On their second tour with Roth back at the helm since 1984, it’s hard deciding which of the band’s accomplishments is the most significant feat. Is it the mid-air spinning kicks that the uber-flexible David Lee Roth whips out? The brilliant return to form of guitar god Eddie Van Halen, whose fingers moved so fast they may have started his instrument on fire. Or the fact that all four band members are not going after each other’s throats – but instead smiling and laughing on stage together.

It’s easy to forget this is a band that has been through more relationship drama than your average soap opera. They’ve survived drugs, alcohol, three lead singers, cancer, lawsuits, divorces, and even the 1990s. To top it all off, Roth said as recently as 2006 that any reunion would result in a “Jerry Springer style fist-fight”. Van Halen is the last band that could be expected to mount a stunning comeback tour more than 35 years after forming, but that’s exactly what’s happening. And they seem to be having more fun than ever.

“My name is Mr. Roth and I am your substitute teacher for the remainder of the concert. If you are a spanish language student, you belong in Panama. That’s about 4 songs down the hall, just a little more to the left.”

He can scream, he can kick, and he’s witty. Roth proved he’s still a triple threat on this night. Although his multiple scarves, shirts, and glasses put him up against Madonna for most costume changes in a single performance, it didn’t make his outlandish green jackets any less fun.

Smiling wide and dancing the night away whenever he wasn’t singing, Roth was wiping sweat off his face at the end of song one. Four splits, a half-dozen kicks, and a hundred shimmys later, he was still yammering out the words to “Jump” while shaking around like the energizer bunny. If it wasn’t for his devotion to clean living (he’s even a big canine fanatic now), you’d swear that 1980s stimulant drugs were making a comeback.

The show lasted over two hours and included every hit a casual fan could ever want, along with enough deeper cuts and new songs to keep the die-hards satisfied. The famous vocal harmonies are still there in full force even minus bassist Michael Anthony, and especially showcased on chorus-echoers like “Beautiful Girls” and “Hot for Teacher”.

Everyone in this band appears reserved when put next to Roth, but Eddie filled the role of showman just as well as he did his standard role of guitar genius. A healthy lifestyle has clearly done wonders not only for his playing but also his looks, which are more youthful than the last tour. His extremely young son Wolfgang is understandably quiet as he plucks away on the bass, but there was a gleam in his eye from time to time as he caught sight of Roth whipping up a kick or his dad wailing on an extended note.

There were no fireworks or explosions, no moving platforms or sliding surfaces. For a band that would seem to want every frill known to man making the job easier, they achieve their shock value with unbridled talent and personality. One massive LED screen and a truckload of confetti was the extent of the “stage” show. For comarison, Rihanna recently employed a moving sidewalk to assist her sliding dance moves. All Roth needed was a well-swept piece of hardwood flooring.

There’s something extremely satisfying about seeing this band move and play as if the last 30 years never happened. For all the crowd could have cared that night, it was 1984 again, and their substitute teacher was Mr. Roth.

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MRC: I have to start out by telling you something you have to hear all the time, but it can’t be said enough. The show you guys are putting on out there is just superhuman – the energy, the singing, everything, and it just keeps getting better year after year. Did you ever imagine that you’d still be doing this in 2012?

JY: In our heyday, I don’t think I could have projected in my mind that anyone would even care at this stage. When I was interviewed by Mary Turner in 1981, she asked me what will I be doing ten years from that point in time. I had hoped we would be doing Styx at that time, but we lost our recording contract in 1992. Damn Yankees even lost their recording contract. In 1994 I really thought the whole thing might be over. Tastes had changed, music television was really the driving force and they had changed to the Seattle grunge scene. And we were broken up by that point so I didn’t see a lot of hope.

Fortunately there was an incredible manager by the name of Charlie Brusco, who said “put the tickets on sale, and they will come”. Not quite like the Kevin Costner baseball movie, but he knew how to promote shows. In 1996, we had this astounding reunion tour and we’ve never looked back from there. If you would have asked me in 1996, I would have said “yeah” – we’ve survived the dark ages and the light’s back on us. We have a sense of how strong the show is but that doesn’t stop us from trying to make the show better with each turn. We have a great time out there and it’s just a tribute to democracy and a great group of people.

MRC: And isn’t Red Rocks just the best place to play a show?

JY: The Gorge [in Gorge, Washington] I think was voted the best amphitheater in the country, but Red Rocks has it beat by a long shot. It’s just amazing. The audience goes up on the hill in front of you, and when they yell back, it’s the greatest place for a call and response. Red Rocks to me is the best natural amphitheater by a long shot.

MRC: Every show you guys play you recognize that you aren’t playing to just the longtime fans. Anyone who comes to see you for the first time is really getting that “ultimate” Styx experience, and that has to be very satisfying.

JY: We’ve come to the conclusion that the best thing for us to do is go out there and play great shows 100 or 110 times a year and just bring it on the stage, because what we do cannot be digitized. To be at a venue like Red Rocks, there’s no way to reproduce that. You can capture it, but it’s not the same as being there.

People more than ever I think are looking for an escape from the difficulties you see on every single news channel. Everyone needs a place to go where they can put that aside, put that out of their brain and celebrate something that gives them joy, and a Styx concert is the perfect thing for that. We’re focused on playing great shows and stepping up our game whenever we can. It comes naturally from my friend Tommy Shaw, from Mr. Gowan. And after the sad passing of John Panozzo, Todd Sucherman is just like a new engine under this race car and I just love taking it out for a drive.

MRC: What are you doing before the shows to get warmed up?

