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You’ve been playing some of your hits for nearly 50 years at this point. Do you ever get tired of those songs? Adversely, which ones are your favorites to play?
Lee: There’s actually quite a few hits – we’ve had about 70 Top 40 hits – that we’ve been playing for that long. We lay 20 to 30 of those quite regularly every year. No, I actually don’t get tired of them. Most bands say that, and if there was a time when I was tired of playing something, it wore off. The songs haven’t gotten any easier. Anyone who has sat in with us understands that. I actually don’t have a favorite either. I guess if I was really pressed, Beginnings always comes up because I like the arrangement. It’s like a small band arrangement. Robert actually wrote that arrangement.
Robert: No. I think there’s an element of gratitude that we still have audiences all over the world who we have to go visit every once in a while. There’s always recognition of the popular songs that come in the live performance that’s very gratifying. The attitude that most of us take is that we try to play it like we’ve never played it before. There’s a level of professionalism and emotional content we try to bring to every performance. And some of the compositions are challenging to play from night to night. You have to pay attention. You can’t phone it in. And to be honest, the songs I look forward to most are the more recent ones. The album that was released [in 2014] has some songs that made it into our live show, and I always look forward to those.
You still play more than 100 shows a year, yet in the documentary, the founding members seemed rather ambivalent about taking a break from touring. What’s your secret to staying motivated and energized?
Lee: The first thing you have to do is enjoy what you do, and that we do. Another thing is enjoying the people who you do it with We do that for the most part. When we work, we work, and when we are off, we are off. But once we hit the stage, everything is great. We travel well together. We have two buses for the band. There are very few fights. The other thing that keeps it going is the music itself. Without the music, you have nothing. These are songs that people keep coming back to hear us play, so the oneus is on us to make it sound like we’re doing it for the first time.
Robert: There are a number of really talented musicians in the band and a number of really talented composers, but I do think that the thing that we do best is perform live rather than recording albums. Certainly there’s a conditioned response to having spent our young years touring all over the world. That’s a lifestyle that’s unique. It can be fun. It can be tough. I love to travel, so it’s always exciting to visit new countries or play for audiences who don’t get to see us every year. All of those things make me look forward to the next tour.
The Sedona venue has a capacity of 750. When was the last time you played an audience that small? Will all eight members be playing in Sedona?
Lee: We might blow out a wall [laughs]. We do corporate shows, so we play for as few as 100 all the way to 200,000. We’ve played all types of shows over the past 48 years. Yeah, the entire band will be here. We won’t play a show with anyone missing.
Robert: It will be great to play Sedona. Except for the huge outdoor venues, [the size of the audience] doesn’t really effect the show. A room with 700 people is wonderfully intimate, and everyone in the room is part of the performance. We really enjoy the smaller venues.
