REO Speedwagon on the Cover of The Aquarian

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June 18 – June 25, 2014 Vol. 2-769
FEATURE:
PHOTO BY RANDEE ST. NICHOLAS
Rolling With The Changes
by Andrea Seastrand
Since forming in 1967, kings of classic
rock REO Speedwagon have added a few
clicks to their tour bus’ odometer bringing
their timeless hits (that I certainly don’t need
to list here) to local venues, thrilling countless
moms just like yours along the way. Recently,
vocalist Kevin Cronin and I spoke about
everything from whales, to touring, to
insecurity, and even a snake in the grass,
probably all coiled up and hissing. There’s
no shortage of chances to catch the band
live this summer, either on their own or with
tourmates Chicago. Go to a show. Bring your
mom and belt it out with Cronin like your
lives depend on it. You know you want to
and, oh, I know you both can! You can thank
me later.
Kevin Cronin: Hi. I’m sorry to keep you
waiting! Our house is under construction
and has been for almost two years now.
Somehow we just can’t seem to finish. My
phone just rang, the doorbell rang, one of
the construction workers found a six-foot
snake underneath the new deck, and the
thing went off to tell me my coffee was ready.
It’s so much easier being on tour, I can tell
you! It used to be we went on the road and
got all partied out and we’d come home to
recover. Now, it’s like I go on the road to get
some rest. A house under construction is
enough to drive you out of your mind.
I don’t mind waiting. It gave me some
time to look at the notes you post on your
website.
Uh oh.
No, no. I wanted to ask about some of
them. In particular, your Mother’s Day
post. I know it was a while ago, but you
said some touching things about your
mom and about your wife.
I started out playing music when I was
really young and I was the only child until I
was seven years old, so I had a real strong
support network for music in general. My
mom was always very
supportive of music. I think if she
could have waved a magic wand she
would have been a Broadway musical
comedy actress. That’s kind of where her
love is. So when I showed an interest in
music she was very supportive and always
has been.
As a touring musician with three children
at home, my wife, Lisa, is basically a single
mom for half the year because we spend
right around half the year on the road. It’s
not like I’m home for six months then gone
for six months, it kind of gets sprinkled out
over the whole year so it’s a demanding
lifestyle to try to balance a career as a
recording, touring musician, and also wanting
to have a family. It’s not that easy to do. You
don’t really hear that many success stories
when it comes to rock ‘n’ roll families. So
many of the kids suffer and marriages break
up and it’s fraught with temptation and just
the schedule itself is really difficult.
Lisa is kind of the fulcrum of the whole
thing. I leave and she has to carry on here.
It’s primarily her thing to harvest the good
parts of what I do and try to filter out some
of the things that end up causing kids to
have a tough time adjusting. She’s really
done a great job of it. Holly, Josh, and
Shane—you wouldn’t call them rock ‘n’ roll
kids. You would call them just good kids who
go to school and do their thing and play
sports and belong to extracurricular activities
and get good grades and have good friends.
I think that’s pretty rare. There’s a lot of kids
who get caught up in the whole rock ‘n’ roll
thing and they think they’re rock ‘n’ roll kids.
That’s not what I ever wanted for my kids.
So I really appreciate her. Mother’s Day
is when I get an opportunity to express it
and tell the world that I appreciate both
my mom and to a far greater degree at
this point, my wife. Also, the fact is, half of
REO’s fans are women and a good amount
of them are moms. So I appreciate moms
in general. Let’s face it, our audience is a
wide swath somewhere right in the mom
years, 30 to 50 years old, so I appreciate
when I look around my house and my
neighborhood and see women who are either
working moms or stay-at-home moms, it’s
a lot of stress and a lot of effort to do it right.
