‘We just don’t do that song’: Ricky Phillips wants Styx to dig deep for classic track

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Ricky Phillips has been lobbying for a classic Styx song since his arrival in the band in 2003, and yet he says the dynamics of creating a concert setlist haven’t allowed them to bring it back.

“I love the song ‘Snowblind,'” Phillips tells Glide, referencing a 1981 Styx track that went to No. 22 on the mainstream rock charts not long after the bassist’s old band the Babys split. “The first time I heard it on the radio I just went: ‘Wow, how cool is this?’ It’s got that smokey, bluesy side to it but the arrangement and the presentation and everything about it, is very, very cool. And we just don’t do that song that much.”

Written by James “J.Y.” Young and the now-departed Dennis DeYoung, with an assist from Tommy Shaw, “Snowblind” was part of Styx’s hit album Paradise Theater. The track has only been performed twice since the close of the band’s 2010 tour, and only some 35 times since Phillips arrived, according to Setlist.fm. Contrast that with “Come Sail Away,” which was played 88 times last year alone.

“It just seems to be one of those songs that gets kicked back,” Phillips. “I always bring it up and drive people crazy with it but there’s kind of a dance you have to put together every night. There’s a way you need to sequence your set that carries you through the set. And when you’re up in front of, let’s say it’s a twenty thousand sold out venue, twenty thousand people out there screaming and hollering, you don’t want to drop down to this slow/mid-tempo. It doesn’t work a lot.”

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