Still Rolling! REO Speedwagon Frontman Kevin Cronin Q&A With Rob Light (Pollstar Live! Recap)

Kevin Cronin, lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and songwriter for REO Speedwagon, discussed “irreconcilable differences,” karaoke, Irving Azoff and touring in 2025 under a new name during a candid Rainmakers Q&A with CAA Managing Director Rob Light during Pollstar Live!

The Q&A started with a video montage including an REO Speedwagon appearance at Live Aid in 1985, and that’s where Light started the 45-minute conversation that was a lifetime in the making.

Some highlights of the discussion are below.

Kevin Cronin: Honestly, when I got there and saw the list of artists that were playing Live Aid, my first thought was, ‘What in the world am I doing here?’ You always feel like, at least, I always feel like I don’t belong in the same sentence as Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney, etc. etc. But I was very proud to have been invited to perform there, and it was one of the one of the greatest moments of my career and of my life was that special.

Was there another artist that stood out?
When we got backstage, I may have dreamed this, but I don’t think so. I seem to remember that there was a teepee set up and Neil Young was sitting in front of his own personal teepee, reading a book.

Walk us through the ups and downs of how you came into the band, left and came back.
I’m from Chicago, and my bass guitar player and my lead guitar player left my band, so I needed two replacement musicians. To run an advertisement in the Chicago Sun Times, it cost $15 and when I called up and told them I needed two musicians, they said I had to run two ads. And I’m like, where am I going to get 30 bucks? This is crazy. I’m a college student. So, I concocted this idea to form the musicians’ referral service. And I hung flyers at all the music stores and coffee houses all over Chicago.

I soon realized that I couldn’t take any of this seriously until one day I get a call from a guy who says he’s in a band, they’ve made one record, they’re signed to Epic and they’re getting ready to make their second album – and they’re looking for a lead singer, rhythm guitar player, songwriter. …I said, ‘You know what? I got the perfect guy for you.’

You joined the band in ’71-’72 and leave and then come back three years later. What brought you back?
You know, the story of me leaving it depends on who you talk to. If you talk to me, I would say that creative differences arose during the recording of Ridin’ the Storm Out in 1973. If you talk to the guys in the band, their story might be slightly different. They might say something like ‘He lost his voice so we kicked his ass out.’ It just depends on who you talk to.

They were smart enough to bring you back.
I was out of the band for a couple of years, and I went and saw them perform in West Palm Beach, and I sat backstage. They welcomed me in. …They told me that there was a group of fans out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who had started a petition to get me back and they have 15,000 names on this petition. I thought, ‘Well, that’s some interesting energy. I wonder why they’re telling me this?’ Well, sure enough, about six months later, I got the call. …I came out to L.A. and reauditioned and the spark was immediately there.

In 1967 the band formed. They had a college student at Champaign as their manager, whose name was Irving Azoff. Tell us a little bit of what Irving was like as a young man, as opposed to how we all know him today.
He had two main management clients at the time, this is in the late ’60s, the late great Danny Fogelberg and REO Speedwagon. And [lead guitarist] Gary had kind of brought me down to Champaign, but he didn’t tell anybody. So, I remember Irving’s attitude was, ‘Wait a minute, we just sold 200,000 copies of our first album, why in the world are you bringing this folk singer from Chicago down to join the band?’ But Irving – and he was like this back then and he’s made a career of it – he trusted his artists. He didn’t agree with Gary Richrath, but he trusted Gary Richrath’s instincts, and that’s the beauty of Irving.

Knowing that you played thousands and thousands of shows back in that era, how many club shows were you doing a week, and how many miles were you driving a night?
Irving was our manager, but he was also our booking agent. And I would say that we probably played at least 300 shows a year, and we loved it because we were all in our early 20s, and it was our job, but it was also what we did for fun. That was how we met girls. That was how we started making a name for ourselves and little by little we became the biggest draw in Champaign, Illinois, and then Irving started booking us in Bloomington and Carbondale and Rockford. We built our following the old-fashioned way – we went to a city played the smallest club in town. Next time, we played the second smallest club in town. We literally built our following one little town at a time.  

In ‘76 you’ve played Busch Stadium [in St. Louis], but word hasn’t spread, yet.  And then March ’78 the album before THE album comes out. For those of you that don’t know, I’ll let Kevin tell you how the title of that album came together.
We were at a party one night after a show, late at night, and one of the people at the party mentioned an old Marx Brothers line, ‘You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish.’ I heard that, and I thought, ‘That sounds like a great album title.’ Well, of course, when I brought it to the band, they all thought I was out of my mind, but I prevailed.

