Kansas’ Richard Williams reflects on ‘Leftoverture,’ ‘Point of Know Return’

A little more than a decade ago, Kansas guitarist Richard Williams started to notice the band’s audiences were getting younger and younger.

He attributed that equally to older fans of the band now bringing their children to concerts and to the TV show “Supernatural.”

The band’s “Carry On Wayward Son” is used at the beginning of the last episode in every season, save for the first, and fans made the tune an unofficial theme song.

“Ten years ago, that was bringing teens, preteens to our shows,” Williams told The Spokesman-Review during an interview in April. “Now some of these kids who were 15, 17 when it came out, they have their own families, and they’re bringing their kids to the shows. Our crowd is older and younger than it’s ever been.”

Before the band’s Wednesday concert at the First Interstate Center for the Arts, Williams also reflected on the band’s time recording multiplatinum albums “Leftoverture” and “Point of Know Return” and what fans can expect during, and after, the “Point of Know Return” anniversary tour.

What do you remember most about your time recording “Point of Know Return”? You were just coming off the huge success of “Leftoverture.”

Not much had been written, and there were deadlines to be met. … When we started, Steve (Walsh) didn’t have anything. Kerry (Livgren) had a couple of thoughts, and we started rehearsals and Kerry really came through. Songs just started pouring out of him. It was similar to “Leftoverture.” Kerry was on a writing streak, and songs just kept coming in.

“Dust in the Wind” was an accident. We were well along with assembling what was going to be the album, and he said, “I’ve got this other thing that’s a fingerpicking exercise that I’ve been working on. It’s not a thing we would ever do, but I’m going to throw it on the pile.” The first time I heard it, I’m going, “That’s our next single.”

We went down to where we were familiar recording. We recorded the last two albums in Bogalusa, Louisiana, at Studio in the Country. It was in the middle of a swamp. No distractions so we could get a lot of work done. We started having equipment failures in the studio, so we moved up to Nashville to finish the project and went to Woodland (Sound) Studio.

Do you remember any particular song taking longer than the others to come together?

The one thing that stood out to me was “Dust in the Wind” because there is no basic track, it’s just acoustic guitars. I took some banjo lessons, so I was used to picking with the metal fingerpicks and the big plastic thumb pick. In those days, you couldn’t punch things in. There’d be this big loud pop, so I had to record it in its entirety, from beginning to end, no mistakes. …

You get ear fatigue after a while all day hearing the same thing, so there’s things you don’t really notice at the time you hear the next day. The next day, I come in and everybody’s hanging their head. I’m like, “What happened?” They said “just listen” and played back everything I’d done the night before. I said “Oh, this sounds great.”

But, all of a sudden, I started hearing this weird clicking, the attack of those fingerpicks on the strings. It sounds like Clydesdales dancing in the background, so we had to scrub it, and the next day I had to start over, but this time I had to do it without fingerpicks.

My fingers were bloody by the time we were done. I hadn’t built up callouses at that point because I’d always used the picks, so, for me, that was the one that took the longest to get done because it was two days, morning to evening, recording …

On “Leftoverture,” “Wayward Son” was the last song that came. We thought we were done writing, and it was our last day of rehearsals. Kerry presented that song. We said, “Whoa, this is a cool song” but we learned it in the studio once we started recording. The version on there is probably the first time we played it correctly.

I’ve always liked us live because it captures an intensity, and, in those earlier studio recordings, there’s a panic because the clock is ticking, tape is expensive, and we’ve got to get this basic track, and so there’s an urgency and tension that is audible to hear. Whereas in modern times it’s a more relaxing way of doing things because no matter what, you can fix things, repair it, drop something else in.

You all recently toured to celebrate the anniversary of “Leftoverture.” Was there always a plan to follow with a “Point of Know Return” anniversary tour, or did the success of the “Leftoverture” tour have something to do with it?

That’s exactly what happened. The reason we did the “Leftoverture” tour was we did a new album, the first one in 17 years, “The Prelude Implicit.” We don’t want to be playing this at a casino or a state fair or something. It wouldn’t make any sense because you have more of your casual concertgoer going to that whereas playing at a performing arts center with a hard ticket, those types of shows you get Kansas fans that know the back catalog.

How do we want people to hear the new album? Well, it’s the 40th anniversary of “Leftoverture.” Let’s put together 10, 15 shows in cities we know we’ll do well and we’ll have Kansas fans there that will have an open mind to hearing new material. … It’s caught on really quickly. I think we did 83 shows of that tour. We have an even bigger album after that, so it’s a logical conclusion, “Let’s follow up with a 40th of ‘Point of Know Return.’ ”

It’s the same format where we come out for about half an hour, we do acoustic versions of some songs, and then the next hour plus is stuff from our entire catalog. Because it’s Kansas fans there, we get to play a lot of deep cuts and songs we’ve either never played or songs we haven’t played in a very long time. That part’s really fun for us, then we end the show with “Point of Know Return.”

What follows is unknown. We are recording a new album this year, so it’s possible that a year from this fall, we might do the new album, bits and pieces of that with stuff from other stuff. And then maybe do “Leftoverture” and “Point” back to back.

You all are really keeping fans on their toes.

We’ve got seven guys in this band that really love doing this and want to be creative and want to go out and play, so being in Kansas now is very much like it was in the first, second, third, fourth album era. Everybody is very energized and loves doing what we do. This is a great time to be in this band.