by Jeff Clark, Staff Writer
BILOXI (GG) — Spring on the Mississippi Gulf Coast means many things, such as warmer temperatures, festivals like Art in the Pass, Easter Mass, and, for the past few years, Styx at the IP Casino in Biloxi. And this year is no different as the band returns for two nights, Friday, April 10, and Saturday, April 11.
Tickets to the 8 p.m. shows can be purchased online at Ticketmaster.com. An adult must accompany anyone under 21 who plans to attend the show.
Styx (Tommy Shaw, JY Young, Chuck Panozzo, Todd Sucherman, Lawrence Gowan, Terry Gowan, and Will Evankovich) is currently supporting the band’s latest album, “Circling From Above,” which was released in 2025. The album featured all-new compositions written by founding member Shaw and the Gowan brothers. It is the third album Styx has released in eight years and the latest since 2021’s “Crash of The Crown.”
When they aren’t recording new music, Styx performs more than 100 shows annually at venues across the world. And for the past 30 years, Sucherman has been on the road and in the studio as the band’s drummer.
A Chicago native, Sucherman said he is blessed to have spent decades performing with Styx.
“When we did the 1996 reunion tour, there was no indication this would have been any longer than that particular tour,” he said in a phone interview from San Antonio, Texas. “When I said goodbye that September when the tour ended, I literally thought I was never going to see these people again. I went back to my musical life, playing around town and recording sessions. And then I got a call in February 1997, which secured me a spot on the summer tour that year. In 1999-2000, the band had a ten-year touring plan that has now become a 25-year plan.”
For more than 50 years, Styx has been thrilling audiences with their high-energy show and ruling rock-and-roll radio charts with hits such as “Lady,” “Best of Times,” “Come Sail Away,” “Renegade,” and “Too Much Time on My Hands.”
They have sold more than 50 million albums and have more than 4 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Their songs have been featured in numerous movies and television shows, including “The Office,” “The Goldbergs,” “Billy Madison,” and “Big Daddy.”
Sucherman said the exposure brings new faces to their live audience.
“The music of Styx had found its way into a new generation that doesn’t maybe resonate with the music of the times,” Sucherman said. There’s something classic about classic rock that resonates with certain people through the ages. I mean, I can hear ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ by U2 in my grocery store these days, and that used to be a protest anthem.”
Styx, who regularly spend the summer months co-headlining amphitheater tours with other classic rock acts such as Foreigner, will be hitting the road with Chicago for the “Windy Cities Tour.” The tour, which kicks off July 13 in West Palm Beach, Florida, marks the first time the two bands have co-headlined.
For Sucherman, a self-proclaimed Chicago fan who has recorded with former Chicago frontman Peter Cetera, the tour is something he is excited about.
“I’m very much looking forward to this,” he said. “Chicago formulated some of my very earliest memories of music and composition and lyrical content and harmony. I concur that ‘Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon’ is one of the greatest pieces of music ever written and recorded. I’m thrilled to be sharing the bill with those guys and to be hearing that music every night. I’m ecstatic about it.”
Photo by Jason Powell – Left to right: Todd Sucherman (drums, percussion), Lawrence Gowan (lead vocals, keyboards), Chuck Panozzo (bass, vocals), James “JY” Young (lead vocals, guitars), Tommy Shaw (lead vocals, guitars), Terry Gowan (bass, vocals), Will Evankovich (mandolin, guitars)
