The Music Spectrum 2004 Year-End Lists:Special Feature: Too Much Time on Our Hands: A Styx Tribute Album

You can find the best-of year-end lists in most music publications. Rather than rehashing what was already reviewed and discussed this year, Music Spectrum is going deep into the stacks of CDs received this year to take a look at some of the ones that got missed.


Only from the mind of Jonathan Rundman and his Salt Lady Records label could come Too Much Time on Our Hands: A Styx Tribute Album. Gathering friends who also felt that the void in the tribute album rack must be filled, Rundman produced this compilation in 2003 in order to celebrate, honor, reinterpret, and otherwise mine the vast motherlode of artistry that is the music of Styx.

True to their American Band Rock form—always playing it up just a notch while keeping the wink and sly smile—Echelon open the tribute ceremony with “Renegade.” Tom Freund gives a bluesy treatment of “Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)” with gravely guitar riffs and a smoky club upright bass accompanied by the Hammond B-3 stylings of Jon Brion. The lyrics of “The Grand Illusion” are open to sounding a little silly on the sparse acoustic version of Lost and Found while also exposing the very real, soul searching heart of Dennis DeYoung.

Two tracks standout for the Americana tones that they lend to the American Pop Rock of Styx. Jerry Chapman & His Evil Herbivores paint a haunting picture with “Man in the Wilderness,” awash in mandolins, the typical electric buzz of the song moved to the background. Probably my favorite track on the album, though, is Dag Juhlin’s take on “Too Much Time on My Hands.” The finger-picking bluesy acoustic guitar with that Pop Rock electric guitar backing it up brings Styx into the AltCountry world. Juhlin’s strums up a storm, stomping his foot like a country bluesman, and all of this on a song that is usually a throw away track on “hits of yesterday” radio. This is one of those tribute album songs that drives you to discover the cover artist, the original song just a vehicle to introduce to an outstanding performer.

By the way, I meant to mainly highlight the other artists on this album since I’ve often talked about Rundman. Yet, I can’t help but to mention that Americana seems to be an overarching theme to many of these interpretations of Styx songs. Rundman’s “Come Sail Away” features the banjo. With that Americana approach, you find these songs stripped back to what they are: songs of love, loss, and spirituality, songs that find themes that resonate in American folk music from generations ago, songs that get hidden in that American Pop Rock form that we first heard when Styx performed them. Too Much Time on Our Hands is a journey in rediscovery.

Thanks to Jonathan Rundman and Salt Lady Records for the review copy.