Part of what REO Speedwagon does is
we provide moms all over the country with
an opportunity to go, “You know what? Let’s
get a babysitter tonight. We’re going to go
out and put on our best rock ‘n’ roll clothes
and we’re gonna see REO. We’re going to
forget about our jobs and our kids and our
responsibilities and we’re gonna hear some
music that makes us feel good.” We feel like
we provide moms with that little escape valve
from everyday life as well. We appreciate
them. And I see them. When I look out from
the stage, there’s a whole lot of women on
girls’ night out. You’ll see groups of five or six
women in their 30s and 40s and that’s exactly
what they’ve done. Sometimes they bring
their husbands, sometimes they don’t.
And that’s certainly not trivial. I know after
I see a good show, it keeps me going
for a while. You are doing a service to
motherhood, thank you very much.
(Laughs) Well, you know what, it’s funny
because I don’t remember exactly when it
was but there was some point in the past
years when I remember just having this…
You know how we all go through moments
of insecurity and I remember this one day
when I was just in that mode and feeling
vulnerable. I don’t remember where I was
but I just remember the feeling was kind of
just thinking, “Wow, there’s people who at
this point in their lives have been
doctors or schoolteachers or just
occupations that really have an impact.
Scientists discovering new things! And
here I am, a frickin’ singer in a rock band.”
I was just feeling kind of like, “Oh boy. What
have I contributed to the world? How have I
made the world a better place?” And as I
was going through the emotions, that same
thing kind of occurred to me. I thought, “Well,
wait a minute. If it wasn’t for us all of these
hardworking people that make the world go
round, we kind of make their lives more fun.
Without us they’d be really bored and probably
wouldn’t do as good a job.” So, by extension,
that’s how we help the world, by making the
world a little bit more fun. Then I felt a little
bit better.
Oh, sure! Even when a song comes on
the radio and you’re able to connect
immediately with it and have it take you
somewhere else for a few minutes, that’s
priceless. That’s very important.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you!
You’re welcome. We all feel insecure in
our own ways.
Of course we do.
Can you speak about REO Speedwagon’s
decision to cancel a SeaWorld
performance?
Yeah, we played at SeaWorld one or two
times in the past, once that I remember. It
was a nice outdoor gig. You wouldn’t know
you were at SeaWorld; it was just like any
other outdoor venue. They’d always fill it up;
again, that’s our demographic, for lack of a
better term. I never really thought too much
about it, until Blackfish came out. I have a
grown son and he turned me onto it. There
are just so many things in life that you see
and accept and never really think, “Wow, that
giant whale is stuck in that little tub. And how
did it get there? How was it captured? How
did it get out there to let people ride on its
back?” You kind of don’t think of it.
After I watched that movie I felt like an
idiot! SeaWorld came at us with a lot of positive
SeaWorld stuff, and they do a lot of good
stuff for exploration and the health of sea
animals of all sorts. I don’t have a problem
with them in general, but in this case, as
far as the way they treat whales, that’s just
a different thing. You remember the scene
that killed everybody where they take the
baby whale away because it’s affecting the
mother—
Oh yeah, yeah. God. Devastating.
And the mother just screams! And talk
about Mother’s Day! OK, I wear shoes, I eat
a hamburger, obviously there’s a food chain
and we’re at the top of it and a cow is not,
but yet you can’t compare a cow to a whale.
There’s different levels of intelligence and
family connection. These whales…it’s just
not right. So after seeing that movie the
boycott was on.
I will tell you this, we’re all friends and
we travel together and live together and have
a huge crew and we’re all brothers but in any
brotherhood there’s going to be dissent. It
wasn’t like everybody in the band just said,
“Oh yeah, let’s cancel that gig.” It took some
doing and we ended up canceling the show,
which was a good thing. I couldn’t possibly
help SeaWorld prosper. A statement needs
to be made to get people’s attention that if
SeaWorld is going to have whales they need
to have another way. You know, buy an entire
bay someplace or whatever. Or just cut the
whales out!
Anyway, the cruelty just seemed like
something that I personally couldn’t support.
