Tommy Shaw: Back Home & Down Home

Posted on November 29, 2011 by bob in Features

photo: Myriam Santos

by Willie G. Moseley

(NOTE – New performance photo added.)

While he is primarily known for playing loud electric guitar, Styx guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw’s upbringing in Montgomery, Alabama meant that he had a number of diverse influences when he was a child, including genres associated with the Deep South.

“We listened to all kinds of music,” he recently said of his family. “I am only now realizing just how open-minded my parents were, because we watched all sorts of music programs on television, and the radio would get turned up in the car when one of us heard a song we liked, whether it was bluegrass, country, pop, movie themes, show tunes, or crooners. It was the Beatles who suddenly threw a wrench into that; I latched onto them, but my parents didn’t.”

Robert E. Lee high school sophomore, 1969.

The youngest of the four children of Mildred and Dalton Shaw, Tommy had already been playing guitar for some time when the Beatles abruptly changed the popular music scene in the mid-1960s for thousands of teenagers across the globe, and the phenomenon motivated Shaw, even at a young age, to set his sights on becoming a professional musician. His father was an employee of Alabama Gas Company, and Dalton and Mildred encouraged the musical aspirations of their youngest child.

One of Shaw’s first live performances was playing Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” on Bob Harmon’s television show on Montgomery’s WCOV-TV.  At the age of 14 he began playing guitar with a group of older teenagers in an aggregation called the Vagabonds. Other members of the band included bassist Mac Barnes, who would become a Montgomery oncologist, and drummer George Wheeler, who is now the owner of a large greenhouse operation just south of the Capital City.

The diminutive guitarist quickly demonstrated that he could hold his own as a player, and numerous Montgomery musicians—amateurs and pros—began to note that Shaw just might have the talent to make the proverbial “big time.”
The Vagabonds would also provide Shaw with his first recording experience, as the band rushed to North Carolina over what was then known as “AEA weekend” (students were out of school only on Thursday and Friday instead of the entire week) to cut a cover version of the Coasters’ “Poison Ivy” b/w “My Baby’s Comin’ Home.”

Before he graduated from Lee High School in 1971 (where one of his classmates was future district judge Lynn Clardy Bright), Shaw would hone his chops in legendary area bands such as Jabbo Stokes and the Jive Rockets, and Rod Henley and the In Crowd. Determined to become a pro guitarist, he migrated to Nashville, and hooked up with a band called M.S. Funk. That aggregation relocated to Chicago, where another Windy City combo, Styx, was beginning to establish itself. At a club gig, members of Styx took note of M.S. Funk’s young guitarist.

Shaw with the Montgomery-based band Harvest, opening for KISS at Garrett Coliseum, 1975. photo: Edward Dunbar Moseley

When M.S. Funk broke up, Shaw returned to Montgomery, settling into a band called Harvest, which performed regularly at Kegler’s Kove, located in a bowling alley on the Atlanta Highway.

Shaw received a phone call in the mid-70s that permanently changed his life, as Styx invited him to audition to replace guitarist John Curelewski, who left the band following the recording of the Equinox album.

“Tommy walked in for his audition,” recalled Styx’s other guitarist, James “J.Y.” Young, “and we put the needle down on Side Two of Equinox, onto my song ‘Midnight Ride,’ which was more on the testosterone, rockin’ guitar side of the band, rather than the melodic side. He was blown away, ‘cause he’d had no idea we could do that.”

Tommy was chosen, and moved back to Chicago…and the rest is history. He’s been heard on numerous triple-platinum albums, has written or co-written hits such as “Renegade,” “Blue Collar Man,” and “Too Much Time On My Hands,” and has toured around the world for decades. Young also recounted how Shaw’s arrival enhanced the band’s concert appearances.

“Stage-wise, Tommy was a dynamo; it was like ‘Hi, everybody—I’m here, and we’re gonna kick ass, and have fun whether you like it or not!’ We sort of developed a friendly rivalry and a wonderful friendship at the same time.”

In the ensuing years Styx would break up, and Shaw would work in a supergroup called Damn Yankees. An offshoot of that effort was Shaw-Blades, a partnership with bassist/vocalist Jack Blades.

All roads led back to Styx, however, and Shaw has been firmly ensconced in the legendary band since 1995. But he’s also maintained the musical relationship with Jack Blades.

photo: Myriam Santos

In February 2009, Shaw was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.

Over his career Shaw has recorded several solo albums, his most recent being a major departure from previous work, a 2011 bluegrass release titled The Great Divide. As a youngster, Shaw had listened closely to bluegrass legends like Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys, and gospel icons the Happy Goodmans.

“I liked those guys with the guitars strapped up high, singing high,” recalled Shaw. “The high voices and the super-low voices always appealed to me.”

The Great Divide garnered an enthusiastic reception, and charted at #2 on Billboard’s Bluegrass chart.

“I’m proud of this,” the guitarist said of The Great Divide. “It might be the best thing I’ve done, top to bottom. I’m at a point in my life where if you don’t like me by now, it’s likely we’re never gonna be friends. If we are friends, then you know me, and you can trust that this is coming from the best part of me.”

Shaw’s primary focus is still Styx, however, and the band has recently released Regeneration, Volume I & II, a two-CD collection of modern-day recordings of Styx’s best-known songs (plus some bonus surprises).

Styx still tours extensively, and in late 2010 and early 2011, proffered their classic triple-platinum albums The Grand Illusion and Pieces of Eight, performed in their entirety, back-to-back at one show (with a twenty-minute break between each album performance). A DVD/CD of those performances is due late this year.

Styx performed at Montgomery’s Jubilee Weekend in 2002, when Mayor Bobby Bright presented Shaw with the key to the city. In 2008, after performing at the Montgomery Performing Arts Center (MPAC), the hometown guitarist expressed his admiration for the sonic design and layout of the venue, pronouncing it to be a type of  template for all performing arts centers.

Shaw and Styx are back in Montgomery Dec. 17, for an 8 p.m. concert at the MPAC.

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