The studio that we mix in is still in Chicago.

So, We're really L.A. based with a secondary base in Chicago.

Seeing our VH-1 Behind the Music shows just how dysfunctional some of the moments of the band were but this new line-up has put the fun back in dysfunction.

There are a lot of people using technology that are playing to a click with backing vocals already stuck in there on some computerized thing that runs along in time to the show so they have these amazing vocals that are only partly the guys on stage producing them at the time.

So, maybe you don't see blues so much in Styx's music but it is definitely part of Tommy's early music.

And in an era where radio stations that are inclined to play Styx music are your classic rock stations and the stations that play current music look at us as dinosaurs - the only way we could reach people with our new music, generally, is to perform live.

Ten years ago, in 94, we thought maybe nobody would ever care about Styx again.

People tell us they have been inspired by our music to do great things.

The studio that we mix in is still in Chicago.

But, there was a time when we all had a great thing going but one person just became very uncomfortable with it and he had to try to change it around to suit him more and then it suited no one else but him.

It is something we have always excelled at and prided ourselves at - the excellences of our stage performance.

Being in a rock band is about touring. It's about writing songs and it's about making records but it's also about taking a wonderful smile onto that stage and making the people feel good about themselves.

Yes, indeed, in fact I would tell you that we go out of our way to be true to the original feeling and sort of sonic and musical pallet that we painted with back then.

But there are rock and roll fans all over this continent and all over the globe, really, and we're just set at marking the planet with Styx music until the day we die.

We always got a strong response but I think in this day in age there is less of a marijuana fog at concerts and more of people just more naturally exuberant - it seems to me.

I'll play until they have to scrape me off the stage.

In my own mind, we are a much happier and much more functional family and a much more well balanced group of individual s both off and on the stage - in the current incarnation.

People like to let loose at rock concerts and it gives them an excuse to do it in a way that is not destructive to others and not really destructive to the band.

And for REO - they get to play for some Styx fans and then we get to play in front of some REO fans. It helps spread the new music to the following of other bands.

The band we have now on stage is the band I always wanted to be in.

Sometimes that mantle is hard to adjust to wearing but we are at a stage that we are comfortable with it and we recognize how we are perceived and how the real core individual that each one of us has apart from the facade that the public believes that we are.

Whereas with us - what you hear is what's happening right then and there on the stage - so we don't need no stinking technology.

Being in the studio is okay but sitting in a room by yourself composing is a discipline that takes a certain type of mind set and Tommy has a great gift for that as did the previous guy.

I don't quite have the energy for extra curricular activities. I have to pace myself a little bit more.

You know the puritan ethic that started out four centuries ago in this country, needless to say - at least for the moment - a thing of the past - from what I can tell.

I don't know, I think the crowds are even more responsive now because the audiences are skewing younger.

So, it's a matter of that I want to take our music around the globe.

We're gonna release a studio album probably a year from now and we've got these recordings that we did with Coco Taylor and Johnny Johnson, who was Chuck Berry's piano player.

And I said - Styx - as a musical group it is our place to reflect the light that is shining on us back onto this place and say - this is where so much great stuff started.

I think that unless you grew up in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles, you're sheltered.

Chicago kept industry, attracted new business, became the center for convention trade and transportation.

My dad was born in Chicago in 1908... his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago, where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children - in the backroom all together - and my grandmother got the idea to go into the movie business.

While Mayor Daley surprised me today with his decision to not run for reelection, I have never been surprised by his leadership, dedication and tireless work on behalf of the city and the people of Chicago.

My place in Chicago is a 105 year old house, but I really like contemporary spaces too, so it's refreshing and fun to be in a space where you can do contemporary things.

I'm always going to get more of a charge playing Chicago than I will Duluth or some place like that. Just because of the history and the people there are way more knowledgeable than a lot of other cities. It's an amazing music scene with some great bands and great musicians.

We are proud to have with us the poet lariat of Chicago.

We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother.

I'd seen the current stage production and the 1975 production of Chicago. I liked them both very much, but I didn't use them necessarily as inspiration.

I joined the Army and was sent to the MIT radiation laboratory after a few months of introduction to electromagnetic wave theory in a special course, given for Army personnel at the University of Chicago.

Chicago is a city of contradictions, of private visions haphazardly overlaid and linked together.

My father actually moved out from Chicago just so he could play tennis 365 days a year, so it was - it was a place we played every day. We played before school. We played after school. We woke up. We played tennis. We brushed our teeth in that order.

However, I was a restaurant critic at Chicago magazine before I worked at Esquire, and I've been a really enthusiastic home cook for a long time. It's just something I'm passionate about.

I have a friend who lives in the South Side of Chicago. I helped out at a church charity there where they try to give a bit of cohesion to a desperate area. Everyone was very welcoming.

Hollywood is run by people who sit up in their executive office, who are not connected to Mississippi, Alabama, Chicago, South Carolina. They know nothing about that, they don't go to church, and they make their decisions about what they think is right.

Chicago is one city. We shall work as one people for our common good and our common goals.

In the States, it takes you a lifetime just to get from Chicago's South Side to the West Side.

This is not to be cocky, but, I go over real well at Comic-Con. I've done quite a few Comic-Cons, and I enjoy the hell out of them. They are so much fun, and so bizarre. I've done the FX Show in Florida, Wizard-World in Chicago, Comic-Con in San Diego, Wonder-Con in San Francisco, the Comic-Con in New York, and I've done them numerous times.

I live and die with the Chicago Cubs.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.