When all was said and done the majority
of the guys agreed. I’ll tell ya, canceling a
show is so counterintuitive for a musician.
From the time I was in seventh grade playing
for little block parties it was like, “Cancel a
show? I can’t cancel a show!”
But it’s scheduled!
Yeah, exactly! People are going to come
feature
REO SPEEDWAGON WILL BE PERFORMING SOLO AT THE BERGEN PAC JUNE 18, THEN WITH CHICAGO AT THE PNC BANK ARTS CENTER AUG. 16, NIKON AT JONES BEACH THEATER AUG. 17,
SARATOGA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER AUG. 19 AND THE BORGATA EVENTS CENTER AUG. 22. FOR MORE INFORMATION, GO TO SPEEDWAGON.COM.
A SPEEDWAGON SUMMER
An Interview With Kevin Cronin
PHOTO BY RANDEE ST. NICHOLAS
16 ARTS WEEKLY JUNE 18, 2014 www.theaquarian.com
here and miss it! Even though we’re professionals now
and we do our thing on a grand scale, people forget
that I’m doing the same thing now as I was when I was
12 years old. It’s on a different level all the way around.
It’s been a roller coaster ride, obviously, but I’m doing
the same thing I was doing back then. So my feelings
are really connected. There’s less of a disconnect with
my 12-year-old self and my 62-year-old self than there
is with most people. Most people aren’t doing the same
thing now that they were doing when they were 12. I
feel very fortunate because it keeps me youthful and
thinking young. As a result I feel there is a fountain of
youth and it’s rock ‘n’ roll music for me.
That leads nicely into my last question. So many
bands from the ‘70s and ‘80s are still going strong.
What keeps REO’s music youthful and appealing
after all this time?
It’s a really good question. I know for us, right around
1990, right when the whole Seattle scene exploded
with Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam, all those bands that
came out and blew everybody out of the water—and,
honestly, I thought they were great—the “classic rock”
bands as we’re called today, no one knew what to make
of it. A lot of bands disbanded. Well, we never did. We
kept playing. And it got ugly there for a while. We
were touring in South America, having hard times getting
gigs in the States. For REO Speedwagon, that was
quite a jolt to the system but we continued.
Right around 1995, we had this idea, “Well, OK, we
can’t headline arenas anymore by ourselves. What if
we take us and somebody else?” So we had to be
co-headliners and booked a tour with Fleetwood
Mac and Pat Benatar. All of a sudden we were filling
up the venues again. Since then that’s kind of been the
way everybody operates. You never buy a ticket to see
one band. It’s always REO and Styx, or Styx and Boston,
or Journey and Steve Miller, whatever it happens to be.
REO and Chicago this year. It’s a great way for people
to get more value. They can see two of their favorite
bands. It’s just a matter of being wise about trying to
figure out who to tour with, who you get along with,
whose music each other’s fans would like. Maybe some
people just came to see Styx but they see us and
say, “Oh wow, we like those guys too!” It’s revitalized
things.
I think the other thing, Andrea, is that classic rock
radio has kept our music in people’s ears and the bottom
line of the whole thing is that the kind of songs we write
are kind of like folk songs. I look at them as just electrified
folk songs. All my songs I write on acoustic guitar then
I bring them to the band and they crank it up. Essentially,
they’re like folk or country songs. People relate to them
and there are some artists that really love to challenge
the listener, who look to push the boundaries and really
break new ground and challenge traditions. That’s a
great thing. We need artists like that in the world.
But that’s never what REO Speedwagon was. Our
music is a little more palatable, and not by design. I just
write the kind of songs that I write and let the chips
fall where they may. Our music seems to stick to people’s
ribs a little bit more. There’s room for all kinds of music
in the world. So here we are today and people are
still paying to see us and we’re still playing a high-level
concert. Our thing is, when you come to see us, we
want to exceed your expectations and that’s what we
hear we’re still doing. As long as we are, we’ll stay on
the road.