JY: There’s a big hookah. [Laughs] It’s not a secret ritual or anything. It really comes from Tommy Shaw’s natural energy, from Lawrence Gowan’s natural energy, and from my natural desperate need for attention. There’s no special ritual, we just have the right people and take the stage with supreme confidence. I love being dazzled by my bandmates, and it happens regularly. I’m like a kid in a candy store. This is the band I’ve always wanted to be in, and the lineup I’ve always wanted to be a part of.

MRC: Of course the song that lives on like no other is “Miss America”. And you’ve still got the pipes to hit those big screams every night.

JY: [Laughs] I’ve got some catching up to do with Ted Nugent. That guy can scream like no one I’ve heard in a long time.

JY performing with Styx in Denver, CO on May 8, 2012

MRC: The music you create live is a very needed thing in the world right now.

JY: Music is an amazing thing. It’s channeled through a higher power, and it has the power to soothe, to calm, inspire, and in the best cases to heal. Chuck Panozzo is a great example. Without this band and the lift that it gives him when he comes on stage, he might not have beaten his battle with AIDS. This gave him hope, and that hope gave him strength to swallow all those damn pills which made him feel terrible many days.

It’s a joyful thing. My quote from a recent CNN interview called “Age Against the Machine” was “find the joy in each day”. And it really is true. In a rock band there’s going to be planes delayed, this is going to go wrong, that’s going to go wrong. It’s just life on planet earth. Things aren’t perfect. When you’re away from home and familiar touchstones, and you’re in a strange place, these things can be very troubling. But the time on stage brings us all back together. That for me is the joy in days spent on the road. In your daily life you’ve got to spend some time focusing on a joyful aspect of your existence. And once you’ve connected with that, it’s like “that’s ok”. Get a good night sleep and face the next challenges tomorrow.

You can find the latest on JY and Styx at www.styxworld.com.

Six gigs into the tour, and even these veterans of Red Rocks were in awe of its acoustic quality.

“Wow! Can you hear yourselves out there? They can hear you 500 miles away!” yelled a smiling Lawrence Gowan, the Styx keyboardist with a penchant for requesting the audience to play “complete the lyrics”.

The mere thought of this trio hitting the road together seems so implausible in 2012 once you consider the collective age of all the musicians involved, the 40 years (give or take) since their careers began, and that’s not even adding politics into the mix (Ted Nugent and Speedwagon frontman Kevin Cronin are not exactly two peas in a pod).

Age, time, and politics be damned – these guys are putting on a rock show. Ted Nugent, the madman performer. REO Speedwagon, the masters of the power ballad. And Styx, the band that hasn’t missed a single beat in their modern career. Pack the bags and the cigarette lighters.

It’s no surprise these days that young fans are catching on to the music their parents (or grandparents) listened to, which means it shouldn’t be surprising that a huge crop of 15-29 year olds made the trek out to Red Rocks to sing a long with this gang of age-resistant rockers. But it was still remarkable to see college students clasping newly purchased Styx t-shirts.

The hits, and there were a lot of them, flew from start to finish with rare exceptions including a “soul” jam from Ted Nugent and company, and Tommy Shaw’s epic “Man in the Wilderness” in the middle of Styx’s set. Shaw is hitting notes that might be higher than his prime here, and the smile on his face says it’s effortless.

Shaw’s exceptional voice and aura were hard to top, but each musician had a clear chance to shine. Derek St. Holmes is singing loud and clear and clearly happy to be reunited with his axeman Nugent. REO’s Kevin Cronin has stage moves that are something to behold, and his voice holds up nicely on the ballads and rockers alike. Even James “JY” Young from Styx can still send a shiver down your spine when he belts out the delightfully pompous “Miss America”.

Cronin may term his band’s music as “classic rock heavy artillery”, but don’t let that fool you into thinking this tour is only for the usual suspects. The “usual suspects” for these artists has been redefined in recent years to include anyone old enough to sing. This tour is escape to a different kind of mindset. No recession, no job worries, it’s all rock and roll. It’s what Styx, REO Speedwagon, and Ted Nugent were put on this earth to do – and they better not stop.

The casino is nestled in the bluffs of the Missouri River basin, just a short car drive south of Bismarck, North Dakota. Oil may be the state’s mainstay treasure, but this evening the only resource that mattered was rock ‘n’ roll. Roger Earl, Charlie Huhn, and the rest of the Foghat crew were on board to ensure that plenty was in supply from the start of their hour-long set.

They may have saved their two most popular hits – “Fool for the City” and the magnificent “Slow Ride” – for the very end of the set, but that didn’t stop the crowd from getting into it from the very start. Lead vocals these days are handled by Charlie Huhn, who impresses as the newcomer who isn’t really new. A former Ted Nugent recruit, he’s been with Foghat since 2000.

Putting out the original Foghat boogie is a more challenging task with just one original member (Drummer Roger Earl) left standing. That’s where Huhn’s slick pipes are a godsend to this veteran touring act. At 60 he’s no spring chicken, but age isn’t having much of an effect on his voice.

Blue Oyster Cult haven’t seen as much change to their lineup over the years, but their fanbase certainly has evolved. Not all of the fists in the air at this show were those of original BOC’ers. Young fans were out in droves, some even sporting shirts of the Cult. Even though the band won’t indulge too much in the cowbell during their signature song anymore, there’s no denying Will Ferrell’s Saturday Night Live sketch has added some much needed youth to their audience.

The kids who came got to see a band still in good shape after all these years. Buck Dharma and Eric Bloom tore it up on guitar, earning respect from the youngsters no doubt, and reassuring their most loyal devotees of their continued prowess.

Keeping a good portion of the North Dakota crowd on their feet for a combined three hours was a pretty impressive feat for two nostalgia acts.