KANSAS Serves Up Leftoverture 40 Years Ago; Audio Interview

North American syndicated rock radio show In The Studio With Redbeard is serving Leftoverture on the 40th anniversary of the breakthrough that gave Kansas classic rock statehood.  

By 1976, it was go big or go home for this intrepid six-member band from Topeka, Kansas. Their first three albums had shown significant growth in all areas of songwriting, musicianship and production, but as you will hear from ex-guitarist, keyboardist, main songwriter Kerry Livgren, guitarist Richard Williams, original singer, keyboardist Steve Walsh, ex-violinist, singer Robbie Steinhardt and drummer Phil Ehart, they fully realized that if their fourth album Leftoverture did not spawn a hit and sell significant quantities, the party would be over, a tab that had already ballooned to over $175,000 of debt. 

Thankfully Leftoverture delivered big. Really big. Over four million albums were sold off the hit “Carry On Wayward Son” and radio favorites “What’s On My Mind”, “The Wall”, and “Miracles Out Of Nowhere”.  Kerry Livgren shares with In The Studio program host Redbeard just how special the recording of Leftoverture was and how, for the band, it’s never quite been duplicated.

“There was a kind of magic feeling around the recording of Leftoverture that years later, as we recorded our subsequent albums, we kept saying, ‘What was it that we did that made this come out that way?’  We went back to the same studio, we used the same place, the same people, but we weren’t able to recapture that. So I attribute it to the songs.”  – Kerry Livgren   

Kansas original guitarist Richard Williams also details how the band’s upcoming 40th anniversary tour will feature Kansas playing the entire Leftoverture album songs in order every night, some which have never been performed in concert until now.                                         

Kansas – Leftoverture / In The Studio interview is available now to stream at this location.