were underdogs that finally made it.”
The album contained the group’s signature song, the power ballad “Keep On Loving You,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Top 40 chart. It’s one of four Top 10 songs REO had from 1980 to
1984. But if all the band’s earliest charting singles are counted, its run reaches back to a live version of “Ridin’ the
Storm Out,” which made the bottom reaches of the chart in the 1981.
Those songs, Cronin said, keep people coming back to REO shows year after year, decade after decade.
“There are a number of songs that got into people’s bloodstreams,” Cronin said. “At a certain age, you get connected to music and those songs stay with you.”
No matter how many times the band has played them, those songs will never be left out of REO’s set.
“We don’t do that,” Cronin said. “If we did, there would probably be an angry mob waiting for us when we got to the tour bus. If you’re buying a ticket to an REO Speedwagon show, know there are songs we are going to play.
“I, frankly, don’t understand when I hear an artist talking about how they aren’t going to play their hits, how they don’t like their biggest songs,” he said. “That makes absolutely no sense to me. To me, those songs are why we can still do it. It isn’t a coincidence. It just so happens, they are my favorite songs of ours.”
The same with Styx. The set has to have the group’s most popular hits, including “Lady,” “Come Sail Away,” “Blue Collar Man” and “Mr. Roboto.”
The group has similar roots and as many personnel changes as REO: Styx formed in Chicago in 1972 and had a sizable grassroots following especially in the Midwest. The group broke through in a big way in 1977 with “The Grand Illusion.” Like that signature album, Styx’s next three studio albums — “Pieces of Eight” (1978), “Cornerstone” (1979) and “Paradise Theatre” (1981) — also topped 2 million copies.
That said, unlike most bands that play the same set show after show, REO switches things up every night.
“I’m the quarterback of the band,” Cronin said. “I kind of get a vibe from the crowd. Going from city to city, I don’t know why, but I remember which tracks off of the albums did well there. It’s different in every area of the country and I’ll call them out.”
REO was off the road like every other band during the height of the pandemic and enjoyed family time. He has enjoyed being back on the road, though.
“I’m raring to go,” Cronin said. “I’m the luckiest guy in the world to be a singer in a rock band that’s been going for 50 years. There’s nothing like standing at the microphone in a place that’s full of people and hearing them singing along with every song, seeing them.”