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\n \u201cSome of the guys peek through their fingers when they see those photos. When they made the wardrobe change in the sketch, I thought, Perfect.\u201d
\n Photo: Will Heath\/NBC via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
You don\u2019t really know which direction Saturday Night Live\u2019s \u201cHusbands\u201d will go until more than a minute in. In the sketch, a group of five men \u2014 forced to spend time together so their wives can socialize in the kitchen \u2014 seemingly have nothing in common and are destined for an afternoon of drinking beer in silence. Is this commentary about the male-loneliness epidemic? Will they ever find something to talk about? Actually, they do in their own special way: Encouraged by host Jack Black\u2019s<\/a> character, they all discover the bonding power of Kansas\u2019s hit 1976 opus \u201cCarry on Wayward Son,\u201d progressively performing more of the verses until they strip down to their rock-and-roll jumpsuits for a grand finale. It\u2019s crazy that they all know the song to begin with. \u201cI actually don\u2019t,\u201d Kenan Thompson\u2019s husband character admits, \u201cbut my mouth seems to.\u201d It\u2019s very much a love letter to one of the defining songs in the classic-rock canon and further proof that the United Nations should perhaps give air-guitar diplomacy a shot.<\/p>\n Rich Williams, Kansas\u2019s guitarist and one of the band\u2019s original members, was quickly alerted to the sketch\u2019s existence after it aired this past weekend. \u201cThere\u2019s always a good and bad side to things. Everybody I know is sending me the clip,\u201d he says. \u201cSo it\u2019s a nice problem to have, I\u2019ll say that.\u201d He was surprised, of course, by the sheer randomness of the premise, mostly because of the reputation Kansas has built for itself over the past five decades. \u201cWe\u2019ve always been seen as a really serious band,\u201d Williams explains. \u201cAs far as our career, we were serious about it, but we\u2019re not made of stone. We laugh all the time. We have a lot of stupid inside jokes and our own language. But to be a part of something like this is just wonderful.\u201d The sketch\u2019s timing adds another layer of significance from Williams\u2019s perspective, as both Kansas and SNL recently marked their respective 50th anniversaries<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s another feather in our cap that adds to our legacy,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe\u2019re still out there and working, but to be acknowledged by an institution like Saturday Night Live? Wow.\u201d<\/p>\n I have to ask: Why did you drop the \u201cmy\u201d in the title? Shouldn\u2019t it be \u201cCarry on My Wayward Son\u201d? Fair enough. Of all of the scenarios of Kansas\u2019s music appearing on SNL, did this sketch at all align with what you were hoping for? It made me think back to recording our second album, Song for America, and how both Kansas and Saturday Night Live were born almost at the same time. They were about a year after our first record, so we have a lot of shared history in Americana in general. To be acknowledged in a sketch in a funny way felt nice. It wasn\u2019t mocking us. It was very cool. And Jack Black is one of a kind. He\u2019s very serious, but he\u2019s very talented. He\u2019s a jack of all trades. His role in Tropic Thunder? I don\u2019t know too many actors that can take things so far as he can. To see him involved in that sketch gave it a lot of credibility, because he\u2019s a musician himself.<\/p>\n \u201cDust in the Wind\u201d and \u201cCarry on Wayward Son\u201d would\u2019ve been a sick double header of songs if Kansas was a musical guest back in the \u201970s. Did the band ever try to get that gig? Take me back to the beginning with this one. When during the Leftoverture sessions was the song presented, and was it obvious that it had a star quality? So when we get down to the recording studio a few days later, we\u2019re laying down each song until we realize, \u201cWell, we\u2019ve got that new song we haven\u2019t really learned yet. Should we try to arrange that \u2018Wayward\u2019 one?\u201d After four or five takes, our producer goes, \u201cI think we\u2019ve got the one.\u201d That song was put together and learned by the band in the studio in a short amount of time. We rolled tape, and the version on the record is, to my estimation, the first time we ever played it correctly. I love my quirky little solo. It\u2019s hook after hook after hook. It\u2019s definitely a guitar and vocal song. We pretty much knew it was going to be a hit.