Kevin Cronin Takes It On The Run
‘I can be prevented from using the name REO Speedwagon, but nobody can stop me from playing these songs’
In 2024, the long-running rock band REO Speedwagon called it quits, the victim of irreconcilable differences between vocalist, pianist and guitarist Kevin Cronin and other members.
But Cronin has reemerged with his own group, the Kevin Cronin Band, and they’re set to go on an extensive tour with Styx from late May through August.
“I can tell you this: a Kevin Cronin Band show looks a lot like an REO Speedwagon show,” says Cronin, calling from his home in Thousand Oaks, California. “I guarantee that basically, anyone that wants the REO Speedwagon experience, the only place to get it is at a Kevin Cronin Band show. There is no other REO Speedwagon anywhere.”
For this tour, “We’re going to be playing our Hi Infidelity album, which was the big ten million seller,” Cronin says. (Hi Infidelity, released in 1980, contains the hits “Keep on Loving You” and “Take It on the Run.”) “We’re going to be playing every song on that record, in sequence. And then the second half is all the hits from other albums, so it’s going to be a rockin’ night.”
(Cronin also notes that Styx will doing a similar thing for these shows, playing their triple platinum-selling 1977 album The Grand Illusion in full, followed by select tracks from across the rest of their career.)
VIDEO: REO Speedwagon “Take It on the Run”
Cronin is upbeat as he discusses the tour, but admits that the rift with his former bandmates — which prevents him from using the REO Speedwagon name — is still painful for him. “That whole thing has left me devastated, I’ve got to say, after putting my entire adult life into making REO Speedwagon as good as I could make it.”
He says the split was due to a difference in opinion about how to proceed with the band: “Some people are satisfied to get to a point in their life where they just rest on their laurels, like a professor with tenure or something. I just have never been able to understand that. That’s kind of what caused some of the friction that has come up within the band over the past couple of years. If some guys want to keep raising the bar, and other guys are satisfied to go along with the status quo, eventually that’s going to cause problems, because I’m sitting there working with a vocal coach every day, and really putting my heart and soul into moving the band forward.
“That’s some of the problems that have led to what I refer to as ‘irreconcilable differences’ between [REO Speedwagon bassist] Bruce Hall and myself — which, I never in a million years expected that to happen,” he continues. “I probably should have seen it coming a little bit over the past few years, but I always just had Bruce’s back, because he was with me since the late ’70s. But hey, you know, it went south and there’s no turning back. I move forward. I can’t go backwards.”
Now, he emphasizes, the Kevin Cronin Band is “the same band that toured last year under the name REO Speedwagon. [Guitarist] Dave Amato and [drummer] Bryan Hitt, who were in REO for 35 years, are still with me. There’s Derek Hilland on keyboards. And Matt Bissonette came to us after 12 years playing bass with Elton John. The chemistry in this band is just indescribable.”
He says there was never any question that he would continue performing. “I’m ready to keep this thing going and build on the momentum,” he says. “There is nothing like walking out in front of thousands of people who know these songs. I’ll play the opening guitar chords to ‘Time for Me to Fly,’ or the opening piano chords of ‘Roll with the Changes’ or ‘Keep on Loving You,’ and you can just feel the power and the energy that runs through the room. It’s like an electric current that connects everyone. And when I start singing, everyone is singing along. I look out at the crowd, and everybody’s smiling, and people are hugging each other. Some people are crying. There’s this beautiful confluence of energy and emotion.”
And this, he says, is at the heart of what he’s always tried to do with his music: “I’ve always striven to connect with people. And with my guitar and my songs, that’s been the best way for me to connect with people, so I enjoy playing those songs as much now as I ever have.”
Growing up in Chicago, Cronin began taking guitar lessons at an early age, but he didn’t realize that playing music would be his calling in life until he saw The Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. “I saw The Beatles, and I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do!’ So when I pick up a guitar, it’s a direct line back to that twelve year old kid who discovered The Beatles, so I still am in touch with that same energy and that same hunger.”
After that, he became infatuated with other British Invasion bands, such as The Dave Clark Five, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and The Hollies. He also liked American bands, including The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape. “All these amazing artists, and so I had all of this amazing inspiration coming at me,” he says.
In high school, Cronin joined a cover band, but he soon became interested in writing his own material instead. “My dad fought in World War II, and they were taught to keep their feelings to themselves. That kind of manhood, that’s what I thought it was. I thought you had to just be tough and keep all your feelings to yourself. I’m a sensitive kind of guy, so it was really hard on me. And so my songs were my outlet.”
After joining REO Speedwagon in 1971, Cronin became a main songwriter for the band, and his emotive songs ended up becoming some of the band’s biggest hits, including “Keep on Loving You,” “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” “Keep the Fire Burnin’,” “Roll with the Changes,” and “Time for Me to Fly.”
REO Speedwagon became one of the most popular rock bands of the 1980s, with all four of the albums they released in that decade achieving gold, platinum, or diamond sales status in the U.S., as well as charting in multiple other countries.
Cronin believes that his songs resonate with people because of the relatable experiences he’s describing in them. As he puts it, “I think that I speak from a place of honesty and vulnerability. I just kind of bare my soul.”
He knows that he’s going to have to perform many of these songs as every concert he does from now on, and he’s fine with that. “We’re very fortunate that there is a core group of songs that, if we don’t play them, there will be an angry mob waiting for us outside the tour bus after the gig,” he says with a laugh. “But luckily, we enjoy playing those songs at least as much as the people who come to the concerts enjoy hearing them.”
And, despite the setback with REO Speedwagon as an entity, and the work it’s taking to get people familiar with the Kevin Cronin Band, he says it’s worth it. “I love this music, and I love this band, and I love our fans,” he says. “I can be prevented from using the name REO Speedwagon, but nobody can stop me from playing these songs, and no one ever will.”
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Great interview. Cronin’s analogy of bands that stop growing to a “professor with tenure” is beautifully put. In the excellent new memoir, Heartbreaker, Mike Campbell describes the painful moment when the band’s new management gathers the guys and announces that it would now be Tom Petty & the Pick a Good Name, and Petty would be getting the lion’s share of the dough. Campbell realizes that Petty was who people were coming to see. But others in the band, especially drummer Stan Lynch, suffer from what the new managers dub “sideman syndrome.” As an REO fan of 45-ish years now, I’d prefer to see as many of the survivors playing together as possible. But if I had to choose between “Cronin and a bunch of pros” vs “the original bass player and keyboard player with some singer who’s as terrible as the zero-charisma elf they got in Journey,” I’m buying a ticket for The Kevin Cronin Band.
I would think playing REO songs for the rest of your life is its own special Hell. Having to listen to them certainly would be: