There's a specific kind of electricity that hangs over a Chicago and Styx bill, the kind that only comes from two Chicago-born outfits with a combined catalogue of well over a hundred million records sold. RBC Amphitheatre, sitting right on the lake, caught that charge on Jul. 28 for the Toronto stop of The Windy Cities Tour. Boats bobbed past on Lake Ontario as the sun dropped behind the stage. And by the time the horns and the harmonies were done, more than one grey-haired rocker in the crowd looked ten years younger than when they walked in.
This was never going to be a passive night. Chicago and Styx aren't legacy acts coasting on one hit apiece, they're two of the deepest catalogues in American rock sharing a stage for the first time as co-headliners, and Toronto got the full 70s-and-80s treatment across a combined runtime that didn't let up.
Full disclosure, this critic has been chasing both of these bands since the 80s, going back far enough to have caught Styx on the Kilroy Was Here tour, a run most fans only know from grainy VHS footage. That's not a brag so much as a confession: it colours everything below. When you've watched a band across five different decades, you stop reviewing the show in isolation and start reviewing it against the ghost of every version that came before.
Chicago went on first, and the horn section did what it has always done best, which is make guitar-forward rock critics quietly question their allegiances. Saturday in the Park still floats even on a night with no rain in sight, and 25 or 6 to 4 closed the set the way it always has, riff first with the brass stabs landing right on its heels. The ballad stretch, built around Hard to Say I'm Sorry and You're the Inspiration, gave the horns a breather without losing the room for a second. Whatever else changes in this band, that horn line remains the best in the genre, full stop.
And plenty has changed. This is a mostly new Chicago compared to the lineup that toured just five years ago, when Canadian vocalist Neil Donell was handling the high end. Donell has since parted ways with the group, replaced this summer by Rudy Cardenas, and there have been further shuffles beyond that. It would be easy for a band this many albums deep to feel like a tribute act to itself at this point. Chicago doesn't. The horns carry the identity forward even as the faces around them keep turning over, which says more about the strength of the material than any individual player.
Behind that vocal chair, the rest of the machine keeps humming without a hitch. Lee Loughnane, the lone original still out on the road, anchors the horn charts from the same trumpet chair he's held since the band's earliest days, and new trombonist Nick Lane slots into that line with more polish than a recent hire has any right to carry. Walfredo Reyes Jr. and Ramon Yslas lock down a rhythm section that never overplays its hand, and the two of them turned in the night's most purely fun moment, trading seats mid-solo, drums to percussion and back, without dropping a single beat in the handoff. Tony Obrohta handles guitar and vocal duties with real taste rather than imitation, and Ray Herrmann's sax lines carry genuine weight in the mix instead of sitting there as decoration. Eric Baines, Carlos Murguía and Justin Avery round out the low end and the keys with the kind of unshowy precision that keeps a 10-person stage from ever sounding cluttered. Cardenas, brand new to the fold on lead vocals, already sounds like he belongs there.
Styx followed, and the setlist ran shorter than Chicago's 110-minute headline set, but nobody in that crowd walked away shortchanged. Styx packed a tight 90 minutes into the night, structured like a band that knows exactly how much time it has and refuses to waste a minute of it.
The hometown moment came early and often. Terry Gowan joined his brother Lawrence onstage, at least the third time that's happened in Toronto, and the sibling chemistry between them is the kind of thing you can't fake or rehearse into existing. Lawrence has spent nearly three decades fronting this band. Watching his own brother share that spotlight in his home city still plays like something genuinely earned rather than staged for effect.
By the time the horns and the harmonies were done, more than one grey-haired rocker in the crowd looked ten years younger than when they walked in.
Here's where the notes get interesting for anyone who tracks these shows closely. Styx pulled out a run of Equinox-era deep cuts that don't get regular airtime, including Lorelei and Light Up, the latter not performed in this city since 1996. They also broke out Crystal Ball, the title track off the 1976 album of the same name, itself absent from a Toronto set since that same year. Two songs, thirty years dormant in this market, both back in one night. For longtime followers keeping a mental ledger of what they've seen live, that's the kind of rarity that makes the ticket price worth it on its own.
But time is undefeated, and it shows a little more on Styx than it does on Chicago right now. Founding member JY Young took to a stool for portions of the set, a small concession that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Tommy Shaw still commands the stage like the rock star he's always been, though the leaps aren't quite as high or as frequent as they once were, and the voice hasn't lost a step for it, still commanding the entire amphitheatre the way it did when these songs were new. Todd Sucherman remains one of the most technically gifted drummers working in rock today, and he made the catalogue's trickiest fills look conversational rather than laboured. Chuck Panozzo, the band's last true original, sat this one out, as he does on select dates these days, though his presence on the record and in the band's history is still felt every time these songs get played. Will Evankovich, the newest official member on paper, has folded into the band's sound so completely it's hard to picture Styx without him now, both as a player and as the producer behind the group's last three records. Lawrence, behind those spinning keyboards, is ageing into the role rather than fighting it, which somehow suits him. None of that dulled the sound. If anything, the band leans harder into the songwriting now that the athletics have eased off, and the whole seven-piece plays like a unit with nothing left to prove. Twenty years from now, if this critic can still climb stairs the way these guys climb a drum riser, that'll be a win.
Here's the one real miss, and it's a repeat offender. Styx skipped A Criminal Mind again, the Gowan solo track that's become something of a tradition at Canadian shows. It's not a minor omission. With two Canadian members now on that stage instead of one, a hometown Toronto date was the obvious moment to bring it back, and the band let it slide by untouched.
That gap matters because of what it represents. A Criminal Mind isn't a Styx song by pedigree, it's a Gowan song, written years before he ever joined the band, and playing it in Canada has functioned as a wink to the audience that knows the difference. Dropping it here, in front of the exact crowd that would have recognized it instantly, reads like a missed opportunity rather than an oversight nobody would notice.
Production-wise, there's little to fault. The lakeside setting at RBC gave both bands a natural amphitheatre swell that indoor arenas can't replicate, and the mix stayed clean through the loudest sections of both sets, no small feat with a horn section and a twin-guitar attack sharing a stage rig on the same night.
What makes this pairing work is the contrast rather than the overlap. Chicago brings jazz-inflected precision and brass-driven hooks, Styx counters with guitar muscle and theatrical flourish, and the two catalogues never step on each other because they were never competing for the same real estate to begin with. Put them on the same bill and you get a night that covers more emotional ground than either band manages alone.
There's a particular kind of gratitude that sets in watching bands you've followed since childhood keep doing this at a high level decade after decade. This critic has caught both acts at more career junctures than feels fair to count, from arena runs in the 80s through to a waterfront stage in 2026, and the throughline has never broken. That kind of consistency isn't common in this business, and it shouldn't be taken for granted just because it's familiar.
Verdict: go see this tour if it comes anywhere near you, and go for both bands, not just your favourite of the two. The rarities alone justify the drive for Styx diehards, and Chicago's horn section remains a genuine wonder regardless of who's standing where in the lineup behind it. Just don't be shocked if A Criminal Mind stays parked on the shelf even in its home country. Somebody in that touring party needs to fix that before the run wraps.
Catch The Windy Cities Tour wherever it lands next. If Toronto's stop is any indication, there isn't a bad seat left to book.
STYX
Chicago