I never heard you refer to yourself as a folk singer. Was that really your inspiration, a different sort of music than rock?
My first bands, we covered Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape, Simon and Garfunkel. We had an electric version that played rock clubs and the guitar player and I were a folk duo called The Late, Late Show and our claim to fame was our covers of Simon and Garfunkel songs.

In 1980 the band really pivots, going from a hard rock sound to a rock, almost pop sound that basically spawns one of the greatest albums of all time, and one of the biggest albums of the ‘80s. What inspired that pivot?
I wrote “Keep On Loving You” at about 4:00 AM one night. I stumbled into my studio and wrote the verses, and we were in pre-production for the next album, and I came in the next day and started playing those verses on the piano. And at some point, Richrath got up to plug in a Les Paul into a stack of Marshalls and to this day, I swear to you, I’m not sure whether he was attempting to play along or just drown me out – so I would stop playing this slow song on the piano. But when he started playing, I swear to God, I stood up from the piano, I looked over at him, he looked me right in the eye and we both knew that we had found the balance between my kind of bulky folk, rock songs and his power rock and roll thing. If we had tried to do it, we never would have been able to. We stumbled into it, and that was the moment that we kind of felt like, okay, let’s, let’s explore this, this kind of combination.

In 1980 Hi Infidelity comes out and it sells 10 million records. That song goes on to be No. 1 and changes the whole dynamic of the band. Tell us what happens in that moment.
Just hearing one of your songs on the radio, like I said, was just an incredible experience, but having a song become the No. 1 record on the Billboard chart was to this day, I’m still blown away by it.

I looked it up before this interview, “Can’t Fight This Feeling” Is a Top 25 karaoke song – in the world. I don’t know how you feel about that, but I’d love your thoughts and what is your favorite go-to song for karaoke?
I did karaoke once in my life. We got rained out of a show up in northern Michigan. It was an outdoor show and people packed the bar of the hotel that we were staying at. And the promoter, who had a pay us because it was an Act of God, said, ‘Well, dude, the least you could do is come down to the bar and do a karaoke song.’ And I thought, all right, why not? What they were hoping was that I would do “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” or “Keep On Loving You” or “Time For Me To Fly” – one of our hits – but I chose “Livin’ La Vida Loca.” I will admit that there was tequila involved and I didn’t really know “Livin’ La Vida Loca.” I thought I would get up and do my interpretation of “Livin’ La Vida Loca.” To say that was a low point in my public appearance career is an understatement.

In the 23 years we’ve been together, REO Speedwagon has done 1,700 shows and grossed $230 million. …Fifty years into this, what makes the road so special?
Oh, man, we’ve, we’ve had so many amazing experiences. I was asked to travel with the President of the United States and perform at a couple of rallies with Bill Clinton in his re-election campaign. We played back-to-back, sold out shows at the Houston Astrodome and the New Orleans Superdome. Five sold out shows at Red Rocks – my favorite venue in the world.

I was born and raised in Chicago, and my mom had never seen a mountain, so my dad got in our 1953 Ford and drove Route 66 from Chicago to Colorado. And there’s a picture that he took of my mom and I at the top of Red Rocks Amphitheater during the day. There was no show, but you can see the stage in the background. And little did I know that I would sell out five shows there.

[In 2024, REO Speedwagon announced they would cease touring] Tell us about the Kevin Cronin Band and what you are doing now.
I always expected that I was going to ride the REO Speedwagon into the sunset at some point. REO Speedwagon was an American institution, but you know rock and roll bands are intricate, unique organisms and people change. People get married, people move and as in many marriages, the REO Speedwagon core ended up having irreconcilable differences. But the offshoot of that was that I met a bass player by the name of Matt Bissonnette. Matt had just come off of 12 years on the road with Elton John and Matt brought out something in me over the past year and half that I really loved. It was something that had gone missing in me. He just brought back a hunger and a desire. …So, the Kevin Cronin Band 2025 will be on tour this summer with Styx.

I wish Bruce Hall and Neil Doughty the best in whatever they do next. I’m extremely inspired, extremely excited about the future of the Kevin Cronin Band. Unfortunately, I can’t use the name REO Speedwagon. I can use the name formerly of REO Speedwagon, which I will do. I’m proud of everything that REO Speedwagon accomplished. I thank all of you who have probably had something to do with REO Speedwagon at one point along the way. But if you want the REO Speedwagon experience, the Kevin Cronin Band will be playing those hits, playing those songs, having that energy, having that positive vibe.