<\/p>\n Were you influenced by anything in particular for your quirky little solo? Who did you consider to be your peers and influences at the time? I never really considered Kansas to easily fit into either the \u201cprog rock\u201d or \u201carena rock\u201d boxes, but you all were doing something unique that not many bands in America were replicating. Did you ever have a penchant for wearing rock-and-roll jumpsuits? Did the Kansas boys enjoy some flashy looks? But everybody picked their own thing. Kerry was wearing these jumpsuits his wife made that looked like green silk \u2014 sleeveless v-necks, very space age, and Captain Kirk-type wear. When I look back on our wardrobe changes over the years, it\u2019s like, Wow, we were stupid. It\u2019s embarrassing. I\u2019m in a tux, and while it was kind of goony, at least I could go anywhere and fit in. But some of the guys peek through their fingers when they see those photos. When they made the wardrobe change in the sketch, I thought, Perfect.<\/p>\n \n Williams in his signature tuxedo from the early \u201980s. I realize you all weren\u2019t twirling ribbons around during your gigs like Jack Black\u2019s character, but did you all have pyrotechnics or design features that you favored while touring? We did pyro for a while. It was dangerous. Robby Steinhardt\u2019s hair caught on fire once. There was a flash pot that went off right behind him, but he was too close to it. He had a haystack of hair, and it was completely on fire. I had to beat him in the back of the head with a towel. It melted into a plastic clump. Let me tell you, it doesn\u2019t smell good when you\u2019re burning ten pounds of hair. It\u2019s a whole other animal.<\/p>\n I have to blame or thank Genesis for the pyro. We started using it because the first time I saw anything like that was when we went, as a band, to see Genesis in Kansas City. It was the Selling England By the Pound tour. A top-five concert of my life. There was one point in the set where, all of a sudden, a flash pot went off, and I had never seen one before. We were all near the back of the venue, and my first thought was somebody had just shot me in the face with a gun. Then as my eyes cleared and my heart stopped leaping, it had gone back into the theme of the song, and it was fascinating. So then pyro was part of our shtick.<\/p>\n Genesis had good lighting, too. It was all very theatrical. It was like going to a Broadway play \u2014 each scene, or song, was carefully crafted to create mood. When we all left the show, we were like, We should maybe lean into lighting our stage like those gentlemen from Genesis.<\/p>\n I remember talking to Steve Hackett a few years ago, and he had a lot of pride in saying that one particular song of theirs, \u201cThe Carpet Crawlers,\u201d made grown men weep in the bathrooms when they heard it<\/a>. Have you observed a specific reaction to \u201cCarry on Wayward Son\u201d when you perform it that other Kansas songs can\u2019t replicate? People will talk about how things just aren\u2019t the same anymore. When we made our records, if the wheels fell off the wagon at the end, we\u2019d have to do it again. We were under fire, the clock was ticking, and money was burning. Producers were looking at their watches and asking us, \u201cWhen the fuck are you going to get this right?\u201d It was all a very organic and intangible process, which doesn\u2019t happen today in much of modern music. It\u2019s all kind of homogenized. So much of it is computer generated. You don\u2019t have to be a \u201cmusician\u201d anymore. When machines play everything perfectly, it sucks the soul right out of everything.<\/p>\n
Wow. That\u2019s a good question, and I can\u2019t answer that. Maybe those two letters filled up too much room on the disc.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen so many parodies and interpretations of our work \u2014 a capella, jug bands, all kinds of stuff. So when I first watched the sketch, it made sense to me that they would go in that direction. But still, I was like, Wow. It keeps going and going. We got a lot of air time, and that was fantastic.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a little fuzzy to me now, but it was talked about; it just never worked out. We never got to be on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, either. The Dixie Dregs got to be on with Johnny, but not us? Seriously? We instead got opportunities to do the Today show. It\u2019s like, No, no, no, I don\u2019t want to go on early in the morning with the morning crew and do that shit. It wasn\u2019t the right venue for us. Don Kirshner was our manager, and he was such a New York guy, so I\u2019m surprised Saturday Night Live never came up.<\/p>\n
