The American music industry has never been particularly interested in — or good at — pursuing slow, sustainable growth models. Americans in general are obsessed with speed, and that’s reflected in our rock folklore — from Elvis striking God’s perfect chord during his first Sun Studios take to Taylor Swift writing hit songs while she was still in high school, we love a fast, out-of-nowhere success story on the pop charts. There’s a whole world outside the spotlight, however, and even though it doesn’t seem to happen as often as it used to, the major labels have occasionally functioned as impatient and/or semi-unwilling incubators for artists who, for one reason or another, take a little extra time to achieve mainstream success.

Like, say, Kansas.

Needlepoint violin solos aside, pretty much everything about Kansas is slow. The first of the band’s many lineups formed in 1970, but it was 1974 before they got around to recording an album, which flopped, as did the two that followed. It wasn’t until their fourth album, 1976’s Leftoverture, that Kansas was able to claw a toehold in the marketplace — and by 1982, when original singer Steve Walsh took a hike and the band briefly morphed into a terrifying CCM/prog hybrid, they had already slid back into commercial irrelevancy. Kansas’ last major label release, In the Spirit of Things, came out in 1988, and their last overall studio effort, Somewhere to Elsewhere, was released almost ten years ago.

While contemporaries like Boston, Styx, and REO Speedwagon managed to retain various degrees of dignity during their commercial dotage, Kansas has given off a sad, flat-footed vibe for the last 25 years or so — Walsh’s departure kicked off an era of multiple breakups, grimy club tours, and long silences punctuated by bargain-priced archival live albums. During the mid ’90s, Kansas attempted a comeback with Freaks of Nature, an album recorded for Intersound, a label widely believed to be a Mafia tax shelter; three years later, they were recording live symphonic covers of their greatest hits for another shady indie outfit, River North. During an interview to promote 2002’s live CD/DVD project Device – Voice – Drum, drummer Phil Ehart admitted that the band had been dumped by not only its last label (prog champions Magna Carta), but its booking agent — a horribly galling admission for a band with evergreen AOR hits in a touring marketplace that always has room for everyone from Air Supply to whatever jiveass live package Alan Parsons happens to be peddling. (more…)