REO Speedwagon gets into the holiday spirit

SEE ALSO: Song sums up tour for Styx.

By John Benson

Even though REO Speedwagon has played Northeast Ohio many times in its nearly 40-year career, singer Kevin Cronin has one vivid memory tied to Youngstown. Specifically, when it’s mentioned this article is for The Vindicator, the 58-year-old cringes.

“I’m very familiar with The Vindicator,” said Cronin, calling from Agoura Hills, Calif. “I had a job in high school working in the mailroom of my dad’s office. He was in the newspaper representation business. He’d have to check to make sure print advertising ran. These gigantic mailbags would get delivered filled with these newspapers, and my job was I’d have to file them. And that Sunday Youngstown Vindicator would come in and, man, that was a bear. The Monday and Tuesday editions were my favorite, but that Sunday would come in and it was no fun.”

Yet fun is something Cronin and his band mates found in the ’70s and ’80s with platinum albums (“Ridin’ the Storm Out,” “You Can Tune a Piano but You Can’t Tuna Fish” and “Wheels Are Turnin’”) and hit singles (“Keep On Loving You,” “Take it on the Run” and “Can’t Fight This Feeling”).

Now the group is venturing down a different road with the recent release of its debut holiday album, “Not So Silent Night ... Christmas with REO Speedwagon.”

“Three of us in the band — Bruce Hall, Bryan Hitt and myself — all have little kids at home, and when we finished our last studio album, ‘Find Your Own Way Home,’ back in 2007, we were thinking what we might want to do next and what haven’t we done yet,” Cronin said. “And the idea came up to make a Christmas album. We thought it might be cute to do that in our spare time and make it into a side project type of thing, but when we started getting into it, the things that we started picking were songs that meant something to us when we were younger.

“It turned out that it really wasn’t ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Frosty The Snowman.’ We were choosing songs with a little more meat on the bone like ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Happy Christmas [War is Over].’ I was amazed we were able to pull that off. Our thing was to pick Christmas songs that pretty much people knew and turn the arrangements inside out into REO Speedwagon songs. I’m really proud of this record. I think people will be surprised in a pleasant way when they hear it.”

Cronin hinted the band may play a song from the Christmas album at its upcoming co-headlining show with Styx on Saturday at Covelli Centre in Youngstown.

That’s not the only special thing fans can expect from these two arena-rock acts.

Earlier this year, the bands teamed up to write and record the song “Can’t Stop Rockin’,” which is performed nightly when both groups join forces on stage during the finale.

This brings up the pertinent question, why are REO Speedwagon and Styx still a major concert draw 20 years after their last commercial success?

“I don’t really know what it is,” Cronin said. “There is some kind of magic that happens when REO and Styx tour together. It’s one of those lucky things. Kind of similar in a way to that Elton John and Billy Joel thing, where they found that synergy and the sum of the parts is bigger than the individuals. That’s kind of how it is with us and Styx. When we pool our resources, we can bring a much bigger production along with us, and that’s fun. And the music just resonates with people. So we just keep it going. We’re having fun and people are digging it. It’s all good.”