Styx [ tickets ]--a band that emerged from Chicago to become one of the top-selling rock acts of the late '70s and early '80s--is still doing what comes naturally, touring like dogs to support the recently released album "Styxworld Live 2001" (CMC-Sanctuary).

And although the album contains plenty of familiar material ("Rockin' the Paradise," "Half-Penny, Two Penny," and "Come Sail Away"), the band is sporting a lot of new blood. Vocalist Lawrence Gowan, bassist Glen Burtnik, and drummer Todd Sucherman round out a very different-looking lineup, but Tommy Shaw and James "JY" Young are still in tow. Original bassist Chuck Panozzo sits in on "Sail Away."

"Styx has always chosen good people. I'd like to think of myself as among them, because I'm a new guy, too," guitarist-vocalist Shaw said with a laugh. "For the longest time, I was the new guy, and also the youngest. Those days are over now."

Recorded in Japan, Germany and Canada, "Styxworld Live 2001" is the group's first live record since 1997's gold-selling "Return to Paradise." It was 20 years prior that Styx released "The Grand Illusion," the first of four consecutive albums (along with "Pieces of Eight," "Cornerstone," and "Paradise Theater" in 1981) to go triple platinum--a chart record at the time.

"Return to Paradise" also featured longtime vocalist Dennis DeYoung, who in October of last year sued Young, Shaw and ex-bassist Chuck Panozzo for "improper use of trademark." The jury trial is set for April 22, 2002.

Tommy Shaw spoke with liveDaily's Don Zulaica about the tour, the band's new blood, and carrying on.

LiveDaily: What's it been like being out on tour with the new guys?

Tommy Shaw: It's a great thing. There's this bursting pool of talent in the band, and as a result, I think you've got these guys that can't wait to get out there and try and get it perfect every night. It's really lit a new fire under us. And that's not so much as changing it up, but in some ways it's like going back and doing a thesis on it. We're remembering where this stuff came from. In a lot of ways, we've gone back to the band we were in 1978.

When you play live, you sometimes have a tendency to drift. And you'll drift and change a part, and then change that part to another part, and before you know it you've really drifted away from the original song that everybody was used to and grew to love. So when we first got ready to go out on the road with this lineup, we thought, "Okay, we're going to strip away a lot of the old habits. And we're going to go back to the original records." Because that's what the fans remember. That's what they play in their car. I mean, I was shocked to see how much we changed things like "Blue Collar Man," "Snowblind," and "Come Sail Away," just one after another--the tempos shifted, the feels shifted, some of the vocals changed. We've really gone back to, "Let's see if we can play these things right."

The fans have certainly stuck with you, even through the band's struggles.

We were kind of like a great car whose engine was kind of falling apart. You put your foot on the gas and something just wasn't right. There was this little bit of hopelessness that you knew it couldn't go any further. And I think, in some ways, that's a lot of why Dennis [DeYoung] decided to step out of it. Because he's even gone into more of the theatrical, writing that sort of thing--he's a great vocalist and that's where his comfort zone is. But for a band like us, our whole future and our past was in being a rock band. When you play, you've got to keep your audience awake. And if you allow them to sit down for too long, suddenly their minds will drift and they'll start thinking about going home. ... It's our job to make the show work for the fans.

I think for Dennis, it just got to the point where he didn't feel sincere getting up there and doing the rock songs. Once you lose that, you suddenly start looking at the fact that you're also not at home, you're out here doing this thing that doesn't do it for you anymore. So now I think he's happier [on his own]. I hope he is. And we suddenly have this band totally focused on being the rock band that it was back before we got sidetracked with the softer stuff.

You probably can't talk too much about the lawsuit ...

The one thing that I would never do is talk down about anybody I've worked with, because, "What was wrong with me for working with somebody that I didn't have respect for?" I have a great amount of respect for Dennis. Those records will always stand on their own, and we had some great years together. There comes times in people's lives where it's best to move on, and that's where we are.

The lawsuit is another story, and time will be the ultimate arbiter of that. This too shall pass. [laughs] I know it sounds corny, but the reason that those cliches are cliches is that they're true. Right now is a difficult time, but there's also a lot of great stuff going on. It all depends on which side you choose to focus on.

You, along with groups like Journey and Boston, always got bashed for being "corporate rock," which is kind of funny to me. How is Limp Bizkit or anything on "Total Request Live" not calculated?

Try to remember the name of the amphitheater you saw us at years ago. Now it's been bought by somebody else--it's a corporate world. Bands, especially the big touring acts, they're full of corporations. I'm sure if you looked at U2's business, or Limp Bizkit, any of the boy bands, Aerosmith--you have to adapt and play by the rules, otherwise you're a Pollyanna. You've got to survive in order to play your music at the end of the day. Otherwise, you're the tree that fell in the forest, and nobody heard you.

There's always been a business aspect to Styx. But at the same time, we never took--to this day, we're still waiting for a corporate sponsor to step up. We've always funded ourselves, so we always thought it was ironic that we got labeled [as "corporate rock"].

[During the band's peak popularity], there just weren't a lot of other bands running their businesses as well as we were. What tipped it off was our manager, Derek Sutton, who never gave interviews, gave this one interview to the New York Times in which he said, "Marketing Styx was like McDonald's marketing hamburgers." And that was the shot heard around the world, that's how we got labeled "corporate." And while there's probably some truth to that, we never looked at it that way. We just were the practical guys who figured out ways to route tours so your truck drivers weren't driving 1,200 miles a day. At the end of the day, the truck's gotta have fuel, the hotel room's gotta get paid for, everybody is on salary--like it or not, it's a business.

You'd better love what you do. Because there's this whole reality--I'm blessed that I can turn a blind eye to it. I can forget that it's there because we've got such great people whom I trust to make things keep working, that I can suspend my disbelief on a regular basis in order to get out there and be a musician.