We were based in Topeka, Kansas, at the time, and in rehearsals working on the new album. We had more material than we needed, so we had to start culling things out. Kerry Livgren was on quite a writing streak; he was walking in almost every day with a song. We had the last day of rehearsals before loading up the truck for the recording studio down in Bogalusa, Louisiana, and we figured we\u2019ll just start packing up equipment. But then Kerry came in and said, \u201cI\u2019ve actually got one more song.\u201d Listen, we were tired of that part of the process. We felt good that we had a good record. But he insisted on explaining this new song, and he went through \u201cCarry on Wayward Son\u201d with a few verses with the guitar. I was like, This has some promise. This is a good song. None of the structure was there, and it was extremely bare bones.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s kind of a weird influence, but I was a big Gentle Giant fan, and they do so much point-counterpoint where somebody will fill in a hole. It\u2019s not playing with musicians, it\u2019s playing around musicians. I was listening to a lot of their stuff at the time and wanted to take that theory and put it to practical use.<\/p>\n
The first band I was in was with Phil Ehart, our drummer, and we played a lot of Motown and Young Rascals. But then King Crimson came out and it was like, Whoa, what in the world is this? The funny thing is, I don\u2019t know what progressive music was called at the time. But what we now know as \u201cprog rock\u201d was Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Jethro Tull, who were big influences for us. Jethro Tull\u2019s Thick as a Brick changed everything. You\u2019re telling me you can use a flute as a main instrument? The formula of what American music was at that time was pretty simple. Nothing wrong with that. But all of a sudden, Jethro Tull threw the box away, and we started recreating it. We looked at Britain. What the early British prog movement taught us \u2014 especially early Deep Purple, when they put all these preludes to their songs \u2014 was that we didn\u2019t have to sing about certain topics. We don\u2019t have to play with certain time signatures. We don\u2019t have to play under three minute songs. It opened our eyes to just be ourselves.<\/p>\n
I wish we stayed with what we started with, which was blue jeans and t-shirts. But as things progressed, we had pressure to have \u201cstage clothes,\u201d and we refused to have a wardrobe expert dress us. So a bunch of hicks from Topeka were left up to our own devices of going down to Robert Hall and finding something that might be kind of cool. I mean, I was wearing overalls back in the \u201860s, which was kind of a hippie thing to do. So the first album I was in overalls, but as it went on, suddenly I went the other way and went into a tuxedo. I wore a tux onstage all the time.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/9b78e66ea6275e9167d9c164d9f50721e6-richardwilliams-kansasband.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Paul Natkin\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
We did get a little caught up in certain things. We had lasers for a while. But it was expensive and often required an inspector to come into certain venues. So we wound up paying for the laser every night, whether or not we ended up using it due to the inspector\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
\u200b\u200bThere\u2019s a lot of crowd participation. We generally save that song for last because it\u2019s a tough one to follow. It\u2019s interesting, because about a decade or so ago, we realized there were a lot of young kids in our audience in the front row. Where were they coming from? It was confusing, and we didn\u2019t understand it. So after one show, I went out and talked with them. I said, \u201cHow do you guys know all this stuff?\u201d And they responded, \u201cSupernatural, sir.\u201d I never watched it but knew it existed. They used the song in every season, and it became the unofficial theme for Supernatural. That was a big thing that got us back into a crowd. It\u2019s kind of odd to have grandparents, parents, and their children all together at a show who listen to the same music, but it\u2019s an accolade that the music lasted all this time.<\/p>\n