When local rockers Styx launch their national Grand Illusion tour Oct. 14 in Evansville, Indiana, it will be their fourth tour in front of video created by Steven A. Jones.
The band is performing their entire albums Grand Illusion (1977) and Pieces of Eight (1978) back-to-back throughout the tour. It’s the first time they’re performing many of these songs live.
Working with a team of staffers and freelancers at What the Hale Music, Jones combined live action, stock footage and photos, and animation to create an original backdrop for the 17 songs on the bill. They had already produced video for the handful of songs from the two albums that Styx has performed on previous tours.
The first track, “Grand Illusion,” opens with Jones’s son Owen (namesake of his Owen Films) on a 1977 period set, putting the needle on a record. As Pieces of Eight’s closing song “Aku-Aku” plays, we see Owen again, “then the camera goes out of the house onto Easter Island, a reference to Pieces of Eight’s cover, and into outer space,” Jones says.
