Summer concert season is about one thing- rocking out to iconic songs and feeling good about it.
Enter Styx and Chicago’s Windy Cities co-headline tour, which recently just hit Noblesville, Ind.’s Ruoff Music Center for one of the best types of tours- two bands who are completely different.
Styx opened the show and, honestly, probably should have closed it out just based on energy. As keyboardist Lawrence Gowan danced across the stage, the band took the stage with confidence, taking their posts and launched right into “Fooling Yourself” and the show had begun.
They played a set mainly consisting of classic hits but also threw in tracks from newer records Crash of the Crown and the most recent Circling from Above and took time throughout the set to tell the fans some fun facts about the band’s history and journey
With the band forming 64 years ago, the band sounded better than ever, and their stage presence was second-to-none as always. Tommy Shaw’s vocals are still just as amazing as ever and James “JY” Young can shred just as good as he did 40 years ago; Styx set the bar high for Chicago to follow.
Chicago closed the night out with an impressive 24-song set that spanned the gamut of their 50-plus year career, including tracks from all the way back to their second album.
The band, though without many original members, sounded just like they did in the early days, and you would never know.
Members took time to talk to the fans between songs, with Lee Loughnane telling the crowd that they’d be making sure to get to all the hits that they came to see and hear and that it’s because of fans like the ones in attendance that Chicago have had the career and longevity they’ve had.
Between the dazzling, moving and polished instrumentals and the featuring of the CoverGirls Rock Violin group from Chicago, it was a night of pure magic.
-Reggie Edwards